The Journal of Bloody Mary Jane: My Florida Idyll, Episode 1

by Chuck Miller

Mary Jane Gallows

  Black Kettle National Grassland, Oklahoma

  April, 2014

  Late Summer, 1892

  After I did away with Andrew and Abby Borden, I went out from Fall River to see the world. For all of a week, it seemed a wondrous place. It was vivid and beautiful and so unlike the nothingness from which I had so recently come. I wandered through New England and down the East Coast, finally fetching up in Florida. It was there that my hopes received a grievous injury.

  I had obtained a sum of money and I entered a small general store, intending to buy some food. I had no need of it, for I was not a creature that required nourishment of that sort. but I wanted to try it. I wanted to do it because you do it, and I wanted to be like you. I wished to force upon myself a false humanity, in the hope that it might one day lead to an authentic one.

  I had wandered through the store with a wicker basket, selecting various foodstuffs that intrigued me. I took them to the counter, behind which stood a man of medium height and middle age. He smiled at me as though I were a long-lost relative, made solicitous and helpful remarks, praised my comely appearance, and made jocularly grave pronouncements about what the weather might or might not do.

  I smiled back and responded in kind to his inane prattling, which seemed to me then to be the very discourse of the gods. I felt good, I felt a sense of grand accomplishment. My quest seemed to be meeting with great success in a very short time. Those were my feelings as the man totaled up my bill and I paid him.

  But that was as close as I was destined to get. A young boy stuck his head in the door and greeted the shopkeeper by name.

  "Good morning, Mister Borden."

  My false smile froze on my face, my false feelings froze in my heart. As quickly as that, the little aspiring human found that the demon she had hoped was gone was nothing of the sort. Abruptly and completely, it had returned, as though a switch had been thrown. A hunger rose in me, but not for the insipid provisions I was purchasing. My hunger was for my purpose, my mission, the thing I was born to do. I felt no disappointment just then, only joy.

  I completed my transaction with Mr. Borden, smiled at him, and left the store. I walked around the nearest corner and threw my basket of wretched offal into a trash bin. Then I roamed about town for several hours, until it began to get dark.

  Just as the last of the sun disappeared below the horizon, I arrived back at the little store. A small placard hanging in the window said "CLOSED," but there was a light in the back of the place. I pressed my face to the glass of the front door and saw Mr. Borden behind the counter, taking money from his cash register and placing it into a small leather pouch.

  The front door was not locked, and I slowly pushed it open, making no noise at all. Mister Borden's back was to me as I crept closer. When I was halfway to the rear of the store, I reached out and gingerly picked up an object from a display rack. It felt so good to just hold it in my hand that I shuddered with pleasure.

  It felt even better when I raised the little ax and brought it down on top of Mr. Borden's skull.