Article 1 – My Little Jilly-bean

by Hannah Pajic

As I stared over my mother’s unconscious body, out cold on the scratched leather couch, I began to find myself picturing violent scenes in my head. I wondered how thick her skin would be if I were to take a kitchen knife to it. Would her blood be brightly red or darkly thick? Would the blood squirt onto or pour down her body? Would she wake up out of her drunken slumber for a minute or two as I slit her throat, or would she bleed out in her sleep? Would she make a moaning noise because of the pain? Would she be silent? Would she struggle if she realizes what I am doing to her?
“Jack?” I heard a tiny squeak of a voice behind me and turned to see a tiny figure shadowing me.

“It’s late, Jilly-bean. It’s a school night. Go back to bed.” I replied quietly.

“I heard you get out of bed. I can’t go back to sleep until you come back.” My sister whispered, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.

I smiled softly. Nothing can make me snap out of it except for my little sister Jillian. My little Jilly-bean. I turned my back to the snoring waste of skin on the couch and put my hands on Jillian’s tiny shoulders, guiding her through the cramped trailer and towards our bedroom. She crawled between our worn out sheets, and I covered her with the plaid blanket that I’ve had since I was a young boy. I tucked the blanket around her tightly.

“You haven’t been sleeping again lately.”

Lack of sleeping wasn’t a question as long as I have my little Jilly-bean with me. Jillian was only six years old, in her final month of kindergarten, but she was the wisest person I knew. She was far more mature than I was and I was nine years older than her. Her eyes were pools of black, and they were filled with wisdom.

“I’ll be fine. It’s not as bad anymore. I just heard something and got up to investigate. I’ve got to make sure my little Jilly-bean’s safe.” I tickled her tiny belly, and she squirmed in her nightgown, eyes softening and becoming more playful and naive. That was the way I like to see her. The way she was supposed to be at this age; playful and naive. She wasn’t supposed to have known the things she knows, or to have seen the things she sees. She and I both grew up too fast to look back. For years, I have played the role of a parent, from feeding and dressing her for school, to forging signatures on field trip permission slips because our mother was either too drunk or too invisible to get hold of her. Neither of our fathers had been in the picture. Mom said my father was some guy she met at a bar and she doesn’t know who Jillian’s is. We may not have the same father, but Jillian and I were the spitting images of each other. We both got our mothers genes, I guess.

Jillian had finally fallen back asleep, and I cuddled up beside her with my arms wrapped around those tiny shoulders. I kept my eyes open, staring at the ceiling until the sun leaked through our curtain-less window indicating it was time to get up.

I had always been odd. Perhaps a bit of a loner, you could say. I never really felt the need to make any sort of relationship with another person or make any friends of any sort. I had Jillian, and she had me. People were not mean to me at school, but they also didn’t make an effort to approach me, and I was more than okay with that. Human interaction is exhausting, and I would rather spend my time doing things that interest me, like observing human behavior or animal insides. To some, it may be weird, and sometimes I do tend to wonder why I am the way that I am. I spend a lot of time watching the people around me; I like to watch them interact with one another and predict what they might be thinking. Despite my fascination with people’s minds, there is nothing I find more interesting than their bodies. To be more specific, the inside of their bodies. Because this is, of course, something that could potentially get me into trouble and affect my ability to take care of Jilly-bean, I’ve found myself drawn to animals instead. I started with smaller animals, like mice I found in our rundown trailer or birds that hit windows, but soon I got bored with those little creatures.

Now, I’ve moved onto stray cats or dogs that roam the neighborhood. If anything I could do for them, I’m helping with their population control. I like to use hard things that I can easily find, rocks or bricks, and bash them over the head until they’re still and ready for dissection. It’s the only time of the day that I have to myself to unwind. Besides, what if one of those stray animals bite or scratch Jillian one day? I was doing the neighborhood a favor by watching those homeless animals. Everything that I do, I do it for my little Jilly-bean.

It was cold and gloomy out that day. Jillian hated this weather and liked to stay indoors under a cozy blanket. I loved this weather. I didn’t love many things, but I really loved this weather. When the weather gets cold, and the clouds begin to drizzle, all of the stray and wild animals tend to take cover in specific spots: under the crappy wooden deck in front of our trailer, in the woods behind it. This weather was the kind of weather a guy like me could have a lot of fun in. I decided to leave Jillian in the bedroom with our blanket and a book she brought home from school that day, and I threw my baseball cap on and slipped out of the back door, paying no attention to my mother asleep on the couch.

My mother had never laid a hand on Jillian. Jillian was my baby ever since she was born when I was nine years old. My mother would never dare lay a hand on Jillian no matter what, even when she was drunk, high or sober. My mother was scared of me, and I knew it. I could silence her with a stern look, and I used that to my advantage because I fucking hated her when she spoke. But that day, she laid a hand on my little Jillian. That day was my mother’s last day.

I was walking away from the thick woods behind our home, wiping bloody hands on the back of my worn out jeans, when Jillian came sprinting from the back door. The sound of my mother’s slurred voice followed her, loud and angry. Jillian was crying, and she had a large red mark on her right cheek. I felt my shoulders tighten.

“What happened?” I asked, but it did not come out sounding like a question. I knew what had happened. Jillian didn’t respond and ran straight into my arms. I tightened my grip around those tiny shoulders and stared through the back door at my mother stumbling her way back to the couch where she would pass out, and I knew that it was my mother’s last day. I carried Jillian inside and quietly tucked her into bed.

I quietly walked to the kitchen and opened a drawer beside the sink. I scanned the contents and fixed my gaze on the largest knife inside. I stared at my reflection in it, but I didn’t recognize the big brown eyes staring back at me. They were cold and emotionless. I was cold and emotionless. I didn’t feel a single thing. I was not scared of what I was about to do; I wasn’t nervous or excited or worried. I was numb. I had been numb for a while, but this was different. It was as if all the hate, all the worry or longing for a family had evaporated and had been replaced with a sadistic determination. As I stared at the knife, I ran my finger along its edge. It was dull and old, but I didn’t think that mattered. I would just have to use more strength for it to break my skin. I pressed it firmly into my index finger on my left hand until I drew blood, and stared blankly at the crimson as it dribbled down slowly. It did not hurt. I could not feel a thing. I returned my blank stare to the eyes in the mirrored knife. The reflection staring back at me smiled slightly as I thought of the force it would take to puncture the skin on my mother’s throat, and I lifted my gaze, fixing it on the couch. That cracked black leather couch which seemed to permanently have a drunken body snoring on it. I began to move toward it slowly, one holey sock in front of the other until I was standing above the woman who birthed me. My blank stare scanned her body, up and down, until it rested on her throat. She was lying on her back, arms sprawled over her head, and her head was tipped back, exposing her esophagus. I ran my fingers across it gently. It was warm to the touch, and it was as if I could feel each cell in her body move under her skin. I could feel the warmth and the movement of the blood through her veins, and I wanted to know what the inside would look like. I wanted to dissect her like a scientific experiment, and I wanted her to open her eyes and watch me as I did watch her. I wanted her to feel as much physical pain as she had inflicted emotional pain to Jillian and me over the years. I wanted her to pay back what she owed us as a mother, and then I wanted her to be dead. Although I was numb and emotionless, I could still feel this burning desire for revenge deep down. Her snore stuttered, and she was still sound asleep, turning her neck to the side, exposing a large artery on the side of her neck. I smiled and wrapped both hands around the handle of the knife, lifting it above my head. Taking one last look at the sleeping body of my mother, I aimed for that beautiful artery, and I plunged the knife into it with all the strength in my lean body. Her eyes shot open. Her mouth gaped and filled with blood, overflowing and spilling down her body. The artery squirted slightly, and then the warm red liquid poured around her. I lifted my arms back over my head and attacked a second time. Then a third. Then a fourth. Then my eyes seemed to have gone black, and I lost count of how many times the knife plunged into her throat. She made an interesting gurgling noise from deep inside her throat, and her eyes rolled around wildly. When I was certain there could not have been much blood left inside her body, and the gurgling and convulsing stopped, her wild brown eyes fixed on me. She stared into my eyes, and I felt the biggest smile creep across my face. I laughed. I laughed a big belly laugh, the kind that makes your stomach hurt. I laughed and laughed and laughed and it felt fucking good. When she finally stopped moving completely and her wide dead eyes seemed to pour into mine, I laughed even harder. I did it. She was dead. And for some reason, I felt at that moment that it was the most hilarious thing in the world.

About the Author: Hannah Pajic was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1998, and moved to Thompson nine years later. She is a first year education student at the University College of the North and an admitting and emergency ward clerk at the Thompson General Hospital. She is also an aspiring elementary school teacher. Hannah has been writing novels and short stories beginning at a young age. She has always been fascinated with things horrific. From reading The Exorcist before bed as a kid, to analyzing and dissecting horror films, to researching and studying criminal psychology and murder stories, Hannah’s never lost interest in horror. After taking a psychology class at UCN, she became particularly interested in analyzing the mind, thought process and capabilities of a psychopath. Thus, “My Little Jilly-bean” was created.

Instructor’s Remarks: Hannah Pajic was my student in my class of Major Works and Authors of the 20th Century from September 2018 to April 2019. She remained active in learning from the beginning to the end. Her contribution to class discussion is insightful and her essays are very well written – Dr. Ying Kong