Lamb to the Slaughter
Mary Maloney leaned back in her chair and put her stockinged feet on the futon in front of her. She leaned over and took her drink from the table beside her. She kept her eyes glued to the television, where an old black and white comedy was on. The heavy curtains in the living room were parted, letting golden autumn sunshine pool on the floor. Dust motes floated around the living room-Mary had forgotten to dust for some time now-and cat hairs covered the carpet in bristly little mats. In the kitchen, dishes were piled up in the dripping sink. Hardened oatmeal from breakfast was cemented to bowls, and last nights casserole left red smears on plates left in the open dishwasher. A single fly buzzed despondently against the kitchen window. Back in the living room, Mary let out a loud guffaw at something on television. Her laugh was stopped short by a pain in her stomach. She shifted uncomfortably in her chair. "I guess the baby doesn't like comedy," she thought ruefully. Mary was suddenly aware that it was long past time for her husband to be getting home. She heaved her fat self - now looking even fatter because she was pregnant - out of the chair and brushed her frizzy hair from her eyes. The cat bumped up against her leg, purring for food. She shoved it aside and waddled to the kitchen muttering to herself. The sound of car tires on gravel alerted her to the fact that dear old hubby was home. Moments later she heard the key in the lock, and a tired sigh as he came in. "Patrick!" she howled from the kitchen. "You finally decided to come home. You leave me and go out for a drink or two with your slacker friends, and forget completely about me!"
"How could anyone forget you? You're as loud as a moose.." Patrick mumbled, throwing his coat on a chair. He pulled the liquor cabinet door open and wearily surveyed the prospective drinks available. Mary was still lamenting how he kept staying out late drinking, and the truth was, Patrick thought, her routine of suffering wife had grown a little stale.
"...and you leave a poor woman, with an unborn child no less, all alone at home all day..." Mary let out a terribly dramatic sigh. Patrick rubbed his forehead. There was a pressure there that threatened to bloom into a headache. He heard snatches of Mary's aggravating voice floating out from the next room. The kitchen was Mary's stage, and she its star actress. She had actually started to believe her own words. Patrick had not, had never, been out drinking with his buddies right after work. He went out only to dinner with his wife, or on the weekends, but not as often as Mary agonized over. It simply pleased Mary the Drama Queen to make up such stories to keep herself occupied- too many soap operas perhaps.... Sometimes, though, she got so disagreeable and exasperating, with her bemoaning her non-existent drunk husband, he felt as though he could cheerfully kill her.
"While you're in the kitchen, Mary, can you whip up something to eat, I'm starving," he called out. Mary sniffed.
"Well...I suppose I shall forgive you this time, and make you something." She trudged down to the cellar, wiping her pudgy hands on her cloth apron. "A leg of lamb, perhaps. Yes, that sounds about right. And maybe some peas, or zucchini...maybe corn.. " She reached into the icebox and pulled out the leg, wrapped in thick pink paper. Frost glittered on the edges of the paper. Mary shut the icebox and heaved herself up the steps. Her eyes fell on Patrick, his silhouette dark against the fading light from the window. In three steps she crossed the room, the sound of her feet muffled by the hair-covered carpet. Stupid Patrick, ignorant Patrick, Patrick who always drank with his friends instead of coming home to see her, Patrick who never bought those special Sara Lee cakes she loved so much. She raised the lamb like a caveman brandishing a club, and brought it down on Patrick's head. Her aim was off, so the blow glanced off the side of his head, but it was enough to bring him down like a ton of bricks. Mary dropped the lamb on the floor, and nonchalantly dusted her hands off. She stepped over Patrick's limp form and grabbed her purse from the front hall. She sauntered out to the front yard. Her rust-eaten pink bike was there on their lawn. Mary got on and the bike creaked with her weight. Down the street she pedaled, her plump cheeks flushed with strain. She passed by the local neighborhood homeless orphan, Shinji. "Please Miss....." he implored.
"Now now, Shinji, I have no time for silly nonsense right now like giving you enough money to eat. Go along and play."
"But...but..." he held up a scruffy gray rat he had been holding. "Me an' Kaworu haven't eaten since last month." His poor little orphan eyes filled with poor little orphan tears. Mary Maloney raised her eyebrows and rolled her eyes. She stalked into the shop. The store owner's son, Quatre Cinqsixsept was manning the shop for his father that day He was a nice boy, but a little hard of hearing unfortunately. "Hello Quatre," said Mary.
"Oh, hello Mrs. Maloney," he replied. Mary pointed out the items she wanted, and he put them in a bag for her. "Hmmm....Quatre do you know where those big zucchinis are?" she asked him.
He gave her a strange look. "No Mrs. Maloney, I don't think we have any bikini fish," he scratched his head, "..but maybe I can ask my dad what they are."
Mary puffed her cheeks in exasperation. "Its alright Quatre, "she said loudly, "I'll just have some carrots."
"A new haircut? It looks nice!" Mary gritted her teeth. Where was another leg of lamb when you needed one?
"I'LL JUST HAVE AN EGGPLANT." she shouted.
"Oh..." Quatre paused, thinking. Mary smiled, happy that he understood. "....yes I can see that you are pregnant! I hope everything is going along well with the baby." He beamed at her. Mary let out an muffled scream of rage. She stormed out of the store and past Shinji, who was now holding a "Will work for food" sign. Clutching her bag, Mary mounted her bike and rode back down the street. By the time she got home, she had already formed a plan. Pretend she had come home and found Patrick already dead. It was brilliant! She walked into the living room, readying herself to break down into helpless tears at the sight of his body. However, there was not body there to break into tears over. The grocery bag fell numbly from Mary's hands. "No!" she whispered, "You're dead!!!" A siren's wail snapped her out of her stupor. The police, he had gone to get the police! An idea surfaced in Mary's frantic brain. Picking up the leg of lamb, she raised it over her head, and brought it down right on top of her skull. The blow felt as if her brain had been flung to the front of her head. Her vision got blurry, edged with black, and she fell to the floor. Mary floated in an out of consciousness, but had settled into a sort of fuzzy awareness of everything by the time Patrick and the police came into the house. She dimly heard their footsteps down the hall, and as soon as they came into the living room, she played dead.
".....and then she just whacked me over the head! I heard her leave and I assum- what the?!?!" Patrick, and the group of policemen that he had been leading down the hall allo jumped back. Patrick stared in disbelief at Mary lying on the floor. A blonde haired officer standing next to him turned and said, "Can you explain that, Patrick?"
"No...I mean...Sergeant Al...she must have.." Patrick stuttered, walking forward towards Mary. He half turned towards the officers. "I swear, she hit me with a leg of lamb!" He spotted the leg of lamb lying beside Mary. "There! There it is, see it?"
"Mr. Maloney, can you imagine how it must look to us, to see your wife lying there with a huge leg of lamb beside her, and you claiming that she hit you?"\
"She must of hit herself in the head!!!" he blurted out. There was a snicker from somewhere in the group, and the other officers looked at him unimpressed. Suddenly, a knock was heard at the door. One of the officers left to answer the door. It was a salesman. "Hello, I'm Dalton McNut, and I'm selling quality spong-"
"I'm sorry, but you'll have to leave." answered the officer.
"Oh, but don't you want to see my beautiful assortment of sponges? I have blue sponges, and red sponges, and those cool sponges with a rough and a soft side-" The officer gently but forcibly moved Dalton McNut, who was still singing the praises of his sponges, from the doorway. He shut the door and went back to the living room. "Who was it?" asked Al.
"Some weirdo salesman with long hair selling sponges."
Al shrugged. "I have a fingerprint team coming in, and an ambulance." He looked over at Mr. Maloney, who was very pale, and sitting in a corner. "You're a good cop, Patrick, and we are hope you're gonna tell us the whole story about what happened here." Meanwhile, Mary was listening to the whole conversation from her vantage point on the floor. She moved ever so slightly to the left to listen more clearly-and got a clump of cat hair right in her nostril. Her eyes squeezed shut. It tickled like crazy, and she was making an enormous effort not to sneeze. Alas, sometimes not even a humongous effort can stop the unrelenting sneeze. "AH-CHOO!" she jumped up from the floor with the force of her sneeze. The police were speechless, except for Al. "What is going on?" he demanded, and the Maloneys could have explained, had the doorbell not rang again. A stuttering voice came from the door "He-hello? What going...on?" Everyone in the room froze. "I'll get it," said an officer. He opened the door, revealing a young man in a bathrobe, holding a flower pot. The officer cleared his throat. "Excuse me, we are conducting an investigation, can you please leave?" The young man whipped out a pocket dictionary. He muttered to himself as he turned the pages. "Investigation?" he said. An expression of understanding dawned on his face. "Ah, I get. Someone die?" He peered around the policeman into the hall. Mary heard the young man. "Oh, its Migel." she told the group. "He's an exchange student who lives down the street." Migel was trying to convince the officer to let him in. "Can I talk to Mrs. Maloney, por favor?" He made a face when the officer refused his request. He went down the steps muttering. The officer shut the door, only to have the bell ring again. The people in the living room had moved into the hall curiously to see who it was. It was the milk man, Barn Farnel. "Hidey ho! Got some milkeroonie for ya today!" he greeted cheerfully. "Why's everyone so glum, someone die?"
"Barn, I think you should leave," said Patrick quietly.
"Oh-kee doh-kee Mr. Maloney. And a good-doodlie-doodle day to you too!" he ran off down the steps whistling. "It's a damn farce here.."muttered Sergeant Al. They all trooped back to the living room. When the fingerprint men and the ambulance arrived, the Maloney den became very crowded. The topic of who had hit whom grew very heated between the husband and wife, and the more they argued, the more it sounded to all present that the thing they most needed was a nice soft padded cell in an institution. Mary clearly had an advantage, the drama queen that she was, but Patrick was very stoic and refused to be ruffled by her theatrics. Pretty soon the group assembled would have started placing bets, had not the vases, plates and the cat started to fly around. Forcibly restrained, the couple was put into the ambulance under the pretense that they were going to be checked over for serious injuries at the hospital. As the ambulance rolled away, one officer commented to his colleague on the meanness of Mrs. Maloney for accusing "poor Patrick Maloney," telling his friend that she was probably the kind of woman who always shunned poor people, and that she seemed like the kind of lady who would "probably be mean to a blind or deaf kid." The ambulance took the Maloneys to a nice institution on the edge of town, right beside a lovely farm. They were given numbers, and their very own straight jacket. Separated, they were taken into opposite halls. The nurse leading Mary to her cell for the first time stopped by another small room, where a worried looking, and slightly frazzled nurse, was peering into the room with great interest. There was a pale boy sitting in there, chewing on the padded wall. He ripped of a big piece he had been chewing with exceptional gusto, and spat it out. He got up and took a few steps back. The nurse watching turned to Mary's nurse. "Better get ready," she advised. The boy took a running leap at the wall, pushed himself off, and shattered the light on the ceiling. Bright sparks rained down, catching onto the chewed wall and setting it alight. The boy grinned, but then stopped. His hair was on fire. "Better get the hose," said the nurse, and ran off. Mary was forced on. Well...she thought resignedly, this is what you get for hitting yourself with a leg of lamb. Patrick was having the same experience, being led to his room. He passed by what looked like a larger version of the ever-popular padded room, with the addition of a large one way window. A group of doctors was clustered around, looking in. Patrick heard part of what they were saying as he passed.
"....still thinks he's an elf..?"
"..won't believe otherwise...."
"...talking less English..."
"..ears.."
"..consider sedatives?"
Patrick craned his head to see the topic of their conversation. Orlando Bloom sat in the room, absently looking around. Oh well, they guy looked like he was having too much fun being an elf in the movie anyhow, it wasn't a big surprise. Now, as was mentioned before, the institution was beside a lovely farm, with many fluffy, braying sheep. The institution, favoring the "cutting corners" route, struck a deal with the farmer, providing them with cheaper lamb and poultry products. Mary and Patrick, therefore, were then served sheep cuisine almost each day of their stay in the happy house, and on Sundays, after basket-weaving hour, the specialty of the house was always leg of lamb.