Family – the people who will identify your corpse. Or, if you’re unlucky, the people who’ll be responsible for it.
– Ep 25: Dunk Mail
My Crusty Caravan Romancer was but one in a long line of terrible men the South women had kissed, screwed, or married, and tonight I was going to have to hang out with two more disgusting specimens over dinner at Mum’s place.
(Oh, did I forget to tell you? They’d changed the time of our regular family dinner so it fell after my Italian class, so now I was taking a class I didn’t want to take and I couldn’t even use it as an excuse to get out of the thing I’d used it to try to get out of in the first place.)
Mum’s new husband Elvis was so terrible that his daughter from his first marriage didn’t even show up to the wedding, saying she ‘had no desire to witness something so tragic.’ I think it’s safe to say that Shelby, who was technically my step-sister although I hadn’t met her, was awesome. And I think she liked women, so therefore wasn’t under the same terrible-men-curse as the rest of us.
My sister Drey was picking me up from class tonight. I adored my sister, despite the fact that she was the perfect child and I was the disaster. She always wore cardigans and florals and was even polite to Elvis. An absolute angel.
“Guess who’s coming tonight?” she squealed excitedly when I climbed into her giant pastel blue four-wheel drive.
“Oh god, not Troy.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “Yes, Keely, obviously Troy is coming.”
Blergh. Her boyfriend was the worst. He was like the average of a hundred people, not to mention my number one suspect for being an undercover alien. It was as if his personality was programmed in directly from a manual of how an overly enthusiastic third-in-charge manager at an electronics store should behave.
“But he’s not who you’re excited about?”
She glared at me. “No.”
“Finally something we agree upon.” She opened her mouth to respond, but I cut her off. “So who is it?”
She huffed, but her juicy news clearly outweighed her crankiness. “Shelby.”
My eyes widened. Holy shit. That actually was exciting.
“The Shelby?”
“Yep.”
“Our goth snake scientist step-sister, aka the coolest person on the planet?”
Drey nodded enthusiastically, apparently having forgiven me for trash-talking her tepid boyfriend. “The very same. She got a research job at UDUNK. She’s moving in with Mum and Elvis until she gets her own place.”
“Oh god.” I grimaced. “Someone needs to warn her.”
“About the…” She lowered her voice. “S-E-X thing?”
“Yes, Drey. About our mother’s near-constant screaming orgasms.”
Drey shuddered, a look of distress on her face. “I really wish you’d never told me about that. I liked to imagine their relationship was all about companionship.”
“I get that. It’s how I like to think about you and Troy.” Whenever an unfortunate thought of the two of them getting it on popped into my head, for some reason all I could think about was a stale doughnut and a breadstick. Just dry on dry. I shuddered. “I couldn’t keep quiet about Mum and Elvis. There’s no way I should have to suffer alone. They keep their lube in the fridge, Drey. Next to the milk. That’s not something you need to see when you’re trying to make your porridge in the morning.”
She squeaked and wrinkled up her face. “Stop! Please!”
“Okay, okay, I’ll stop. Only because you’re driving and I don’t want Elvis’s throbbing erection to be the thing that makes us crash and die.”
“Ew! My gosh, Keely, have mercy!”
At least she hadn’t accidentally seen it. On multiple occasions. Like, say, that day Mum and Elvis were ‘doing laundry’ together. I shuddered. No one should know that much detail about their mother’s husband.
“We need to discuss Shelby some more. When is she getting here? What is our strategy for seeming cool when we meet her?”
Drey frowned. “Isn’t having a strategy to look cool kind of inherently uncool?”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “Just because you’re a librarian and everyone thinks you’re awesome the second they meet you, Drey, it doesn’t mean we’re all that lucky.”
“You should be yourself.”
“Are you serious? Have you met me?”
“You’re so fun and spontaneous! She’ll love you.”
I shook my head. “I’m sweaty and I think I have an armpit rash from Jed’s body wash.”
“Well she’s not going to know that unless you tell her, so keep it on the down-low and everything will be fine.” She frowned. “But you should probably start buying your own body wash. You don’t want to do anything that might make Jed kick you out.”
“Why, worried I’ll come and live with you?”
“No, no, of course not!” she said quickly. Her face turned bright red, a sure sign that she was lying through her teeth. Darling Drey had zero poker face.
“It’s okay. He doesn’t even notice.”
She didn’t say anything, but she gave me a look like she doubted what I was saying was vero. (True.)
Drey pulled up outside Mum’s house. It was a two-storey pale brick home purchased back in the day when people could perform such magical feats as affording a house. Now these things were but a dream, even in the Dunks. Didn’t matter how many people had been chopped up in a house, how blood-stained the carpets were, I would never be able to afford a place of my own. Even rent was a little out of my league. Which is probably why, even though Mum and her new husband had thoroughly defiled it, the sight of my childhood home made me feel kind of… heart-comfy.
But you know. Twice-weekly dinner still seemed a bit much.
I had a little more spring in my step than I usually would walking into a family dining experience thanks to the knowledge that Shelby Blood was inside. Even her name was awesome.
The door swung open and Elvis Blood – whose name was not nearly as awesome – pulled me into a giant hug.
“Keely, it’s lovely to see you! How’s Italian going?”
“Great.”
I pushed past Mr Blood, or Signore Sangue, as I called him – even though he was forever telling me that surnames didn’t need to be translated. But I wouldn’t change my ways for him or they didn’t call me Keely Sud. (That’s South in Italian. These jokes would flow a lot better if you’d just take one italiano class, you know.)
“Hi Elvis!” said Drey. “I love your shoes!”
“Thanks, darl. They’re part of the autumn collection I’m designing now.”
Oh, didn’t I mention that? Elvis made and sold beaded sandals for a living.
“Andrea!” cooed Mum as we entered the kitchen, eyes wide with joy as she gazed upon her favourite child.
That was my sister’s full name – Andrea, rhymes with Dong Slayer. She hated it when I introduced her like that, but hey, it made sure no one ever forgot how to pronounce it.
Mum pulled Drey into a hug like she hadn’t already seen her twelve times this week. There were some downsides to being the favourite child, and Mum ‘popping in’ to see her at work was one of them. This served as an excellent distraction for me to steal a handful of salt and vinegar chips from the platter on the bench, clearly not meant to be touched until it had been placed on the designated nibbles table in the back yard and admired by Shelby, tonight’s guest of honour.
“Keely Barbara South, you put those chips down this instant!”
Busted. Guess Mum wasn’t that distracted after all.
I raised my eyebrows at her. “You want me to put them back in the bowl?”
She frowned. “Well, no, I guess I don’t. But don’t eat any more until everyone is here.”
Sure I wouldn’t. “I don’t know why you always say Barbara like that’s my middle name, Mum. That’s not what’s on my birth certificate.”
She huffed. “I refuse to say what’s on your birth certificate.”
“What’s this about?” Elvis asked me, eyes curious.
“You don’t know?”
He shook his head. “I thought your middle name was Barbara.”
“Close, but not quite. Mum let Howard fill out the forms in the hospital.” Howard was, I suppose, my biological father, but somehow I didn’t really think of him like that. In my mind he was just a deadbeat dude who’d lived with us on and off when I was little. “Keely Barracuda South at your service.”
Signore Sangue’s eyebrows knitted together pensively. “I think I like that better than Barbara.”
“Something we agree on, Elvis.”
“Keely, I thought you’d wear something nice to dinner,” said Mum, clearly not wanting to think about my middle name any longer. “We’re having guests.”
“I didn’t know that. I came here straight from Italian and I went there straight from work. And what do you mean ‘guests’ plural?”
“Well, there’s Andrea’s lovely Troy…” What did I say about my mum having shit judgment when it comes to men? Personally I didn’t think Troy qualified as a guest so much as a loser we had to put up with because we loved Drey, but I decided that argument wasn’t worth the effort. “… And Elvis’s daughter Shelby. She’s upstairs now, having a shower and getting ready.”
She didn’t say any more, but the ‘like you should have’ was heavily implied.
The sound of heeled footsteps on the stairs carried down into the kitchen, cutting off our conversation, and I looked up to see my step-sister in person for the first time.
According to her blog – which Drey and I had obviously stalked the second we learned of our sister’s existence – Shelby was a snake scientist with a love of goth fashion and boogie boarding. Honestly, it was too much cool for one person. It seemed unfair that I’d ended up with yet another sister who was more impressive than me, but I’d live, so long as Shelby deemed me an adequate relative.
When she appeared in the doorway, she was everything I’d been hoping for. Black knee-high boots with shiny silver heels and a faux-leather minidress, the top part a corset that really popped out those tette. (I guess she sweated a lot less than me if she could wear that in this heat.) Her lipstick was plum red, her hair black and her skin golden brown.
“Sorry I took so long,” she said. “I had to feed Rufus.”
Was that a new euphemism for using the toilet? I filed it away as something to say when I wanted to gross out Jed later.
“Not to worry!” Mum said cheerily. “This is my daughter Andrea, who works at the library and volunteers at the animal shelter. And this is Keely. She didn’t have time to get changed after work.”
Ah, I hoped one day to have that introduction etched on my tombstone.
“Nice to meet you,” said Andrea, rushing forward to hug Shelby.
“I’ll wave from a distance,” I said. “I’m super sweaty.”
“I get it,” Shelby replied. “Me too, most of the time. It’s a risk when you dress in pleather.”
Oh my goodness. Shelby was a sweaty gal like me. So much in common! I wondered if she had an armpit rash too.
“You smell really delicious though,” said Drey as she released Shelby from the hug. Drey was the kind of person who could get away with saying things like that without giving off cannibal vibes. (I was not that type of person, as I’d found out to my detriment on a date two years ago. I told a guy he looked good enough to eat, and he told me he was glad we ‘had that hobby in common.’ I left via the bathroom window.)
“Thank you,” said Shelby. “You smell great too. Like vanilla and knowledge.”
“I told you,” I said to Drey. “It’s like the books have seeped into your skin.” I hoped the place I worked hadn’t seeped into my skin. Eau de corpse somehow wasn’t as alluring. Unlikely it’d had time, though, given I’d had this job less than a month. I doubted I’d stayed at any job long enough to absorb its odours.
“We’ve set up the table out the back,” said Mum. “Let’s go sit there.”
She picked up the tray of food and practically ran over to Shelby. Of course she was allowed snacks. That was okay, though – it wasn’t nearly as insulting as having to wait for Troy before starting on the nibblies. At least Shelby was an actual guest and not a nuisance who ran the risk of impregnating my sister and ruining her life by bonding her to him forever via a small human with shared genetic material.
“What would everyone like to drink?” Elvis asked. “Place your orders and I’ll bring them out.”
“Sometimes I genuinely like you, Elvis,” I told him. “Not often, but then occasionally you bribe me with alcohol.”
He laughed heartily. “You’re always a crack-up, Keely. Mojito for you?”
“Yes please.” I could be polite to Elvis when there were cocktails at stake.
While my mother’s husband got to work on the drinks, the rest of us made our way into the back yard. I stepped out the door onto the terracotta tiles where Mum had set up her classic green plastic table and chairs. Solar-powered fairy lights twinkled along the brick wall of the house as a breeze drifted lazily towards us, carrying with it the sound of children giggling in a neighbour’s yard and the smell of the flowering frangipanis along Mum’s back fence. It was the perfect setting for a summer evening. Pity about the company.
Drey was busy texting on her phone, I guess trying to get Troy to hurry up so we could eat dinner. I dragged my chair as close to the table as possible and sat right near the snacks, shovelling chips and dip into my face. My mother was torn between shooting me disapproving looks and wanting to seem kind and normal in front of Shelby.
“Tell us about your job, Shelby. I’m sure the girls are very interested in what you do.”
“Recently I’ve mostly been watching snakes have sex.”
“Then you’re going to be fine living here,” I muttered.
Mum shot me a warning look, then turned back to Shelby and re-engaged her nice face. “Fascinating. Snakes making love. Who knew?”
I frowned at her. “What did you think they did?”
“What?”
“You said ‘who knew’ like you didn’t know that snakes had sex.”
“Oh. Right. Well, I don’t know. I guess I never thought about it.”
“I think about it a lot. Way more than I want to,” said Shelby. “Sometimes I even see it in my dreams.”
I nodded. “That happens to me when I play a game on my phone too much.”
She pointed at me and said with intensity: “It’s exactly like that.”
Was it just me or was I nailing this meeting-my-sister thing?
Eventually Elvis brought out the drinks – beer and wine for the others, matching cocktails for me and him – and took a seat right next to me.
“How did Italian class go tonight?” he asked. In English, which shows you exactly how much confidence he had in my abilities.
“Good.”
“If you ever need me to quiz you –”
“It’s just a hobby. I think being quizzed would take the fun out of it.”
“Right you are. If you want to have a conversation, then. Or maybe we could do an Italian cooking class together.”
“If the desire strikes, I’ll book us a lesson at Giovanni’s.” Like that was ever going to happen.
“Sounds great,” he said, beaming. “Now, in case you didn’t know, it’s actually ‘di Giovanni’ because…”
He continued talking, but I focused on the fresh mint and lime juice in my cocktail, allowing the taste to transport me to a more interesting locale. I nodded and threw out the occasional ‘si’ so he thought I was paying attention. I only tuned back in when I noticed Shelby joining the chat.
“Keely was living here until not that long ago,” Elvis explained.
“Really?” Shelby asked me. “Find yourself a nice apartment?”
“No. I sleep on a friend’s couch now.”
She frowned. “Why did you leave? Did they kick you out?”
“Only through their campaign of sustained grossness.”
The frown deepened. “I’m not following you.”
“Oh, Keely,” said Elvis, laughing like he didn’t know I was scarred for life, “we’re newlyweds! What did you expect?”
“To see your penis a couple hundred fewer times, that’s what I expected.”
He waved a hand like this was all banter and not me discussing deep trauma. “You saw it three, maximum, and I apologised for that. You’re not very good at knocking.”
“Before walking into the kitchen?”
“The kitchen?” Shelby repeated, her voice faint.
“We came down to get the whipped cream and never made it back upstairs,” Elvis said with a smile, like it was the most reasonable thing in the world.
I took a sip of my mojito. “I found anal beads down the back of the couch.”
“They were brand new, never used. They fell out of the goodie bag I bought for your mother.”
“The soundproofing is really bad,” I warned Shelby. “You will hear everything. And if you bring someone home, Mum and Elvis will hear everything too.”
“Not that we’d listen in. You don’t need to be embarrassed to bring anyone home, darling.”
I shrugged. “As long as you’re fine with them seeing your dad’s bare arse at some point.”
“What have I done?” Shelby whispered, her expression haunted.
I patted her arm. “Jed has a spare armchair if this place gets too much for you.”
She nodded, a look of vague horror in her eyes. “I may take you up on that.”
Tall Drink of Slaughter is out now! Grab your copy.
Want to keep reading? Here’s Chapter 4!