Funny that I ended up back here. This used to be my best hiding place, a place to lay low until he calmed down, calmed down enough to just beat me but not kill me. Now it's my hiding place for a different reason, not because I'll get away with it, but just for a moments peace, a moment of trees and fresh air before the clanging of metal becomes my life. When they find me here, they'll talk about dragging me from the brush behind the long-closed steakhouse, how I gave no assistance but also no resistance, how I seemed cold and unresponsive, as murderers often are. They can say what they want. I learned a long time ago how to check out, how to be in that white room of light no matter what was really going on, how to stay checked out long enough to clean the blood, my blood, out of the carpet, long enough to pick up the broken glass, long enough to fool myself into thinking it would get better, maybe stop, someday.
It stopped today.
Maybe they'll call it a crime of passion, but they'd be wrong. Survival, fear, dread... these are the only concepts left to me. Passion? Just a long ago memory of caring that seems like it should have a place in my heart somewhere, but doesn't. It was a crime of elimination. Not of eliminating him, but the elimination of all other choices. You can't give what you don't have, and the demands were never going to stop, never. Not without a drastic change, and since he never changed, I did it for him. I saved him the trouble of years of counseling, years of trying to figure out who's fault it was that his life wasn't perfect, not that any of that would have happened. He'd have just gotten older, and meaner, until the day he decided he had every right to kill me. The cat eventually kills the mouse when the entertainment of it all is gone. Maybe that would have been a crime of passion, but not this.
He might have seen it in my eyes. I almost never looked him straight in the eye, choosing to avoid contact so as not to draw his anger, but I did today. He lay in bed expecting his coffee to be brought to him, his face contorting in anger because he saw no cup, a flash of realization that I was looking directly at him, and for just a moment, he looked directly back at me. In his eyes I saw anger and venom, yes, but what else I saw was...delight? Was he actually glad to have any reason to be violent? I don't know what he saw in my eyes, but I know he'd never seen it before... and never again, I guess. If he'd looked away, it might have saved his life, but he seemed fascinated by my stare. He never saw the knife as it popped through his skin and into his heart. As I see it, if I wasn't supposed to succeed I'd have hit a rib or something, but that didn't happen. There was none of the drama that they show on T.V., no final words, no death scene. He was, and then he wasn't. I didn't feel happy, or sad, or anything really except for the first time in twenty years I was gonna get my cup of coffee before he got his. Well, at least before he got his cup of coffee. The news will probably make a big deal about the blood on the handle of my cup.
The helicopter is circling above me now, so I'll take as many breaths of fresh air as I can, see the beauty in the trees, and be the only one who knows my life just got better.

Want to comment on this Flash Fiction? Sign up to Edit Red and you will be able to comment on Flash Fiction and get access to: Upload your own stories and poems, get readers and their feedback, promote your work...