Masters of Horror

by Lee Pletzers

  “We want an explanation, young lady.”

  “That’s what I’m going to get, Mom.”

  Lucinda smiled. This couldn’t have been better timed if she’d planned it for a year. She reached under her bed and drew out a chipped gray-green metal strongbox the size of a hardcover book. She opened it with the tiny key she wore around her neck, then took it back to the kitchen with her.

  “Here’s why,” she said, handing the box to her father.

  “What’s this? Please tell me it’s not drugs, Lu.”

  “Just open it.”

  Mr. Parker flipped open the box. Then he handed it to Mrs. Parker.

  “Where did you get all this money, Lucinda?” Mrs. Parker demanded.

  “From working. I know things are pinched around here financially, so I thought I’d help out. That money is for you.”

  They melted immediately…just like she knew they would.

  “But honey,” her father said, counting the cash. “There’s over five hundred dollars here. You earned all that babysitting?”

  “Sure, and doing other chores for people. It’s amazing what people will pay someone else to do because they’re too lazy to do it themselves. I just wanted to help you guys out, that’s all. I mean, we’re a family, right? And family members should help each other—at least, that’s how I feel about it. So please, take the money. I don’t want it.”

  Her father sat back in his chair. “You are one impressive girl, you know that? How many other kids would try to help out their parents like this?”

  Report card forgotten. Mission accomplished.

  Her mother just shook her head in wonder. “I wish we could tell you to put this money away and that we don’t need it, but we really do. With Dad’s hours cut at the plant and mine at the flower shop, we’re a month behind on the mortgage, and this will catch us up. Are you sure about this, sweety?”

  “Absolutely, Mom.”

  “Then thank you, love. Thank you ever so much.” Her mother stood and gave her a warm hug, followed by her father.

  Oh yeah, they owed her now, boy.

  Over coffee, milk, and pie, an agreement was reached in which Lucinda would cut back on her after school jobs and pull her grades up where they belonged. A workable schedule was arrived at that everyone could live with, and that was the end of it.

  That night in bed, Lucinda smiled, happy that her backbreaking after school odd jobs were now over. She hated working that hard, but she had to accumulate as much money as possible quickly, because she knew that once that report card showed up, it would be coming to an end—which was the plan all along.

  She’d continue to babysit Charlie and run errands for Mrs. Habbershaw, a kindly widow with six cats and one Chihuahua named Max—who was a nervous wreck—probably because the cats were all bigger than he was. Mrs. H. needed cat food and litter almost every day, and hauling that junk was hard enough work, as far as Lucinda was concerned.

  * * *

  She put on her depressed act for exactly one week before approaching her parents about the blue contact lenses and getting the unsightly moles on her neck and ear removed. The tinted lenses cost four hundred fifty dollars and the procedure for the moles another eleven hundred, but Mr. and Mrs. Parker didn’t bat an eye. After all, who had a better daughter than they did? Mrs. Parker would drive her old car for an additional year.

  Over the next few years, as Lucinda learned more about manipulation, her parents learned more about state bankruptcy laws. She managed to get a number of the more minor surgeries done—dusting, cleaning, and tweaking as Lucinda called it—pouring additional bills over the heads of her already fiscally drowning parents who just could not say, ‘no’ to their darling girl.

  Talk about a huge ROI on a measly five hundred.

  Just before her eighteenth birthday, Lucinda’s mother sat her down in the kitchen for a “little talk.”

  “Lu, honey, I know you were counting on that earlobe reduction for your birthday this year, but frankly, we just don’t have the money for it. We’re still paying off all the other surgeries, and you’re graduating this year. There’s nothing left for college, Lu, much less more plastic surgery.”

  She studied her mother. The more Lucinda’s looks improved, the worse her mother’s became, it seemed. She was stick thin and gray. “Oh, don’t worry, Mom. It’s okay. I know you and Dad are struggling. There’s no reason why I can’t go to work and help out…again.”

  Mrs. Parker hung her head. They’d once been such a happy little family. Where had all that gone? “If you could do that, Lu, just until we’re back on our feet, it would be a godsend.”

  “Of course, Mom.”

  Lucinda’s father, a proud man, wasn’t happy about the idea of further financial assistance from his teenage daughter.

  They discovered him hanging in the basement the next morning.

  His life insurance policy and his will were in his shirt pocket.

  There was no note.

  Her mother was crushed into catatonia, so Lucinda made all the calls necessary, as well as the funeral arrangements. She opted for cremation, since it was much easier on the pocketbook, and skipped the casket in favor of a cheap pine box in which the Parker patriarch would be committed to the flames. The funeral director had looked askance, but Lucinda was past caring. Her father’s will had read: “To my dear wife goes seventy percent of my estate remaining after my funeral expenses and to my dear daughter, thirty percent in hopes that she will use it to further her education.” If it was to be thirty percent, then she wanted that figure to be as high as possible, and she wasn’t about to waste resources on incinerating a four or five thousand dollar casket. After all, funerals were nearly as expensive as cheek and chin implants, and there wouldn’t be funds enough for both.

  * * *

  Her mother was never quite the same after they scattered her father’s ashes over Sunset Pond, where he liked to fish now and then. Since Lucinda had skipped the embalming, the urn, the burial plot and the memorial service, disposing of her father’s body had cost a grand total of two hundred twenty five dollars—which his social security death benefit covered, thank you so much. They weren’t out a single cent. Her mother would get over the lack of a burial plot to visit and adorn with flowers. She could sit at the edge of the pond and put flowers into the water if she wanted to, couldn’t she? What was the difference?

  The following week, after the life insurance check was divvied up, her mother caught up on back bills and just managed to save the house from foreclosure.

  Lucinda made a surgery appointment.

  It was during her recovery at home that Mrs. Parker’s relic of an automobile, the one that should have been replaced years ago, finally gave out. The brakes failed, and in her panic, she lost control of the vehicle and hit a two hundred year old maple tree head-on. She made it through with only a broken leg to show for it, but when they took her to the hospital for a CT Scan, they found the cancer.

  It was everywhere.

  She had, at most, three months to live.

  When she gave Lucinda the news from her hospital bed, her beautiful daughter managed to summon up a tear or two, then rushed home and dug out her mother’s life insurance policy and will—which left everything to her.

  It was hard for Lucinda to be too upset with that kind of a windfall staring her in the face.

  She met with her mother’s doctor the next morning to discuss her mother’s illness and her final days. As the doctor was walking her out, he inquired about family medical history, since her mother was alternately too sick or too upset to discuss it.

  “Has anyone else in your family ever had cancer?” he asked.

  “Oh, sure. One of my uncles died of it a few years ago.”

  “A blood relation?”

  “Yes. My mother’s brother. Why?”

  “I’m concerned that you may have a predisposition for cancer.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “That because it
runs in your family, you would be more likely to get it than someone whose family is clean of it. What sort of cancer did your uncle have?”

  “Colon cancer, I think.”

  “Then you should be sure and get a colonoscopy at least once every two years.

  Lucinda was alarmed. “And what kind of cancer does my mother have?”

  “Well, since it’s spread so far, it’s a little hard to say, but from what I’ve seen in the scan results, I’d guess it started somewhere in the reproductive tract.”

  “I had an aunt who died of ovarian cancer.”

  “Mother’s side or father’s?”

  “Father’s.”

  “Oh, then you have a predisposition for it on both sides of your family. Any breast cancer?”

  Lucinda nodded miserably. “Two cousins. Both dead.”

  “My advice to you, then, is to get a PAP smear, mammogram, and colonoscopy every year, like clockwork,” the doctor said. “My dear, are you all right?”

  Lucinda was sheet white and trembling all over.

  “I understand that you lost your father recently, too. I’m sure the stress of that and your mother’s situation is taking a huge toll on you.” The doctor pulled his prescription pad forward. “Ever taken Valium?”

  “No.”

  “Well you’re going to start. This will at least allow you to get some sleep. Under no circumstances are you to drink alcohol with this medication—do you understand?”

  “Yes. But I don’t drink. It’s really bad for the skin. Ages it, you know? I can’t have that. Thank you, doctor.” Lucinda took the slip from his fingers, then left the office.

  As the doctor watched her walk away, his eyes narrowed slightly. The only time she showed any emotion at all was when I explained predisposition.

  Lucinda sat in her-father’s-now-her-car on Level B of the hospital’s underground parking garage and stared into space. I finally got my face and neck looking perfect. There nothing more that has to be done for another five years, and now I could get cancer and die? I don’t think so! I’ve invested too much money in this perfect face to be dying anytime soon.

  Lucinda firmly believed that there is a way out of every problem, and so she reclined her seat a bit and thought.

  And it didn’t take long before she had a solution.

  A perfect solution.

  * * *

  As it turned out, her mother didn’t have three days left to live, much less three months. She passed peacefully, or so they told Lucinda. Her mother’s body met the same fate as her father’s even though she had specifically requested embalming and burial in her will. Lucinda rationalized that she’d want to be with her husband, and so it was the pine box and the pond for her, as well.

  Between her mother’s insurance policy and what was left of her father’s, Lucinda had $65,000 to her name, as well as a house and a car. It was time to put her plan into action. She picked up the phone and dialed.

  The next day, she met with a surgeon to discuss a double radical mastectomy.

  “May I ask why you want this procedure if you don’t have cancer? You’re very young and this operation is most disfiguring.”

  “I have a predisposition to breast cancer, so I figure no breasts, no cancer. It’s one less thing to worry about,” Lucinda explained.

  “Here, let me show you some photographs of post-mastectomy patients. You should know what you’re asking for.” He rolled open a file drawer, extracted a folder and handed it to her.

  They didn’t have the desired effect. The mutilated chests moved her not at all. “This doesn’t bother me, doctor. I still want the procedure.”

  “May I ask why you are so worried about this at your age?”

  “I have, over recent years, paid out approximately $150,000 in facial cosmetic surgery. I have no intention of dying of cancer now or for a long, long time and losing that investment.”

  “If that is your reason, then I must respectfully decline to perform this surgery.”

  “Okay. I’ll keep looking until I find a doctor who will. You’re certainly not the only one on my list. Good day.”

  Lucinda met with four more doctors before she found one who was glad to help her. The surgery was scheduled for that weekend, and went off without a hitch. Lucinda Parker, at age nineteen, had traded in her 34C breasts for two flat round masses of bumpy scar tissue.

  And she was satisfied.

  While recovering at home, she received the final bill for services rendered. This bill, added to the partial invoices already delivered, came to just over forty thousand dollars. That left her with fifteen thousand, a house, and a car. It also left her with two more procedures that had to be done ASAP.

  While recovering, she applied for a second mortgage on the house. She was happy to discover that it was closer to being fully paid off than she had realized, and so had little trouble securing a six-figure equity line of credit, and no sooner was she fully recovered from the breast surgery than she was doctor-shopping the next.

  “I understand that you want to schedule a complete hysterectomy. And it says here on your paperwork that you’re, what, twenty years old?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Are you having problems with heavy bleeding? Cramping?”

  “No, not at all. I have a predisposition for cancer, and if I have a complete hysterectomy, that eliminates three cancer possibilities. No uterus, no ovaries, no cervix, no cancer. It’s three less things to worry about.”

  “That may be true, but do you realize that you will never be able to bear children after this operation?”

  Lucinda sighed. “Doctor, with a face like this, do you really think I want to spend my time chasing children around? All kids give you is wrinkles and gray hair.”

  The doctor looked astonished. “My dear, you will not be able to avoid either of those things forever.”

  “With hair dye and plastic surgery, I’m damned well going to try. Now, will you be doing this procedure, or not?”

  “‘Not’, young lady. I’m sure you know the way out.”

  This time it took twelve turn-downs before she located a willing surgeon, and the bills were much higher and the recovery time much longer and much harder. It took most of her loan to pay for the hysterectomy, and she still had one more expensive procedure to go.

  What to do, what to do?

  Well, she’d think about it—she had a month or two of convalescing to go through. She was sure to come up with something.

  A knock at the door roused her from her thoughts. It was Charlie Foley, fifteen now and working at Harkin’s Market delivering groceries to shut-ins.

  “Hi, Lu. Here’s your groceries.” He strode in and set the box on the table. “See you.”

  “Hey, wait a minute! Where you off to in such a rush? I haven’t seen you in ages.”

  “I’ve been around. Not my fault you haven’t seen me. Though every time you come back from the hospital, you look and act so much less like you that I don’t know who you are anymore.”

  “I’m still me, Charlie. Still the same old Lu who used to take you to the movies.”

  “I really miss the old Lu. The old Lu cared about people. The old Lu loved her parents and honored their wishes,” Charlie said. “You’re not her—not anymore.”

  “Oh, sure I am, Charlie. Please stay a while and talk. I get so lonely.”

  “How could you possibly be lonely, Lu? What happened? Your mirror break?” With that, her former knight in red sneakers shook his head and took his leave.

  “How could he treat me like that? After all I did for him! Who the hell does he think he is to say things like that to me? Me! Well, if that’s the way he feels, good riddance, I say.” Unconsciously, she reached for her hand mirror.

  * * *

  After a few weeks of weighing financial options, Lucinda finally came up with a foolproof way to cover her surgery costs, and get back at Charlie and his attitude at the same time.

  Once she was fully recovered,
one Monday morning she walked to the end of the lane where the mailboxes were and waited in the tall grass.

  It wasn’t long before she heard Mr. Foley’s pickup truck roaring down the narrow road. The final turn out of the lane was blind, so Lucinda stepped out into the road just before Mr. Foley rounded the corner.

  When he appeared, she looked fearful and stepped slightly off to the left. The fender clipped her just where she had planned for it to—the right hip. She also didn’t see any harm if some of her previous stitches pulled out and added a little more blood to the mix.