The Punisher

They looked around. They were clueless.

"Start with dishes. Hand wash, dry, put away. Wipe counters. Mop floor. Get down one dish at a time, carefully, from the top, up there, get a ladder if you need one." I pointed, I'd remembered what Brian said. "Wash the dish, the upper cabinet, make it clean and nice. Then wash all the rest of the cabinets, floors, walls, fridge, stove, everything. Absolutely everything in this kitchen should shine. Everything! Leave the inside of the fridge alone, there's a jello in there, that's ruined if you shake it."

Emma's head indicated confusion, but she nodded, this was new information. "Yes, Sir."

Kara echoed this, "Yes, Sir."

"Do the simple stuff first. Complete a task and move on. If you have questions, accumulate a few of them, then come and ask me quietly to my ear so you're not interrupting the game. Got it?"

My ring started to itch, almost burning. They looked at their hands, too, but when I touched my ring with my other hand, it gave a little shock and I could see they both got a shock, too.

Kara's eyes got confused. "I'm pretty sure that meant we absolutely have to do what you just said."

I shrugged, I didn't know.

I did know, they'd murdered a friend of mine, and somehow I wasn't crying and screaming about it, or going crazy-angry. For that matter, my friends weren't either, and at least Brian knew all about it, and from what Mary said, she knew, too. If two of them did, maybe everyone did.

I went downstairs.

== Lunch and Home ==

About lunchtime, Mary went up, then brought back down sammiches and laughed that we couldn't have napkins. She said it looked like Emma and Kara had wiped down the kitchen using one paper towel per wipe, totally wasting them and filling up the garbage can. I asked if there was anything I could do and Mary said, "They have no perspective. Clueless fuckwits. Waste of space." She shook her head, then we were back to the game.

I waited for most of us to be done eating then brought up the half-eaten-through pickle jar as an excuse to see what they'd made progress with.

Mary was right. The garbage bag was by the door, overstuffed with paper towels that had one wet spot in the center and the rest wadded up.

On the plus side, it smelled better, and all the dishes were done, as asked.

I opened the dishwasher, and sure enough, it was still half-full of dirty dishes, so I pointed.

The stove was cleaner, though the inside was crusty. It was a self-cleaning model, so I called them over. Mom had shown me how to do it once when I was a kid - I'd put a frozen pizza in upside down and cheese had dripped all over the bottom.

With them watching as I pointed, I explained. "Take the racks out. Wipe up the bottom with wet rag until all the big crusty bits are off." I did one swipe. "Get all of that. Wipe off the inside of the door, all the sides, just the big stuff. Then, close the door. You have to take the stuff off the top - see the back of the top is the vent? Will set a fire."

They understood fire. I could see they wanted to do something and were interested, which was a welcome change. I think they'd believed they had to scrub the insides until it was all clean.

"The oven's going to heat up, SUPER hot, like over 500 degrees. All this crap in there? It'll turn to ash. Takes about 3 hours. Turn on the exhaust hood fan, set it to low. On the controls, set this, press this. There. Listen, hear the click? Locked. Has to lock. If you opened it while it was self-cleaning, your hair would explode, and you two, specifically, would literally go to hell."

That wasn't quite right, but they were probably just dumb enough to try it.

I turned it off and it unclicked, then pointed, and Kara did what I'd done, then turned it off again so they could wipe out the rest of it first.

Turning to see what else they'd done, I saw the mop in a bucket in the corner, and the fact that the rug by the back door was wet.

"Are you five?"

"We... uh..." Emma took a deep breath. "No. Mistake."

"And you say?"

"Sir, I'm sorry."

"Mop. Then, remember this, it's important."

They turned to me, eyes open.

"The Job Is Not Done Until The Tools Are Put Away. That includes taking the trash out."

They nodded.

"Any job, one-third the time is prep, one third doing it, one third clean-up." Dad always told me that, though it was first in the context of painting, it kind of fit everything else handyman related I ended up doing, too.

Just about then, Mrs. Connolly walked in and looked around. "Ah, you've made some progress. Good."

I looked at her, "Ma'am, Emma and Kara here are profoundly clueless. They probably don't even know how to clean a bathroom correctly. I don't think they've ever done that. Do you have a few minutes to explain? You'll have to treat them like little children and explain every little thing, and demand perfection until they get it all down."

Emma was glaring at me, Kara was just resentful, but that was trouble. I touched my ring.

They jumped and inhaled sharply. Kara said, "Oh. Ma'am, I think he's right. Can you, uh, Please, show us, thank you?"

Mrs. Connolly nodded, "I've got twelve other things to do, I'll check in. Mr. Connolly knows, too, so if I'm gone, you can ask him. Follow me."

I went back downstairs. Life was not going to be easy, for them or me.

== ==

We finished up at about 3 pm (our normal finish-time), and I went upstairs to see their progress.

They'd cleaned the downstairs, upstairs, and basement bathrooms (I'd seen them working in there), the kitchen completely, twice since they didn't know what they were doing the first time and Mrs. Connolly had to help guide on that so they could finish; and had started washing the windows and storm windows but had run out of stuff to do it with.

We had to go.

The others left, and I noticed Brian walking Jo to her car; she lived up past UNB near a golf course, it was a longer trip. I would have gotten a ride from her but Brian was probably inviting her out for coffee... at least I hoped so.

I got my coat on but it got to be obvious that despite it being cold weather out, the girls didn't have coats. They just had the sweats they'd borrowed from Brian.

It was pretty cold out, and a stiff breeze off the ocean. I presumed they'd be heading to their own houses... But then I remember they couldn't, they'd be staying at my house.

They didn't even have shoes.

Brian came back inside, puzzled. We watched Jo get in her car and pull away.

I asked, "So?"

"Brunch tomorrow, her house. I've only been there when we were playing DND there. Her mom is nice."

"She is." I remembered Jo's mother and older sister. They had a bigger-sized house, pretty nice, but two old cars. I knew that meant they weren't that rich.

Emma and Kara were standing behind me, still wearing socks. I asked him, "Say, we had a wardrobe problem last night. Can you drop us home? They don't even have shoes here."

He looked over at them, his face screwing up with some measure of disgust. "Yeah, fine, I'll get... yeah, hold on, I'll tell my Dad."

He ducked into the den, cleared it, and we went out down a snowy front walk to his dad's car and piled in.

I had my backpack, and Emma and Kara were carrying my sleeping bag, pad, and pillow.

He dropped us off and I said a genuine thanks, then pointed at Emma and Kara.

Emma said it first. "Sir, thank you for the ride."

Kara echoed that as we got out, and we waved as he drove away.

The girls gingerly picked their way up our sharp ice-covered driveway. They had to be hurting their feet and freezing, too.

Emma and Kara were wide-eyed with worried concentration, they'd never been to my house before. Of course, I never would have let them in if they had shown up.

As we walked in, my mom called, "That you, Kevin?"

"Me. Emma, Kara."

She came downstairs and we shut the garage door behind us.

"Good, you're home."

"What's up?"

"Mrs. Paulsen and Mrs. Kroger dropped by some plastic bags with the girls' clothes last night. There were notes, the bags were on the front porch this morning, I almost missed it."

I nodded and glanced at them.

She went on, a serious look on her face, like she was irritated at something. "Your dad and I decided we can't have you upstairs next to us, too much loud sex and we won't sleep well. You'll all be in the basement store-room, though you'll have to clear that out and get that stuff out to the shed, we'll deal with it in the summer."

I was confused by all of this. We didn't have a shed out back. We didn't have a store-room, we had a half-basement, half crawl-space.

She turned to the girls, "You'd better get down there and get good clothes on, I don't want to take you to the emergency room for gangrene if you don't have shoes on, and it'd be a hassle to throw away or donate your stuff if you died."

My mother was talking about Kara and Emma dying, not me, I got by inference, because her tone was logical. Built-in was an utter lack of caring about Emma and Kara's well-being.

My dad came downstairs and was obviously headed out. Emma was in his way and he pushed her aside as an irrelevant object, getting to his coat. This also was hugely out of character, my dad was usually pretty polite.

Calling back to us, he said, "New mattress gets here in an hour, had to pay extra for delivery today. Turns out, it doesn't come with sheets." The door slammed just as he left.

Mom gave me a hug and said, "Father Jim called about Danielle's passing, wanted to tell you his office door is open if you want."

"Thanks."

Mom left, ignoring the girls, but then leaned back inside. "Say. Kev. I know it's required to have wild sex on your first full night as a married couple, or couples. We'll eat early so you have time. We can go to the 10:30 am mass tomorrow if you want, or the normal one at 9. If you want to go early, be ready and swat these girls into shape, I'm not waiting around."

I looked back, "I'm not swatting them, Mom. I don't hit women."

"Why not? They killed your friend. Serves them right. Little swatting might help them out." She was very matter of fact, and I was plenty freaked out by the casual understanding she had about them doing bad things.

She had a point, probably, but I still wasn't going to do that. "'Not all penance is pain', Mom." it was something Father Jim used to say in communicants' class.

"Whatever. Your wives, your problem. I'm going to get dinner ready. Mrs. Kroger brought over a whole bunch of canned goods, I think it's about all the food she had in the house. She had to move out and she can't bring it, she's headed to Moncton to live with her mother. That Danielle girl's parents and siblings are getting her house and all their stuff - that's what the note on the clothes said."

Kara's inhale at the mention of her mother meant she didn't understand that implication until just then.

I looked at Emma. "Do we know about Emma's parents?"

"Her dad wrote her note. Something about him getting transferred for business. Their house is already on the market and emptied, they had to donate all their stuff to charity so that's probably all the clothes she'll see. We don't have a lot of money for anything now, Kev, so you'd better get them squared away with clothes for school on Monday or they'll walk down the hallways in rags. That'd be fine, too. No one would notice, so no loss. Still, they need shoes. I didn't go through the bags."

Mom dropped it there and went into the kitchen, I heard her banging around.

Calling back out, "I threw out the notes, told you what's in 'em. Not important, full of insults they know already." She paused. "Oh, right - on the plus side, they can probably wear your old winter boots, we won't have to waste money on their feet. If they're too big, put newspaper in the toes."

Mom's words had been brutal, I knew, but at the same time, it all made pretty good sense. As for the newspaper in the toes, she was efficient that way. She always had a workaround.

Looking at Kara and Emma, my memory kept popping up afterimages of them being mean and causing me vast pain and just being horrible, vile human beings. "Follow me. We have work to do."

They did, we went downstairs. My house was different, some kind of magic at work. Instead of a blank wall, there was a double-wide doorway that led to a kitchen, store-room, compact bathroom with shower, and a small bedroom the size of a closet. That bedroom wouldn't work as a bedroom for us, it'd have to be the store-room.

In the center of said room were four trash bags, tipped over and spilling out clothes and a few papers.

I said, "Find clothes, get dressed. My old boots are in the closet by the front door." I looked over; apparently we had a breakfront that looked really 1970's, heavy and full of nick-nacks. "That. You can clean that out for your dresser, for later. First, gotta get it empty, pack up what's there carefully, crinkle-wrap newspaper around each piece. If you break something, you're going to pay to replace it. Better take pictures of each piece... Oh, right, no phones. Fuck it. Just wrap it up, box it. Recycle bin is by the backdoor, for newspaper. Dad gets the Sunday Telegraph-Journal for some reason. We'll get all this into the back shed, presuming we have one now?"

I went back upstairs and looked out the back door. There was a shed! It was huge, almost a 2 car garage size, though the path around the house wasn't big enough to drive to it. I went out to see how it'd work. From the house, there was a paved and shoveled path, and the shoveling looked fresh.

The shed had tons of shelving. Overkill. I wondered what else we'd be doing with it. To start with, it had more than enough space for the storeroom crap.

I went back inside and downstairs. They both had jeans on and had found gym shoes.

Emma said, "All I have. No boots anymore. Mom didn't pack them, I guess."

I looked at them. "Pack away your stuff so it doesn't get mixed up with what we're schlepping to the shed. I'm going up to my room to grab a shower."

Going up, I had to walk by the kitchen. Mom called out, "Hey, Kev. I put all your bathroom stuff in your room. We expect all your room stuff to be downstairs by tonight, or tomorrow at the latest. I want to use your old room as a larger home-office for my CPA work. More mouths to feed, we'll need more money coming in."

I went upstairs. She was true to her word. All the drawers in my dresser were pulled out and stacked in a pile. My closet was empty, my dresser-top was empty, my desk was empty, it was all empty.

Everything I owned was in a bunch of full garbage bags that filled the floor.

Mom had not been too gentle with the packing.

The mattress and box springs were off the bed and missing, but thinking about it, I'd probably seen them in the basement near the TV.

Egads. My life was upside down.

My goal was to shower, but I had no towel, it was missing from the peg behind my door. I walked across the hall to the bathroom, and it was empty, too - zero stuff - no soap, not even a shower curtain. Mom and Dad had a master bath, I probably could have used that, but the implication was clear - use the basement bathroom.

Just like with the girls' stuff, bringing anything downstairs would get it mixed in with shed-bound stuff. There'd be no shower for me until the shed move was done.

== A Sort-of Wedding Night ==

Over the next 2 hours the three of us made umpteen trips carrying all manner of stuff from the storeroom to the shed, where I carefully consolidated and packed it tightly.

Once we had that cleaned out, we went upstairs and started carrying down stuff from my room, though we were interrupted by the mattress delivery people.

Somehow I had a king mattress.

It did make sense, we couldn't all three fit on a single or even a queen, probably. I didn't know.

The girls didn't know how to make a bed very well, so I had to show them, using the new sheets Dad came back with. Plain white, which was plenty fine for me.

I knew they wouldn't remember how unless they practiced, so I told them to strip what I'd done, then make it again, three times in a row, checking alignment / spacing and neatness each time, use a ruler to make sure the same amount of blanket was on both sides, etc. I admit, I was being a stickler for details, but somehow I knew if I didn't do that, forevermore they'd get it wrong and I'd know it was wrong and that would bother me.

Emma looked at me with a strong frown back, but frankly it looked more concerned than irritated.

We paused to eat dinner; I was invited but Mom handed them a serving bowl with spaghetti and sauce on it, and said there were plates and silverware in the downstairs kitchen, like that was a normal thing. "Oh, and you'll be cooking your own food in about a week, I'm good for a week of houseguests but you're family now. Family, you can pull your weight or starve, your choice. Learn how, it's the Cooper way."

They got the message and carried the spaghetti bowl downstairs to eat down there.

I sat down with mom and dad for dinner; we didn't always eat together so it was nice to be with them awhile and just talk.

Dad wanted to know how the gaming went.

I described the funny parts of our quest. In one, Bill had run into a group of tavern prostitutes. They were also super-powerful witches, so either they'd do what he wanted (come along to charm some monsters) or they'd force Bill to be a gigolo at their brothel/tavern.

He had to roll for charisma enough to NOT have sex.

Mom and dad found that funny.

Just about then, Kara and Emma came back up with the washed-clean spaghetti bowl. They both said thank you for the food.

Mom looked right at her and brought out her stern, matter-of-fact voice. "You two should know. There are standards here, OLD ones, as old as time, and then some. Falls on me. I'm the mother of the groom. There are required activities, breaking of maidenheads, even if you've already denied love and trodden on yours. I'm just the messenger here, you know what's expected. Make it happen. Now, you're ugly, don't make me look at you, go downstairs."

My ring started to burn hot. I tried to resist, but it was too hot, I had to touch it. The girls, their rings started burning, too, or something, they were holding onto them. When I touched mine, the same thing happened as before.

Kara said, almost monotone, "Yes, ma'am. There are duties. We will comply. Emma?"

Emma had a monotone thing, too. "Yes, Ma'am. We will comply."

Oddly, I felt compelled to respond, too. I said, "I understand. I will comply, too."

After I said that, a sense of relief came over me that was sort of confusing, but at the same time, freeing. We all knew what was coming. I didn't know everything, but I was pretty sure I could figure it out. It's not like I'd never watched porn.

We were almost done eating so I grabbed another piece of garlic bread and we went downstairs again.

There was still a ton of stuff left to do.

By 9 pm, we had a mostly-sane bedroom, furniture in place and some of the things put away. Granted, a lot was still in bags and disorganized, but it was enough for the night. I'd still be hours just getting my desk sorted and in order again.

My phone pinged..

It was Mary, wanting to know if I was going to be at the 9 am mass or the 10:30 one. I said, "10:30, too much to do."

Mary texted me back, "Tell them to suck you up, then fuck them sideways and fall asleep early. I like 9 am better."

Well that was a thing.

She added, "I like you better."

THEN she added, "No more pretending. I More-Than-Like You. Fuck me sideways, too."

What?!?!?!??!

I had nothing to say to that.

Hearing me exclaim, Emma came over and looked at the exchange.

"Kevin. Mary wants to date you. This is fine. We will not get in the way. You SHOULD fuck her sideways. You should love her."