| Courtesy: vultravideo.com |
Today’s Prompt:
He turned
the key in the lock and opened the door. To his horror, he saw…
Word Count: 1,200
He turned the key in the lock
and opened the door. To his horror, he saw the
thing rolled up inside fabric that could have been Egyptian mummy wrappings,
if the circumstances were a little different. Except, were they not?
SPECIALISTS,
INC.
We
kill unwanted visitors!
100
Easy Street off PDB Drive, Ikeja.
A soft drizzling rain fell on
the fine June morning he decided to take his friend up on his suggestion. The drizzle
never could get anything in particular wet
even if it tried. It was Mother Nature’s excuse for keeping folks fussy. You wanted
to get out of the house and you were like should
I take an umbrella along? Would it stop at this or would the rain morph into a
downpour? He had not bothered to bring his umbrella even though he had one
sitting in his car. The man glanced
up briefly at the inscription etched into a small metal plate and screwed into the
exquisitely carved entrance door as he made his way up the stairs. The walls
leading up to the office floor displayed framed portraits of sample pests— mosquitoes,
bedbugs, roaches, rats and so on—the Specialists
smoked out of folk’s homes and
offices, but the man saw beyond the smoke screen.
He stepped into the posh office
and there sat a man in the reception lobby where a woman might have been better
suited.
“Hello, Mr. Mene. My boss has been expecting you.”
Mene surprised himself and
balked. “How did you know I was coming, I never told anyone?”
“Oh, but you did.”
“I did?” he rubbed his chin and then recalled telling
his friend.
The receptionist saw his face
brighten. “Your friend Calvin called in to say you were coming in. Go on, my
boss is waiting for you.”
Mene stepped up to the door
behind the receptionist and turned the knob. The view knocked his breath out of
him. The office was state of the art complete with a wall-to-wall built in TV
screen. On a far corner was a sofa possibly for the executive visitors.
“Hello, Mene. I have been expecting you. Come, make
yourself comfortable.” A man sat behind a plush giant office table. Mene wondered
what else he did on that table besides office work.
Mene took the seat on the end
of the table and waited.
“You saw our offer and decided to come check it out?”
“I wouldn’t put it that way, Mr. Max…”
“Max, please. Call me Max.”
“Max, I was wheedled into it by a friend.”
“I see.”
“Calvin said you turned his life around. Said you helped
him out of a delicate situation. I was
wondering if you could do the same thing for me. Except, I ain’t getting my
hopes up; I’ve tried everything I could and I don’t wanna trust too much in
your strategy and be let down.”
“Well, I commend you for making up your mind to come
see us about your problem. We’ll come to that shortly but first, you must sign
the form. Without it, we can’t do business with you.”
Mene waved it off. “Oh, please,
forget about the money…”
“It’s not the money, Mene. It’s protocol. Just in
case anything ever goes wrong we at Specialist Inc. want to know that our
interest is preserved and protected.”
Mene scanned the form quickly
then signed it.
Max plucked the document out of
Mene’s hand when he offered it up, got out of his seat and clapped him on the
shoulder.
“You have made the greatest decision of your life. You
will not regret this, I guarantee it.”
“If you say so. I don’t know. But if I have to face
it one more day, I’ll self-destruct.”
Max fetched a remote off his
giant desk.
“The pictures you are about to view show some of the
methods we apply in the treatment of pests.
You will see stuff that’s unconventional
to educated society. Mene, according to the form you signed, you are not permitted
to discuss what you see with anybody outside these walls. Not even your wife.” He
paused then added for emphasis. “Especially, your wife.”
He made sure the reality of
what he said sank into Mene’s mind and then pressed the remote.
The jumbo screen came alive and
a picture floated to its surface.
“I want you to meet Mother-in-Law #1. This mama had all the knacks of a dinosaur. But we
managed to cut her down to size. She wanted to bathe the baby, bathe the baby
mama or talk her through her bathing time. Can you feature that? When does the
man enter the picture when Mother-in-Law
#1 is always a step behind the wife? The man was a complete wreck when he
visited our office and this close to suicide. We helped him and now he, not Mother-in-Law #1 is the man of the house.”
Mene had a strong desire to squeal
and yodel but he found out he’d lost his voice when he gasped instead. His throat
was dry and it made a clicking sound when he tried to talk. The woman on the
screen had no face. Where a face should have been there was a horrifying
specter of a Halloween mask, cooked raw. Her teeth lay bared because her lips had
been clipped off.
“She learned her lesson the hard way. When the man’s
kids couldn’t stand the monster their mother-in-law became, he had to put a halt
to her visits.”
Click.
The next picture was of a woman
strapped to a metal chair—possibly an electrocution chair.
Mene let out a bone-chilling scream
and clapped both hands over his eyes.
“Enough. I’ve seen enough. Turn the damn thing off.”
“Oh, but you haven’t Mene. I’m just warming up. There
are pictures in this film that will freeze your blood.”
The woman on the screen had
begun to assume strange and grotesque positions.
“We did try to warn her from hanging around her son-in-laws
apartment but she would not listen.”
“What kind of beasts are you?”
“The Beast from the East, Mene and we’ve come to
right what’s wrong with your marriage.”
“By killing innocent
people?”
“They made other people’s marriage and lives
miserable; they had to be taken out of the way before they pulled off more
havoc.”
“You are sick. And same goes for everyone in this
establishment from hell.”
“No Mene we are here to save people like you from
their mothers-in-law. And here’s the next picture…”
But Mene wasn’t going to wait
around and listen and watch one dead person after the other. He rushed out into
the rain which had finally opened up the skies in a downpour.
“You signed the form, Mene. You can’t turn tail and
run.” The receptionist called after him. “We will do our job. Make sure you’re
ready to pay up when we finish.”
He stood on the threshold, staring
at the form inside the Egyptian mummy wrappings, and wondered. Back at the Specialists office, he’d seen a picture
on Mr. Max desk, it began to gain substance in Mene’s mind. With substance came
realization and then terror.
It was the picture of his
mother-in-law.
Eneh
Akpan
June 25, 2013
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