Returning to the grand hallway, leaving Sayoko to finish the cake decorations (i.e., prevent Milly from vandalizing it with her icing penmanship), Kallen and Milly parked the cart with the plates and utensils by a large table sitting in the middle of the room. On top of it stood some glasses, as well as a punchbowl, empty but for ice. Next to that were some pitchers of orange juice or other citrusy delights, as well as a glass bottle wrapped in a cloth, its corked neck sticking out from it. Taking note of it but otherwise leaving the mystery bottle alone, they crossed into an adjacent area which was the Student Council's conference room.

The window shades had been drawn to allow more natural light in, which Shirley was using to help her judge how she fixed up Mrs. Mayberry, who sat in an armchair while Nunnally "stood" by, makeup kit in her hands. At the conference table itself, Lelouch sat with his back to the entrance as he fiddled with a laptop which Kallen assumed was the personal computer of his that everyone was so concerned about, typing away at it while consulting an instruction booklet, a slight grimace etched across his face.

Looking at him, she happened to see through a window a student in a full set of riding clothes as he passed by on a horse. Kallen shrugged – not the weirdest thing she'd ever seen – and refocused her attention on Lelouch.

Standing by his side was another high school division girl, giving the determined-looking boy a slightly nervous look as if the attempts to open and rummage through his computer were readily apparent to him. Again, like most of the female students she wasn't ugly by any stretch of the imagination, but her behavior did nothing to improve the mousey image she gave off with her oversized glasses and the tightly tied pigtails her olive green hair was divided into.

Thoughts of compromised computers made Kallen look around and, as if he'd performed a magic reappearing trick, she only then noticed Rivalz standing by the entrance she'd just walked through. He was twiddling his thumbs, trying to be nonchalant, but now and then gave Lelouch, then Shirley, then Lelouch again nervous looks.

"What did he do now?" she wondered, knowing (sort of) why he'd want to stay clear of Lelouch's computer, but not what his problem with the orangette could be. She'd noted that Shirley was frowning mildly, and had assumed it was in concentration as she fixed Mrs. Mayberry's makeup.

As if reading her thoughts, or perhaps a curious look of Milly's own, Rivalz covered the side of his mouth with his hand as he spoke to them. "Okay, look… I thought since today is kind of a big deal, I'd make us some virgin mimosas for the party, but you-know-who just had to have a problem about it, how we were underage and would get into trouble. I tried to explain it was just seltzer water, but she only shut up when we heard Mrs. Mayberry coming, and she's still in a snit over it." With that he rolled his eyes and slouched against the doorframe, totally missing the look Shirley was now shooting him, having guessed what he'd have to whisper about.

"Oh, Kami-sama, I am not getting into this." Looking quickly for something to divert attention from any further hurt feelings, Kallen went for the most obvious one. "Who's that?" she asked, nodding at the girl with the pigtails.

The girl seemed to shrink a little as she realized she'd been noticed. "Oh... hello," was all she had to say as she looked down and off to the side, totally avoiding eye contact. Millie was having none of this, of course, as she went over, grabbed the girl by her shoulders, and practically hauled her over from the table.

"This is Nina, Kallen. Nina Einstein. She's one of the council's club members, the Physics Club, specifically, among other science-y groups," she explained as the girl's spectacles only magnified the deer-caught-in-headlights look on her face. She was already blushing in embarrassment when Milly added, "Don't let her quiet demeanor fool you. Still waters run deep, don'tcha know?" As she was speaking, her chummy shoulder grasp turned into a tight hug from behind in addition to her practically resting her chin on top of the shorter girl's head, whose face was now beet red.

"Okay, we're just about ready to go," Lelouch said, mercifully ending their leader's antics. "The webcam and the mike are connected" – he tapped a spherical device clipped onto the top of the monitor screen – "and the video-call app is open. It should be 9 A.M. yesterday in Morgan now, which I believe is when you want to call your husband, right, Mrs. Mayberry?"

"Yes," she said smiling, causing Shirley to flinch as she then tried to fix a slight smudge the sudden facial movement had caused. It didn't help that the teacher kept speaking for another moment. "A preemptive present, as Milly called it."

"Wait, yesterday?"

"Yes, Rivalz," Milly began to explain patiently while disentangling herself from the relieved Nina. "The International Date Line runs down the middle of the Pacific Ocean, which is between Area 11 and the homeland. As a result, it's now yesterday morning in West Virginia where Mr. Mayberry lives."

"Yes, the morning of his birthday. And since I can't be there with him..." Mrs. Mayberry stopped, her face briefly going sad, albeit without the air of agitation from before.

"A surprise birthday call will lift anyone's spirit, I'm sure," Nunnally added, feeling around for and patting her tutor's hand. The adult blonde smiled in appreciation and, with a final thumb's up from Shirley, stood and walked over to the computer setup.

"So that's what this is all about," Kallen muttered to herself. She'd gotten so wrapped up in Milly drafting her that she'd forgotten about the adult's vacation problems and the question of what Lelouch's computer had to do with it. "And that it's between husband and wife would also explain why she couldn't just use the school's computer lab," she deduced with a smirk. Then something occurred to her.

"Excuse me, ma'am, but wouldn't your husband be at work by now? Should he be taking personal video-calls like this?"

"No, it's fine," Mrs. Mayberry said as she all but shooed a reluctant Lelouch out of his chair. "Jarold is an architect, so he works from home and meets his clients at their offices or while on business lunches."

"And saves money that would otherwise be spent renting an office for himself," Kallen noticed, as she began to wonder if the Mayberries were in debt or something. She kept her questions to herself, however, only nodding in understanding at the teacher, who had moved on to scrutinizing the monitor.

Apparently having similar thoughts about leaving the married couple alone, Milly clapped her hands like a teacher leading a field trip. "Okay, now that that's done, we have a celebration of our own, so let's adjourn to the grand hallway," she called out.

Nunnally, again being pushed by Shirley, came up close as she said that, with Kallen stepping aside to give her some space. She also felt like putting some distance between them as knowing of her double-impairment and the likely reason caused Kallen to feel embarrassed and self-conscious from earlier, something she wasn't used to feeling in regard to a Britannian.

Nina soon joined them, nodding shyly at the new girl. Rivalz, already standing by the doorway, just straightened up and glanced at his fellow male councilor, waiting for him to join the group. As they gathered into a bunch, they saw Lelouch and Mrs. Mayberry fuss over last minute details about handling the computer. They couldn't see what was happening on the laptop, but they could make good guesses from the teenager and the tutor's interaction.

"You just key in the email address for Mr. Mayberry's home computer here..."

"Okay," she answered while hitting some keys experimentally, much to the raven-haired boy's consternation.

"But before you start, I need to disengage an automatic feature on the—"

"Ooooh! Hello, me!" Mrs. Mayberry said as a light on the screen illuminated her face a little, evidently a window showing the webcam's POV. After twiddling her fingers at her digital mirror image, she began typing again for a moment, only to stop and say "hello" again, frowning a bit. "Are the speakers on?"

"Click that button with the sound wave icon on it right... there," Lelouch whispered to her, pointing at the keyboard somewhere even as he took a step back from her. Rather than simply walk behind the teacher to join up with them, Lelouch began taking a circular path around the table, which Kallen found a bit odd but thought no more of it. Of the small group who noticed this, only Milly knew why but kept her mouth shut for once.

Halfway around the table, and just as he was about to duck so as to not interrupt Mrs. Mayberry's light, Lelouch frowned a bit when the teacher spoke into the mike again, noting that the volume seemed just a tad high. Seeing a chance to take care of another matter he'd wanted to settle first, he began speaking in hushed tones, "Mrs. Mayberry, let me do just two little things before you—"

"Come on, will you?" Kallen called out, still just a tad pissed from the trouble Lelouch had put her through. "I'm sure she can handle it, plus we have our own event." She still held this whole scenario of joining the Student Council in doubt, and a party would be as good a place as any to find out what degree of snooty assholes she was getting mixed up with before she made a final decision. She was already getting an idea about Lelouch as he opened his mouth, a withering look etched across his face.

Whatever his response would have been is lost to time, however, as Mrs. Mayberry had used the interruption to finish entering her husband's address. A series of beeps not unlike a dial tone sounded from the laptop, a tad more audible than one would like for a video-call but not terribly loud either, as it waited for a response from the other end of cyberspace. With a sigh of annoyed acceptance, for surely his sister's tutor could either figure it out by herself or just live with it, Lelouch had just decided to go ahead with the others when his laptop received an unexpected response.

He and the other gathered souls would never know that the call had been answered due to a packaged condom being errantly thrown across the Mayberries' bedroom, bouncing off the corresponding computer's monitor and landing on just the exact key that performed the "call accept" function. Their only concern had been providing a virtual reunion between husband and wife after too long an absence and, technically speaking, they had succeeded as a second video window popped onto the screen. Its contents, however, were not for the faint of heart.

"Okay..." a man's breathless voice suddenly erupted from the machine, "...oh yeah... right there..." It was accompanied by feminine panting and, playing in the background, stereotypical "bow chicka wow wow" music like something off of a porn soundtrack. And that's just what could be heard from the other end, never mind what else was being transmitted.

After much time had passed, Kallen, as did many of the others, admitted that she would have found this hilarious had she'd seen it in a movie or on a TV show. As it was, the assembled teens all stopped dead in their tracks halfway to the entrance, their only motion being to look back at their friend, their elder, and the computer which was now indifferently playing the offending material. Indeed, one of the first theories about what was happening, conjectured by Shirley of course, was that Mrs. Mayberry had somehow opened a video file Lelouch would have rather kept private. The uncharacteristic look of surprise on his face, however, quickly dispelled that thought, as they unknowingly witnessed one of the few times in his life up to that point where Lelouch was completely dumbfounded.

Bowled over.

Flabbergasted.

Caught with his pants down.

A phrase that could also be used for the two figures on the monitor screen that Mrs. Mayberry was now watching. Staring at, actually, despite the twitching of one of her eyes, while her jaw hung open and her complexion tried to choose between deathly pale and tomato red. Her expression, along with the returning tension shown on it, told the assembled youths everything about what was happening.

"...right there, right there, right th—"

Remembering herself, Milly began flailing her arms about, trying to wordlessly signal Lelouch to do something with one while motioning everyone to hurry out into the hall tout de suite with the other. She was hoping to at least mitigate the humiliation of her young friend's tutor, a futile gesture surely but one could hope, when suddenly...

"YOW!" shrieked whoever the adulteress was. Then, in an almost painful to hear Southern drawl, she announced with lustful abandon to her audience both known and unknown, "Thass akshuly mah ass-hol'... but Ah dun' cahr! YEE-HAW!"

Now that prompted a swift reaction, although it was little more than everyone flinching or engaging in some kind of shocked motion as their faces all turned varieties of white, pink, or green at this little newsflash. Kallen clapped a hand over her face as this cruel mockery of Mrs. Mayberry's fidelity seemed to escalate with each passing moment. And naturally, just as she wondered what could go wrong next, it did…

"Oh my God, that's really something people do?"

The exclamation had come in a voice equally as quiet as it was unnerved. And with the not-quite blaring sounds of maddened sex accompanied by a bass-heavy tune continuing from the laptop's speakers, it should have gone unnoticed. Nevertheless, it was like a gunshot had wrung out as the Student Council simultaneously all focused their attention on the youngest member of their band. Nunnally didn't catch this, of course, as she continued to sit in her wheelchair with both her hands clasped over her mouth. Whether this was out of embarrassment for Mrs. Mayberry or personal humiliation after realizing what she'd just said, no one could tell.

Again, even though she'd known her for only the past half-hour, Kallen had no idea what to do or say, no more than anyone else did. Remembering how Lelouch had reacted all because Shirley had stopped pushing Nunnally's wheelchair rather abruptly, she looked back at the young man in worry. She'd been half-expecting him to be in the midst of transforming into a rage-embodying man-beast straight out of Robert L. Stevenson, but to her surprise he seemed barely changed. In fact, he hadn't moved at all since this had started, standing shocked still before the windows across from where he'd set up his computer, intent on doing his little sister's instructor a solid. The only movement was from his eyes, now adopting a thousand yard stare that was broken up by occasionally blinking, but otherwise...

"Not there! Not there!"

"Yeah! Put et in!"

"Okay... okay. Yeah..."

"Damare, fudōtokuna yarō!" Kallen thought, her school persona going on a brief vacation as she began to storm over to the table, preparing to either give the cheating asshole a birthday greeting of her own or to just punch in the screen.

As she did so, the audio gave way to just more labored breathing partly drowned out by a weird, rhythmic squeaking that sounded less like bedsprings in motion than it did a rubber ducky toy being repeatedly squeezed. The return of relative quiet seemed to allow Mrs. Mayberry to gather her wits, backing away from where she'd been leaning into the monitor as she began to stand up. Kallen stopped in her tracks as she took in the tutor's no-longer starring expression, her mouth now closed and lips pressed together in grim determination.

Her motion as she stood up caused the chair she'd been sitting in to tip over until it fell to the floor behind her, landing with a wooden clatter. Surprisingly, the brief sound managed to be heard clearly over the audio-connection, as the mysterious squeaking sound came to a sudden stop, followed quickly by the voice of Jarold Mayberry.

"Hey, did you hear something?"

There was no telling what next caught his attention, as only Mrs. Mayberry was close enough to the screen to actually see with definition while everyone else had wisely kept their distance. Perhaps he just looked around and finally noticed the video window on his computer, but in any event Jarold Mayberry's next words signaled that he realized that the party was over.

"Oh shit! Sweetie! Uh, what are you doing—?"

"SHUT UP, JAROLD!" his wife roared at the screen, bending over so the webcam would give the other party a good look at her face. Kallen, and likely everyone else, jumped back as the cracks in her composure shattered, allowing the tension and pressure she'd been under to flow out of her like a dam bursting.

"Or a volcanic eruption," Kallen reconsidered. Mr. Mayberry's paramour certainly got that notion, letting loose a cry of fear that somehow managed to still carry a hint of her atrocious accent.

"You scream like a bitch!" the schoolteacher snarled back pitilessly, her eyes darting at the blurry point of movement as the unknown woman scrambled about, pulling bedsheets and pillows over her face and body in an attempt to cover herself.

This seemed to prod Mr. Mayberry into action but, unbelievably, with the intention of defending his lover as they next heard him say, "My God, Cerise, she has a family!"

"We could have had a family!" Mrs. Mayberry cried, banging her fist on the tabletop with enough force that the computer actually bounced what seemed like a full foot into the air. (Indeed, cracks on the underside of the tabletop where she'd struck it were to be found sometime later.) Breathing in heavy gulps of air, she backed away from the machine, naked hurt creeping into her voice with her next declaration, which also served to correct herself from her previous statement.

"No! I could have had a family! The doctor said my plumbing works absolutely fine, remember, Jarold?" She jabbed an accusing finger at the screen as she added, "You're the one who's got microscopic rodeo clowns making up his j*zz!"

Kallen fairly hissed as she sucked in air through her teeth, looking back at the Student Council for confirmation that she hadn't imagined what she just heard. Mostly what she saw were looks of revulsion at the verbal exchange, with Rivalz struggling to keep his gorge from rising. But Milly at least locked eyes with her and shared a look of comprehension. It certainly explained the emotional tension the older woman was under, especially her reactions to Kallen's mistake about Nunnally's identity. It also cleared up the mystery of the Mayberries' money problems, as methods for getting around fertility problems – in vitro fertilization and the like – could get expensive fast, and were likely not easy on the combined income of an architect and a schoolteacher. Not the typical wages of a teacher, anyway, as Mrs. Mayberry's next set of words confirmed. They pertained to her country, however, so Kallen frowned a bit as, once again, she would have preferred if things had been phrased differently.

"I'm out here in this glorified demilitarized zone for your sake, to pay for your procedures! And this... this is how you...?" Mrs. Mayberry stopped and just glared at the computer silently for a moment. She then took a deep breath, held it for a moment, then let it out before speaking again. Her voice was calm but icy at first, like a hanging judge pronouncing a prisoner's doom, before rising to a final vindictive roar. "I hope the time spent with your whore was worth it, Jarold. And that it's loosened you up but good, too. You're going to need it in divorce court when my lawyer FUCKS THE EVER-LOVING HELL OUT OF YOU!"

"W-wait wait wait! No... no!" was heard being struggled out of the fool's mouth as his former loving wife reached over, grabbed the top of the screen, and snapped the laptop shut, cutting off the video-conference as cleanly as a headman's axe.

For a moment, the room was silent. Kallen and the Student Council stood where they were, all silently contemplative. They had just witnessed the end of a marriage, and of a million different possibilities connected to it, as surely as if they'd witnessed a loved one's death. Something nagged at the back of Kallen's mind, some small part of her remembering the wish to see the woman she'd dismissed as a mindless, smiling living Kewpie doll to experience some real loss, but she brushed it off for the moment. She grit her teeth as an even worse thought – comparing this moment to how her own parents' relationship may have come to an end – was forced away too. Separate from the rest of them both physically and in his view of events, Lelouch stood, fully composed again, his face staring at the schoolteacher in grim appreciation of the betrayal that had been done to her.

His sympathy, however, was not to last much longer.

Kallen moved to the side due to some instinctive alarm yet again as Mrs. Mayberry turned this been an anime, her eyes and the upper half of her face would have been covered by shadow, mirroring the darker side that was now in control of her. To some degree or another, all present caught this, backing away even as all she did was begin walking towards the entrance, her steady tread conveying no intent other than movement. They were all fond of her and thought of her as part of their band, but this was not the Cerise Mayberry that they all knew... and only one of them was willing to do anything about it.

"Wait, Mrs. Mayberry!" Nunnally's wheelchair whirred as she came up and, with the skill and experience her blindness had forced upon her, stopped right in front of her tutor, next taking hold of one of her hands in her own. "Remember what you taught me? 'Think before you act'!"

The youngest of the Student Council shamed them with that, each chastising themselves for their cowardice. Mrs. Mayberry needed them, not whatever desperate actions were seeping out of the pits of her despair into her thoughts. And if they couldn't, or wouldn't, then what kind of friends were they?

The thoughts mentioned above did not happen at all, as there had been no time allowed for any such self-reflection to occur to them. For as the final syllable left Nunnally's mouth, Mrs. Mayberry's hand slipped from her hold, and with the speed and ruthlessness of a snakebite, slapped one of the "trackballs" on her armrest, spinning it backwards. The wheelchair roared to life as best it could as the wheels on one side jolted to life, causing it to whirl around wildly. Mrs. Mayberry then continued to the exit, oblivious to what she'd just done, while everyone else sprang to life. Despite their best efforts, they did more to hamper each other, crashing and tumbling over themselves even as the chair inevitably tipped over, flinging Nunnally out and sprawling her onto the floor.

Amid the commotion as everyone called on the blind girl, who did her best to stifle her tears as she was pulled up from where she'd fallen, Kallen's hand again fell to where she carried her clutch on her person. Stopping just long enough to help Rivalz push the wheelchair back upright, she turned towards the entrance to follow the schoolteacher, the small purse in her hand and its hidden switch lightly prodded by her finger.

"Kallen."

She halted at Lelouch's voice, spoken with a calm tone that nevertheless seemed to demand and encourage obedience, a voice that reminded her of why she came here in the first place. He marched up to her, giving a meaningful look as he did so, before he turned to assess his sister's condition. Grabbing her legs at least as they carried her onto a chair, the one where Mrs. Mayberry had her makeup fixed by Shirley only a few minutes ago, he said nothing more, doing what he could as his frightened sister regained her composure, and assuring himself and the others that nothing was broken.

As if on cue, they jumped again at the sound of shattering glass in the distance.

While the mystery of what that could have been mystified everyone else, Lelouch quickly thought of several possibilities and just as quickly narrowed them down the most likely, a skill he would utilize and Kallen would become familiar with in the following months. At present, they were aimed at trying to deescalate what was still essentially no more earth-shattering than an acquaintance suffering an emotional breakdown, which didn't change Lelouch's conclusion that none of the options were good.

"Sayoko!" he bellowed into the air as he began walking – or perhaps his version of running again – in pursuit of Mrs. Mayberry. "Stop her!"

The question of what the Hell a maid could do about the woman now blinded with rage was answered for Kallen soon enough. Walking past the lanky teenager as she continued her pursuit, she soon heard screams of "Let me go! Let me go!" coming from the grand hall. There, they found Mrs. Mayberry on the floor and locked hard in some kind of submission hold by Miss Sayoko, arriving just in time to catch her last few futile struggles as she dissolved into broken-hearted weeping.

Without further prompting, she also released her grip on Rivalz's mystery bottle from earlier. Or what was left of the bottle, actually, as the body of it had evidently been smashed against the edge of the table, leaving the jagged remains which she had held by the neck of the bottle. Based on the presence of the cork, which had wound up in the punchbowl after presumably an angry toss, it was plain that Mrs. Mayberry had attempted at first to lose herself in the bottle as they say before deciding it could be used for a much quicker way to end her torment.

"Please," Mrs. Mayberry begged through wet tears, finally able to form words again. "Please... I've nothing... I don't want to live."

Kallen and Sayoko both looked at Lelouch, both wondering – worrying? – if he would acquiesce. His face again was almost entirely impassive again, but for a twitch of his own about one of his eyes. Whatever his decision would have been was quickly vetoed as the reassembled Student Council, Nunnally again in her wheelchair as she led the pack, joined them.

"Nunnally, you should stay back and—"

She shushed him quietly as she moved forward to Mrs. Mayberry, who now lay limply in Sayoko's grip. The maid's hold loosened as Nunnally bent forward in her chair, again holding her arms toward her tutor. Mrs. Mayberry, for her part, simply slipped out from Sayoko's arms and absentmindedly moved into a sitting position, still sniffling, another sob coming out on occasion.

It took a minute or two, but her head eventually turned and focused in on the arms being offered her. Her eyes turned into pinpricks as, wordlessly, she realized what she had done. Instead of another breakdown, she scooted over and, hesitantly, began placing her arms into Nunnally's offered hold. Whatever part of her – or of any of them – that was scared of yet another betrayal, or of her abuse from minutes before being reciprocated, vanished as Nunnally calmly pulled her into a hug.

Another crying jag came on at this, but now one of grief and regret, as absolution was offered without a word. As Kallen, Lelouch, and the others set about doing what they could to clean up the mess, Mrs. Mayberry laid her head in her pupil's lap as Nunnally stroked her back, doing her best to calm her again.


Not quite half a world away, Jarold Mayberry sat heavily at the corner of his bed. A stray thought that it had once been their bed flickered to life, but it burned out just as quickly.

"Shit," he muttered a few moments, he said it knew that he should be crying right now, but he just felt drained of any emotion. Empty and directionless.

He glanced up at the computer monitor, as if checking to see if Cerise might call back. He kind of hoped for there to be a window with just her face – her patient, loving face – looking at him, waiting for him to say something that would make all of this go away. But no, it just showed its standard desktop with the bright background of a sunrise and a smattering of icons on the side.

"Has it only been a minute?" he wondered, slightly amazed at how quickly the world could come to an end.

That was the best way to describe it, after all. The end of the world. Cerise would leave him for sure, and after a loud and angry series of court dates too. Returning to his old hometown, founded by and named after his ancestors, in North Carolina wasn't an option, not with news of why his marriage failed sure to follow him there. God, he could practically see his godfather, good old "Uncle Opie", shaking his head in disappointment as he looked away from him.

Shit indeed.

After a moment, however, Jarold glanced behind himself as he slowly became cognizant again of sounds and motions in the room with him. "Oh, right," his mind slowly recalled, "Martha."

The blond, busty hellcat-in-the-sack he'd pissed any hope of a family away for was up and about. Instead of a flurry of action, struggling into her clothes to get far away from him and his house as if suddenly noticing the most horrid stench, her movements were slow and deliberate as, still undressed, she fiddled about with her duffle, an overnight bag she always seemed to bring with her for their little... trysts. He imagined feeling an aura of forlornness coming off of her that mirrored his own, which held back whatever inclination he had take out his fear and anger on her. As much as he was still scared for himself, what would happen to her now?

Martha had established early in their relationship – if you could call it that – that there was more to her and her husband Ralph than the sappily sweet sitcom couple they presented while at church, the county fair, and so on. He wasn't sure what she'd meant by that, but if her activities while alone with him were any indication, then she meant they had something akin to an "open marriage". In short, they were swingers, and he wouldn't have to worry about the much bigger Texan crashing through the door some day with a shotgun in his hands and the will to use it in his eyes.

"But they kept that on the down low, as the kids say," Jarold realized. Hard to do when there's a messy divorce with descriptions of gymnastic debauchery offered as testimony.

Deciding he'd felt sorry for himself long enough, Jarold rose from the bed and held an arm out towards her. But before he could say anything, Martha turned her head and saw him, and whatever words died in his throat. Hell, he wasn't even sure if he had anything planned to say in the first place. He just held both his hands up towards her in a pleading gesture. Surprisingly, the soon-to-be-scandalized woman smiled at that.

"Y'all be hurtin' raht now, hon, hmmm?" she finally said, giving him that wide smile that had drawn his attention in the first place so many months ago. He nodded almost dumbly, letting his arms drop back to his sides as Martha walked up to him, patting him on the shoulder in consolation.

She used this motion to actually turn him around, and before he knew it, Jarold was walking into the bathroom, Martha close behind him. As she did so, directing him to the combination bath and shower, she spoke again. "Wahl, 't weren't fo' ' jest le' Mamma Martha wurk her majik, 'n y'all's wu'ries 'll be ovah inna minnit."

"Are you... actually suggesting we have shower sex now?" he asked, feeling bewildered. The last few minutes had been an emotional roller coaster and he didn't feel this would really do any good for either of them.

"Oh, et'sa bit moar corn-pliks th'n thet, sugah."

He was now standing right at the edge of the bath, practically leaning over it as Martha was now running her fingers through his hair. He began to get the feeling that something wasn't adding up, but his mind was still doing too many back flips to make sense of it all.

"I just don't see—GRRKKKK!"

A few minutes later, Martha withdrew her hands from the cascade of water, then did the same with the leg she'd used to push Jarold's body about. She'd positioned him so his body was raised higher than his head and neck, which lay on the bottom of the tub, allowing his blood to flow out of the ragged gash across his throat and down the drain rather than rest and pool inside of him, which would have formed bruise-like splotches on his skin otherwise. As usual, she took care to be certain that her extremities had been washed clean, but all the same she'd taken the precaution of kicking back the bathroom rug with her other leg which she'd kept out of the bath. Spatters and footprints of bloody water were easier to clean up from tile than shag carpeting, after all.

Turning the showerhead towards the soap niche built into the wall, she let it spray the Bowie knife she had left there. Satisfied it was mostly clean, she removed it, twisted the nozzle back onto Jarold, and walked over to the sink to more thoroughly clean her knife and her hands with soap. After drying off with some lengths of toilet paper, which she of course flushed down the toilet, along with what she used to wipe down the floor of any water that might be tinted pink, she returned to the bedroom where her clothes and duffle bag waited.

With her weapon secure and her clothes back on, she fished out her cellphone, running through her head what all she needed to do first before dialing. Deciding to contact her and Ralphie's regular sitter later, as school had barely even begun by then, she decided to call her husband first. The neighborhood was practically a ghost town other than a shut-in who lived far enough away at one end, so there was little chance of witnesses, but she didn't trust herself to be able to carry out Jarold's body by her lonesome, nor very quickly.

Martha sighed at the thought. It was inevitable, but she'd hoped to have a little bit more fun first. But now she knew she'd been wasting her time if "wifey's" exclamation about Jarold's impotence was true. They would likely have to settle for sacrificing a cat or something at the next Black Sabbath like a bunch of know-nothing teenagers who'd seen too many horror movies. Best case scenario, they'd be lucky and some nobody who wouldn't be missed would be passing through town right about then.

There was an alternative option, of course, but like any true mother, that was just too horrible for her to contemplate. That and, however obedient and well-behaved they were regularly, both Suzie and Jerry would put up way too much of a fight if she and Ralphie even tried it.

The dial tone ended and her husband's deep voice came over the speaker. "Martha! Howzit goin'?" he asked, his good-natured tone showing her call was a surprise but nothing that worried him. She was starting to hate herself, but it seemed like a day for ruined moods all around.

"Sorry, suge, but we gots 'rselves a 'clean-up on aisle 6' sitchy-a-shun ovuh heah." This was their rather obvious secret code for having a body they needed to move and dispose of quietly.

Speaking of quiet, Martha glanced at the computer. She'd hit the power button with the knuckle of a finger as she'd passed it by earlier, but that didn't do anything to the wife of course. From the position they'd been using, she was facing away when the video-call came through somehow, and she had grabbed and covered her face with a pillow when she heard the wife screaming. That made for good odds that she hadn't been clearly seen and couldn't be identified. But still, the Mayberry woman would come looking for Jarold and if he just vanished...

Inspiration struck at that point. It was a simple idea, easy, uncomplicated, and could work.

Calming herself down, she then added into the phone, "An' we need t' take some ol' clothes t' the chary-tee drop-off wahl we're at et." They didn't have a phrase for communicating what she had in mind, but Ralph – sounding a bit confused but trusting – agreed to it.

Finishing up her call, Martha next went over to the closet, pulled out some suitcases, and set about grabbing clothes randomly, yanking some off their hangers while others she took hanger and all off from the rail. She next started flinging socks, tees, and underpants from a bureau, tossing them across the room into the suitcases, allowing some to miss in as good a simulation of panicked packing as she could muster. She smiled at that, congratulating herself on her quick thinking. When Jarold's wife returned home and saw the state of the house, she would assume her unfaithful husband and his girlfriend had simply run off somewhere to start a new life together. No need to search for a barely seen girlfriend at all, much less a body.

At least, Martha hoped so. She had family in a position now who could, with one phone call, make this whole thing disappear so completely that not even the Mayberries' ghosts would know where their bodies were buried. But she'd rather not, for he would surely hold this over her and Ralphie's heads for the rest of their lives. Not for blackmail, she imagined, but simply to tease them at how "amateur" they were at killing people.

"Cuzzin Lucy's kinda a nut lahk thet," she muttered to herself as she set about taking items from the medicine cabinet next.


End of Part 2