Two-Hundred Dollars Worth of Sperm

Stephanie Williams yawned, trying to keep from passing out on the nubby brown sofa. Jody was already half asleep on the recliner as the television droned on and on about the climbing crime rate and the death toll around the LA/Orange County area.

As the newsman reported on the latest gang-related problem in the inner city, Stephanie experienced an abrupt sense of horror. Something was not quite right, but her whole family was home, safe from all the horrors of the outside world.

Jody was sitting right beside her with his mouth half-open, eyes barely open. Why was she all of a sudden overcome by a fear that was gripping and twisting her stomach?

She gazed at her seventeen-year-old son with a sudden fierce love welling up from somewhere deep inside. It was that fierce love that had held him safe for nine months and it was going to keep him safe until he turned eighteen and was ready to leave the house.

He was a good boy. Nothing was going to happen to him. He was never going to know about the cunt that his asshole father had been sleeping with for months now.

That was between Terry and herself. Until Jody was old enough to leave the house and begin his life on his own, she would shelter him from that as well.

Terry was upstairs taking a bath. She could just walk in, drop a hair dryer into the tub and call it an accident. Things like that happen all the time. Nobody would ever tie her to it.

All the thoughts rolled through Stephanie's mind all at once, making her laugh and run a shaky hand through the greying hair at her temples. She was going to have a nervous breakdown if her imagination did not take a long vacation.

It was then that Stephanie heard the loud bang overhead. It was a mini-explosion, almost like a firecracker exploding. It startled her and woke Jody out of his half-asleep stance.

"Mom?" Jody called out.

"I'm here, Baby," she said, hoping the tremor in her voice did not scare her son. "Probably just a blown fuse. Your dad will find what caused it."

"Don't sound like no fuse to me." Jody got up and rubbed his eyes. "And besides, the lights and the TV are still on. I'm going up to check."

He stretched out to his full 5'9" (and still growing) stature and bounded up the stairs, taking the steps two at a time.

"Well, if your dad's sleeping, don't wake him dear," Stephanie called out after him although she knew somewhere in her brain that the loud pop would have probably awakened the dead.

"Mom!" Jody's shrill scream startled Stephanie out of her thoughts.

"Jody? Jody!!! What's the matter son, are you hurt?" She called out as she jumped from her seat on the couch and ran up the stairs.

"Mom!!!"

"What is it???" She cried, running towards her son.

The sight that met Stephanie's eyes caused her to fall into a slump. Her son caught her before she hit the floor, preventing further damage to her shocked body.

On the floor of their bedroom was Terry Williams, faced down and staring at the door where his son and wife had just entered.

The gun was still jammed in his mouth but the back of his head, along with lumps of mushy grey matter in a pool of red blood, was splattered onto the carpet, spraying up the wall of the room.

His remaining exposed brain cavity contained remnants resembling dark red stew meat, frothed with some kind of oxygenated afterlife as the carotid artery, propelled by some still-active hind brain, continued pumping blood up into his shattered skull.

The gush of crimson goo, along with his semen and urine, released at the moment of death, was soaking the floor underneath him in an acrid stench of violent death.

It was Jody who made the call to the police and it was Jody who accompanied his parents, both of them in gurneys, to the hospital.

Hovering at the entrance of the house was a distraught Terry Williams who was missing the back half of his head and howling with despair.

"What the hell, man. I told you not to do it!" Blake shouted at him with frustration. He had arrived on time, but still could not avert the tragedy.

"I heard you, Blake! I just thought, oh my god, I'm hearing the sounds of a dead guy! I must be going out of my mind!"

"You doofus. I was trying to tell you not to blow your brains out. You heard me but you didn't even listen to me."

"Oh Blake, what have I done! What's my wife and kid gonna do?"

Blake stared at him, unable to respond. Arriving before the death was not necessarily a guarantee that he could stop the death from happening. He felt at once useless and inadequate.

Beside them, Luis shook his head. "I tried, man. I was shouting in your wife's ear, and it looked like she heard me 'cause her eyes went wanky or something, but she never moved from her sofa."

"She can't hear you?" Terry Williams turned towards Luis with startled eyes.

"Nah man. I don't have poltergeist super powers like Blakey boy here's got. Living people can't hear me or see me."

"How come I can hear Blake? I also heard some other guy and a woman. They were chattering at me nonstop. It was driving me insane!"

"Man, you are something else," Luis shook his head. "I just told you Blake has poltergeist super powers, didn't I? You could hear him 'cause he was trying to communicate with you."

Terry looked unconvinced. "This fucking feels like a dream man. I'm not dead, am I?"

Blake stared at him. "You are deader than a tree stump dude."

"But how? Why?" Terry howled.

Luis sighed. "You got marked 'cause you cheated on your wife, man!"

"Liana. You guys know about Liana?"

"Of course we do." Luis turned and looked away. "Even your wife knows about her."

Terry's eyes grew tragic. "I am so sorry that Stephanie found out. I never wanted to hurt her, but Liana, she is the most precious person in the world to me, aside from my son."

Luis gave a disgusted grimace. "Your most precious person in the world sold your sperm to the Overlord for a measly two-hundred bucks. That's how you got marked, idiot."

Terry Williams began to cry again. "Why? What did I do to deserve this? Cheating on my wife is a terrible thing but it's not a crime deserving death!"

"Of course it's not, but you didn't die because of your infidelity. You died because you got close to Jasmine Love."

"Who?" Terry looked up with tear-filled eyes.

Blake sighed. "Jazzy Hunter. Her real name is Jasmine Love but we know her as the jazz singer, Jazzy Hunter."

"The—you mean the new singer we just got two weeks ago?" Terry raised his hand to his mouth. "Did we piss her off somehow?"

"No, Terry. We didn't piss her off." Blake responded with a slow hiss. "We pissed off her obsessed stalker, the Overlord Anh Hai."