Wolfy Chai

Blake Dudley and Miss Winters had a rigid routine. Sundays were for brunch, at either Marios or Seasons 52; and, today Blake decided it was a Seasons 52 kind of day.

Even though she ordinarily never ordered anything off the menu’s of either place, Miss Winters always made sure to scan the menu for any seasonal salads she could pick at—dressing on the side—in order to make the 30 minutes of public-facing exposure pass more quickly. Today, her left eyebrow (the only eyebrow that retained its mobility after enduring copious rounds of cosmetic procedures) lifted up upon spotting the new harvest pumpkin salad with a raspberry vinaigrette. She thought that it was an opportunity that was too good to pass up.

But while the menu “pickings” were suitable today, she made sure to make it clear that today’s company soiled the usual pleasantries that accompanied her Sunday brunch. To her dismay, Blake’s son had to come along with them today, her stepson, Gregory.

Miss Winters dreaded and envied her husband’s only son—his golden boy. Gregory had done it all, an Ivy League education, a medical doctor, and the spouse of a statuesque husband. Gregory’s hair was always flowing with lush golden locks down to his shoulders, his jaw was perfectly sculpted, lips were plush and a were painted a soft hue of red as if they were petals plucked from Oprah Winfrey’s rose garden in Montecido, California. His tall muscular model frame fit perfectly into any garment he shouldered, including the pastel pansy-patterned romper he chose to wear today.

The two often rivaled over how they each could outdo one another, with a shared goal to be as healthy and youthful as possible. Unfortunately for her, Miss Winters only possessed a high school diploma from some unknown high school in an impoverished slum in Brazil. She could not keep up, no matter what tricks she tried to pull out. However, now that she was the one with both hands in daddy’s deep pockets, (and actively accruing settlement money from her last 3 husbands), she had cash to spare in order to rejuvenate and erase any traces of her otherwise unremarkable roots.

As a result of her lack of formal education, Miss Winters was easily poached into every cosmetic procedure and health craze. From her time pulling health hacks off of her Goop email subscription and her time binging the most recent episodes of The Real Housewives, to her time browsing the latest Cosmo magazines; when it came to the hottest beauty trends, her eyes were peeled as widely as they come. As a consequence of using her face as a beautification experiment, her face resembled a well-used hiking trail: with huge bulging cheeks being the rocks, and her squished and tucked eyes forming deep ravines filled with debris.

But let’s get back to brunch shall we!

As per usual, Blake ordered a platter of appetizers that only he would actually consume. As a token of their enduring love-based marriage, Miss Winters would occasionally pluck a single leaf of parsley from the top of the calamari. But this time, Miss Winters sat there at dinner sitting directly across from Gregory, watching him eat, bite after bite. Her eyes traveled down his esophagus, tracking the food as he swallowed. All-the-while, she ensured that not a single crumb of food would slip between her pursed lips. Instead, she just sat there. Sat there, watching.

And each time either of the boys opened their mouth wide, her eyes narrowed like a hungry swarm of lampreys waiting to hook onto the flesh of its victim; a creature that lived to drain others vitality as a means to sustain itself without sustenance. When Gregory finally took his last bite, licking the remains of the roughage off of his toothed fork, she decidedly took a single sip of the 100% distilled water she had in her crystalline champagne glass as a reward for her unmatched devotion to the art of restraint. Her snake-like gaze was paralyzing, zooming in on the corners of Gregory’s lips, closely inspecting him for any hint of a reaction with surgical precision as she galled and chuckled internally with delight; yet, somehow her botox-stretched facial muscles did not move even an inch.

As the evening came to a close. She folded her napkin neatly on the table, leaving not a single strand out of place. She then proceeded to stand up exactly in front of her chair with almost mechanical precision. As her frame shifted away, Gregory temporarily lost track of her amongst the thick bushes of old lady perms, but somehow he could just sense she was near by the convulsing smell that off-gassed from her dark energy. He knew that she must have slithered into the crowd somewhere, her slick, rail-thin frame, while not taking up much space, pulled down the vibration of any room she was in, like an imploding black hole. Suddenly, upon catching a glimpse of what looked like a sea serpent or a bald-faced plank of plywood—Gregory made out a strange creature with cement filled lips that seemed to be made of blubber and that almost bounced under the flickering candlelit lighting of Seasons 52. It was her, Miss Madame Winters.

She was standing there, tapping her foot fervently by the hostess stand, tightly griping the handle of the restaurants’ front door. Earnestly waiting to say her goodbyes and send Gregory off, she prodded him with the one robotic arm she managed to dislodge from her side in order to give him a one-armed air hug around his lower back. With one quick strained grimace, the door slammed shut loudly behind her on her way out.

She swiftly retreated to the car, like a dragon returning to its lair, and took out an enormous bottle of 100% isopropyl alcohol wipes to shed any germs off of her entire body. From head-to-toe, she wiped… wiped… and wiped some more.

By this time, Gregory was out in the parking lot as well. Having parked directly across from her, he observed that she was sadistically enjoying the stinging sensation of her recent alcohol-wipe application until out of the corner of her eye she caught you staring her way. She immediately pulled down her enormous, black-out sunglasses, concealing an evil smirk, which noticeably deepened in its evilness once the glasses fully settled onto the bridge of her nose. Little did you know, that might be the last thing you would live to see.

Later that night Miss Winters felt her head endlessly spinning from the encounter she just had with Gregory. She paced back and forth wondering if there was only some way to make him disappear. After all, it would solve ALL her problems, etch out his cut of his father’s fortune from his will, ya know, the whole shabam. So she took to the her iPad Pro, went on the internet and typed in a search to try to pin-point the quickest and easiest ways to get rid of stepchildren on Chat GPT. She grumbled at the initial responses that were cogged out, complaining that they were far too “PG”, i.e., “. . . ruin the relationship they have with their father” or “convince them to move to another country and pay for their airline ticket”.

So, she went back to the drawing board, this time insisting that Chat GPT made the responses more “evil”, and, without hesitation, the AI chatbot spit out a hyperlink to a book entitled “The Murder Menu: Permanent Solutions to Rid You of The Pesky Persons Polluting Your Life”. Her eyes instantley glazed over like a pair of candied pecans; she was now entirely consumed by what she saw on her iPad’s screen like a hungry lioness spotting a heard of gazelle on an African savannah. She promptly followed the link to Amazon.com and immediately added the book to her cart. She urgently checked the box for “next day delivery”—willingly swallowing the extra $2.99 fee she would incur as she was more than ready to put an end to the biggest source of inconvenience in her life. She was TIRED of coming in second place. This time, it would be for good.

The next morning she woke up ready to pull up her sleeves and get to work. She was full of new-found energy and was uncharacteristically upbeat, and even put on music. For Miss Winters, when it came to music—nothing could penetrate the dense energy field she casts around her, and not one body part could be seen exhibiting dance-like movements (a phenomenon NASA scientists have been able to observe on her even at the atomic level). She chose her go-to playlist of “Top 100 Motivational Death-Metal Songs” on Spotify to help put her in the right frame of mind and then was ready to go.

Although it was a beautiful day outside, nothing satisfied Miss Winters more than sitting on her designated reading sofa inside—with all the shades pulled down. She took out her freshly opened copy of the “Murder Menu” that she just recently re-encased for privacy-purposes with the sleeve of Pride and Prejudice, wafted in the new book smell, and began to read.

First came “Chapter 1: The Planning Stages”. She quickly browsed through its contents but early on started to yawn profusely, she was ready to get it done, and pull the plug quickly. To achieve her goal, she realized she might have to cut a few corners here and there, and that this is one of those times. So she began skimming through the table of contents until she stumbled upon the chapter which contained a catalogue of murder menu items to choose from. She began thumbing through the list until she compiled her top three picks: drowning with a brick, tossing off a sky rise, and asphyxiation by chlorine gas. She had a tough time choosing between so many equally promising options but she had finally decided that the chlorine option would be the most practical to execute this time around.

Her first stop was going to the local (illegal) militant civilian supply store located behind the Kosher Market of Boca Raton’s Royal Palm Plaza which was the only place in a 50 mile radius known to carry high quality concentrated chlorine gas canisters. She found out the location through a brief footnote in the index of the Murder Menu book referencing the coordinates of nearby killing supply stores.

Upon arrival, she realized the place was masking as a carpet store so she had to use the radio located at the front desk with the secret code in order to get the type of services she desired. So, she picked up the walkie talkie and said “let me in, let me in”. “Password question ” is what a man with a deep gravelly voice said in return. “piggy chin” she chirped back with glee. She heard back “and the security question is. . .how many rounds of Ozempic does it take to get thin”? She answered with a grin “5-15”. Her eyes started to glow with cheer as she recounted the first time her plastic surgeon, Manuel, told her the 5-15 rule. She hadn’t forgotten it ever since.

A trap door suddenly opened from underneath one of the carpets. She was beckoned to follow it down to a door where the deal would be done. An angry bald man with not much patience appeared sitting at the end of a dimly lit metal table, smoking away. The smoke was so thick, clouds formed inside the room and his face would disappear and reappear as waves of smoke passed him. At this point, Miss Winters was hacking and coughing trying to wave the smoke away from her face. She squeaked in a deep raspy voice “give me the goods, I need to get the f* out of here”. She held out a thick wad of cash and waived it at his face and received a canteen of chlorine gas in exchange. She then scrambled out on her knees to avoid the thick layer of haze that had formed a layer of smoke clouds in the room.

She now was feeling ready to finally put her plan into action. On her way back home she rehearsed it in her head over and over. First, she would invite Gregory over to the house for dinner. Next, she would make a special diuretic tea filled with a cacophony of Malaysian herbs for him and tell him he needed to finish it all. Then, when he went to use the bathroom in the guest bathroom she would toss the opened chlorine canteen on the floor just before it shuts and gas would quickly fill the air and kill him before he would be able to escape.

But as she was pulling into the driveway, she noticed Gregory was already there, a whole 3-hours before planned. She went inside and immediately her nostrils warped horizontally as she inhaled what smelled like an artificial pine scent in the air. As she waded into the kitchen, her eyes latched onto a dark-green Yankee Candle burning on the counter. At this point she was furious. She thought to herself “how could I ever let a tacky candle burn on my own premises, not on my watch”. She started to scream and Gregory came into the Kitchen. He asked “what is it this time. She replies with a shriek “it was you wasn’t it that lit this cheap ass candle in MY house I am so sick of you”.

In the heat of her rage, she flung out the chlorine bottle. Ready to get the kill in the bag, she opened the top of spray nozzle—unfortunately in the wrong direction—allowing the bottle to spring open, funneling what looked like a tornado of chlorine gas directly towards her face. Her eyes and nose started to instantly burn, quickly evolving into a scalding full facial rash. In her efforts to attempt to close the lid (which would have been impossible to do anyways), she hobbled over, lost her balance, and knocked over the candle, catching her whole head on fire from the highly inflammable keratin treatment she just received several hours earlier.

Gregory froze for a moment, struck by terror, not at the fact that she was on fire, rather, at what she looked like as her permanent makeup started to melt off of her face revealing how hideous she actually was. Once he managed to shake off his dizzying daze, Gregory grabbed the fire extinguisher that was neatly affixed to the inside of the door under the kitchen sink. Once it was unclipped, he let it rip, spraying his stepmother and coating every orifice from her mouth to her eyeballs with a morass of the white puss-filled fluid.

He promptly called 911 and she was rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery. Her eyelids suffered third-degree burns leading the surgical team to find it medically necessary to reconstruct the skin around her face. Luckily, it was a relatively quick operation and she was sent back home with bandages over her eyes.

The next morning, upon removing the bandages Miss Winters stood in front of her comically oversized makeup room mirror and saw herself for the very first time, post-operation. Her eyes… they had somehow narrowed and stretched even wider than before. She went from looking like an aging, foxy international model with a hint or two of botox and filler, to a wild cat tracking through a thick bog of jungle mud. No matter how hard she tried, she could not squish them back together, she had been disfigured. . .