The Killing Rileys- First Love, First Kills

by David Matheny

  Kaley blew out a breath. "Oh, thank God."

  They laughed at that.

  Kevin reached with his hands to hold both their hands. "Whatever any of us want to do ... Whatever our children want to do ... We should be able to do."

  "That's so sweet honey," Kami said.

  "It is sweet, but I know there's more to it than that. Something you'll do to make all that doing possible, right Kevin?" Kaley asked.

  Kevin reached for the shake and answered in a matter of fact manner, "I'm going to make a buttload of money."

  They laughed harder at that.

  The burgers came.

  Kaley looked at both of them. "Since we talked about those basic needs that need to be satisfied?"

  Kevin turned to Clara. "We're going to need more milkshakes."

  They didn't laugh as hard, but they laughed sweeter laughs with the sweet old waitress joining in.

  ****

  Back in the present on his award night, at the card game that reminded him of the game from many years before, he saw the sweet looks of remembrance on the faces of his sweet, but deadly sisters, and was glad he brought the memory up. "That was the best day." Kaley looked like she was still gripped by the vivid memory.

  "And we were there ... And all our children were there." Kami patted her stomach that was as flat as it was back then.

  Kevin pointed at the two of them. "And all I did was get it started. You remembered every detail. Almost every word."

  Kaley sat back and shook her head. She explained the breath-only laugh when Kevin cocked his head. "It's funny. Since Kami and I were babies, we both thought of ourselves as your parent."

  Kami took over when her less emotional sister was choked up with the emotion of that. "We were your mother figures before we could say, 'Mother figure.' But, that long ago, you were your own kind of little parent." She looked choked up with the emotion of that, but she could speak through that emotion. She was an actor. "The one with the eye on the future. The one with the big balls to dream big. The big dick to swing hard and swing for the fence. The guts to say, 'Fuck you!' to the world and fuck the world up the ass."

  Kevin and Kaley sat mesmerized by the passion of those words that mesmerized them until the humor set in and took over.

  Kaley was the first to comment after the laughter, "There's your Academy Award winning scene."

  Kevin thought on the sentiment of the impassioned soliloquy instead of the comedy in it. He voiced his own passion even though he knew he wouldn't voice it as well, "My sisters. My mothers." He paused to let them laugh at that. "My wives. My lovers."

  Those words coming from him, got his sisters up, got him up, and got them together in a tight embrace.

  "Long ago, you asked 'Is us enough?' Kevin." Kaley kept the hug tight.

  "This much later, you know it is for us—" Kami tightened the hug with the others. "Is us enough for you, Kevin?"

  "Is it?" Kaley asked.

  Kevin took in a breath as he held his sisters so tightly, the breath pulled them closer to him. "Us is enough and us never stops being enough."

  There were two passionate kisses between the brother and sisters, and one sisterly kiss that was oh so sweet.

  Kevin sat down and noticed his sisters still stood.

  Kami leaned on the table. "Instead of a crappy cake for your award night—"

  Kevin didn't think or guess. He voiced his inner hope. "Brownies?"

  Kaley leaned and nodded as vigorously as Kami before she spoke tenuously, "Now, we had Mom make a triple-batch, and we can leave a third or a half plain."

  "A half!" Kevin said with the harried and worried tone of a routine person whose favorite routine with a favorite food was being threatened.

  "But, aside from the untouched, unsullied side of the brownie pan—" Kami had to stop to let out her giggle, which was still melodically girlish.

  "We thought we could make sauces out of the fudge we bought when we took a ride in the country." Kaley flashed a quick smile after that.

  "The caramel and the chocolate fudge," Kami explained.

  Kevin rubbed his face and his neck hard with his hand until the answer came. "Sure."

  The sisters gave slight smiles of victory to each other they knew the brother wouldn't catch even if he was catching more and more subtleties like that lately. They turned and walked up the hill together.

  "You can do a third, a third, and a third," he called out to them.

  As the women heard that and took more steps, their victory smiles got broader because he couldn't see.

  He spoke louder to make sure it would carry, but the urgency in his voice, showed the loudness was driven by worry, "And make sure the sauces don't mix." He relaxed for a moment until another worry hit. "And no fudge sauce gets on the plain part."

  The women smiled their laughs as they went in to prepare his special treat.

  His smile was fuller than that. He was thinking about the fullness of his life. How fulfilled he felt in his life. His life with his sisters he lived with and loved as wives.

  ****

  Kevin moved over to the very comfortable outdoor chaise lounge and closed his eyes to rest. It wasn't long before he heard the sounds that stood out from the sounds he was familiar with.

  He heard someone carefully and quietly tying a boat to the boat dock to the Zelman home they owned.

  He heard the measured footsteps stepping on the wooden dock planks, stepping through the beach sand they put in, and stepping on the soft grass.

  He smiled because he was still pretty lame at reading people, but somehow, subconsciously, he'd identified those steps. That was impressive because those steps were made by the woman he called his 'woman' to make his mother think he could be into a woman who wasn't also his sister.

  He heard her steps stop close by and knew she'd probably kept an eye on him during every step, so he thought he would mess with her mind because he had an idea of what she snuck up the hill to do to him. "Rebecca."

  The almost very pretty intellectual looking woman looked odd with her open eyes under her eyeglasses and her wide-open mouth to complement that.

  "You drove a long way—" Kevin pointed toward the dock as he kept his eyes on her. "You mounted an amphibious assault worthy of a Navy Seal—" He thought back on using that word when the four of them launched the pool chairs for an amphibious assault on the previous owner of his home. "And I'm guessing there was more covertness to your covert attack?"

  Rebecca looked like she was debating letting him steer the conversation, but she answered, "I left the award banquet after you had your sisters dump me." Her face reddened as she seethed with rage. "I drove the back roads not just to keep off the grid and away from the cameras, but to give myself time to think it over."

  "To think over killing me?" Kevin asked that as calmly and politely as if he was asking someone about the weather.

  "Only if I have to—" She seemed lost in his unusual eyes for a moment. "I won't have to, if you'll only listen to me. I know if you listen ... You will ... You will learn to—"

  He knew she was stuck, so he helped her out. He knew he didn't have to stall long. He knew help was on the way. "I'll listen." He noticed something as she pulled up a lawn chair and sat down. He saw the way she clutched her bag. In the short time they talked, he saw her reach inside and feel for something. He made his best guess and guessed it was a gun. He knew her work in the same line of work Kami started out in put her in dangerous or precarious situations. He knew she was a news correspondent who took the hard correspondence jobs to overcompensate for that slight edge of beauty she lacked that kept her out of the limelight. He knew she was smart. Very smart. That was what he had to watch out for. What they had to watch out for.

  Rebecca took in a breath and spoke with the precision of someone who practiced what to say on the long drive on the back roads that led to the Zelman home and the man who wronged her, "We only dated for three months, but I had my eye on you and my mind set on you for at lea
st a year before that, Kevin."

  Kevin nodded to show he was listening intently, but all he was thinking about was how familiar this situation was. The similar situations weren't as life-threatening as he perceived the present threat to be, but they were as familiar. He'd grown to believe he was handsome a little more from the many more times he found himself in this type of situation. A jilted girlfriend doing something crazy to try and get him back or make him pay. It wasn't only familiar for him, it was familiar for his sisters too. Obviously, going from a news correspondent who worked her way up to the most serious assignments in a few years, to being taken seriously as an actor who only did one small independent film of substance a year would give Kami many admirers. The admiration that garnered paled in comparison to the admiration of her amazing beauty that was as captivating on screen as it was in person. Objectively speaking, she was the most beautiful woman he ever met in his life. And he met many beautiful women in his beautiful life. Of course, there would be men who went crazy from that much beauty. It was almost the same for his older sister. Kaley had book fans who were about as crazy as they came. She mixed well in elite circles too, and that was where she hooked men of that sort. She was the perfect compromise for any wealthy young man looking for enough beauty to satisfy himself and enough intelligence to satisfy his social status. That meant it was routine for any one of them to be dealing with a crazy person. He hoped they could finally quit trying to appease his mother at home and the public at large. He didn't care if their celibacy toward others and intimacy with each other was speculated and rumored on. He was past caring. He kept himself from grinning when he thought that the hard incestuous truth might sell more books, movies, or get him more speaking gigs. He saw she had taken a long time to think of her next words and that let him get through that long chain of stalking thoughts.

  "I thought it was just me." Rebecca looked slightly down on herself but came out of that. "I did what I promised myself ... Promised you I wouldn't do." She grinned almost a sly grin. "I went online and checked out everything on every woman you told me you dated before when I asked." The grin got slyer. "And a few you didn't tell me about."

  Kevin thought of all the preparation she put into her surprise visit so far and decided to push her. "You know you left an electronic trail in case you decide to use whatever's in that bag on me."

  Rebecca looked shocked at first before she patted the bag and looked at him a little proudly. "Seriously, you don't think I'm smart enough to search with an anonymous browser and erase my search history?"

  He thought of arguing the efficacy of that but decided not to. "You are smart, Rebecca."

  "Almost as smart as you, Kevin. Smart enough to be with you." She looked sad for a moment and her sigh confirmed that. She leaned in the lawn chair and looked into his eyes. "But, no woman will ever get close to you. No woman can ever be with you." She shook her head. "Not unless your sisters are out of the picture."

  Kevin heard the rolling sound underneath him. He knew she couldn't hear that because his autistic ears that were sensitive to sounds heard more than she did. He also knew what to listen for. He knew only a little time was needed. He knew he had to get her focused more on him, so she would lose focus behind her. "Rebecca, I've spent my whole life with my sisters bossing me. Dominating me. Making me do things I don't want to do. Be someone I don't want to be." He thought of Kaley's writing and channeled her to write the lines he thought she would write "Making me lose someone I know I'm supposed to be with."

  "Kevin—" Rebecca's eyes were moist with tears.

  Kevin thought of the one sad thing he could think of. It was the time he ate cereal on the couch of the McConnell home with his sisters. The time he thought he abused them when he was a child. His quick mind quickly thought of the fact he was being abused by the older babysitter, and quickly discarded it after that. He truly thought he was going to lose his sisters back then. Maybe not completely. Maybe they would still tolerate him because he was family. He remembered being too afraid to cry then, but he was sure of one thing. The loss of them would be so tremendous, he could never survive. After the fact, just the thought of the possibility of that loss made him feel sadder than he'd ever felt in his life of few feelings. It was grief. Worse in a way, than the loss of his father he loved so much. That's because his sisters would still be living, and he would be living without them. He thought of that sadness and the tears sprang out of his unusually colored eyes. "You're the only woman who ever gave me the nerve to stand up to my sisters. It was the first time I ever took a stand against them." He hung his head down and cried almost into a sob before he looked up at her. "I wasn't strong enough. I'm so sorry. My love for you is so strong, I thought it would make me stronger, but—" He put his hand to his eyes and cried hard.

  Rebecca stood to take the steps to get to Kevin. Something wrapped around her neck and jerked her back into the lawn chair.

  Kevin opened his eyes and stood up to see Kami using some type of garrote to choke Rebecca from behind, while Kaley was in front of her pinning her in the chair.

  "Sis, can we swap?" Kami said as Rebecca was on the verge on unconsciousness.

  The exchange of positions was fairly smooth, but Kami had to deal with the strength a slight breath gave Rebecca.

  Kaley got a good grip on the choking device.

  Kami leaned close to see the panicked eyes of the dying woman. She took the eyeglasses off her brother's last girlfriend who resisted her death less and watched it occur more with wide-open eyes. She put a thumb and index finger in the eyes, exactly like she did to the man Kevin killed in the condo. She turned to him and smiled. "I felt like doing an oldie but goldie."

  Kevin and Kaley laughed at that.

  Kami kept the eye gouge up until Kaley was extra sure and released the choke. She put her thumb in her mouth and sucked on it.

  "Hey, let me in on that," Kevin said.

  "Me too," Kaley said.

  Kevin let Kaley get a taste of the eye tissue on Kami's finger first. He tasted it and saw his sisters looking at him. "Fruity, and a little sharp, but with a pleasant piquant aftertaste."

  They all laughed melodically.

  Kaley lifted a hidden trap door that was covered with turf. She waved Kevin over and pointed. "Our second sled. One of the back rollers is bad. I almost had to drag myself here."

  Kevin looked in the tunnel from the house that wasn't tall enough to walk through, but you could zip through it lying prone on the sleds with rollers attached. "We'll put that on my to-do list."

  "Your honey-do list," Kami giggled and that got Kaley giggling.

  Kaley gave Kevin a pat on the shoulder. "That was some nice on-the-fly dialogue writing, little Bro."

  Kami patted his other shoulder. "And some decent acting."

  Kevin knew he betrayed himself the minute he turned excitedly to Kami. "Really?"

  Kami exchanged looks with Kaley. "Well, you're not ready for the big screen, Buddy."

  "But, I think you've got dinner theater in the bag." Kaley nodded toward the body.

  Kevin shook his head as he followed her and got behind Rebecca's lifeless body to lift the heavier upper half. "You're not my nice sisters. You're mean dream-squashers."

  Kami walked down the hill ahead of them and got the lid open on the custom incinerator that Kevin designed and had built to his specifications.

  They got the body in the incinerator and got the heat cranked up to incinerating level.

  Kevin leaned and smelled around the high-tech exhaust.

  "It works, Sweetie," Kaley said.

  Kevin shook his head. "We should grill something to mask the smell. Better safe than sorry."

  Kami opened her mouth to argue, but her mouth morphed into a pleasant smile. "I think it would be nice to have something barbecued for the young kids and old folks when they get back."

  "I'm telling Mom you called her an old folk," Kevin said.

  Kami swung the device they used to kill Rebecca at Kevin.
<
br />   "Ouch!" Kevin got over his pain to take a look. "Are those bola balls?"

  Kami nodded. "My award to you on your award night." She looked at the incinerator. "We should stop the bitch-burner, so I can put it in."

  "I don't know." Kaley got the toy that could be deadly from her sister. "I think our old idea of soaking in bleach will do the trick." She saw Kevin looking happy about that. She dangled the hard-plastic balls close to his testicles, just as she did in the alley many years before. "They still fit."

  Kami took Kaley's hand and guided it down as she spoke, "But he's older now, so they hang lower. A lot lower."

  Kevin came out of the laugh with an emphatic statement. "Fuck me!"

  Both sisters snapped their heads at him and looked worried as they saw him about to speak his next words.

  "I'm the luckiest fucker in the world to be a—" He felt it so strongly he couldn't finish it, but his sisters could.

  "Sister—" Kaley said with a big grin knowing what her intuitive sister would say after that.

  "Fucker!" Kaley said with a big grin.

  They laughed a hearty round of laughter before he thought through the remaining details to handle to hide their latest homicide.

  ****

  After the impromptu cookout the children and grandparents were so happily surprised they had going, Kevin was in the kitchen refilling drinks while Kaley and Kami got the brownies ready. Kevin saw Kami look at the monitor for one of the many cameras he had installed on the Zelman property they lived in. He knew she was checking to make sure the others were all occupied and not heading up to the house.

  Kami turned to Kaley. "I know ovulation sex trumps everything, Kaley." She pulled in a breath and let it out slowly to let the touch of anger out. "But, come on? You know killing sex is a thing. A big thing."

  Kaley gave Kami a look before she smiled. "Honey, why do you think I worked it, so Kevin and I took the little boat back to the marina? So I went with him to sink that stank news-lady's car in the big lake?"