Worth

She wanted to write the words that might kill her.


Kill is a little drastic, but partially true. The urgency is conveyed. Maybe it isn't all that drastic.


She stowed the notebook and the marker, in a superficial show of secrecy. They knew she had these things. Probably read every word she wrote.


They were coming. Coming for what, she didn't know. She never knew. As far as she could tell she had been in this room for just over two months and no one ever really explained much. They gave her some pills. Something to numb. They made sure she was eating and shitting.


Then they left. They left and there wasn't much left to do but count the cinderblocks and eat her fingernails.


Maybe it hadn't even been two months. Initially she'd slept a lot and there was probably a lot of skewed time in that. Still, it had been a while.


She wondered about her kids. She wondered about her husband, how he was coping with diapers. All these concerns were huge but they ignored the immediate position she was in.


These were the facts, as she recalled them:


It had been a stormy afternoon - her favorite kind - and when the kids came home from school they went over test scores and homework. They had a muffin. They went outside. She sat down with a book and a blanket. The baby pulled out every toy in existence and proceeded to wreck any sense of order in the room, and things were fine.


The doorbell donged, and for some reason she got up and went to the door. This was abnormal. She must have known.


She saw a face she'd blocked from her mind for years. Her blood suddenly cracked within her veins. So many scenarios went through her head and she was not in any position to deal with any of them. All she could think was that her hair was unwashed and greasy and why hadn't she washed it? She would have, if she'd known today she would become a murderer.


The kids ran past, a background to the loathed face she was now confronting. The baby babbled inside, oblivious.


"I knew I'd see you again," he said quietly. "You know you've thought about it."


His words came out of his mouth like rancid fat, clumping through his damn clustered teeth and oozing grease down his chin. Though there was none in sight, the smell of Crown Royal and the dank clink of lakewater in a cove of raw stone overwhelmed her.


She had never told anyone about that day on the river, the day that had turned light and friendly fun into shame and violation. It hadn't even been a date. They'd just gone on a whim. An outing with friends that had since been branded in her mind as a day of invasion, blood, drunken whispers, pain and shame.


And now here he was. Why? What could possibly be the reasoning behind hunting down someone who would like nothing more than to erase your existence from memory?


What did he want?


She thought of all the things she had said she would do in this situation. The things she would say and the things she had threatened a thousand times in her mind. Instead, she shut the door. Sat down in her chair.


Decision. She got up, walked with purpose to the garage, and strode back to the door. He was still standing there, like he'd known all along she would come back. This infuriated her even further, because how dare he? How could even even assume, after all this time, that he might know what she would do?


He didn't. He couldn't have. But she did. And she knew what to do. Fifteen years had led to this moment.


Breathe. Breathe.


She walked toward the door. Breathe. Breathe.


In one motion she opened the door, smiled. He opened his mouth to speak, which was quite convenient for her, since it provided a view of the point of the ice pick she jammed down his throat. His screams, if that's what they were, wheezed out along the sides of the handle with an accompanying spray of spit, mucous, and blood.


She watched his eyes. The only part of him she hadn't seen that day was the only thing she wanted to focus on now, and as the life left, she saw that he wasn't even surprised. That was a comfort, strangely, and as his blood ran over her hands, she marveled at how silky and black it was.


He fell, as did she.


His sentence served, she looked on him without hate for the first time.


They later found the two of them, limp in the doorway. Her hand clenched the ribbed wooden handle as it entered his head, and his hands were splayed at his sides, upturned as if in offering.