The Light of Day
ngela killed her husband tonight. It was slow and painful as she
watched him bleed profusely over the toilet bowl. His mouth was
gushing a river of blood mixed with tiny shards of glass which she had
mashed up and mixed in with his mug of warm Cappuccino. He
groped his neck, his bloody tongue hanging south toward the
bathroom floor as she stood outside the door, in horror, watching him
die.
Both of her trembling hands were cupped over her mouth and her eyes were swelling with tears. She wondered if this was too extreme for him......but she knew better. Die, you motherfucking rotten yuppie bastard she thought as Mike fell over and hit the side of the bath tub and rolled onto the floor still grabbing at his glass filled throat as his lacerated mouth made horrible gurgling noises . She made the coffee lukewarm on purpose so he�d gulp it down at breakfast with the tiny shards of glass resting in the bottom of the cup.
Just minutes before, they were both getting ready for work, each bustling around the kitchen, not uttering a word to one another since last night�s latest eruption. She made the coffee as he buttered two rolls with spicy mustard preparing ham sandwiches for his lunch at the office.
�You want coffee?� she asked him impatiently, expecting him not to answer.
�Yeah.� was all he said, as he cut the giant ham into thin slices and placed them delicately on the bread. She brewed the percolator and prepared both their mugs with sugar and Hazelnut cream. When he searched inside the refrigerator for the pickles was when she added her film canister of crushed glass into his mug. She mixed it around and around and turned the stove down to medium.
She turned and washed the spoon feeling the red, ripe wound across her lower back. Last night was their worst fight yet. They had been married for 12 years and the last three of them were total Hell. His drinking was steadily increasing to over a twelve-pack of beer a night followed by his crude attempts at making love to her in his drunken stupor. He was a very responsible person and dedicated to his work. His income was just over sixty-five thousand and he took care of all the bills but he still did nothing for his relationship with Angela and nothing to get help to stop drinking. The disease which was handed down to him by his father�s genes and example had progressed slowly but surely.
When she met him at the night-club fifteen years ago and he was the gleam in her eyes that never tarnished. They did everything together and loved each other madly not wanting to be apart not for one moment. They married in the summer of 1985 in their hometown of Regnipaw Falls and then moved away to Chandler Arizona five years ago when Mike got his promotion and transfer. They were both on top of the world back then. Mike had always told her he would love her forever and would take care of her and their impending children. Something they both wanted back then, but neither had talked about in some time now.
The fight started at five thirty when Mike came home with a half empty twelve pack under his arms and a fresh beer can in his other hand. Angela was at the counter carving a plump pink ham she had baked all afternoon and she even topped it with sliced pineapples and some cherries. He dropped the twelve-pack down on the kitchen table, spilling a few cans of beer from the carrying case. One of them dropped to the floor and burst, spraying the table and floor with sticky, frothy beer.
�I just cleaned those floors, Mike!� She screamed at him, forgetting about the ham for now.
�Well....think of...all that beer I.... just wasted,� he said in a drunken slur, practically burping the last few words. He clumsily reached down for the can that was still spurting beer from top. �What�s dat? A pig?� he asked as he bent over the floor and fumbled for the can laughing to himself. He straightened back up as best he could and was barely able to put the can back down on the table.
�You�re drunk again, aren�t you?� she asked, knowing full well that he was down right polluted.
�Yep,� he said matter of factly. �I�ll jes git dees.....cloth�s off.......and be back down fer da game.� he said tugging at his tie and collar. �Don�t bother makin me a plate...........I ate at da bar......stinks anyway.� he told her making a face like he was smelling fresh dog shit for the first time in his life. And then he swirled around, went off balance, and then stood up straight and slumbered out of the kitchen toward the stairs. Angela was furious. He�d come home like this for the past three nights. He was wasted and wanted nothing more than to watch the basketball game and drain the rest of his beer. She had even called him at work that afternoon and asked if he�d like a nice home- cooked dinner with all the fixings. She rented The Joy Luck Club from the video store and thought they were to have a quiet evening together for a change. Instead he came home with the twelve pack with hopes of watching basketball.
She wasn�t just furious. She was ballistic. With the oven mit still on her hand she went to the table and picked up the remainder of his beer and ran into the hall and threw it toward him with one giant heave. As he reached the first stair, the twelve-pack nailed him hard in the corner of his back. He fell backwards and slipped off the stair and onto the tile floor as the beer carrier ripped apart and cans burst from their tops and started spraying everywhere. He smacked his back onto the unforgiving tile and his head hit next, the back of his skull taking the brunt of it. And for a brief minute, she thought she had killed him. But in seconds he was up, the drunken stupor look on his face now replaced with raging anger.
�Serves you right, you lousy drunk.� she spat, and she turned and stormed back into the kitchen. She thought that he would just stand there and realize how mad she really was this time and then go on about his business. But as she walked back into the kitchen she heard the hallway closet door open for a second or two and then slam shut again quickly. She reached the island in the middle of the kitchen and picked up her knife from the counter and was about to resume carving the ham when his footsteps were behind her and the her legs buckled from underneath and pain thrashed up and down her spine like an earthquake. She crumpled to the floor like wax as Mike stood over her with his 1-iron grasped between his clinched hands. He looked down at her his eyes bulging and grinned. That�s when she saw the monster inside of him come out. The boozing and partying was about to unleash in a way that she�d never seen before.
�Fore!!!!� he screamed in her face as she reached for her back which was already starting to swell from the blow. He threw the club into the living room, smashing the lamp his mother and father had given them for an anniversary present three years ago. �You fucking, bitch!! You want some more??� he yelled down at her as she quivered from his bellowing beer breath. She shook her head and pleaded and then he reached up on the counter and grabbed a piece of the still hot ham. �You want a nice dinner tonight? Huh? Huh?� And then he took the piece of ham and shoved it into her mouth like some sickening wedding tradition, only with tears of pain and fresh ham instead of tears of joy and cake with icing. She gagged and convulsed and nearly vomited from his thrusts into her mouth. He then got down on one knee and spoke to her in a steady monotone voice through gritted teeth. �I�m going to kill you, Angela. Keep it up, and I�m gonna end your miserable existence, you bitch.� He got up and ripped the buttons off the front of his shirt and threw it aside on the floor. She thought he was going to rape her but instead he grabbed another piece of ham and chomped it down like he was a savage. He wiped his honey-glazed hands and turned around and walked down the hall and picked up the beer cans that weren�t broken. �Thanks for dinner, bitch!� he yelled into the kitchen as he trudged up the stairs cradling his precious beer.
Angela laid on the floor for a good half an hour before she finally got up. She wanted to make sure he wasn�t coming back down before she cleaned up the tainted diner and then went into the bathroom and rubbed cream onto the red welt across the bottom of her back. She was a tough woman but not this tough.
She sat on the couch for the next few hours and waited for him to fall asleep before she went out back with an empty wine bottle and broke it across the back steps. The noise was loud but she knew he couldn�t hear a thing. He was in La-La land for the rest of the night. She went to into the garage with the bag of broken glass and then took his hammer out of his tool box and hammered the fragments of glass into tiny shards. Drinking problem or not........Mike was a monster, but to her and her only. And although even if she�d rationalized and came to her senses, she�d still find another way to make him pay for the last three years of drunken hell he�d put her through. The little slaps had progressed to hard backhands and last night was the straw that broke the camels back. She not only wanted it to stop, she wanted revenge. She smiled and stared down at the sparkling glass as she hammered away in the garage, Mike oblivious to what she was doing.
She finally crept to the couch exhausted after cleaning up the mess. She laid there at the crack of dawn and waited for him to wake, but fell asleep instead not hearing him wake a half an hour later to go to the bathroom. Her film canister of glass was tucked safely away under her pillow.
As Mike twisted and convulsed on the bathroom floor, Angela felt the pain of the 1-iron across her back as she rethought what had happened last night. Her hands were cupped over her trembling lips as she uttered silent words under her breath. Just die........Just die you, yuppie bastard!!! But Mike wasn�t about to die, as he reached for the side of the tub with a bloody hand. He tried to get up, but was vomiting too much blood. The floor became messy and Angela found herself wondering when she was going to get the time to clean it up. She had tennis lessons at 10:30 and then an aerobics class at 12:30.
Mike�s hand dropped down to the floor as the glass inside his stomach and throat cut some more tissue and sliced at his tonsils when he puked it back up. Seconds later, to Angela�s delight, he swallowed his tongue and writhed there for what seemed an eternity before his hands hit the floor and then lie still. His eyes remained open, staring ahead at the white ceiling as his mouth groped for words that would never come. Finally, his chest rose once more and then lay still as his white Cardigan dress shirt soaked up the red blood like a sponge.
After she was sure he was dead, Angela dropped her hands from her mouth and just stood there for a moment wondering what the hell she had just done. After a while, his body sickened her and she could look no more. She hobbled back to the kitchen and leaned over the sink trying to vomit, but nothing would come up. Instead she poured herself a cup of the lukewarm coffee and took it to the table and sat down. She sipped the murky liquid thinking of what to do next. She was going to go to the phone and cancel her tennis appointment but decided against it. She thought about what to do next, biting her manicured nails for the first time in years. The mess in the bathroom was much more than she had expected. She then suddenly felt too tired to do anything at all. Her wet eyelids drooped down and she did all she could to keep them open.
She got up from the table and lazily made her way to the sink and dumped her coffee down the drain. She placed the mug into the sink, not noticing the white, clumpy powder in the bottom of her cup. That was when she saw the prescription sleeping pill bottle on the window sill. Mike had filled it for her the day before and now it stood there empty as could be with the morning sun making its way over the mountain top. The 40 sleeping pills in the jar were now gone. She looked down in the sink and then saw the white powder staring back up at her from the bottom of her mug. That�s when the reality hit her. Mike was up early too preparing his own sugar substitute for her coffee. The pills went to work and she then went cross-eyed and dropped to the floor like a sack of potatoes. Her soft skull hit the tile floor fracturing it and she lay there still.................... never again to wake and see the light of day.
