The Façade of Quad in Nimrod ✓ | Satire, family drama, dark society

XXVI

The next day was rainy and both Valerie and Mordecai spent time inside the mansion. Neither ventured outside nor opened the front door. It had been rumbling on and off, and lightning flashed in the distance. 

Valerie was watching the storm out of her window without a thought in her mind. She was defeated with Fernando and wondered if she should just succumb to a fantasy and imagine Thomas Benedict had come to save her from this 'mansion cage'.

Rain splattered against the window and she followed the droplets downwards feeling her mood go with them—downward. She could see a bit of the front entrance from her room and imagined Thomas Benedict standing in the rain. Valerie was turning into a hopeless girl if she didn't snap out her damsel in distress mode and try to take the reigns of life for herself for once instead of relying on other people to do it for her. 

She was, honestly, pathetic.

Downstairs, her father had visibly changed. If any took a moment to look at him without shying away from his glare and intimidating demeanor, they would see glutton. Mordecai was a big man with a bigger belly, because all he could stomach these days were sweet breads from Experience which he would go out to get himself in box-loads. 

Despite the starch and sugar in his system, his cheeks were sunken, and his skin was pale. He still adorned a thick mustache he combed every morning that at the end of the day lay flat as if someone had stuck fur on his lip. His mustache twitched as he debated on going out or staying in. His eyes were so dead and lifeless, it looked as if nothing could ever faze him.

He opened the door, deciding to brave the rain, and found a Christmas box there. Without looking at the tag, he undid the ribbon and the lids popped open. In his dazed state that he was, he lifted one of the packages wrapped in Christmas paper. It squished in his hands but also felt hard. It was also kind of wet and 'red paint' was coming off it and Mordecai lifted it to his nose to sniff.

But he couldn't tell what it was despite the scent was practically blaring into his nostrils. He opened the package and for five seconds, the thing he was holding in his hand did not register.

From her room, Valerie heard the wall-rattling shout and scream of her father. 

Startled out of her fantasy, she stumbled out of the bed and hurried to the stairs. She saw there was a large box in front of their door. Her father was rustling through it taking out all the pretty little packages when he found the fear—his wife's mutilated head with the marking of a red circle on her forehead.

Valerie saw it, too.

Petrified Mordecai put the head back and scrambled to the phone to call the police, all the while wiping his hands on his clothes for touching such a thing. The flesh of Georgina had begun to rot a little and the blood was clumpy and dry in some, but moist and new in others.

"Fik, fik!" Mordecai swore when he dropped the phone after calling the police. 

"Fik, fik!" His hands trembled without control.

Thirty minutes later, the police took the body to the mortician to have it prepared for burial, but they were unwilling to continue the investigation.

"Please," Valerie hurried up to one of the officers as he turned to leave, "catch whoever did this to her." She had already been crying without control and her voice shook when she spoke.

"No can do, missy," the officer shrugged.

Tears in her eyes, she grabbed his arm. "Why? Why? Please, find who killed my mother."

The officer sighed into her face and his breath stunk of tobacco. "Look, little miss, this is the elusive Red Circle we're talkin' about here. From the looks of it, circled around the bullet that killed her like a bull's eye shot. Red Circle is everywhere and as slippery and hard to find as tryin' to catch a damn slug while fishin' for a needle in a haystack. If we had more clues, we would've caught them long ago. Just be glad at least they didn't torture her before her death."