Jude

Jude had always loved Christmas, the food, the carols, but most of all he loved presents. His parents bought him everything he wanted. Last year they gave him a twenty-seven-inch television for his room; Jude was hardly tall enough to turn it on and off.
         
He was a typical seven-year-old, only child, spoiled and obnoxious. However, he hadn’t always been an only child; he had had an older brother.
         
Sein was not like everyone else and he wasn’t the way his parents had wanted him to be. He never played football or had lots of friends. He spent most of his time in his room, worshiping his computer. In fact he referred to the device as “the paramount of technological intelligence”; his parents called it a distraction. They wanted him to go out into the world, meet girls and be just like every other immature, irresponsible kid
his age. They had minimal concern for his well being, as long as he was out doing something. They constantly shunned his brilliant grades and trophy winning chess skills, slowly turning Sein against everything that he loved, in order to make themselves more content with their first-born. Thus on the eve of his 17th birthday he secretly enrolled himself into Fort Waterloo Military Academy, and quickly scribing a note to his parents and his three-year-old brother Jude, he left the next day with no intent of returning. Two years later his lifeless body was found limp on the floor of the shower room, a bullet hole through his skull, it had been a suicide.
         
Now Jude’s parents coddled and indulged him to every extent, not wanting the financial and societal strain of another mistake.
         
Jude had grown very accustomed to the kingly treatment he had been receiving the past two years, unaffected by and ignorant of his brother’s suicide. He didn’t know what suicide was, nor could he have comprehended it if it were explained to him. He hadn’t yet learned about death. Once, when his father was playing in the garden, Jude had tried to drink some of his “pirate juice”. Fortuitously, his father prevented him from consuming the poison, telling Jude, “People who drink that go to sleep for a long time”. This had been his only real experience with morbidity.

However he was a very intelligent child, he could tie his shoes, and make his own toast, and, he could understand why his parents spoiled him so; he was their favorite. This he could tell. They had bathed him, fed him and even replaced his soiled knickers for him, they served him; he was their God. This he was sure of and never failed to take full advantage. He was their one and only, at least until recently.
A few weeks ago he remembered being awoken abruptly in the middle of the night, and secured in that ghastly uncomfortable car seat. But the sound of the car engine and the tapping rain had quickly lulled him back to sleep. When he awoke the later on he was home again, but his mother was not. His father carried him inside and back into his race car bed. Jude didn’t know what had happened that night, but a few days later his mother returned, with another!

It was a helpless little infant, no more than a few days old. Where had it come from and why was it in his house? Jude had no idea, but he didn’t like it.
It smelled and was loud. It was not at all like him when he was a baby. And the worst news about this new invader came just two days before Christmas. In his parents’ room down the hall, he had overheard what sounded like an argument.
         
“Sweetie, isn’t Cate the most precious thing?” his mother said
         
“Sure dear, but we have a problem”
         
“She definitely has my eyes”
         
“Uh huh, anyways about Christmas this year”, his father avoided the subject of “cuteness”; he had never been a fan of sensitivity. “We just couldn’t afford to spend as much as usual, what with the new kid and all.”
         
“I know sweetie, Jude will just have to be happy with what he gets and after all we can’t baby him his whole life.”
         
These words dropped Jude like an unbalanced teeter-totter. An unhealthy fire rapidly swelled inside him. It was that squelching little crawler’s fault. Jude would find a way to solve this problem. He recalled the pirate juice.
Now it was Christmas day, a time for giving and getting, and loving and caring. Jude’s plan was set and already in action, his parents were out of their minds in preparation for the annual feast. They were perfectly distracted, enabling him to pursue his solution.
       
Cate was asleep, as was usual for her at 2 o’clock (and 5 o’clock and 8 o’clock); she was lazy and good for nothing, daily taking a multitude of hour-long naps. But Jude wanted her to sleep for much longer than that.
       
He clumsily opened the refrigerator, knocking free a few bottles that sat next to the gravy, prepared and chilled last night. They bounced around the floor and tumbled under the oak dining table. This was perfect, deviously he administered the sleeping poison to each of the bottles, and, climbing up onto the counter, placed them inconspicuously back on the cooling shelf of the Coleman. Just then he realized something, a possible, though solvable, catch-twenty-two in his diabolical plan--the others.
       
Friends and family arrived as scheduled, all bearing gifts for one another. Jude must have counted thousands of presents littering his living room floor. All of which would soon be his, as the guests now made their way to the huge oak table.
“Our heavenly father…” Jude’s dad never failed to taint each and every meal with a blasphemous prayer, to a God with whom he rarely conversed but frequently cursed.
“…bless this meal, make it good unto our bodies, and our minds, and our souls, and let us never forget those whom we have lost. Amen”

Then they ate, they ate more in 15 minutes than most eat in a day. They inhaled mashed potatoes, squash, and ham, all gluttonously swamped in that brown roux and meat juice concoction. Everyone loved the gravy. In fact only one person hadn’t tried it, Jude.
         
He sat back in his booster seat and thought about what might be in all those festively adorned boxes. He dreamed of race cars and action figures, bicycles and scooters, and all the other toys that he would soon be playing with. And he slowly nibbled at the dry ham on his fork, waiting to open his gifts.

Just as planned his mother had been feeding Cate her bottle and she contently drank, all the while introducing the slow acting poison into her body, but now it took effect. She began to cough and gag convulsively. Terrified his mother quickly stood up in panic and reached to dial 9-1-1, but it was to no avail, the poison got her next. She fell to the floor, foam poured from her slacking mouth. The others went just as quickly, one at a time, in the order that they had eaten the gravy, but with not nearly enough time for them to realize what was happening. Jude watched with an air of accomplishment, as every guest and family member fell into deep and permanent repose (though the permanence was completely unbeknownst to him).

As soon as his last victim hit the floor, Jude jumped down from his chair and darted into the living room, where all the gifts were stacked and waiting his arrival. He tore through the wrappings as quickly as possible, unaware of when his family would awake and scold him for his wrongdoings. He knew that they could wake back up at any time, and then he was in big trouble.
         
After hours of childish glee over all his new gifts Jude grew tired. He stumbled over to where his parents had fallen. They were cold.

"Mommy" Jude said sleepily, "Daddy"?
         
Why hadn't they woken up yet? It had been so long since he had put them to sleep.

He was exhausted from all his playing.

He tugged at their clothes and nudged his mother’s arm. No response.

An hour passed and Jude could no longer stand up, his eyes dangled closer and closer to dreams. He lay down next to his mother’s chilled body, and shivered. He would sleep there until she woke to tuck him in.