by Ron Shiflet
With those words, Miss Swilley approached the carriage, climbed on board and waited for the slaves to pack her belongings. She never said goodbye to Louise or Prentiss, or even to Mrs. Eleanor, and she never looked back. After about fifteen minutes, when the carriage was on its way to deliver her to a new beginning, she left Providence Gardens forever, although she still visited it, on occasion, late at night, in her dreams.
HELL HATH NO FURY
ROB ROSEN
“What you mean, leaving me?” my wife, Vonda, asked, throwing me that mean-ass look I’d come to both fear and hate. Vonda came across like a coon left out in the rain when she got to being her ornery self. Which is to say, she was pretty foul to look at and certainly not in the friendliest of moods.
“Well, things just don’t seem like they’s working out no more.” I was stating the obvious, but I could tell from her reaction that she wasn’t interested in hearing it.
“Maybe if you was home and not out carousing like you always is, things wouldn’t be as bad as you say.”
“But when I’m home, you’re always getting mad and hollering at me.” Like right about now.
“That’s cause you’re a sorry excuse for a husband, Lee Roy.”
“See, that’s what I mean.” Things were turning ugly, and were about to get a hell of a lot worse.
She continued. “Now just you wait a minute. What’s this all about, anyway? Things have been like this for years now. Why all of a sudden you wanting to call it quits? If I know you like I think I know you, there must be another woman. Is there?” Why she picked that moment to finally be right about something was beyond me.
“N...no,” I sputtered.
“Oh, Lee Roy, Lee Roy. You know I know you better than that. Don’t even try to pull the wool over these eyes.” Heck, I’d like to have pulled it over her whole face and covered the damn thing up completely.
And with that she stormed off and disappeared into the bedroom. End of round one, I figured. If I could make it through to the next bell, I might have a shot at the title. But no such luck. My figuring and Vonda’s figuring were two very different things. The way she figured it, there wasn’t gonna be a next round.
She came barreling out of the bedroom a short while later, her daddy’s rifle held firmly in her hand. I knew I should’ve sold it when her daddy passed away. Damn that hindsight thing.
“Now, Vonda. Let’s just settle down a bit. No use getting all excited.”
“Too late for that, Lee Roy. If you had got excited around here lately, maybe none of this would’ve happened.” And if you wasn’t such a hag of a wife, I might not have had to go looking for my loving elsewhere, I thought, but kept my trap shut. Having a gun pointed at your head will smarten you up right quick.
“Come on now, Vonda. Please put the gun down and let’s talk this thing over. I’m sure you don’t want to see me dead over this.”
“No? You sure about that?” She aimed the gun and pulled the trigger without even batting an eye. Missed me by a hair. On purpose, I was certain. Vonda always was a crack shot. Only I wasn’t no deer and this wasn’t the Carolina invitational.
“Come on now, sweetie. It’s me, Lee Roy, you’re shooting at. Not some stray dog.”
“That’s just what you is, Lee Roy. A stray dog. Gone straying to some Dixie whore, no doubt. But no more. I’m gonna see to that. That first one was to put the fear of God into you. This next one’s gonna send you straight on to him.”
And she lifted that big, old rifle up again and took dead aim. I knew I was a goner for sure. Whatever the effects of the booze I drank earlier when I was out with my so-called whore, Mary Joe, were gone now. I was clean-cold sober and scared shitless. Damn these women, I thought. What a pain in the ass. Not nearly worth all the trouble. I shut my eyes, sank to my knees, and prayed to the dear Lord for mercy.
“Bye, Lee Roy. Thanks for nothing,” she said, just before she pulled the trigger.
My heart was pounding in my ears and I wet my pants. Then, as luck would have it, I fainted dead away. A far better cry than dead all together, let me tell you. When I awoke I was, miraculously, no worse the wear. A bit damp, but certainly not dead.
I pushed myself up and had a look around. Vonda lay sprawled out in front of me; a large puddle of blood had pooled around her hefty body.
“What the hell?” I said, scratching my throbbing head.
I looked around the room and spotted the source of this unexpected sight right away. Apparently, when I fainted, the bullet continued on its course, as bullets are known to do, and hit the first thing it came into contact with; which was the metal coffee table that was right behind me.
I guessed, judging from the state my wife was in, that the bullet ricocheted and hit a better target, namely Vonda.
I got up and had myself a look. I flipped her body over and knelt down to see if she was still breathing.
“Bastard,” she groaned. Yep, she was still breathing, all right.
“Now looky here, Vonda. You the one who tried to kill me. Seems like you had this coming to you.”
Luckily, she dropped the gun or I probably would have been dead on the spot. Instead, she fixed me with her beady, little eyes, and with her dying breath, she moaned, “That bitch will never have you, Lee Roy. For better or worse, till death do us part. Only it was supposed to be your death, you lousy piece of shit.”
Her eyes rolled back into her head, she let out a final, rancid gasp, and then she was gone. Thank heavens. Now I wouldn’t have to pay no alimony.
But what to do with the body? There was no way the sheriff would believe how she died. The affair with Mary Joe would come out sooner or later, and I’d for sure be the one and only suspect. No way was Vonda worth a life sentence. Damn her.
So I did the only thing I could think of. I went out back, got my wheelbarrow, and wheeled that sucker inside. Then I went and got some old sheets, the ones her mama gave her with those ugly pink roses, and I wrapped Vonda up inside. Didn’t want to get any more blood around the house than there already was. Too bad Vonda wasn’t going to be around no more because it was gonna be a bitch to clean the mess up. Then I dumped her wrapped up body in the wheelbarrow and wheeled her outside.
“Man you’re heavy, Vonda. Should have stayed away from that Taco Bell like I done told you to,” I said, as I struggled with the load.
When I got near the swamp behind our house, I dumped her out and found the biggest rock I could find. Then I found some rope, tied that sucker good and tight around her, and heaved my no-good, dead wife into that there muddy water. Just to be on the safe side, I walked in about a dozen feet or so and pulled her along with me. Didn’t want her washing up anytime soon—or ever, for that matter. Wouldn’t look good with the neighbors. Then, when I figured we were far enough out, I let her go. She floated for a few seconds, but then slowly began to sink. I watched until there was only the flat surface of the murky swamp again.
“Bye, Vonda. Thanks for everything.” No use rubbing salt in the wound. Truth be told, there wasn’t much to be thankful for. ‘Cept maybe her fried chicken, but even that wasn’t worth all the mess she made. Southern women may be good for cookin’, but marryin’ is a whole other kettle of fish.
Speaking of messes, I threw out the rug she bled on. There’s an incinerator not far from the house. Perfect place for it to end up. Never did care for it anyway. Vonda’s tastes were never mine. Finally, I’d get a chance to do a little redecorating—put some of my huntin’ trophies up, at long last. Suppose that’s what you’d call icing on the cake.
Then I used the computer to type up a letter saying that Vonda was leaving me. Guess there was more to that thing than easy porn. Had me a good look around to make sure there wasn’t any more blood and didn’t find none, thank goodness. Realized I had to get rid of the coffee table, too. Wouldn’t look good for me when they saw the mark the bullet left. What was one more trip to the incinerator, anyway? And then I called the sheriff to tell him about the note
I supposedly found. After all, they’d come around looking for her eventually. Might as well get that over with right quick so I could concentrate on Mary Joe for a while. Though there was no way I was gonna marry her. No siree. Been there, done that. And learned my lesson but good. One mean, fat, dead wife was enough for me for a lifetime.
And then I popped me a beer and plopped down on the couch, plumb exhausted and newly freed. Hallelujah!
“Here’s to you, Vonda,” I said, raising my can up. “May you rest in peace.”
Actually, it was more my peace I was celebrating, but I figured I owed the old girl something. Besides, couldn’t rightly feel guilty about what had happened. She was the one who tried to kill me, after all, not the other way around. That was fate. Or dumb luck. Whichever, I was just glad to be alive. And single.
I decided to wait until the next day to call Mary Joe. Not out of regards to Vonda or nothing, just to enjoy being alone for a change. Alone with my peace and quite. And that’s how I stayed until I fell sound asleep on the couch. It wasn’t until sometime in the middle of the night that I got woken up by something. A noise, actually, coming from the back yard. I got up to investigate.
“That you, Sheriff?” I asked, after I stepped outside. Though I knew it couldn’t be him. Was way too late for a visit. I figured it must’ve been a cat or something trying to get into the trashcans. I went back inside and crawled into bed. The day’s activities had clean wiped me out.
I wasn’t asleep for more than a few seconds before I heard a noise again.
“Damn cats,” I muttered, but got up just the same.
Noticed the wet spots as soon as I stepped into the kitchen. But where did they come from? I guessed I brought it in with me when I went out to check the first time. I stood there looking down at them and yawned, before heading back to the bedroom.
“Don’t expect me to clean that up,” came a voice from the living room.
“Huh? Who’s there?” I asked, frozen to the spot.
“What, you forget me already?” came the response.
“If this is a joke, it ain’t a good one.”
“Not in a joking mood, Lee Roy? Well, me neither. Now come give your wife a kiss hello.” Shit and double shit, I thought. This couldn’t be happening. She was dead, for sure. If not from the bullet, then from the water.
I forced myself to move forward into the living room, and there she was. Blue and wet and nasty as hell looking, but wide-eyed and very much, if not alive, then clearly not dead. Guess my knot tying wasn’t gonna win me any prizes.
“What you doing here, Vonda? You’re dead. Ain’t you?”
“What am I doing here? This is my home, Lee Roy. You my husband. You think I’m gonna let you go that easy? It’s you and me, forever, Lee Roy. Just like we said that day we got hitched.” Man, she looked a fright sitting there, sneering up at me, her yellow teeth never looking so foul. And a few hours under water hadn’t done her complexion any good neither. Had these God-awful, blue veins popping out all over and her eyes were this evil, cloudy shade of gray.
“That’s just what people say when they get married, Vonda. It’s not a literal thing.” Was it? Wish someone had told me that beforehand. This is not what I signed up for.
“Well, I took it literally, you shit for brains. So either I stay or we both go together. You decide.” She folded her arms and waited for my response. I wanted to run, but my legs wouldn’t move. I puked instead.
“You’re cleaning that up too,” she said. “I’m done waiting on your lazy ass.”
“Sorry, Vonda.” Even in death she had me whipped.
“Keep your apologies to yourself. What’s your answer?”
I sat there and thought of a way out. Maybe the gun again? But I didn’t think I could kill her, since, for all intents and purposes, she was already dead. And, man oh man, she was ugly sitting there. Couldn’t go through life with a wife that looked like that. So I reached for the gun and gave it a try. Plugged three nice-sized holes in her belly. Black ooze seeped out of the wounds, but otherwise the bullets had no effect, ‘cept to make her grin even wider. Vonda was proving harder to kill than a cockroach in a garbage heap.
“Fine, let’s go together then. You too nasty to live with now, anyway. I’m ready to meet my maker up in heaven.”
“What would be your second choice? Heaven doesn’t seem to be an option. I know, I checked already.” Damn. That figured. She did, after all, try to kill me. Don’t suppose the Lord looks too highly on that sort of thing.
“Fine, then I suppose you can stay here,” I sighed, resigned to my fate. “But could you at least try and clean yourself up? You smell something awful.”
“It’s only going to get worse, Lee Roy.”
Of that I was certain. Death, like life, didn’t become my wife.
So we was back to square one. Only this time I was barely allowed out of her site. Neither was that gun of hers. Kept it right by her side at all times, should I decide to stray or something. No booze, no bars, and certainly no Mary Joe. Since death couldn’t part us, Vonda made sure nothing or no one else would either. It was work, then home, then sleep, and repeat. A living hell with a creature who’d been there and back. I’d have left her if I didn’t think the bitch would follow me clear cross the country.
Speaking of sleep, that was the worst part of all—my night of the living dead, I liked to mutter to myself when I thought she couldn’t hear me. And, judging from the constant, loud hissing sounds coming from her gaping wounds, it’s quite possible she heard very little from my side of the bed.
“Can you at least lie down and turn off the lights?” I tried, those first few nights.
“Why? Don’t need no sleep no more, thank you kindly. Might as well catch up on my reading.”
“You got to be in the race in order to catch up, Vonda.” She replied by kneeing me in my back.
I meant the literate race, but the human race was more like it. With each passing day she grew more and more gruesome. Once she was no longer waterlogged, she turned this awful shade of gray which matched her hair and eyes, until she looked more like a shadow than a person. Not that she was ever much to look at anyway, mind you, but there’s ugly and then there’s ugly. Vonda went beyond that somewhere around the third day, a Sunday.
“Let’s go,” she commanded that morning.
“Um, go where?”
“To church, of course.” She had on her long pants and a turtle neck sweater, though it was in the dead of summer. And she wore her gloves and hat and scarf and sunglasses, so, if you weren’t looking too close, you might not have realized she was a walking, talking corpse—though you might be curious why patches of rotting flesh seemed to trail her wherever she went.
“What’s the point?” I asked.
“The point is, I got to get back in the Lord’s good graces so he’ll take me into his kingdom some day. If you was smart, you’d do the same.”
I thought about that for about a split second. Basically, she was offering me a perpetual existence with her. “I think I’ll take my chances in Hell, if you don’t mind.” Seemed like a more pleasant option.
“Suit yourself. What should I tell the pastor when he asks where you are?”
“Upwind, tell him. Which reminds me, sit in the back. You stink something awful. Jesus might have liked his fish, but I don’t think he’d want his house reeking of it.”
“I’ll pray for you, Lee Roy,” she groaned, and then lumbered out.
“I don’t think he’s listening no more,” I said to the door.
Well at least I finally had some peace and quiet, though her odor managed to linger long after she had gone. At least she wasn’t horny, I figured, but in that there was no difference between the old Vonda and the new one. For me, however, it was a matter of life and death. Life being Mary Joe and death being Vonda. And, as if he heard my prayer after all, there came a knocking on my door.
“What you doing here, Mary Joe?” I asked, stunned to see her s
tanding there like that.
“You ain’t been by in days, Lee Roy. I was worried sick something was wrong.” If she only knew.
“Oh, thank you for thinking of me, but I think you should go now.” I tried to close the door, but she wouldn’t hear of it.
“Go? Why should I go? I waited for your wife to leave, so I know you’re by your lonesome. Let me in.”
Man, she looked good standing there. And smelled a heck of a lot better than what I’d recently grown used to. How could I refuse? Besides, Vonda was sure to be gone awhile. If the Lord could have his day, why not me?
“Okay, Mary Joe. But just for a moment.”
She came in, waving her hand in front of her face. “What is that smell, Lee Roy? Stinks like hell in here.”
“You got that right,” I murmured to myself.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Sewage leak,” I said, louder. “From deep, deep down.”
“Well, it smells like death warmed over. Maybe you should come on home with me. This can’t be good for you.” Amen, brother.
But before I could respond, she started to have herself a look around. And fine, okay, it was sort of exciting having her there—as if living with a decomposing wife wasn’t taboo enough. But when she plopped herself down on my bed, that was crossing the line. A line she dared me to cross as well. A line I gingerly tiptoed over. I figured that a few seconds on the other side couldn’t hurt none.
Course there was never a few seconds when it came to Mary Joe. She was on top of me in no time flat. Before long I clean forgot where I was and what I was doing. Life without sex will do that to a man. Still, it came as quite a shock what happened next.
“Can’t leave you alone for a minute, Lee Roy.” I knew that gravelly voice in a heartbeat.
Mary Joe turned around and froze in place. She wasn’t expecting a wife, especially a recently deceased one. Her being in the position she was in, I couldn’t see what she was seeing, but I was sure it was a pretty terrifying sight to behold. And, shocked as she was, Mary Joe wasn’t going anywhere quick enough for Vonda; which didn’t bode too well for either one of us.