My Year With The Perfect Family

by Mark Nutter

About the Author: MARK NUTTER grew up in a motel near Joliet, Illinois, which is not as glamorous as it sounds. He’s written a short fiction collection (‘Sunset Cruise on the River Styx’), musicals (‘ReAnimator the Musical’, ‘The Bicycle Men’), television ('SNL,' '3rd Rock from the Sun') and film ('Almost Heroes'). www.marknutter.com.

Excerpt

DAY ONE. 

I gunned down the mother and the daughter in their respective beds. When the son came out of his bedroom I shot him in the hallway. And when the father came home late from work I stabbed him to death at the front door.

DAY TWO.

Hm. That may have been a mistake.

My name is Davis Barnes and I’m a documentary filmmaker. I’d already been paid half of my five-thousand-dollar fee to make “My Year with the Perfect Family,” for the Perfect Family Network. I was excited at the prospect of spending a year with a family so unlike my own.

Now the subjects of my documentary were dead, and I had 364 days to go before I got the rest of my money.

I sat down on the living room sofa. I filmed a few seconds of the father, crumpled in a bloody heap at the front door. I didn’t need a crew. I was shooting the doc on my phone using the DocumentaryPro app, and while it was a versatile app, it still couldn’t make a dead guy who didn’t move look interesting. 

I put my phone down and thought about my situation.

DAY THREE.

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