posted by tbogg at 10:07 PM

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I, the Mummy

It was cold out this morning. Gray and wet, like Lynne Cheney at a Chippendales. I sat looking at the daily rag, reading about death and destruction while drinking my coffee and Wild Turkey. My name is Mummy, but you can call me America's Worst Mother™.

I shoved a butt in my mouth and fired it up, sucking the sweet nicotine deep into my lungs as I looked over the top of the paper at my four yard-apes: Frangelica, Popeil, Becky Bob, and Utz. Good kids. Strong kids. Smart kids...except for Becky Bob who sat at the dining room table chewing on her shoelaces. I thought to myself: three out of four ain't bad.

I turned my eyes back to the paper. A bombing in Spain. War in the Middle East. A sale at Barneys. The world is a sad place.

Utz looked over my shoulder at the pictures of death and destruction. He didn't even blink. Only ten, he'd witnessed more deaths than a Governor of Texas, and we had a backyard full of hamster graves to prove it. He ordered porridge and toast and looked out the window with dead eyes.

Out of the corner of my eye I watched Frangelica, her hair messed up like Jenna Bush's after pulling an all-nighter at a frat house. She yawned while flipping through a fashion magazine, her long stiletto nails tapping out a death march on the filthy formica table. I thought to myself: she's a stone killer, that one, and made a mental note to start locking my bedroom door.

Morning is tough around our house. The cold bitter coffee. The overflowing ashtrays. Sulky pre-schoolers with hooded eyes muttering threats and vague obscenities at each other. Maybe, for once, we could get through breakfast without drawn guns and screamed curses. It was going to be a long day. No rest for anyone. I figured we'd sleep when we were dead.

I stabbed my butt out on the scarred table and lit up another. It was car pool time.

Before leaving the house, I checked in on Twitchy.

Twitchy is the kid's rabbit. A wild black thing with a droopy ear and a taste for human blood. He lay in his cage:

In the semi-darkness, my breath catches at the sight of him lying on top of the papers, stretched out and prone.

"Bunny...?" I draw closer and pull a bit of hanging twine that clicks on the light. In the cruel glare of a bare bulb, Twitchy is motionless. Perhaps it's only because there's been so much death in the news, but I seem to be seeing the Reaper everywhere I look.

I reached out and touched Twitchy and he leaped up snarling like Dick Cheney after his weekly defib. Jumping back, my heart pounding like George Bush's at the idea of a press conference, I hit the light-bulb with my head causing it to swing back and forth, casting crazy shadows on the wall.

In the flickering light, Twitchy looked at me with his one good red eye, snarling. Bad juju.

With shaking hands, I turned off the light and walked out into the gray light of day.

It was going to be a long one.

No rest for the wicked.