Family Tradition

Jeannie slipped into her daughter, Madison’s, bathroom to pretend she was going pee. Instead, she slid the mirrored door of the medicine cabinet open and began searching for sleeping pills.

Maddy had just turned nineteen and this was her first day in her new apartment. She was moving the last of her things in, and Jeanne knew she should be out there helping her with the boxes. But she planned on paying Maddy a surprise visit tonight, and she had to make sure that things were just right.

As she read the label on each small, brown bottle, she thought about the reason she was pilfering through Maddy’s belongings. It was twenty years ago that Jeannie first took part in this sadistic family tradition; one that she suspected stretched all the way back to her ancestors. Back to when her family first started practicing the black arts.

Jeannie was only twenty then, and had just moved into her own apartment. She was settling down to spend her first night there when the phone rang.

On the other end was her father. But instead of saying “Hi” or “How’s my little girl,” he wailed into the phone like a blubbering baby.

Jeannie slammed the phone down and felt her body begin to shake. “Not now,” she whispered to herself. “It can’t start now!”

There was a rapping at the window behind the couch. Slowly, nervously, Jeannie reached for the blinds. When she lifted them, she found her mother with her face pressed against the glass, sneering and screaming.

Jeannie dropped the blinds and backed away. It was nine o’clock at night and she had to be up to get ready for a job interview at six the following morning. Plus, she was PMSing. No, now was definitely not the time for her parents to pull their shit.

She had to get away, go somewhere where they couldn’t find her. The mall closed at ten. Just enough time to do some window shopping and grab a late snack. Then she would return home and her parents will have grown tired of this childish game and gone home, too, hopefully feeling ashamed of themselves.

Jeannie arrived at the mall and spent a few minutes looking at the latest fall fashions before settling down for a snack at the Coney Island. She was about to bite into her hotdog when she noticed something moving beneath the mixture of mustard, onions, and chili. She plucked out the meat, horrified to find her father, shrunken down to the size of a frankfurter, kicking and squealing.

She dropped him onto the tray and jumped away from the table. She ran down the scarcely populated corridor to the fountain, where she sat down on the cement ledge and tried to calm down. Pennies, nickels, and dimes glimmered beneath the rippling water like sunken treasure. Jeannie dug into her pocket and fished out a quarter. She closed her eyes and said, “Please, make them go away.”

Before she could toss the coin, she heard a muffled voice coming from the palm of her hand. She uncurled her fingers and saw her mother’s face on the coin where George Washington’s should be. “We’re not going anywhere, dear,” her mother said. “We’re staying right here, to make sure you stay awake, the same way you kept us awake when you were a baby, screaming and crying and shitting yourself, every…damn…night!”

The face on the coin began to laugh and Jeannie threw it into the fountain. It plopped beneath the water then sunk to the bottom and settled among the other coins. “Please,” she said again, “make them go away.”

Her drive home was uneventful. No parents popping out of the glove compartment or ejecting themselves from the CD player. It was quiet, peaceful. And her cramps were going away. She would sleep well tonight.

When she got home, she went to the bathroom to change her tampon. She pinched the white string between her thumb and forefinger and slid the cotton plug out. She was startled by an ear-splitting scream. Clinging to the tampon, grinning and caked with menstrual blood, was her father. She dropped the tampon into the toilet and swatted desperately at the flusher handle. “How do you like it?” her father screamed as he bobbed up and down in the swirling red water. “How do you like it, Jeannieeeeeeeeee….!” Then he and his malicious words were sucked down into the network of plumbing.

But he would be back. He and her mother. Jeannie knew it. They would use their black magic and they would reappear in places she’d least expect them, at all hours of the night, making it impossible for her to sleep. But maybe there was a way to cheat them out of their revenge.

She opened the medicine cabinet and took out a bottle of sleeping pills. “Scream all you want,” she said as she pried the cap off and dumped the pills into her hand. “It won’t bother me now.”

She shoved the pills into her mouth and washed them down with a drink of water, then went to her bedroom and crawled under the covers. The bed was warm and comfortable and Jeannie began to drift off, the memory of her parents’ cruel antics fading into the darkness that was reaching to engulf her.

Then the bed started to shake. Jeannie opened her eyes and found her parents, one on each side of the bed, rocking it violently. “Did you think it would be that easy, Jeannie?” her mother shrieked. “Did you think a simple bottle of sleeping pills could stop us?”

“We’ve got news for you,” her father said, sweat glistening on his forehead as he yanked up and down on the bed frame. “It’s going to be a looooong night!”

Jeannie felt like she was riding a bucking bronco, but she closed her eyes tight and tried to ignore the quaking and jostling of her body. Soon the sleeping pills kicked in and the bouncing bed seemed to settle until its movements were as smooth and even as a boat on the ocean. And eventually, Jeannie slept.

And as much as she had despised her parents for putting her through that night of torture, here she was, twenty years later, preparing to do the same to her own daughter. But it was different now, because now she understood. When you’re a parent, sleep becomes a valuable commodity, and Madison had deprived her of that much-needed rest more times than she cared to remember.

Jeannie slipped the bottle of sleeping pills into her pocket and flushed the toilet. It was time for the payback, and she planned on doing it right.