|
|
Dinner was always when the shit hit the fan. My dearest wife always has something to say between each bite of the meal she only spent the last hour making. The food is raw, the stove is broken, I should have been a repair man. The the food is burnt, the gas valve is broken, I should have been a fireman to give her peace of mind. The food is bland, these spices are useless, I should have been a merchant to get her the good stuff. Each and every time I’d tell her she’s the one who married the town accountant. I’d discard my miserable meal in the trash and crash under the covers of my bed, hoping to be asleep before she could retire to my side. One night I came home to nothing. No smoke from a burnt dinner, no swearing at food not cooking fast enough, just a quiet kitchen. It was nice. I scraped together a decent meal from the scraps in the cabinets and ate in peace. My wife arrived home just past midnight. She had flecks of aqua lichen in her hair that glowed in the lightless room. I barely cared to ask her where she had been, but my mother taught me better than to completely ignore my spouse (or more accurately, my father taught me that lesson after killing her for it). Jean said she met up with a group of other ladies just outside the graveyard to clean the resting place of those accused as witches decades ago. I just shrugged and rolled over into sleep. That became our new routine. I’d come home to an empty house, empty kitchen, make a quick meal to fill my stomach, and my wife would return sometime past midnight with glowing hair. That lasted a little over a week before my stomach hurt from the cheap food. Besides my aunt’s pampering of me after my mother’s death doomed any meal I would try to make. I began confronting my wife. I told her that she either needs to actually do something worthwhile in her free time (like make money), or be here so that I could function enough at work to do so. Even her begrudging meals were better than starving or sickness. Jean rebelled. She started coming home later and later each day. I started staying up late just to confront her, but she never budged. It was right after the first snowfall that I escalated our conflict. If those women were going to stand out in the snow for hours digging up graves that get swamped in moss and lichen overnight, they would need another member. We may hate each other’s guts, but she was all I had left, what with my aunt being taken by a heart attack and my father never having stopped muttering about the whispers saving him from my mother’s silence. I threatened to go with her and confront those ladies myself if she didn’t stay inside (anywhere at all) until the end of winter. This somehow worked. She was there when I came home the next day, swearing a storm at the stove that hadn’t been started in weeks. Our old ‘conversations’ resumed too, but they were slightly different. The food is raw, the stove is broken, she should have cooked at Mary’s place instead. The food is burnt, the gas valve is broken, she could have used this broken valve to melt all the snow and get out of here. The food is bland, these spices are useless, the weeds she pulled from around those graves would have more flavor. My new tell off was that she could live in the crypts for all I cared, just don’t linger outside. Then I stormed away, braced the chill to dump the trash in the bin, secured the lid, and sulked off to bed. A month into the snow she stilled. She cooked quietly and served each meal with a sweet smile. Even the food was in a better mood, if not over salted. After three days she asked me to pick up a large amount of rat poison. She wanted to kill the raccoons that were throwing the trash outside the can every other morning. So I did, happy for the fighting to have stopped, thinking, maybe this common enemy could bring us closer together too. When I came home with the bag of waxed cubes, she thankfully dragged them out to the trash and dumped them inside. She came back inside with a skip in her step and finished the soup on the stove. She handed me my serving with an extra broad smile. When I took a sip I knew why, there was a hint of fish under the standard salty taste. Fish is hard to get in the dead of winter like this. But I didn’t buy it when I got groceries… she must have gone to the market. I shouldn’t have been mad, there may have been other explanations, but I was furious. I was only safe in these storms because my car got me there, but she walked even after we’d argued for weeks that she shouldn’t do so. Has she been sneaking out? Is that why she’s been so happy? I stood to confront her, then my legs buckled under me. My vision blurred as I hit the floor, her shiny black shoes the last thing I saw. When I awoke, my face burned with the wind, my fingers and toes were stiff and blue, and my shivering felt like a self-contained earthquake. Rope bound my limbs and a tarp dragged me through the snow as I tried to orient myself to where I was. Someone chuckled, an ancient sound, as they swept me in front of them. I slid about 10 feet across ice topped with snow. I wriggled to my feet catching only a glimpse of the radioactive glow of my capture’s hair before the ice gave way. The frigid water of the river swept over me, me locking me in place, alone in the dark water.
Sam Kaufman is a writer from Connecticut. She started avidly writing in her sophomore year of high school doing both novels and short stories. She mostly writes dystopian tales but occasionally slips into fantasy as it is her favorite genre to read.
Sam Kaufman is a writer from Connecticut. She started avidly writing in her sophomore year of high school doing both novels and short stories. She mostly writes dystopian tales but occasionally slips into fantasy as it is her favorite genre to read.