A Spectre Appeared

It begins with me, being a complete asshole as always. Why she ever agreed to marry me, is beyond my understanding. Thinking about it now, all the reasons I fell in love with her, were exactly the same reasons I started taking her for granted. She was just too nice, you know what I mean? There was no challenge in her: in my marriage, in my life, and I blamed her for it all.

It wasn’t long before I hated the way she ate; the way she slept, the way she looked at me when I was being a complete arse, and the way she never stood up to me. It was all her fault, it had to be. Who could blame me for spending my nights getting drunk in the scum-filled bars of town, hoping to get a knee-trembler from some gin soaked skank at the end of the night, before stumbling back to my miserable life, and I did, you know, more than once.

That’s when it happened. I did what I always did, I opened my big bloody mouth when I should have stayed dumb. He looked normal, nice even. He listened to me whinging most to of the night, while our glasses went from full to empty, to full again. I’m not sure when he asked me the question, but I sure remember the answer, “God damn right, I wish she was gone.” He looked so normal.

He left me there, drinking, talking shit, and trying to get lucky. I was so drunk by the time I got home, I didn’t even notice if she were in the bed, or not, I just passed out. When I woke, strong mid-day sun was streaming through the window. I looked over and the bed was empty, I tried to rub the pain from my head and the dust from my mouth, but that was a permanent fixture of my life of late. Instead, I slept. When I woke again, the light was weaker, and the house was silent.

I didn’t worry at first, I just enjoyed the silence. When night fell and the front door was open, I began to worry. Her car was in the drive and all her clothes were in the wardrobe. Inside me, something was struggling to raise its head from the drunken swamp that was my life. By the next day, I had to call the police. Her phone was on the bedside table, her wallet was in the kitchen, that was when I remembered him, the normal guy.

The questions came in the thousands, the answers were all the same, “I don’t know.” Days went by, weeks, TV cameras gathered, and I stayed hidden. I wondered how he had done it; I wondered if it had been quick, or if he had taken his share before it was time. Most of all, I wondered if they would blame me for it all. That was when it happened.

She appeared before me like a spectre, her face white with rage, the normal guy standing by her shoulder.

“You’re alive!” I yelled standing with my arms outstretched to hold her. The steel flashed through he air like a spark, I nearly didn’t feel the sting of it, bite into my wrist. My hand fell to the table with a wet thud, blood spat into the air from the stump I still held aloft. She looked at me with nothing but hatred, the samurai sword trembling in her grip, her lip quivering with emotion.

“You bastard,” she said, lifting my lifeless hand from the table, feeding my blood soaked finger into her mouth, before sucking greedily. She yanked my dead flesh from her mouth, and dropped it on the table before me. She spat a ring of gold into her palm, and said, “This is mine.”

They ran hand in hand from the house, giggling like high teenagers. She ran into the night, clutching something shiny, damn her to hell.