The Children of the Rich

21 February 2011

The children of the rich have many advantages in life but do not grow up nicely because thanks to inbreeding they are frequently stupid and in any case spoiled. That was certainly true what people said about the sisters Tiara Wristwatch Cavanagh and Toxica Vestibule Cavanagh that were born to their proud parent Cavanaghs sometime in England in the midst of an economic downturn that the family had no realistic reason to take notice of. If Tiara wanted a pony she got two and if Toxica wanted two ponies she got four and if the two of them wanted six or sixty racehorses they got multiple instances more of those graceful and expensive creatures than they actually asked for in the first place and etc. Their bedroom was a stables, a garage for cars they were not yet old enough to drive and a swimming pool they were too lazy to swim in.

Even life as a diet of endless advantage and cushy vacation-breaks could not prevent that they were dumb. How the parents wrangled their hands and bit their lips and wondered what to do about it, consulting books about nature vs nurture and waving flash cards at the kids during advertisement breaks in order to stimulate their brains. They (the parents) believed in innate goodness and potential of all persons but in the end tho this did no good and a private tutor was hired to educate the ladies Cavanagh. When he arrived he was a stupid English gentleman based on Michael Caine whose qualifications were not legally what they seemed to be and paying him was sending good money after bad since he could not teach them anything, not even manners, deportment, mathematics or Sods Law. The girls spent much of the lesson time letting the Latin roll over them like water off a wetback and instead gazing out of the windows daydreaming about a shopping expedition to Dubai or pulling the legs off a fly they had caught in a net kept just for that purpose.

When Toxica and Tiara were approximately in the area of 16 years old they hatched a half-baked callous and largely simplistic plan to murder their parents and speed up the process by which they would come into full possession of their rightful inheritance. With this in mind Tiara pretended to be ill and lay down on a fainting couch which she had arranged in her bedroom and called for her mother on the intercom. When her mother came to see what was the matter a few days later Toxica was still waiting behind an arras or curtain, with a big heavy stick of wood she had selected from a pile of what seemed to be similar improvised cudgels in the garden. Whack! She hit her mother on the head and her mother kind of went staggering like a drunk or an idiot with some kind of brain co-ordination defect. Finnish her off said Tiara and their mother said oh no do not kill me I am flesh and blood I gave you everything you wanted and asked for an could possibly have needed please come on you can’t be serious, is the bonds of blood not worth more than mud and all kinds of things like that and Toxica just laughed and whacked her mother a few more times in the vicinity and region of her head. Later they killed their father too and loaded the bodies in a walk-in deep freeze cabinet.

After the murders Toxica grew heavy with remorse, putting on weight, weeping and moping, writing endless unpublished confessions on her Facebook, and scoffing endless biscuits and chocolate confectionary. Tiara meanwhile showed no remorse, enjoying the fruits of her murder spree, buying land and houses to look at, building orphanages, adopting children and then diss-adopting them on a whim as was the fashion then.

One day a police officer called. The investigation was brief and competent, the case against the sisters Cavanagh completely watertight. When the trial came they got a lawyer based on James Stewart but it didn’t do no good against a judge based on Judge Judy. He argued that they had diminished responsibility, that society and TV in general was to blame, that the way they were brought up was through no fault of their own that they did not understand the significance of taking a life even if it did only belong to their parents. Judge Judy didn’t take no shit from anyone. Even the pleas that Toxica showed evidence of remorse (about 20 kilos of it) dint cut no ice with her. The sisters Cavanagh were sentenced to death by legal lethal injection, they were strapped to gurneys and watched over carefully by a team of almost-qualified physicians while their heartbeats slowed to a murmur and their story came to an end.

[Fragment written whilst working on the new Forced Ents piece…]