Horror Snippets #4 The Ends of a Sentence

The Ends of a Sentence

Jon sat down at the kitchen table, finally ready to kill his wife.  It had taken him two years to work up to this point, which on the surface seemed a long time, but he’d been married to her over forty years and had had nothing but time to study her the last fifteen since he’d retired.  In perspective, two years was hardly anything at all.
But during that short spell of time he’d been able to formulate exactly why it was he wanted her dead.  It wasn’t that she’d had the affair.  Martha had never told him, but he’d known her well enough to figure it out for himself.  He’d seen the signs.  Jon had had his own affair or two.  It wasn’t that he suspected the boys weren’t his.  They’d turned away from him even before leaving the house.
It was that now, after all these years, she was going to leave him.
Martha set his glass next to his bowl.  If she had her way, it would be the last time she’d ever do that.
“Do you know how much I love you?” he said to her.
She turned and stared at him quizzically.
“Well, of course I know you love me,” she said.
“No.  I said do you know how much I love you.”
She leaned against the sink and folded her arms, fixing him with a stare.
“No,” she said coolly, a slight smile playing across her face.  “How much?”
“So much that you are as much a part of me as me.  I know you, Martha.  I know everything you’ll do.”
She chuckled.  “And what am I going to do?”
He wanted to tell her what he knew she was planning, but that could wait.
“I can tell you you used too much salt in the soup.”  He dipped his spoon and slurped a mouthful.  “Exactly.”
“Aw phooey, you always say I use too much salt.  You know it even before you taste it.”
“Right.  You’ve been doing it for years.”  Jon nodded.  “You’ve been doing a lot of things for years.”
She stood and let her arms drop to her sides.
“Now what’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.  Just that we’ve been married, what, forty-two years now?  You get to know a person after a while.  You can predict them, know them in a way they may not even know themselves.”
“Oh really?  Well, what am I thinking now?”
“Now?  Oh, any number of things, I’d guess.  Mainly of which, what exactly your husband is up to.”
“Well, you don’t have to be a mindreader for that one.”
“It’s not mindreading.  And it’s not a joke, either.”  Jon pushed back the bowl and picked up his glass of water to take a long drink.  “I know you.”
“I see you just feel like being cryptic today.  Well, I’ve got things to do.”
Jon smiled.  Martha shook her head.  He took a folded sheet of paper out of his shirt pocket.
“Honey, could you read this?”
She stood and stared.  He could tell he’d upset her, but he merely held out the small scrap of paper until she came over and snatched it from between his fingers.
She stood back and unfolded it.
“‘I’ve got things to do.’  Jon, what is this?”
“That’s what you just said.”
“I just—oh, Jon, if you going to claim you know me so well you’ll have to do better than an expression I use all the time.”
“Point taken.”  Jon shrugged, the smile still on his face.  Her eyes danced all over him.
“Eat your soup.  What are you up to?”
“Nothing.  Not really.”
“I’m meeting Lois for bridge soon.  I need to get cleaned up.”
Bridge meant she was going to see him.
That was the only thing he didn’t know.  Who the man was intending to take his wife away.  It tore at him just as if someone were slowly tearing his arm off.  Confronting her on it would do no good.  Either she would deny it and they would descend into an argument or she would simply admit and defy him to do anything about it.  Both options would tear her further away.
So killing her was the only way he could keep them together.  After she was gone he would follow shortly after—he had something waiting in the basement for that.  But first, her.
“I don’t want you to go to bridge.  Stay here with me.”
“And what will you do with me?” she asked.  “Take me dancing?  Write me poetry?  Sing to me?”
Jon looked sheepish, she knew he couldn’t do any of those things.  It had been so long since he’d tried anything like that, but wasn’t love supposed to be beyond all that?  They still had intimacy which he thought was pretty good considering his sixty-seven years.  He knew she’d say something like that, but he didn’t have any defense for it.
“That’s what I thought.”  Martha’s voice shook him out of his thoughts.  “I’ll be gone about three hours and when I come back we can snuggle together and watch TV like you like.  We can watch whatever you want.”
He let her go upstairs and get cleaned up, letting his mind roam while she was out of the room.  If he let her go to him then she would be that much further gone from him, that much more not his, the tear that much deeper.  He felt it like a pain in his neck as real the socks on his feet or the seat of the chair beneath him.  Jon wondered if he would have this same resolve now if he were in front of the man stealing his wife.
“Well, I’m going,” she said once she came back downstairs.  “Stay awake if you can, but if not I’ll see you for breakfast.”
“Martha?”
“Yes?”  She turned to him.
“Would you look beneath the fishbowl on the mantle?”
“I need to go, Jon.  Later.”
“Martha, please.  It’ll take just a moment.”  She sighed, made a show of dropping her head and stalked over to the mantle.
She slipped a scrap of paper from beneath the fishbowl.  She looked at it, crumpled it up, uncrumpled it and looked at her husband.
“Jon, what’s the meaning of this?”
“What does it read?”
“You know what it reads.  How did you—”
“I told you.  I know you.  I love you.”
“And this is the way you show me how much you love me?”
“In a way, yes.”
She walked back over to him.  “All right, so you got me piqued.  How did you know I’d say that when I got to the door?”
“It’s easy by now.  I’d say it was about twenty years ago or so when I started to notice your patterns.  You know, how you react in certain situations.  The things you do, the things you say.  After so many years I realized it became… repetitive.”
“Are you saying after all these years that your wife is boring?”
“No-no, anything but.  I’ve always been fascinated by you, Martha.  I suspect that’s why I’m even able to pick up on these kinds of things.”  Jon put a hand on her hip and tried to draw her in.  She held still.
“You’re mad,” he said.
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.  I can tell by the way your eyebrows smush together like that and the way you fix your mouth.  I knew you would be.”
“Okay, now I am mad.  You’re saying you planned all this to upset me?”
“No.  I didn’t want to upset you.  It was kind of unavoidable.”
“What was ‘unavoidable’?  Jon, what are you up to?”
He smirked, but didn’t find any humor in what he was about to do.  Jon stood and walked over to the cabinet over the refrigerator.  Inside he’d left a notebook last night.
He turned to the first page and began reading to his wife.  Martha’s mouth dropped open as she listened in horror to him recount everything they’d both said and done since he’d entered the kitchen until now.
“Give me that!”  She snatched it out of his hands and began leafing through the pages.  “How long did it take you… to do this?” she asked once she was done.
“I couldn’t sleep last night.  I came down and started writing.  I guess… an hour or so?”
“Is there something wrong with you?  With your brain?”
He laughed.  “No.  Why would you ask that?  Martha, don’t you know how much I love you?”
She looked at him like he’d just walked off a spaceship.
“Don’t come near me,” he said.
“What?”
“That’s what you were about to say.  You were thinking it.”
“I said no such thing!”  Martha slid a foot back, the notebook slipping from her fingers.
“I know.  I said you were thinking it.”
“Jon, stop.”
“You’re scaring me,” they said together.
She put her hand to her mouth and Jon mirrored her.  He took out his pen and pad from his shirt pocket and began scribbling.
“I can’t—I can’t—” she began.
He tore off the tiny sheet of paper and held it up for Martha to see.
‘I can’t, I can’t,’ Martha babbled backing away from her husband.
She turned and fled upstairs, crying uncontrollably.
“Martha!” he called out to her.  Jon knew, but couldn’t bear to follow to see what was about to happen.  A second later he heard her slip, hit her face on the stairs and tumble back down.
By the time Martha reached the bottom step she was dead.  After a minute or two, he pushed himself over to her, to see what he’d done.
Those blank eyes stared at him.
Jon would have liked to have thought if he could have expressed in words how much he loved her it would have made a difference.  But he knew that she was just as set in her way as he was in his and there was nothing that could have been done to stop what she was going to do.  He pulled himself out of his chair, kneeling with her, stroking her hair and arranging her arms and legs so she’d be comfortable.  Jon kissed every corner of her face, over and over, trying to commit the dimensions of skin to memory with his lips, allowing himself the briefest of whimpers as he held her.
After a while he got up and went to the basement door.  He paused long enough to rub the dull ache at his neck.  It was already receding.  Jon looked at the notebook on the floor before going down.
There was so much more he would have liked to have written in there.

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Aaron Flyte was a jerk and he deserved to die. Andy would have described himself as seething as he drove the man who was blackmailing him to the nearest ATM to empty out his account. He had no clue how he was going to explain this to his wife, but it had to be done.

Andy's wallet was in Aaron's lap. Aaron had picked through it, removing cash and the debit card to the account Andy had so foolishly used for his paycheck and the erroneous funds that had made their way there as well.

Had he been able to wish for a person's death, certainly he would have done so upon Flyte. It would have been better had Aaron simply turned him in once he found out what Andy had been doing. It would have been a relief of sorts.

The lies had been long and enduring. Once Andy was thoroughly hooked, he honestly expected someone to tap him on the shoulder and say something to the effect of 'gotcha', but it never happened. No one ever came. It got easier and easier and Andy began to take more and more. By the time Aaron came along, Andy was so deep he didn't know where the lying ended and where he began.

"How long have you known?"

Flyte looked at him with that all-too knowing smile. “Long enough.”

Aaron let his hand hang out the window in that way people tended to do when they seemed to be relaxing on a drive in a way Andy had never been able to do. He had an enduring childhood phobia of a vehicle or some stationary object cleaving off his hand that kept all parts of him securely inside his vehicle.

Actually, it wouldn't be too bad of an idea if—

“Holy geez!” Aaron screamed, yanking his arm back inside the car. Andy glanced over and saw one hand firmly locked around his wrist. He didn't get too good of a look, but it almost looked like two fingers were missing from his hand.

Andy slowed for a light that had just changed, the cars in front of him surging back into the bloodstream of traffic.

“What the hell happened?” Andy asked.

“Turn around. You have to go back. You have to go back!” Aaron was on the point of hysteria. Andy saw the panic in a man's eyes just before pressing the gas again to keep up with traffic.

“Stop the car? Why?” Andy could feel a rising sense of superiority, though he didn't understand why.

“Please,” the other man said. “My fingers. They fell off.”

Andy felt more curiosity than panic. "Really?" he said. "Let me see." He reached over without looking and grabbed Aaron's wrist, holding it up to his face. He'd been wrong before. Aaron's index finger was still there it was only the thumb and middle fingers that were missing.

That was funny and Andy coughed a laugh before he could stop himself.

No, f you, Aaron.

Andy shoved the man's arm away, feeling him waning like a balloon with a fast leak, while Andy felt strong.

“Please stop the car and let me out. Let me get my fingers!”

“Sorry to break the bad news to you, Aaron,” Andy began in a low tone like he was letting him in on some big secret. “But your fingers are at least a half a mile back. On the off chance they didn't get run over or scooped up by some critter, you'll never find them. It's windy out there and those fingers probably rolled all over the street.”

“Oh, sweet Lord, I think I'm going into shock!”

“I'm surprised you're not already. Hey, how bad's the bleeding?”

“I'm not… it’s not… bleeding.”

That was odd, but Andy didn't really care. He stomped on the gas and weaved around a little Toyota in front of them.

“My ear!”

Aaron's agony was like manna. He wanted more. The speedometer crept up to fifty and Andy gave it a little more.

“What are you doing? Why won't you let me go?”

“Why won't I let you go? You? What have you been doing to me for the last two weeks, Aaron? What just happened to you is the least you deserve.” Andy gave the man a sideways glance before pumping the brake to keep from rear-ending a white pickup.

“Tell you what. You want to go get your fingers? Get out. Get out right now. You'll probably break an arm, maybe your tailbone. But people will probably stop for you and then you can get your fingers.”

Andy began swatting at him, then shoving him into the door. Sure, Andy was wrong for what he had taken, but he hadn't caused anyone agony. The company could go for years and never know the difference. Hell, they probably would never know if it weren't for someone like Aaron who wanted to ruin it. Andy had already begun the proceas to stop himself. It was like an addiction and he'd already planned his own intervention. He was going to quit.

But if Aaron had had his way that could never happen.

Andy blew through a red light, several honking horns trailing after them. His speed crept back up to forty.

“Oh, God, my teeth.”

His words sounded looser, like his tongue weren’t caged firmly inside his mouth. Andy chanced a few seconds for another look. Almost all of the uppers and lowers on the right side of his mouth were gone. A few of them were sitting on Aaron’s pant leg, strikingly white against the dark blue of his jeans. The man sneezed and the rest that had come loose that were still in his mouth clinkled across the dashboard and windshield.

Andy laughed.

It was the first time he’d had a laugh like that in probably months. It felt good. By the time he got his eyes focused and back on the road, he’d scraped bumpers with a blue Grand Am.  The driver screamed something at him he didn’t understand and that made him laugh even more. And when he laughed the second time he hit the gas again.

They were doing sixty now.

“Oh, no, my arm!” His elbow was resting against the door at an odd angle and the smile felt glued to Andy’s face.

“I’m gonna go for seventy,” he said. “I’ve never driven that fast off the freeway. What do you think?”

Aaron was babbling incoherently. He pulled at his tongue with his intact hand and it flopped into his palm. They flew past one of the branches of Andy’s bank.

“I didn't want to stop at that one,” he said. “No drive-thru.” Aaron was making a high-pitched sound, like a deep-throated screaming tea kettle. There was a red light ahead of them with cars four deep stopped at the intersection. Cross traffic had just begun moving, but Andy could beat them if he wanted.

He stomped on the gas, jumping into the incoming traffic lane, a car that had just rounded the corner drove onto the sidewalk to avoid them, the driver honking like he was communicating in Morse code.  Walls of traffic closed in from either side, one of those trucks with the tall, compact trailers rigged to it large in the passenger side window.

Andy’s tires chirped and the car leapt. Both men slammed back against their seats as the car fishtailed out of the intersection, weaving into a lane.  Andy screamed in victory, crushing the dome light of the car with his pumping fist. He felt blood trickle into his sleeve, but felt no pain.

“Come on, Aaron, how awesome was that?” he said.

The two men met eyes and he could see they were on opposite emotional ends. That was panic he was looking at. Abject terror if there ever were such a thing. He let off on the gas—

—just as Aaron Flyte’s head fell off.

It wedged between his legs, mostly upside down, nothing visible above the bridge of his nose. The empty cavern of his mouth seemed a perfect fit for the lump of a wallet merely an inch or two away.

But of course, Aaron had no need of his wallet anymore or the precious debit card inside. Andy snatched it away.

It didn’t even cross his mind that what had just happened was bad. He rolled down his window, finally taking his foot off the gas. He put his elbow up, feeling the stiff wind against his arm.

Hey, why not?

Andy put his hand up, his speed slowing to sixty, fifty-five. The wind felt nice between his fingers.

At forty-nine miles-per-hour, his index flew off. It didn’t hurt and Andy didn’t immediately notice. He was at forty-four and down to a ring finger and index left before he saw something was wrong.

“My fingers!”

He stomped on the brake to turn around and his hand fell off. It landed on his thigh like it was about to try for second base. Andy screamed, his foot coming off the brake.

A car honked past, far too close and he looked around. Traffic was coming fast and in a panic, he hit the gas. The car jetted back up to fifty and pressure in his nub of an arm eased.

Andy cradled his wounded arm to his chest, despite not being in actual pain. He kept the car between forty-five and fifty, a long stretch of road ahead with no traffic lights. He didn’t know how long he could go without stopping and the bravery he’d experienced just a few moments ago was all used up.

What would happen when he came to a red light?

It didn’t seem like Andy was going to get the chance to find out. A police cruiser eased out of an abandoned gas station and injected into the stream of traffic behind him.

Andy knew. He just knew. Even as he hoped it wouldn’t, he knew the siren was going to come on, that the cruiser would flash its lights. His only question was what he’d do about it when it happened.

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Horror Snippets #1 Bird

"Johnny!" she shouted. Ann, for a change, was ready to go and here he was nowhere in sight. "Johnny!" she called her husband again. Still no answer. He'd better not be messing with that bird again, she thought. He'd gotten the South African cockatiel or whatever it was three months ago and had been obsessed with it ever since. Always feeding and playing with it, letting it out ...the cage so it could walk up and down his arm. Ann shivered. He'd set the bird on her shoulder unexpectedly once and she'd screamed and almost smooshed it like a bug. In the time since she'd wished several times she had, but she'd only issued the commandment that he never take it out around the baby. Johnny had even missed work a few times to be with that bird. But after Ann had caught wind she'd threatened to send that 'flying rat' as she'd put it at the time, flying over an I-75 overpass. The time wasn't even the worst part. The bird was hideous. Warrant cockatiels supposed to be yellow? This one was in odd great Green purple color and it has almost no beak to speak of. And the few times she had actually tried engaging with the bird, to try to love it as her husband did (Ann actually did put forth effort--not like Johnny-sleep-at-the-opera--embarrassing!), she could have sworn she saw teeth lining its triangle of a beak. It had beady soulless eyes, not that that was so different from any other bird, but they had luminescent rings that followed her around in the dark if Johnny forgot to cover its cage. "Johnny!" Ann slipped on an earring, intentionally stomping across the hardwood floor in her heels. It had been three months since they'd been out after dark and she had no intention on being late. Johnny' s mother had the baby until tomorrow afternoon and Ann wanted to have a nice buzz by ten o'clock. She stopped by the bottom of the stairs and listened. Not only was he ignoring her she couldn't hear him even moving up there. "Johnny, I'm going to leave without you!" She was steamed and let every ounce of it out in her voice. Ann stalked into the powder room to do one last make-up check. She outlined her mouth again and examined her lipstick a little longer and more closely than needed, hoping her husband would awaken from his avian fugue and get down here so they could leave. Ann blew herself a kiss before turning sideways to see her profile in the red dress. She was hot, she had to give it to herself. The dress clung everywhere it was supposed to and hung loose everywhere else with just enough cleavage exposed. Not bad for a girl who'd popped out a baby a few months ago. Ann walked into the kitchen for her clutch. The time on the microwave read seven-thirty three. All right, dammit, enough' s enough. She turned for the stairs. As she stomped her way up, she made sure to mumble loudly about him, the bird, and where he could shove it. She actually was speaking aloud, but wasn't paying particular attention to the words coming out of her mouth. "Maybe you can go to the party with your precious buh--" she began once she'd reached the top of the stairs. Their bedroom was immediately to her left and she'd turned into it and froze. Johnny's legs were sticking out of the closet, wearing the black slacks she'd asked him to wear and no socks on his bare feet. He didn't appear to be moving. "Johnny?" she said, all of the anger sucked out of her voice and replaced with trickling fear. She leaned slightly against the wall for just a moment before dashing to his side. Johnny was only thirty years old. His father had a heart problem, he was much too young. She made him get it checked every year and he was always 'fitter than a fifteen year old' as he always said. But there he was. Not moving. She rushed to the closet, not wanting to see what she was bound to. Johnny had had a heart attack. She hoped it wasn't too bad, that he'd only lost consciousness. But when she knelt by his side, slipping her hand into his, she saw the bird, still inside its cage--where his head should have been. He looked like he'd been dragged up to it, the ragged neck wound pressing into the bars where the cockatiel was casually nipping away.

Gerald Rice
Author of Fleshbags
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