[Summer Contest Entry 2015] marriage

Once in a while - not often, but not only once - I picture killing my husband. I imagine cracking his lovely skull at the corner of our Mahogany table, unspooling his brains, if there's any. Blood would be sprayed all over my shirt, warm and sticky like his semen (only this is dark and leaves a reddish stain that is hard to clean). Some from the wound would trickle down on his face to make a puddle on our living room floor. I would stare down at his bloodshot eyes as he breathes his last breath, smiling. See the light at the end of the tunnel, honey? I hope what he's seeing is my sexy me, me at my Victoria Secret lingerie, the body that he will no longer taste once he's up there in heaven.

I've seen my husband dead for less than a hundred times already - sometimes from accidents, but mostly I killed him - and somehow they always end up with him managing to say I love you, baby before coughing, choking, and finally kissing life goodbye. Such is his love for me. Lucky me, I don't have the mental ability to think of the dirty work that should come after: hiding the body, cleaning up the mess, burning the evidence. It's all Agatha Christie-complicated and it actually bores me. Taking his life is the only thing that thrills. After each and every daydream I would ask myself if there's anything wrong with me, or with how my head works, and then I would be comforted by the voice - my own giddy, cheerleader-ish voice - that comes after a minute: No, of course not! What you are experiencing is just a part of having a married life! Jeez, relax. All married women experience this. It'll pass.

It didn't.

The delusions of me murdering my sweet, charming California guy grew stronger every day. When I'm cooking dinner I imagine driving the knife deep into his heart. Suddenly the potatoes I'm peeling look like his head. I considered pouring bleach on his porridge, drop the mothballs in his morning coffee. What's that? I imagine him asking when he saw. Sugar, honey. You like three? because he likes them sweet. And he would drink it, a sweet death, and that would be the end of him.

Please don't give him (or me) a wrong impression. I love my husband, more than anyone or anything else, and I'm sure he loves me too – or at least he’s in love with my vagina and can’t betray it. He has never cheated on me, or abused me, or did anything remotely illegal to mess up our relationship. I haven't, too. When I first met him I already know what kind of man he is: sweet, honest, nurturing. How can you not love someone who brings you flowers and chocolates every 14th of the month? Massages your back every other night? Helps you do all the housework even if he’s tired from work? (And makes you reach orgasm twice, before he does).

When I first met him it was through a blind date. He and I have a common friend who introduced us. I can still remember our first date. At first he was nervous, but when I convinced him that I am not going to eat him, he began to relax. He was wearing a crisp black suit and tie – fresh from work (and also as if he’s ready to be buried, but I don’t think of it that way back then) – and he reserved the whole restaurant for me to feel special. (He was really rich). The dull, yellow glow of the candles. The high arc ceiling and the sparkling chandeliers above. The languish steak. The sound of our utensils, our laughter, and the violin that was played after we ate. It was a perfect night (with a minor incident explained later on), like any other nights in Jane Austen’s novels.

We danced that night, and during the nights of our following rendezvouses. He introduced me to his co-workers, to his friends, to his neighbors (who are gossipy), and later, to his parents - who thought he was gay. I did the same for him. I moved in to his place. He proposed to me in France, in view of the infamous Eiffel bitch. We got engaged. We had a big wedding in a big church, here in California, me in an expensive wedding gown, tralalala. With a tiara! The only bride in San Francisco to have a tiara, how foolish of me! But he insisted, so…. Fairytales do come true! tralalala.

See, I love him. Crazy, madly, deeply. The first months of marriage were heaven. We fucked and fucked, and fucked more, but I couldn’t have a baby, which is cool. I don’t want one yet.

They say people change after marriage, but my husband didn’t. He remained loyal and faithful and silly and I love him. It’s just that, I must have overlooked one of his major qualities - one I thought wouldn’t be a big deal for us - during the entire process of our being together.

He is the clumsiest, most careless, most reckless man I have ever known.

Every night he manages to trip over our carpet floor and sustain a head wound by hitting his head somewhere. Sorry, baby. Must have been the carpet. Often he would drop a spoon or fork while having breakfast, and he would hit his head for getting it under the table. He would slip on the bathroom floor and lose a tooth, or cut open his chin when shaving his mustache. He would bleed, a lot, for watching TV, and when you ask him what happened he would just shrug his shoulders and admit that he's got no idea.

I don’t know where he got this recklessness. His folks and family seem normal. I just keep thinking that I should have known he would be like this, back then when he accidentally hit a candle during our first date and set our table ablaze.

My husband loves gravity more than his wife, and I’m starting to get jealous. I had removed the carpet, but always he would find a way to fall, often face first, in order to inflict himself an injury. Damn this – whatever object is nearest. Sorry, baby. I think I – whatever happened to his body part/s. I had practically removed every piece of furniture in our house to protect him, but nothing can protect him from himself. He just attracts so much danger, I thought –

I might as well kill him myself.

So now, I cooked up a plan. Tomorrow, when we go to Hawaii to spend summer, I will get him drunk in our hotel room and finally, oh yes, finally I will put my imaginations to use. I will kill my husband and stage it as suicide or something like an accident, him jumping - or tripping, yes, that’s very like him – from the window of the 10th floor. Of course, I’ll make sure he’s dead. I’ve read manuals in the internet. I've watched tutorials on YouTube on how to locate and erase your fingerprints without using blue lights they use on TV.

He’s been very disturbed lately, I will tell the reporters, I’ve seen marks on his wrists but I, I – here I will have to be a real crying jag, snot-appearance included – he didn’t told me anything! I know he got problems but – cry, cry, cry. I will probably bring my sister so I can strengthen my alibi, tell the police I was out with her swimming during the time of the crime.

Oh gosh. I can feel it now! My palms are beginning to sweat with excitement. Haha! I’m finally going to kill my husband!

“Baby, I’m home!” My husband enters the house and got his pinky finger pinched by the closing door behind him, as it always does. “Oww!“

“Honey, what happened?” I call out to him from the kitchen. I was cooking dinner.

“Nothing, baby.” I can tell he's sniffing the air. “Mmmm. Smells good. What’s that?”

3 years of marriage, †˜til death do us part. Eat and be merry for tomorrow you shall die.

Later, when I set the pot roast on the table and served him a meal, I made him remember our first date, on how the chandeliers glow above the bright yellow candle – and on how he burned down our table. As we both chew on the pig’s meat, its natural oil moistening our lips, I thought how I have overlooked - at the day we first met – one of his most obvious, distinctive, repulsive qualities. And on how he may have overlooked mine.

Although once in a while – not often, but not only once – I see fear when I look at my husband’s bloodshot eyes.

This was pretty dark and I loved it! Gave me a bit of Gone Girl vibe if you've ever seen that movie. I love how they live life like nothing's wrong, but seeing the inner workings of the main character clearly break that. It also makes me wonder what might be wrong with the husband as well. I'm sure he's got his own problems.

There were a few tense inconsistencies, but overall good. Also, you meant the Eiffel Tower, correct? I believe it's in France, and not Italy.

Well, that's a yandere if I ever saw one. Good on you for the entry, Chronus.

Oh, yes! Urgh. Anyway, thank you for the kind words.

Your main character is clearly crazy, and I like how your story is basically going through her thought process and you see what makes her tick. It isn't just, "Yeah, she's crazy." You leave this conclusion to the reader, which is something that not every writer does.



I like how the last line is a call back to the first line of the story, and there's some nice implications there. You dedicated the story to convincing the reader that she's crazy and then in one line, to me, you hint that she may not be very good at hiding her murderous thoughts from her husband.

Thanks for appreciating that last line, d. And to tell you more about it, when I was starting to write this entry, I only had the first and last sentence in mind.

Sometimes that's all it takes to get something going.