I'm Having a Party and You're Not Invited
I'm Having a Party and You're Not Invited
By Ekona Del Rey Monroe
The coffee was still warm when she took the first sip.
Margaret sat at the kitchen table on the morning of November 27, 1958, her swollen belly pressing gently against the edge of the wood, one hand resting protectively over the life inside her.
The light through the lace curtains was soft, almost holy. She smiled at him the way she always did, tired, trusting, full of a quiet radiance that had once made him feel like a man worth loving.
โMy lovely wife,โ he said, voice low and steady, โthis morning I fixed you coffee.โ
She laughed softly, the sound like wind chimes in a dying garden.
โYou never make it the same way twice.โ
โSad to say I changed the way I usually make it.โ
Something in his tone made her pause.
The cup hovered at her lips.
Her eyes, those deep hazel eyes that had followed him through every ordinary day filled with the first flicker of animal fear.
He watched the realization bloom across her face like ink in water.
โNow just calm down. I can see the fear in your eyes.
You may be wondering what the hell Iโm talking about, so let me just be quick.โ
He leaned closer, elbows on the table, as if sharing a secret between husband and wife.
โIn the next thirty minutes, you will be coughing blood. You wonโt be breathing.โ
Margaretโs hand flew to her throat.
The cup clattered but did not break.
Upstairs, small feet padded across the floorboards.
โShhhโฆ Shhhโฆโ He pressed a finger to his lips.
โPlease donโt scream so loud, darling. The neighbors might hear us.โ
Sally appeared in the doorway first, seven years old, clutching her rag doll by one frayed arm.
Her sister Emily, five, hid behind her, peeking out with wide, uncomprehending eyes.
โItโs okay. Donโt be scared.โ
His voice was almost tender.
โFor God is with us now.โ
He had prepared the ropes with care.
The stool stood ready beneath the beam in the living room.
Sallyโs small neck disappeared into the noose like a flower into a grave.
He adjusted it gently, almost lovingly.
โI canโt imagine what you are going through right now, Sally.
That rope around your neck is pretty tight.
One little wrong step on the stool and then itโs over.
So if I were you, I would stay still unless you feel as if you are ready to die.โ
Emily cried for her mother.
Margaret, already weakening, tried to crawl toward them, leaving a trail of dark droplets across the floorboards.
The poison was efficient. It was also cruel.
He spun the cylinder of the revolver.
One bullet.
โNow hereโs the twist,โ he whispered, pressing the barrel to his own temple.
โI wonโt stop until the bullet hits.โ
They prayed together as the light faded.
As I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with meโฆ
Their voices trembling, small, breaking joined his until they did not.
The house grew quiet after that.
He sat among them for hours, arranging their bodies with the same care he once used to tuck them into bed.
Margaretโs hand he placed over her unborn child.
Sallyโs doll he laid across Emilyโs chest.
He whispered apologies that tasted like rust.
Then he walked out into the cold November night, leaving the front door open like an invitation no one would accept.
On November 28, the Mulberry Police Department found them.
A mother and her two children, three, if you count the one who never drew breath, died in their home.
The husband was never found. At least, not for a while. For months he drifted, a ghost wearing his own face. He attended the funeral in a borrowed suit, weeping openly beside the three caskets.
Neighbors squeezed his shoulder and called him strong.
โHow does a man survive such loss?โ they asked.
He would look at them with red-rimmed eyes and answer,
โI donโt know that I have.โ
At night the party began without him.
He would wake to the sound of laughter drifting from the empty nursery. Sallyโs bright, bell-like giggle. Emilyโs softer, hiccuping joy.
Margaretโs voice, warm as fresh bread, calling them to the table. Come on, girls. Daddyโs almost home.
But when he entered the room, there was only dust and silence.
He tried speaking to them. โIโm sorry. Accidents happen, right?โ
The silence answered with screams.
They caught him eventually.
A fingerprint on the stool.
A witness who remembered seeing his car idling blocks away that night.
The poison in the shed.
His confession, when it came, was calm and polite, as if he were excusing himself from a dinner party.
In prison, the walls were closer than any rope. The first year, the torment was theatrical vivid replays that left him vomiting in his cell.
He would feel the stool wobble beneath Sallyโs bare feet again.
Hear Margaretโs final wet coughs.
Taste the metallic certainty of the revolverโs click against his own skull, over and over, never firing.
But the mind is more inventive than any devil.
By the third year, the memories began to rot and rearrange themselves.
He no longer remembered the exact order of their dying.
Sometimes he saw himself comforting them. Sometimes he believed they had begged him to join their party.
Sometimes Margaretโs face became his own motherโs.
Sometimes the unborn child spoke to him in a voice like gravel and honey.
โWeโre having a party, sweetheart. And youโre not invited.โ
That was the sentence she repeated.
Not in anger. Not in hatred.
In the soft, regretful tone she once used when there wasnโt enough pie left for seconds.
A gentle exclusion.
A door closing on the man who was supposed to protect them.
He heard it in the shower. In the mess hall. In the endless gray hours between count and lights-out.
Weโre having a partyโฆ and youโre not invited.
He clawed at his ears until they bled.
The guards wrote it down as self-harm.
Time did not heal. It fermented.
He forgot the color of Emilyโs favorite dress but remembered the exact weight of her small body when he lifted her onto the stool.
He forgot the sound of his own name but remembered the way Sally had looked at him not with hatred, but with bewildered trust, right until the end.
Isolation became a country with no borders. Other inmates avoided him; even monsters can smell a deeper darkness.
He spoke to no one.
The nervous system never left fight-or-flight. His hands shook constantly. Sleep brought no rest, only the party he could hear through the walls of his skull.
Laughter. Cake being cut. Margaret humming the lullaby she sang to their daughters every night.
The clink of glasses. And always, always, her voice, tender as a knife between ribs:
โWeโre having a party, sweetheart. And youโre not invited.โ
On the night he finally died quietly, in his bunk, forty-one years after the murders no one came for him. Not God. Not memory.
Not even the ghosts.
In his last moments, the cell dissolved. He stood at the threshold of a warm, brightly lit house.
He could smell fresh coffee.
Hear his daughters shrieking with delight. Margaretโs silhouette moved behind the frosted glass of the door, radiant, whole, her hand resting on a belly that would never empty.
He reached for the knob.
It was locked.
Through the glass he saw them turn toward him three faces, then four.
Their eyes held no accusation.
Only a distant, heartbreaking pity.
Sally raised her small hand in a wave that looked almost like goodbye.
Emily hid her face in her motherโs skirt.
Margaretโs lips moved.
Weโre having a partyโฆ He sank to his knees outside the door, pressing his forehead against the unyielding wood as the sounds of joy swelled inside.
Laughter like sunlight. Love like oxygen.
Everything he had murdered continued without him, purer for his absence.
He understood then, with the final clarity of a dying mind, that this was the true sentence.
Not the rope. Not the poison. Not the prison.
They were whole. They were together.
They were happy.
And he would stand on the outside forever close enough to see, never close enough to touch listening to the party he could never attend.
The last sound he made was not a scream.
It was a small, broken sob of pure, annihilating love.
The kind that arrives too late.
The kind that changes nothing.
Somewhere inside, a door stayed closed.
And the party went on.
The End
