Wolfy Chai

Some women in this world were not supposed to be mothers. While their devotion to their children might fall short, their dedication to their vices was infallible.

Lucille Laughlin, Lola Lovehandle, and Wanda Winkton were three such women.

Lucille was lanky, and while thin, still had an irritating muffin-top that never seemed to flatten out. Her nose was stubborn and just kind of hung there on a face as if it were a deformed potato. She regularly attended Pilates, yoga, and, accordingly, fashioned herself with a pair of Lululemon leggings and a generally unflattering crop top.

Lola—on the other hand—was everything that Lucille wanted to be but never could be. Lucille often seethed with jealousy inside, even though she never let that piece of information rise to the surface. Lola was the perfect female form—five sizes slimmer than Adam’s Eve with curves that bent with twice the gradient along her hips (which she had independently confirmed by a NASA scientist). She invested a Herculean effort into maintaining her figure, by whatever means necessary. She would often be seen returning from various wellness retreats mysteriously looking five years younger, and five pounds thinner.

Wanda was the poor one—and, for that matter, the most “normal” of the three. Wanda was the only one who held down a job of her own as a single mother divorcee. She was a pre-school teacher at Wasatch Elementary, in Provo, Utah. Her days often started with screaming at children to come inside and ended with her clothes and face being colored on with crayons. Unlike her girlfriends, Wanda didn’t fit in—literally. She was a bit of a “chunky monkey,” as her mother would say. This reputation had followed in her well into adulthood. She had unkempt, curly black hair and a chin that was hugged by her sagging cheeks on either side.

What brought the three together was the fact that all of their kids went to school together. The three would coordinate play dates each Sunday. The intuitive choice was to host them at Lucille’s house because she had the largest backyard of the three for the little munchkins to run around in. But… of course… this was in reality only the secondary reason for their playdates. The moms were much more looking forward to having their own fun.

One day the children were out playing in the pool. Splashing. Screaming. The mid-summer sun beaming. The moms left out a gallon pitcher filled with pink lemonade for the kids and handed each one a chocolate-coated ice cream popsicle. After distributing the delectable treats, Lola announced, “Children, mommy is thirsty so we are going to go back inside to hydrate.”

Lucille, Lola, and Wanda reconvened around the kitchen island. The booze was very soon thereafter piled onto the counter. Today they were to make a huge pitcher of Long Island iced tea.

Lucille squawked, “Are we ready, girls!” as she jumped with glee, making a motion with her hands for everyone to surround the idolized alcoholic beverage in front of them.

Each plunked their bendy straws in and began sipping, mutually harvesting the spoils of their labor, like mosquitoes sucking blood out of their victims. It wasn’t long before their eyes began lighting up with glee as if someone had shocked them with ten thousand volts of electricity.

Lola was determined to add to the fun; she pulled out from her oversized Nordstrom Rack bag a towering bong. She lit it on fire, causing a cloud of smoke to mushroom into the room. “Oh shit!” Lola remarked. Pandemonium ensued thereafter. It started when the smoke alarm started to go off. Lola screamed, “Turn on the vent, turn on the vent.” Wanda body-slammed onto the counter like a beached whale. By the time she stood up on the counter, she began puffing with heavily labored breathing and sweating like an oily piglet. Wanda attempted to fan the smoke—with a manic level of aggression, due to the fact that she forgot to take her bipolar medication the night before.

Once the alarms were deactivated, Lola sighed, “Let’s try this again in the living room, girls.” So the three promptly filed in the living room, passing the bong around under the room’s chimney. To effectively orchestrate this, each woman lowered her head into the furnace, one by one, inhaling in the medicated gas, puffing the refuse up into the black vents.

And just as the adults in the room finally started to relax, conversely, the children’s energy began to escalate. Soon, the children were climbing on all sorts of things—the fence, the trees, even over each other. While they were scaling the roof, the moms strolled out into the yard.

The three women did not see anything at first. They just assumed the kids were napping, so they continued their conversations out on the patio. Cackling away, Wanda remarked, “I remember when I was able to launder drugs in a kid’s backpack at school because one of the parents was my drug dealer…”

She was choking on her laughter right up until Rebekah, Lola’s daughter, leapt off of the roof and landed on Wanda’s back like a spider monkey. In a sugar-crazed rage, Rebekah started biting onto Wanda’s hair, digging and scratching her aggressively like a bear mauling its victim. Wanda began screaming. Mistaking Rebekah for a common backyard raccoon, Wanda flung Rebekah off of her with both arms. Rebekah dislodged from her predatory perch on Wanda’s back, catapulting into the air, and eventually landing in the pool and being knocked unconscious.

While Rebekah was drowning behind the three women, the conversation carried on as usual. “So I managed to pay for and collect my drugs using the backpack…” Wanda uttered in a self-assured manner. She continued, “I even started selling to other teachers at the school!” Her eyes were filled to the brim with delight, savoring the cleverness of her carefully constructed drug cartel operation.

The tranquility of the moment was disturbed when Rebekah briefly resurfaced from the depths to unleash a reptile-like scream before being pulled under the water once again. The moms noticed this time. Wanda dove in first since she was the closest, eventually fishing out the soaked child from the deep end.

Once brought to the edge of the pool, Lola shoved Wanda out of the way. At first she attempted to resuscitate her by doing regular CPR she learned at her female defense class. Unfortunately, it just wasn’t cutting it. Then, a light bulb went off. Her bony hand clasped the bong and began lighting it up. She desperately funneled plumes of smoke from the bong into her lungs, mouth-to-mouth in the hopes that she would cough the water up.

The makeshift procedure worked like a charm, causing Rebekah to cough not only the water up but also a live snake that somehow made its way down her throat. Lola had no idea that the whole time she had been harboring the anti-Christ. However, if anything were a sure sign, it would be that.

The three women looked at each other in horror. Rebekah was always a bit of a demon child. She pushed other kids off of the playground equipment and shoved them off of swings. She killed birds in her backyard with stones for fun, and she even injected poison into the hummingbird feeder once. But still, she was a child. No one thought that she actually needed to be locked up. But maybe, she did…

However, once the snake had lost its host, it needed to find a new one. While Rebekah returned to a relatively angelic state, Wanda’s typically elated mood turned her stone cold—she was forced to swallow the reptile whole. Suddenly, Wanda’s body started violently shaking. She emitted incoherent sounds from her lips that wobbled from the vibrations. “Uh uh uh uh uh uh uhhhhhhhhh…” she mumbled. Suddenly, a fracture in the earth below her opened up. The onlookers watched her sink into hell with terror. And then. Out of the blue. She was gone. Or, so they thought…