I’d seen enough. With numb hands that felt weak as kittens’ paws, I reached for the off switch and turned to Kate.
***
She didn’t appear at all flummoxed that I’d decided we’d had enough entertainment for the day.
She remained sat there, gazing of to some distant shore that only she could see, and wearing that ecstatic, demented grin.
I realised my wife and partner of far too many – and yet too few - years had completely lost her mind. What little mind she had left to lose, at any rate.
“Kate? Kate? Are you feeling okay?” It was all I could think of to say.
She never responded.
Not so much as a twitch of the eye.
My bug-shit crazy wife remained perpetually spacey.
“Kate” I prodded, “this is no time to leave the building, honey. We have to think about getting some help. There’s a dead baby across the street, Kate – a dead baby - and the whole fucking towns turned to ashes. Honey, snap out of it. We gotta figure this out.”
Still no response.
I thought I’d change tact with her. See if I could reach her on a more basic level.
“We should get in the car and get the fuck out of here, babe. Go see if your mothers okay.” Here mum had lived alone the past five years, and had slipped into mild senility of late. Still, she had a hold on Kate that I never had. And I had to respect Kate’s dedication to her mom.
“Let’s rattle the hell on out of here and go see if she’s alright. She may need help with…”
“She’s fine.” said my wife.
“How do you know? Did you call her?” I asked.
“Phones are down. No need to call her anyway…”
“How do you know she’s safe, then? Don’t you wanna head over there and make sure, Kate?” I was growing more and more uncomfortable with her drugged-out demeanour.
She was calm as a Hindu cow, and that made no sense at all – not a fucking lick of it.
“She’s safe because she’s in heaven.” she said.
Despite my issues with my once awesome, then pathetic, then zealous and now clearly crazy wife, I really did love her mother.
The woman always had my back, and never took sides. I often figured if she had to she’d have chosen ‘Team Donnie’. Only bloods bond had held her to Kate in recent times. She was her mother, after all.
She’d never understood Kate’s religious fervour any more than I did and had hidden her true feelings on the matter from Kate for years now.
She’d been my friend and my consort in all things biblically fucked up.
So you can imagine my shock on hearing that she’d died. My mind overflowed with awful images of her burning.
“Holy Christ! She’s dead!? How do you know!? What the hell happened? I’m so sorry honey. I-I don’t know what to -”
“She’s not dead. She’s in heaven, Don. Why don’t you ever listen? And please…don’t use the Lords name in vain.”
What the fuck!? Was she really trying to pick a fight with me now?
“You said she was in heaven, Kate.” I said, “Can’t be in heaven without being dead.”
Won’t be in heaven at all if she has anything to do with it herself, I thought with vastly inappropriate humour.
Her mom was a staunch atheist. Like I said, she didn’t approve of Kate’s present ‘spiritual state’.
“There isn’t any death anymore, Don. Can’t you see that yet? Can’t you feel it in the air?” she replied, smiling that creepy-as-hell smile and never taking her eyes from the thousand yard point where her tumbling mind had decided to dwell.
“Feel what in the air? What the fuck are you talking about? It’s time we got rolling. We don’t have time for this right now.”
“Rolling?” she laughed. “Rolling where exactly?”
“If you’re gonna go cuckoo for coco-puffs, maybe you should choose your moments more carefully.” I hurled back – not an answer to her question, I understand, but no one was taking scores
She said nothing, so I revved up and charged on, happy to have some focus, even if it was centred on anger for my increasingly unhinged partner.
“Did you hear what I said!? There's a child fucking spread all over the neighbour’s driveway. Her mother has burned to death! There are fucking bodies everywhere and half the neighbourhoods on fire... you think this is a good time to lose your fucking mind?”
My ranting seemed to have no effect on her at all. Even for Kate, this was some far out shit.
“I don’t know what planet you’re orbiting right now, but your better come back to earth and fast. It’s not enough that you left me in a puddle of fucking blood at the foot of our bed, and made toast and fucking tea instead of actually helping me! It’s not enough that our town and now the whole damn worlds burning up. It’s not even enough that your own mother may be dead! No…you'd rather just sit here and stare into fucking dimension X. God dammit, Kate, look at me!”
Finally she turned to me, and in a floating detached voice which I've never heard her use outside the early, drug days, she said, “Can’t you see what this is, Don? Can’t you feel it? Mommy hasn’t died. She's been taken.”
“Taken by what!?”I asked, completely at a loss as to where she was going with this.
“Taken by our Lord and saviour - Jesus Christ.”
My anger subsided, replaced by worn down, weariness.
Not this shit again.
This was getting more ridiculous by the minute. “Honey -”, I said in my most placating tone, “it’s nothing more than a terrorist attack. I’m sure the news reports are exaggerating.”
A brazen fucking lie on my part.
“This is all going to pass soon and -”
“Yes. All things shall come to pass, Don. Even unto the end of the Earth.” She was looking at me, but she sure as shit wasn’t seeing me.
“It’s the second coming of our Lord, Don. He's riding on a chariot of fire, and has come to burn away sin and release our tainted souls from this wicked world. We've been chosen - we've been chosen to rise to the kingdom of Christ. At last, after so many long years, we’re going home.”
“You can’t really believe that, Kate.” I said. “What I saw outside was no second coming. I saw people burning.”
“Sinners - one and all.”
“Including the baby!?”
“We are all born in sin, Don.”
“So you keep telling me. I saw animals burning too – have the squirrels been bad little critters and now he’s sending them to some nut-free eternity?” I asked. “I suppose the cat I saw licking its dick was one of your lot and on its way to heaven with the rest of you. Is dick-licking a sin, Kate!?”
The faintest hint of a smile was etched on her face – she clearly thought me a fool, or a madman – typical.
“You have to snap out of it right now and we need to find help. Enough of this religious bullshit.”
I have a tendency to open my mouth before I think, and I knew before that last part left my mouth that this was gonna be one of those times.
Kate’s expression changed. I should have known better than to come between a zealot and her delusions.
The mesmerised, stoned gaze distorted, and a hateful scowl crawled its way to the surface. She even bared her teeth.
“Don’t you dare talk of the Lord in that way, Don. He sees and hears all, and you’ll be left to burn. Don’t you want to ascend with me?”
No, Kate - I really don’t, I thought to myself.
“We could enter the kingdom as husband and wife. All these years we've talked about this and now you want to ridicule Jesus on the eve of his glorious return? You'll burn for this, Don! Repent and rise with me.”
You see what I have to deal with?
“Honey -”, instinctively I reached for the fridge door, my mind seeking solace in the long gone company of a cold beer, “we didn’t talk about this for years. You did. You’ve been babbling about this shit since as far back as I’d like
to remember, and it’s probably my fault.”
She just glared at me. I took that as my cue to continue.
“I fed into this bull! I allowed it to go on. I watched you turn from a space-rocker into a holy-roller, and I supported you on your little journey into dementia. I sat back and nodded my stupid fucking head in agreement at the never-ending stream of bullshit you ranted. I lost my buddies. I lost my fucking balls. And now it’s really the end of the fucking world and you wanna sit here, eat toast and wait for the Son of God?!? You think he's gonna ring the fucking doorbell, invite himself in, eat our cornflakes and then whisk you off to paradise?! You’re a crazy fucking bitch, Kate. You’re a goddam wrecking ball of lunacy and I want you the fuck out of my life, you intolerable cunt - FUCK OFF AND TAKE JESUS WITH YOU!”
Now, I know my timing was off a little bit. I understand that...
Listen - when you gotta break wind you gotta break wind, and something in me had changed this morning. The world was most definitely ending one way or another, and I was pretty sure at that point we were most definitely fucked. Something in that knowledge set me free. I could feel the older, happier version of myself break to the surface as I let loose on the she-devil sat before me.
It was long overdue, and by the look of shock on her face, I could see that the limp-mined lunatic never saw it coming.
Ignorance sure is a powerful drug.
Kate looked on me with stunned, hurt eyes. Her rage momentarily subsided as the pain set in. I like to think a second or two of reality hit her in that moment, and for a brief fleeting time, she was the old Kate again - free-thinking and fun-loving.
A beacon of brilliant light in an increasingly dark and shitty world.
I never had long to ponder all this though, as the mug of boiling hot tea that smashed over my head put all my hope to sleep fast. Along with the better half of my senses.
***
“What the fuck!?” I screamed.
It was all I had time to utter before Kate was on me. She lunged over our breakfast table like a panther to a gazelle. Even in my semi-stupefied condition, I could see what she was brandishing in her hand.
A kitchen knife...
Fear gripped me, clearing my head of some of the fog that had settled there, as I realised that the woman I had shared my bed with these last five years, was planning to stab my sorry ass to death. It was in her eyes, man. It was in her eyes.
I had no time to speak or implore before she was on me - a screaming banshee sent from hell, or maybe heaven.
I raised my hands in defence just in time to block the blade and avoid losing one of my eyes.
The knife sliced through the palm of my left hand.
Searing pain shot through my senses as I tried to hold onto the blade and push her back at the same time.
My left palm gripped the knife by its metal blade, and as she pulled back to take another stab at me, she opened up my already mangled hand once more. I screamed in agony as the razor sharp steel sliced through my flesh a second time, cutting a deep bloody furrow in the soft flesh of my palm.
She raised the blade above her head, and stabbed again.
Luckily, in her dementia, she must have lost all sense of co-ordination.
I say this as she was clearly aiming for my heart, but in her rage she managed only to plunge the blade into my forearm, just above the wrist. I could feel the metal scrape bone and hoped it hadn’t gone in deep enough to do any real damage.
Although between this cut, my ruined hand, my head-wound from last night and the mug that had smashed over my face, I was beginning to lose much of my mojo.
If I didn’t do something soon, she was gonna kill me.
This morning had made a mess of me, and Kate looked hell-bent on finishing the job.
I heard the knife fall from her blood-slicked hand as I reeled from this new agony.
My eyes were pooling with fresh blood from the wound on my head my wife had so kindly re-opened with her teacup, and I was losing vision fast. The world was a maddening blur, filled with motion. Shadow and light were all I had to work with.
I saw the shape of her moving toward me, and I did the only thing I could - given the circumstances...
I threw the best damn right hook I could muster.
Perhaps there is a god, because it landed.
It’s awful, I know. I was fighting for my life, though, and I think I may have had that battle-madness shit I heard about in Game of Thrones.
I felt my knuckles crunch against bone, and heard the sharp crack as her nose shattered.
Kate went down like a ton of bricks.
I used the moment to wipe my eyes clear and get a bead on what to do next.
In the space of perhaps ten seconds or so, our kitchen had become a warzone. There was blood everywhere.
I’d lost a lot of blood during the attack, man.
I felt a shiver dance through me as I pictured what she would have done had I went down during her frenzy.
No doubt about it – she would have ended me.
This was the final straw. The world apparently had gone as crazy as my nutjob wife and in that moment, vengeance overcame me.
She’d ruined the best years of my life, had sucked all sense of joy from my heart, and now, after taking my freedom and my will, she had tried her damnedest to take my life.
Hell no!
It was time to end this shit, once and for all.
If the world was going to hell she was going with it.
***
I dragged what was left of my shattered self over to where she lay.
She was out cold on the linoleum, her face a mess of blood and bone. Assorted fruits and cereal boxes surrounded her.
She was already growing one hell of a black eye.
My eyes searched under and around the table for the knife she’d cut me with, and finally fell upon it.
It was strangely stood upright. The tip of its blade impaled in the blood-soaked lino. It must have landed that way when it slipped from her murderous hands.
Damn that thing is sharp, I shuddered. She could have opened me up like a tin of beans with that thing.
I reached for the blade, grasped it in my blood-slick hand and then crawled over to where she lay, bruised and beaten.
I knelt before her with my knees pressed down on her shoulders to hold her in place, and with my good right hand I took the knife and placed the cold steel into the soft flesh of her throat.
“This is for all the torment, Kate. I'm setting you free, honey. I hope you find the answers you’re looking for out there, but I'm pretty sure murder - even if only attempted on a self-confessed asshole - is a mortal sin.”
I pressed the knife deeper into her flesh, and I could feel the skin begin to tear.
All it would take now was one quick slash and she would finally be gone from my life.
Hell, I’d earned the right. She’d tried to off me first, I told myself.
Yet as I looked down upon her, with her swollen and blackened eyes shut and her nose in ruins, I saw the girl I had fallen in love with. Right now, in this moment, in her sweet oblivion, she wasn’t caught in the web of her beliefs. She wasn’t intolerant, or hateful, or judgemental or pious.
In this moment, spread out on the kitchen floor and covered in Coco-Puffs and rapidly cooling Earl Grey, she was simply ‘My Kate’.
I couldn’t do it.
Instead, I dropped the knife to the floor beside us, and ran my hand through her cereal and blood matted hair.
I never even realised at the time that I was stroking her with my slashed and mangled left hand.
In those precious seconds, time had turned back, and all the chaos and disorder brought not just by this morning but every morning for so many years, was gone.
I was simply a guy who had once loved a girl, and somehow it had all gone irrevocably wrong.
She was still unimaginably beautiful, even all fucked up
Even before the last ten hours, her eyes had sh
one less brightly than when we met, and her smile had become a guarded mask she presented to the world rather that an expression of joy and love.
She was still beautiful, though.
This was a new world we were waking up into, today. Perhaps we could find a way to turn the clock back – reclaim what was taken from us. Maybe it wasn’t too late. If I could make her see sense, maybe this whole horrible event could be the catalyst for her return to mental wellness.
Hope springs eternal.
I leaned forward and swept back her sodden hair. Then leaning closer I whispered into her ear, “I'm so, so sorry baby. We’ll find a way through this.”
I didn’t get to finish my romantic spiel, as I felt Kate’s knee smash into my balls, crushing them like two grapes.
They say that rage and adrenalin can imbue us with enhanced strength and dexterity…
I'm here to tell you this shit is true.
At least on a female’s part.
I don’t know when she’d come to or how in her present condition she’d found the strength to punish my testicles with such ferocity, but it felt like both my nuts had been knocked into my stomach.
Grunting, I rolled off my wife and collapsed into the foetal position amidst the morning’s debris. I was barely aware through the pain that I’d thrown up all over the floor and was squirming in a puddle of half-digested eggs and toast.
“The last supper”, said Kate, and she was laughing.
In no time she was on her feet and had a towel pressed to her crumpled nose with one hand, and that goddam knife in the other.
She stood over me and smiled. Even in what must have been a great deal of pain, she smiled.
Honestly...I couldn’t see the humour in the situation.
“You think you can take the Lords name in vain, Don?” she asked. “You think that now at the very end you get to drag me down with you?”
She was breathing heavily, perhaps from exhaustion or maybe from excitement. “All this time you’ve lied to me. Had me believing that you wanted to be saved too - that you WANTED a new life...a blessed life. All you really ever wanted was to revel in your sin.”
Consumed - Volume 1: An Extreme Horror Anthology. Page 9