by Denise Gwen
A dangerous moment.
His senses on high alert, he took in the scene. She’d just left the room; a saucepan of something hot and savory bubbled on the stove and, despite himself, his mouth watered. Tomato basil soup, his favorite.
And then, just like that, he had second thoughts.
Did he really want to go through with this?
A few minutes later.
As he stood there debating with himself, his wife walked into the kitchen. She didn’t see him at first, and so he sat down quietly, coiling the rope on his lap. Standing at the stove, she picked up a wooden spoon, stirred the soup, set the spoon down onto a ceramic dish she used to use to catch drips when cooking, and turned her head to the right and saw him. She stood stock-still for a moment, then screamed and put her right hand to her heart. He remained seated at the kitchen table, facing her, and with the rope on his lap. He dug his fingers into its thick fibers.
He gave her a flinty smile.
She did not smile back. “What the hell, Randy. What are you doing here, scaring me half-to-death like that?”
“I want to talk to you.”
“You’re not supposed to be here.”
“This is my house.”
Ignoring him, she turned her attention back to the stove. Picked up the wooden spoon from the ceramic dish and stirred the soup. Without looking at him, she said, “I got a protection order yesterday.”
“You did?”
“Yes, I did. I could call 911 right now and you’d be arrested.”
“Well, huh.”
“I sure did.”
He noticed the bruising around her neck from where he’d thrown her up against the wall and tried to choke her, two days earlier. The bruises had mottled, turned blue and purple. He winced.
“Who’d you go to for the protection order?” he asked. If she’d gone to his old friend and fellow golfing partner, Judge Winterbourne, he’d let him know his displeasure. Friends didn’t betray their friends; it went against the code.
“What I want to know is,” she said with asperity, “is why haven’t you been served?” She tapped the wooden spoon on the saucepan rim, set it down on the ceramic dish and turned to face him, anger flashing in her eyes.
“I don’t know. It’s not like I’m hiding or anything. They sure as hell know how to find me.”
She said nothing.
In a low voice, he said, “I didn’t know you’d go through with it.”
“How many times, Randy?” she flung at him. “How many goddamned times do we gotta go through this? And yes, I did go through with it, you fucking asshole.”
“Don’t curse,” he said. “It’s unladylike.”
“Oh, you and your ladylike crap. Yes, Randy, I went through with it. I walked into the courthouse and I filled out the paperwork, and I got my domestic violence civil protection order. You can’t be here right now.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “As a matter of fact, I want you to leave. Right now, Randy. I’m done messing around with you.”
He said nothing, but a slow burn rose inside him, a rising rage, starting in his feet, creeping up his legs, right into his groin, his heart, and his head, and as he sat there, the rage simmered through him like sauce in a saucepan.
How dare she. How dare she get a protection order against me. And after all I’ve done for, her, too; the Mercedes, the jewelry, the gifts.
He’d spent a small fortune on her, and she had the nerve to tell him to get out of his house? The house he bought, paid for out of the insurance money from his dead wife’s estate? This house, that he bought, owned outright before she even walked into his fucking life, she had the nerve to throw him out of his own fucking house?
You’re throwing me out of my own house, you bitch? I don’t think so.
“Randy, are you gonna leave, or am I gonna have to dial 911?”
He shifted in the chair. “That soup smells good.”
“You’re not getting any of it. I’m taking it to a pot-luck luncheon with my friends over at Gault Park today.” She turned the heat down low and rested her hands on either side of the stove surface. “Go now, Randy. Go now, before you make things worse for yourself.”
“You’re having sex with that man, aren’t you?” He spoke these words evenly, quietly, in a low voice, while inwardly, his rage rose. Coiling his fingers around the rope, the harsh, scraping texture of the fibers revived him.
I can still do this, but I’m thinking against it.
“What if I did?” she flashed at him. “How dare you hurt me. How dare you choke me. You almost killed me.”
“No, I didn’t,” he said evenly.
“I’m gonna make you look so bad, Randy, by the time re-election rolls back around, you’ll kiss your god-damned career goodbye. You won’t get elected as the god-damned dog catcher.”
She was right. Domestic violence wouldn’t play well in his re-election campaign. He relaxed his fingers and the rope dropped to his lap. She’d filed domestic violence charges against him before, and he’d talked her into dismissing them. Might he persuade her to do so again, for old time’s sake?
He stirred, the chair creaked under his weight. “What if we went to counseling? You asked me to attend counseling before, why don’t we go to counseling?”
“God-dammit, Randy.” She grabbed the wooden spoon and stomped over to the kitchen table, standing over him, looking pissed. “You don’t get it, do you? Get out of my house right this instant or I’m calling the cops. The real cops,” she added, sneering, “Not the goons you manage, over at the Sheriff’s Office.”
“Miranda, take it easy, there.”
Quietly, oh so quietly, he pushed back his chair a tick. If need be, he was prepared to jump to his feet—
“Now, Randy,” she said, and then a lot of things happened, all at the same time, a lot of action, and once it began he couldn’t take it back, for at the moment she pointed the sauce-slicked spoon at him, she saw the rope coiled on his lap and she cried out in alarm and ran from the kitchen and he jumped to his feet and caught her at the threshold of the swinging door between the kitchen and the dining room, and by this time it was too late for him to turn back, for him to decide not to go through with it, because she’d kind of forced his hand, hadn’t she, oh yes, she had.
He tackled her from behind and she screamed as he pushed her down and she fell, face-first, onto the dining room carpeting, her chest in the dining room, her legs in the kitchen, and the swing door bumping up along her right shoulder. His massive weight heaved her down and he outmaneuvered her as she struggled; she proved no match, not with him bigger and stronger and meaner. He looped the rope around her neck as they struggled, coiled it into a hangman’s knot, then jerked her head back, hard. Her voice cut short as the rope pressed against her trachea.
This’d be a whole hell of a lot easier if she’d only pass out—
He pulled, hard, on the rope until, finally, her resistance faded and her arms went limp and her head lolled forward as her resistance turned from animal terror into a dull, leaden lump. Keeping the rope around her neck, he rolled her over onto her back and put his hands around her neck and twisted.
Her neck snapped with a satisfying crunch.
A few minutes later.
“Ginny,” Melanie Wittenberg called out to her older daughter as she rested on the sofa with a blanket, “before I take you to the doctor, do you want me to drive you through your paper route?”
Ten-year old Ginny Wittenberg was home from school, sick with the flu. Well, that’s what she’d said, anyway, because she hadn’t been feeling well for the past couple of days, and well, she wanted to keep an eye on Mommy. Mommy had been acting nervous over the past few days, and Ginny, sensing things in a way her younger sister Evie, didn’t, decided to stay home and keep an eye on Mommy.
For just in case Daddy showed up.
Deep in her heart, she sensed Mommy knew she was faking it, but because her grades were so good, she also knew she could get away with t
he occasional personal day, just like Mommy did from time to time at her job, when Mommy felt too stressed out to go to work.
I’m taking a personal day, just like Mommy does.
Grandpa walked into the living room and put the back of his hand against Ginny’s forehead. “Your forehead’s cool to the touch. You’re getting better, honey.”
Then, just in case Ginny didn’t know Grandpa was in on her little secret, he winked.
She smiled back up at him.
“I’ll do your newspaper route for you if you want, honey,” Grandpa said.
“Dad,” Mom called out from the kitchen, “you’ll never teach her a good work ethic if you keep doing her job for her.”
“Nonsense. A ten-year-old girl who’s sick needs a break from time to time, doesn’t she?”
“Sure, she does,” Mommy said, standing in the doorway, her arms crossed over her chest. “A ten-year-old girl who’s sick, does need a break from time to time.”
“Oh, come on, Ginny. You know she’s not feeling well.”
“Dad, I—”
Ginny made a great show of lifting her poor little head from the cushion. “No, Mommy,” she said. “I’ll do my paper route.”
“That’s my girl,” Grandpa said.
“Don’t’ forget a jacket,” Mom said. “It’s springtime, but it can turn suddenly cool and I don’t want you getting a fever.”
“Okay, Mommy.” Ginny jumped off the sofa and ran upstairs to her bedroom to fetch her hoodie.
As she reached the landing, she overheard her mother.
“I don’t know why she insists on doing this.”
“Doing what, honey?”
“Faking it.”
“Oh, she’s not faking it.”
“Oh, of course she is, Dad. She’s faking it, and I know it. Why does she do this?”
“She wants to keep an eye on you. She’s worried. Don’t fret. It’s only the one day.”
Ah, so everybody knew. Somehow, she didn’t know why, but this diminished her pleasure in taking the day off. Oh, well. She shrugged on her hoodie, pulled it up over her head, and ran back downstairs to the kitchen. She assembled her newspapers, threw them into her carrier bag, and ran out the back door a minute later.
A few minutes later.
Time stopped for a long moment.
This is it. I can’t go back now. I can’t take it back, what I’ve done. This is forever.
A swell of sorrow filled his heart. It reminded him of when he was a child, and his parents took him to the ocean for the first time in his life. He’d stood in the water, watching as an enormous wave rose and then crashed over him and he’d been frightened and sucked under and he’d lost his bearings for one terrible moment, and then when he arose from the water, sputtering, crying, and with his mother fussing over him, he’d realized that this was what death must feel like, total obliteration, an annihilation, a drowning.
A terrible way to die, by drowning.
He looked down at her. She did not look pretty. Her eyes bugged out of her head, her tongue lolled, her skin had gone pasty white and doughy.
But at least she wasn’t yapping anymore.
He bent down and lifted her up into his arms.
An eerie moment of dissonance struck him. He remembered the day when he carried her across the threshold to the hotel room on their honeymoon, nine months earlier. He’d carried her into the room in just this way, with her head toward his right shoulder, with her legs draped over the left arm, but on the day of their wedding, she’d been laughing and smiling as he carried her across the threshold into their hotel room, and now she didn’t laugh and she didn’t smile, but her head lolled back at a sickening angle, and her sightless eyes stared up at the ceiling, and there was no turning back, and it was her fault, god-dammit, it was all her fucking fault.
You forced this decision on me, Miranda.
A few minutes later.
In the garage, Ginny grabbed the Army green knapsack Grandpa used in the Korean War, and which he’d made a gift of to her when she started her paper route, stuffed all her newspapers into it, pulled the straps over her shoulders, and heaved the bag and herself onto a bicycle and pushed out through the open garage door.
Half-asleep, still drowsy, she started at the top of Plum Run Road, tossing the newspapers as neatly as she could onto the neighbors’ front driveways. Grandpa got mad at her when she was slip-shod with her aim, and she tried to do a good job, because she never knew when Grandpa was going to follow up later to check and see where she’d tossed her newspapers to. She started thinking about her language arts assignment, though, and got distracted as she worked her way through her route.
She delivered a total of one-hundred and fifty newspapers to over one-hundred-and-fifty households stretched out through the Plum Run Road Subdivision, which intersected with the Wells Falls Lane subdivision; a fair haul. What she liked to do, was start immediately to the right, with the next-door neighbors, the Shermans, who lived at 5456 Plum Run Road, then deliver to all the houses along Burnt Furnace, then take a left onto Steam Furnace Road, then take a winding cul-de-sac, before arriving at her last street, Wells Falls Lane, then finishing it up and heading back home on Plum Run Road. In all, when she hurried, she could deliver the route in a hair less than twenty-five minutes.
The moment she wheeled her bike from the garage and inhaled that clear, clean, crisp air, she knew it’d be a good day, after all, even if she was worried over her mother.
It wasn’t until she reached 2354 Wells Falls Lane, that she stopped.
At first, she couldn’t believe what she saw.
A few minutes later.
Her body slack and heavy, he struggled to carry her over to the dining table and ended up dropping her onto the maple-wood surface, her body splayed out all herky-jerky, and he felt moisture on his left hand and when he withdrew his hand, to his disgust, he realized she’d released her bowels and her urine in the moment of death, and a pool of urine was now spreading across the maple-wood surface of the table and he’d touched it and then he smelled her excrement and knew her panties were now full of her shit.
But then again, it’d be natural to evacuate in the moment of death, right? And if he managed to pull this off—
Would someone, planning her suicide, use the toilet before she killed herself? Well, he’d never had occasion to ask himself the question, as he wiped his urine coated fingers off on his pants, and so he really didn’t know. He’d better leave her panties alone, and he was fine with that, really, but he’d have to mop up the urine and hope there was still a little bit left in her bladder, because it would be natural for urine to drip from her body onto the dining room table, but he needed to clean up a lot of it, pooling as it was all over the table.
Panting, he released her and stood back. She’d swollen up, her arms and her legs and her belly had filled up with water, rotund, ugly and wet; her tongue lolled out of her mouth like the mouth on a dead cow, and her arms and legs splayed any which way.
This was turning out harder than he anticipated.
Better get a move on.
He kicked off his shoes, jumped up onto the table and looped the rope around the fixture attached to the ceiling for the chandelier. Satisfied he’d looped it around enough, he bent down to his haunches, looped the rope around her neck, and began hoisting her up. It took a good long while, and he worried that, despite having earlier reinforced it, the chandelier might crash from the ceiling, but the work he’d done several months earlier had been sufficient, and the chandelier clung to the ceiling and to the light fixture.
Okay, now to pull her free of the table.
He pulled and pulled, and at first her body remained slackly inert and stretched out on the dining table, but as he continued to pull, first her head, at an obscene angle, then her torso, then her hips, and finally her legs and her feet lifted from the table and he pushed her head forward to make it look more like a hanging, and he gave a final tug to the rope and secured t
he knot.
Drenched in sweat, and stinking like a Texaco Gas Station toilet, he released his hands from the rope and took a tiny half-step back to survey his work. On an impulse, he reached forward and checked her pulse. He waited for a long minute. No pulse.
A snap.
He jumped.
What the hell was that?
Ducking behind her body, he glanced out through the dining room window. God-dammit, he’d forgotten to close the fucking curtains. He jumped off the table and ran to the window and looked.
“God-dammit,” he whispered.
Someone was watching.
A few minutes later.
Ginny stared at the huge object hanging from the chandelier of the Randalls’s dining room and couldn’t understand what she was seeing. What was it? It didn’t look right, to her. Halloween? But Halloween was months away, was Mrs. Randalls doing weird art installation for Easter? She shook her head, it didn’t make a bit of sense, but then, as she stood there, the newspaper dropped from her slack fingers and she looked down at the grass, and at the newspaper lying in the grass, and then she looked back up to the window, and this time she saw it for what it was, and a tingle of terror shivered through her and she felt so cold, as if she’d turned to ice.
Her hoodie covered her head, and she grabbed her elbows and squeezed her arms close to her body and still she felt cold and she gazed through the dining room window and then she saw a man step out from behind the body, and she knew he’d done a terrible, terrible thing.
The man waved.
A few minutes later.
Randy gazed out through the plate-glass dining room window, across his yard, and into the eyes of a little boy perched on a bike on the sidewalk in front of the house. The kid just sat there, his hoodie up over his head, vacant-eyed and inert. He must’ve pulled up to the curb with a bag of newspapers. He’d just dropped a newspaper onto their front lawn and when he stopped—