Reaper

CHAPTER 2 - Mad As a Hatter

Charles Maurice Wesley, a man thirty-four years of age with a loving wife and a beautiful girl child. He works hard every day, organizing numbers at his mediocre desk job then goes home to his family where he is the understanding husband and doting dad. Every other weekend, he hits the bar with his friends before returning home before eleven.

In short, everything about Charles is average. Charles Wesley's life had fallen into a routine long before his marriage, he never strayed from his beaten path nor did he care to. He was comfortable with his life.

As the Wesley family sat at the dinner table, silence shrouding them like rain clouds in the distance. Usually, little Ami would engage her parents with exciting tales from her day, however, the child was quiet as she pushed her barely touched food around on her plate.

The lady of the house, Helen stared worriedly at her daughter. With a soft touch, she felt the child's forehead, before doing the same with her husband. She noticed how both her child and husband appeared pale with little to no appetite.

"Sweetie, does anywhere hurt?" Helen inquired.

"My tummy doesn't feel good" Ami, mumbled, slumping as the energy she had left her body.

"Looks like our princess has come down with the flu" Charles remarked.

"I think we all have" Helen sighed,

Nodding in agreement, Charles reached for his wife and took her hand giving it a reassuring squeeze before turning his full attention to their daughter, "Princess, how about some tea? It'll make your tummy feel better." Reluctantly Ami agreed, and ten minutes later she, her mother, and her father were sipping on the tea Charles brewed.

However, during the next few hours, the health of each member of the Wesley family deteriorated at a frightening speed. While they all slept together in the master bedroom, each grew a steady fever as the night went on, Charles and Helen were awaked by the cries of their daughter who had vomited.

"I can't feel my legs!" Ami cried. Moments later, the child began to convulse sending her mother into a panic. Helen, despite her nausea and confusion, chalked up her rapid heartbeat to her distressed state. She screamed for Charles, ordering him to call an ambulance. 

In the midst of her distorted focus, Helen knew that it was not the flu she and her family had contracted, it was something much more serious.

When Helen realized Charles made no effort to get help she turned on the lamp beside her before turning to him. "Charles!" Helen screamed to the seemingly stoic man, the confusion clearly portrayed on her face.

Charles' eyes slowly turned from unconscious Ami to Helen, a harsh coldness quickly crept its way into her bones as she looked upon her husband's face. Charles - kind, sweet Charles -  was smiling. "Everything will be alright" Charles assured her, Helen began to visibly shake, her mind was trying to find reasons why her husband was not helping their child, why he looked so very different.

Almost as if he were a stranger.

The question to her answer was simple. The man lying beside her was another person. He was a manifestation of deep-rooted resentment, fear, anger, and hurt. He was always in the dark, at the bottom of the sea, waiting as he continuously fed on the things that Charles begrudgingly accepted. 

And three months ago, when Charles finally had enough, he was released from the dark sea of thoughts that he constantly resided in. His purpose was to grant Charles' desires, starting with his mother, Edith Wesley, the woman responsible for it all. Growing up with an anal-retentive mother was as easy for Charles as deactivating a bomb while blindfolded.

Order was emphasized in every aspect of his life from what he ate to what he studied in college. Venturing from any pattern that was set for him was met with severe consequences, the type that made him never want to try something new again.

Three months ago, Charles who had been up for promotion was instead demoted to an office assistant just because it could be done. Charles had pleaded with his boss to reconsider but was made a fool of. It was then in his boss's office while he could hardly hear the man belittle him that everything he had to put up with replayed in his mind.

His mother's excessive controlling nature, his father's negligence, school bullies, uncaring teachers, insensitive friends, cheating girlfriends, a demanding job that paid less than the labour was worth, shitty workmates and a piece of trash boss. Charles was tired of it all and made two wishes. Get even and eternal slumber. When Charles had left his boss's office, one of his wishes had already been granted.

From that point onward, the inhabitant of Charles's body followed the routine of the originator without raising suspicion. Some Saturday nights "Charles" would spend a few hours with his "buddies" drinking beer and laughing as they called him his wife's bitch. Every Sunday "Charles" would go to his mother's house for tea and listen without objection as she prattled on about what he needed to do with his life.

When Mondays rolled around, "Charles" met his boss with a cup of coffee and said nothing as the man praised him for being a good dog; while all through the week his workmates gave him false encouragement as they either laughed to his face or behind his back. None of them suspected that as "Charles" silently took their verbal, mental, and on occasion physical abuse that he'd prepared a gift to repay them in kind. Each beverage that they drank, be it tea, beer, soda, water, or coffee, there was always a little extra something just for them.

"What do you mean everything will be alright?" fretted Helen, her sense of feeling was rapidly declining. She fell back onto the pillow, no longer able to hold herself up but still reaching for Ami. The little girl had stopped breathing, her lungs were paralyzed, and in her deep slumber, she had left the mortal realm.

"They all demanded too much, took too much. They didn't give anything back, so they had to suffer, just like Charles did. I wouldn't leave you and Ami to suffer, so we shall go together."

Helen's eyes widened as she came to the terrifying realization, her husband of seven years was no longer her husband but a madman. Whether it was from the poison or the revelation, Helen was spilling the contents of her stomach as Ami had earlier.

The woman was frightened beyond her wildest thought, her eyes caught sight of her phone on the bedside table and a flicker of hope shone in those dark eyes of hers but before she could finish the thought, her lungs ceased their function, whether it was death by suffocation or choking on her own vomit, I, the spectator had yet to decide.

***

Standing beside me now, Charles' spirit looked upon the work of his alter, face ashen and eyes teary, he shouted for his dead family to wake up. As he tried to touch his daughter he found that her physical body was simply unreachable. This man was a product of his environment, a classic case of bottled emotions and the result of what happens when one's had enough.

However, Charles was not blameless, no, he was simply a coward who never worked up the courage to speak up for himself and continuously pointed the finger. In the end, the actions of others and Charles' lack of action resulted in eighty-seven deaths. He was successful in getting even but his eternal slumber would yet be determined.

Charles's anguished cries turned into hysterical laughter till I could no longer distinguish between the two. Madness had embraced him yet again. As the gate to the underworld opened, chains propelled through, wrapping themselves around Charles' body and dragging him into the abyss, the tears of blood that ran down his cheeks glimmered for just a moment before he was never to be seen again.