Brimstone

Flash Fiction by Nick Di Carlo

Between 1972 and ’74 when he was arrested, Brimley Stone abducted at least thirteen women, painted their faces, dressed them like Raggedy Ann dolls, and strangled them. He was 19.

Serving hard time for life—no possibility of parole, Stone obsessed with time, agonizing over how he’d fill a lifetime of empty hours. Determined to transform himself, Brimley Stone learned to read. He started with the Bible and found Jesus. Understanding that idle hands are the devil’s tools, he learned carpentry and studied art, becoming an accomplished painter and furniture maker. Yet, he remained unfulfilled. He discovered what he’d missed while reading Proust: “The greatest work of art is love.” Love—something he’d never known. While prison isn’t an environment conducive to finding love, to being loved, Brimley Stone had hope….

In 2019, newspapers ran Sunday edition stories about the reformed Brimley Stone. When the network news filmed him, spotlighting his paintings and furniture, his prison uniform was pristine and pressed. Articulate, polite and confident, he acted like he wasn’t in prison at all. He was the host and the interviewers his guests.

“A remarkable man,” my mother said. “So handsome. I’ll bet he’s lonely, though. I’ll write to him.”

“Mom,” I said, “Are you nuts?”

Every day she wrote to “Dearest Brim,” then strolled to the corner mailbox humming, “When I Fall in Love.”

Brim Stone wrote back, thanking Mom for her kindness.

Mom had her hair done, bought a new dress, and had professional photos taken and sent them to Brim Stone.

Brim Stone sent Polaroids of himself wearing a wifebeater shirt and showing off his muscular and tattooed arms and chest.

Awestruck, Mom wrote back asking if she could visit him.

“Mom,” I said, “Are you fuckin’ crazy?”

She waved her hand at me like I was a bothersome fly.

Every weekend for three months, my mother rode the train 150 miles each way to the penitentiary and back, spending a night in a cheap motel. Then, one Saturday afternoon, my mother sent a text with a picture of her and Brim Stone, side by side, holding a sheet of looseleaf paper inscribed with bright red marker, “Just Married.”

Our state pen was a progressive place offering cultural events, educational and sports programs and, get this, conjugal visits. To deserve the right to, I guess, “conjugate,” inmates had to have an impeccable record and be deemed trustworthy. And Brim Stone, former serial strangler of Raggedy Anns, had transformed himself into such an inmate. Rigidly righteous. The personification of truth, justice and the American way.

Mom bought a house within walking distance of the state pen. She phoned me often, telling me, “I’m happier than I ever dreamed I could be.”

“But he’s never getting out. No parole, remember?”

““He’s a sweet man. Smart and exciting. I love him.”

One night I couldn’t hold back, and I shouted into the phone, “Mom, remember that story about the woman who brought a frozen snake into her house, thawed him out, fed him and nursed him? Remember how that turned out? A snake can’t change.”

“Don’t be silly. Snakes always change their skin. They make themselves new all the time.”

“That change goes only skin deep—the snake can’t change what’s hardwired inside of it.”

 “My Brim is proof that people can change for the better.”

So, I quit arguing. I tried to be happy that Mom was happy. I understood that since my dad left decades before, she’d been lonely and raising me wasn’t the easiest job a mother could have—even if I never strangled at least thirteen women that the cops knew about and probably a bunch more that they’d never find out about. And in a way, I envied her—and Brim Stone. I mean, I wasn’t a serial killer, and I couldn’t find anybody to marry me. I had a good job, good teeth, and I lived with the sweetest Tabby cat. I read novels, spoke a little French and Spanish. I volunteered at the food bank and donated to charities. What did a guy serving life in prison have that I didn’t have? Apparently, crime can pay, even if you get caught.

For the next year, life went on just that way. I lived on my own, while Mom and Brim Stone enjoyed their connubial bliss one weekend each month. I imagined their romantic dinners of bologna sandwiches and Kool-Aid and their sordid, sweaty wranglings on a worn-out double bed inside a windowless concrete box.

Near Christmas time, Mom started pestering me to take the train up and spend the holiday with her and my “stepfather.” I declined.

When the phone rang on Christmas day, I expected it would be Mom calling to spread holiday cheer, and to say again how happy she felt to be with Brim Stone.

“This is warden Roy Bean at the State Penitentiary. I’m afraid I have bad news.”

“Did Brim Stone escape or something?”

“No. I’m sorry. It’s about your mother. She’s dead.”

“Dead? How? Her heart?”

“Inmate Brimley Stone strangled her during last night’s conjugal. He used her lipstick to paint her face like a rag doll. He told us they were playing a sex game where she dressed up like a doll. He said she got excited and fell out of bed with the sheet coiled around her throat. It’s all bullshit, of course. That leopard never really changed his spots.”

“I told my mom that a snake can only shed its skin—can’t change what’s inside it. She believed that Brim Stone was the exception.”

I tried to take some solace in that mom was happy for a while but I couldn’t do it. “Well, what happens to that murdering snake now?”

“The cops and DA are going to file charges, but we don’t have capital punishment, so maybe he gets another life sentence tacked on. Maybe spends it in solitary.”

‘So, he got away with it?”

“Well—yes. Yes, he did.

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Bio: Nick Di Carlo has taught writing and literature in both traditional and nontraditional settings on both east and west coasts, including New York state’s Maximum Security Correctional Facilities where Lawrence R. Reis, author of Wolf Masks: Violence in Contemporary Poetry, noted: “The men in his classes recognized many similarities between their experiences and his. Those experiences, often dark and sometimes violent, inform and power Dr. Di Carlo’s own writing.” His work has been published in Shotgun Honey, Guilty Crime Magazine, Muleskinner Journal, and Flash Fiction Magazine.

Cover photo by pexels/Belier Baracaldo Edited by The Yard

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