The Devil's Box Part 2

Acedia

“Sorry it took so long. There was construction on Pine and the lines at the grocery store were outrageous. I should be able to get dinner on the table in about thirty minutes.”

As she carted the hefty bags to the kitchen careful not to drop the carton of eggs she had wedged between her chest and chin she waited for the complaint about dinner being late or the fact that she had gone out in sweatpants again. He said nothing, not even a hello or a where the hell did you get groceries? Mars?

She didn’t like the insults but at least it was some kind of communication. Lately it seemed her husband hadn’t wanted to communicate at all. At first she wondered if he was changing his ways, cutting back on the biting comments and trying to make amends for all of the bad times and bruises, but she noticed it wasn’t him coming around to treating her better at all. When she would look into his light eyes he would simply be in another place, his mind far away probably thinking about the coming hunting season or the repairs he needed to do on the truck. Then he’d come around and ask her what she meant by scaring him – that he was just watching some television?

So now, instead of yelling, he was ignoring her and she didn’t know how to feel about it.

After a few more trips he still hadn’t acknowledged that she was home and it was beginning to piss her off. Being his wife he should at least say hello she thought. She cooked, cleaned, took care of him, of his dogs, his friends, always had dinner on the table at a decent hour and never had a bad word on her mouth for him. All he had put her through and now he was going to add ghosting her to it? There was no way she was going to let him get away with it. But there he was, his beer half full on the side table, his shoes in the middle of the living room floor and the tv was on some horrible sitcom she couldn’t remember him ever watching before.

She called out to him, “Harry? You awake?”

She wanted to touch him but the years of feeling his vice grip bruising her arm stopped her. If he was asleep he would not be happy that she woke him or that there wasn’t dinner on the table. Instead she leaned forward to take his beer, she would replace it when he was eating, but when she caught sight of him he wasn’t moving. She couldn’t hear his breath, there was no snoring, and his chest wasn’t rising as it should. Could he be dead? Her heart fluttered at the thought. Please let him be dead!

She crossed to the front of his chair, slowly pressed her fingers to his throat looking for a pulse. There wasn’t one. She let out a sigh and her mind flew in a million different directions. She could live now – finally live! She and the baby growing inside her belly could get in the car and drive and never look back. She let out a small laugh that grew into a manic episode. It was such a relief to be free of her demon.

“Goodbye Harry you rotten son of a bitch. All the beatings and the hospital visits, all of your efforts to kill me and it looks like you went first.” She leaned in to whisper to the man she had despised for ten years, “No one is going to miss you. I hope you burn in hell.”

Those light grey eyes opened, his hand clutched her throat and the blackness of eternity slunk around the edges of her sight. His last words to her echoed in the dark, in whatever hell he had left her in.

“No one escapes the box.”

  

Ira

She was taking up the whole of his doorway with her slim, wiry frame effectively keeping him from closing the door on her. There had been tears and anger and pleading all in the past thirty minutes and he was no closer to changing his mind.

“I know you love me. You can’t push me away like this! All the time I’ve given you, everything I do for you, do you even notice? Do you appreciate it? How can you say you don’t love me?”

“What are you talking about? I have been pushing you away since the beginning and I have never been in love with you. Here you come banging on my door in the middle of the night again obviously drunk and talking about God if I know. How did you find my place this time?”

Her makeup was running down her face, her hands were puffy from beating on the door and she was only half dressed. When he had answered the door she had tried to throw herself at him, stripping to show him what he could be having now. He noticed there was even an overnight bag on the steps. Had she actually thought he was going to let her stay the night he wondered?

“I always know where you are at all times. You are in my heart. We’re linked. What do I have to do to convince you that we are meant to be? I’ll do anything you want.”

He blew out a frustrated sigh. “I want you to leave and never come back.”

Her wail pierced the night like a coyote on a full moon. He knew soon the neighbors would be turning on lights and calling the police. “I can’t leave! You’re my life! I don’t know what I would do without you.”

He couldn’t take it anymore. He shoved her as hard as he could without pushing her down the front steps. “I don’t give a shit what you do as long as you don’t bother me. I will never love you. I don’t even know you. And now I have to move again, change my number again all because your twisted mind thinks you love me.”

His wife’s voice floated down from the stairs, “Honey, is everything all right? Do I need to call the police?”

“Its fine Sara, go back to bed.”

When he turned back to the door her face had gone deadly pale and he couldn’t be sure but it looked like the night had gotten darker. Where had the streetlights gone? And the stars?

“Is that her?” Her growl brought his thoughts back to her. “Is that the whore you replaced me with?”

“She is my wife. We have been married for three years, long before I ever met you. Now get off my property and don’t bother ever coming back.”

The tears returned. “What’s my name?”

He had the door ready to slam but the question shocked him a little. He didn’t know. In all the letters she had left, all the phone calls, the strange meetings in the grocery store or the library, in all the time she had stalked him she had never once given her name. “I don’t know. Please go.”

He didn’t see it but he sure felt the knife as it slid cleanly into his ribcage. “It’s Sara. And it’s time to come home.”

This is the second installment of The Devil's Box micro series. Look for the third part next Thursday.