Spoiled Brats: Stories

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They buried my wife in a shoe box in Central Park. I like to imagine that the funeral was respectful, that her body was treated with a modicum of dignity. But of course I’ll never know. I wasn’t invited to the ceremony. Instead, the guests of honor were the students of homeroom 2K.

Her killers.

When the children returned from the burial, they drew “tributes” to my wife in Magic Marker — maudlin scribbles of halos, wings, and harps. It was hard not to vomit as Ms. Hutson taped them up above my cage. I’ve never seen such tasteless dreck in all my life.

Hailey, I noticed, was crying as she drew. The irony. It was her responsibility to refill our water bottle last week. Instead, she spent all her free time with Alyssa, practicing a clapping game called “Miss Mary Mack.”

Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack!

All dressed in black, black, black!

It was that inane chant that provided the score to my wife’s final moments. She was dying of thirst but never cried once. It was only later that I realized why: her body was too dehydrated to produce tears.

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