Free Spook Lights: Southern Gothic Horror by Eden Royce

the prison’s visiting room Plexiglas barrier, scuffed with the remains of so many other fights before ours.
    “Like what?” I asked.
    “No, Mama!” His tone made me jump and I scolded myself for being so nervous. So scared of my little boy’s voice, full to bursting with anger and desperation. “You’re supposed to ask me why .”
    “Oh,” I said. “Why?” Only now did I realize how obedient I could be to my son, but not to my husband or my vows. I sat there in my best church hat, marveling.
    He sat back in his chair, hair buzzed almost bald, revealing his pale scalp. A faint raised scar shaped like a sickle marked where he’d been hit with a beer bottle five years before. It was a fight over some worthless girl. That’s how he’d known, he’d told the papers. When he fought over some girl and she’d still walked away with the loser he’d beaten to a pulp that he’d vowed never to care about another woman. To make them all pay.
    Upon seeing the scar, his M.O. solidified in my mind. Jesus take the wheel. I was thinking like one of those TV shows now. Modus operandi. Method of operation.
    I’d felt lightheaded in the courtroom when the prosecutor described it. Out of body, I floated above the pictures of my son’s handiwork. I was beyond the words of the medical examiner. Wounds consistent with a curved blade. A lot of force. Brutal force. The cutting words of the prosecuting attorney yanked me from my daze with just as much viciousness.
    Severed heads, their scalps always found yards away from the rest of the body. The defendant’s semen dried into their long hair. Eight young women, the prosecutor had said, his Armani suit tailored to his lean frame. He looked at the jury over the top of his trendy yuppie glasses. All under twenty-five. I’d fainted.
    A guard appeared in the door behind my son. “Phillips, five minutes left.”
    Now, I shook my head and asked again. “Why?”
    “Cause you let me,” he picked at his teeth, then looked at his finger. “You always let me do anything I wanted.”
    So it’s my fault? I wanted to scream at him and storm out. Then I’d never need to have another body search in order to visit this festering hole south of Hades. Never have to endure another seedy, depraved look from the men on the inside, their sweat rank with the stench of captivity.
    Men really did devolve without women. I stood and left without another word, my legs and back stiff and wooden. Sweat ran down the middle of my back under my suit and into the waistband of my pantyhose. When I got into my car, I turned the air conditioner to maximum. Pray for him, Lord just make it okay. I didn’t see any of the road the entire drive home.
    When I opened the door, the rich meaty smell of roasted chicken hit my nose and my stomach roiled. Hat carefully placed on the hall table, I greeted my husband. “Visit went all right today.”
    “Um hm.” Bill’s head was buried in the Sunday paper, likely the food section. His roasted chicken was the best I’d ever tasted, but right now acid bubbled up my throat and threatened the back of my tongue.  
    My hands shook as I removed my suit jacket and hung it over the back of a chair, content to stand in the living room in my bra and camisole, letting the icy air chill my damp skin. “He looks okay, just thinner. When he finally comes home—”
    Bill interrupted me, his tone one not to argue with. “He’s not coming home, Agnes.”
    “He’s our son.” Even to me, the words sounded weak as water.
    “He’s a murderer. A serial killer.” He threw down the paper and ran a hand through his thinning hair. “God, all those girls… It makes me sick.”
    “One day he’ll get out. I prayed to get the verdict overturned. He didn’t do all of that...that what they said he did.” The room swam and I grabbed the back of the chair to steady myself. “There’s a chance he can still get out.”
    “Not as long as I’m here, there’s not.”
    My heart tripped,