The Secret Society of Demolition Writers by Marc Parent

them rotating inside of the universe, and to acknowledge this would be to interfere with the most basic rules of physics. Gravity might let up. The earth might go squealing through space like a let-go balloon.
    “I didn’t even know a place like this existed!”
    “They used to be the rage. Can I take your coat?”
    “I think I’ll keep it, if you don’t mind. I’m really cold-blooded. Um, obviously. Not really, bad joke. It reminds me a little of a place I used to eat with my parents. Didn’t spin though.”
    “So it reminded you—”
    “I don’t know. I’m making conversation. I’m nervous. I’m depressed. Those boys, they just got me thinking. My
parents—
”
    “You miss them.”
    “I do. Yes. I mean it’s stupid, not stupid—I do, my father particularly, but both of them. And at the same time, I know they’re with me, looking over me.”
    “Sure. No, I understand.”
    “Oh, I’m glad. I’m glad ’cause most people don’t. I don’t feel
sorry
for myself ’cause I’m an
orphan
, ha ha
ha
. But. Gosh. I’m glad you understand. I’m really, really glad you understand. Is that the courthouse over there?”
    “I think so. Yeah. Connie, can I ask you something?”
    “. . . Yeah. Of course. What? Go ahead.”
    “Why’d you do it?”
    “Oh God.”
    “I’m sorry—”
    “No, it’s all right. I just—I never answered this before. Not even Jewels, and he’s my shrink.
Was
my shrink.”
    “You don’t have—”
    “I was mad.”
    “What?”
    “I was mad.”
    “What do you mean, crazy mad?”
    “No.
Mad
mad. Like angry, ticked off. I had a date, for the first time in my life, and I didn’t tell my mother because I was afraid she wouldn’t let me go, so I said I was going to see a movie with friends and she still said I couldn’t go. If my mother said no, it was no.”
    “You killed your mother because she wouldn’t let you go to a movie?”
    “You’re not listening, Babe. Because I was mad. That’s all I can say. I was angry and I picked up the candlestick and I hit her twice, and I got angrier and angrier. It had nothing to do with my mother. Of course she was yelling, of course she was fighting back, but it was like I was, oh, what’s the word, the girl in that movie,
possessed
. The longer it went on the angrier I got. I was angry that I was angry, I was angry that I was doing this, and then my mother wasn’t my mother anymore. And then she was dead.”
    “. . . Your father—?”
    “He loved her. He loved me. How could . . .”
    “Ah, ah. Okay. A mercy killing.”
    “Don’t be mean! I sound horrible and I know it. This is why I’ve never said. It’s horrible, it’s evil, and there’s never been anything I can say. It’s
indefensible
, but people still want me to explain. All I can say is, that lady was right. Completely right. It’s like a different person killed her parents and a different person went to jail. I have to believe that. If I think, right, Constance, you killed your parents, now how are you going to spend your day? I couldn’t function. I’m telling you the truth. I killed my parents because I was angry. It was like I had food poisoning—that’s the best way I can put it, I don’t want to say I was diseased or crazy. But the strangest thing is, I’ve never been angry again. I used it up.”
    “You were never angry in prison?”
    “No.”
    “With Jewels, then.”
    “No.”
    “I’ve heard you!”
    “Lonely. Sad. Um, disappointed. But that, that’s over for me now. You know me! How could I hurt anyone? I used it up. We all get a certain amount of anger, and in some of us it just surges one day and then, for the rest of your life, the fuses are blown. Then God steps in. Look. Hey, look at that.”
    “Where? I don’t see where—the mall?”
    “The moon, dummy. Look at the moon.”
    Connie of the bad sweaters. Connie of the flowers. A violent death is like no other, said the self-help books, you need to seek people out, you need to go to