The Storm

The storm rolled into the valley bringing with it quarter sized hail and gusting winds. Before it came one could feel the electricity in the air and it brought with it a strange feeling that occupied the pit of the stomach. A feeling that anything could happen. Sheets of rain pelted the windows and the trees whipped around the air as if dancing frantically to some wild and primordial music. The roaring sound of the wind was audible above the sound of the over-sized television that occupied the front of the living room in a house that could only be accurately described as a mansion. A strikingly attractive young couple sat silently on a couch watching a the over-sized tv. His dark hair and beard a striking contrast to her bleach blonde hair. The storm outside was nothing compared to the storm that was beginning to form between the young couple.

He had had enough. He hated the very sight of her. The sound of her made him want to drive nine inch nails through his ear canals and into his brain. Her every movement irritated him, her mannerisms were a personal affront to him-but you could never tell by the look on his face. It was stoic and devoid of all emotion like a professional poker player. It was as if someone had removed his emotions from him in a surgery. But the truth was much worse than that. He was dead on the inside. She had killed him. Killed the man that he had used to be and killed the man that he could have been.

She loved him as much as any woman could love a man. He was her Prince Charming, her Romeo. He was everything she had ever wanted in a man and more. But, as will happen in such a case, she was terrified of losing him. She had been from the very start. After a couple weeks of dating she decided that he was the one and as a result she began a systematic campaign to bag and tag the young man for marriage. Once she had him she began isolating him and walling him in. Pretty soon his friends stopped calling him and other women knew enough about her to leave him alone.

Back when they first met in college he was a young man of great ambition and talent. He was well respected by his peers and had his choice of women. He never had thought of her as Mrs. Right, she had been from the start merely Mrs. Right for the night. He had only meant to be with her for a few nights at the most but, as will happen with the best laid plans of mice and men, they fell to forces beyond his control . His plans became waylaid by the planning and cunning of his future wife and mother-in-law.

There had been a time where he had loved her in spite of who she was. She put up a strong and independent front, preferring to be seen as one of the guys rather than helpless girl. The truth was much different. She was weak minded and had low self-esteem. She cared too much about what other people thought even though most people never do. They say that there are three types of people in the world. There are above-average individuals, who discuss ideas. Average people who discuss events and below-average people who discuss other people. She belonged to the later, despite her own beliefs of her intelligence. She was a classic victim of the Kruger-Duning Effect.

At the start he had been merely attracted to her physically. She was a beautiful young woman with a figure that was more fun than an amusement park. She seemed intelligent before he got to know her better. She maintained decent grades and was able to carry on somewhat of a decent conversation. Her family was also fabulously wealthy and she treated him lavishly. She lacked, however, the most basic of intelligences and had a very poor comprehension of emotional intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, and the most important thing, common sense.

He had known from the beginning that she was a modern woman. Unfortunately he refused to believe at the beginning just how modern she was and in time began to be in denial about how modern she really had been before they had met. But who was he to judge? Was he not a modern man? If he were to chastise her for being a modern woman than he would be a hypocrite and he hated nothing more than hypocrites. But the past was revealed eventually and he was dismayed to find out that she was much more modern than he.

So he put aside his reservations about whether or not she really was too much of a modern woman and accepted her for who she was with him and not before him. That was the Christian thing to do. With him she wasn’t too much of a modern woman: she cooked, she cleaned, she wasn’t flirtatious with other men, and she was fiercely loyal to him. She spoiled him and tried to be what he wanted her to be. She seemed to be all things including perks that one could possibly want in a woman. She was a package deal though. She came with an entire life preset working for her father’s company.

He didn’t really need the job, he had his own fathers company he could run, but it wasn’t nearly as successful. In addition to that option he had his own business that was just starting and he had a career in the public accounting lined up to pay the bills until his own business took off. Even if his business failed his accounting career could lead to numerous lucrative options. If he was going to stick it out with her after college he was going to have to sacrifice what he wanted to do in life for what she wanted him to do in life.

The young man had run the different scenarios in his head like hundreds of calculations until he decided he would marry her. He loved her and she was sweet, affectionate, and caring. She was also very attractive and was set in a lifestyle that would preserve her figure well into the future. He reasoned life was too short to be working as a worker bee and he could still work on his business if he was with her . So he swallowed his pride and his reservations about her modernity and accepted his position as her husband.

At first life was good to the two. They had a beautiful wedding which was the social event of the decade for the sleepy southern city she hailed from. No expense was spared by her father, for he felt he was finally getting the son he deserved. He sacrificed his career for her as soon as it began to get in the way. When he decided to marry her he knew that it was an eventuality. When the time came for him to leave on an extended business trip she placed herself in front of the door and made him choose. It wasn’t a choice really, he had already known what he would choose long ago before he had asked her to be his wife.

So they left the city where he was working and headed to the sleepy little southern city, so warm and soft compared to the frozen north he had grown up in. He took his place as the pretender to the throne and worked as hard as possible to earn his place. Eventually his time constraints needed another sacrifice and his own business dream was the final sacrifice on the altar of his marriage. So there he stood, his youth and options draining away as the days passed and the nights fell.

All would have been well if he had continued to love her, but the whispering and rumors of her modernity began to erode away at his love. He hated himself for his weakness but like a stone with a crack he could not help it. The cracks began to form in his love and her actions seemed to act like a wedge driving into the cracks widening them into fissures. She boxed him in, chastised him, and tried to control every action of his life. She was terrified of losing him because she loved him so much, but that only added to the problem. He could not understand how one person could be so reliant on another. Why did she need to know where he was every moment of his waking day? Why must he be in contact with her every moment of every day?

She was neglectful of her duties as a wife as well. He could forgive her past modernity if she had acted modern with him when the time was right, but she wasn’t. There was always an excuse, or if there was no excuse it was always so unenjoyable to him because she wanted it to be over before she started. Yet she would dress in the clothes that ignited a fire in him that could not be quenched by any amount of water. He felt dirty and cheap whenever they played the part of husband and wife and it added to his hatred of her. Why would she dress like that if she wouldn’t even play the part for her husband?

At first he had ignored the rumors of her modernity because when he met her she seemed so proper. But he had met her at school and those who not only were aware of her modernity, but had firsthand knowledge of it, were more than common. But he ignored them and told her that he did not care what she had did in the past, as long as she was true to him. He fooled himself that it would get better in time and that the rumors, whether true or not, would fade into the past like so many hurtful memories he himself possessed. But alas, that was not the case, and when they moved to that sleepy little southern town the rumors grew and multiplied and eroded his manhood faster than a nor’easter on the sand of a New England beach.

So there he sat, less than thirty years old but already wishing for death. Already wishing that it was all over and he could enjoy some peace and f*****g quite for once. She always had something to say, yet it never amounted to anything. He did not care what so and so did or say. He did not care what the latest TV reality stars did. He wanted to discuss politics and science but she had nothing to say on those matters. Even in the matters of business she had less sense than a farm hen. She was merely a mouthpiece for her father, regurgitating everything he said and agreeing with her father even if he showed her the errors of that opinion.

A few years ago he had learned that he was a trophy husband; that it didn’t matter truly what he was or how he felt. Only what he appeared to be. And to everyone in the world, including her, he appeared to be a devoted and loving husband.

He was not a cheater. His father had not been while he was growing up and as a result he would not do it to his wife. No matter how much he wanted to quench his fire. He would not embarrass her in such a manner. He had never caught her cheating yet she lied to him about everything and anything. He didn’t know what the truth was anymore than she did. But he couldn’t call her out on anything. It wasn’t worth the fight.

So he sat there watching the tv not paying any attention to what was playing. Lost in his own thoughts about what could have been or should have been. He got up to get a beer and was nearly to the kitchen, in front of the large stone fire place, when he realized she had gotten up and followed him, her mouth never ceasing to move. It took him a moment to comprehend the fact that she was in fact yelling at him for ignoring her. He looked at her and for a moment all his rage and hatred for her rose up to the surface, and as if on its own, his arm came up and slapped her upside the head with a righteous fury only the most evangelical could understand.

The force of the blow lifted her off her petite feet and for a second she seemed to float in the air like a flower petal caught in a breeze. But Newton’s law regained control and she went crashing into the fire place striking a particularly jagged rock head first. With a sound like a melon being dropped on a kitchen floor her head bounced off the rock showering the back of the fire place with a mixture of blood and brain matter. Her body fell with a sickening thud into the fireplace and the only sound in the room was the quite din of the TV barely audible over the roar of the storm outside.

He stood there in disbelief of his action. It had been over 15 years since the last time he had struck a woman and that had been his sister and had only been in self defense. He crumpled to the floor, his legs no longer able to sustain the weight of his body. She had finally completely ruined him. There was no defense for his actions. He had murdered his wife. True it had been somewhat of an accident, but no jury would absolve him of his actions. There was no record of her abuses on him and the loss of dreams is no defense for murder. His life was over. He could run, but they would catch him. They always do. She had stolen his dreams, his possibilities, his ambitions, and his happiness. Now she would steal his very freedom, not that she hadn’t long ago. He could not face a trial, no that would be too long and drawn out. His jail sentence would only add to his misery.

He slowly came to the realization that it didn’t matter if he lived or died. He had been dead for years now. He was now a zombie living his life to someone else’s commands. He had not lived his life for years by his own accord but he would be damned if he allowed another person to end his life. No, he would kill himself.

He got up slowly and weaved towards the staircase. The storm seemed to grow ever louder, but it was outside of his realm of comprehension. His only thoughts were to the freedom he would finally enjoy after a short walk and a quick squeeze. As he reached the staircase he became aware of the fact that the very house was vibrating and suddenly there was only darkness interrupted only momentarily by flashes of lightning and a deafening roar as his world seemed to give away around him, and then there was only blackness.

-

He came to in a stunningly bright room. As his vision slowly became focused he realized he was in a hospital room. He painfully looked around him and saw his brother sitting there. When his brother saw that his eyes were open and moving around he cautiously spoke over the hum of the medical equipment around him.

“Steve. You’re alright. But I have something to tell you. They don’t want me to tell you right now but it isn’t right to keep it from you. Your house was hit by a tornado. By some grace of god you survived but….but your wife is dead. She was killed in the storm”

And he was free.

Author's Note

The other side of the decision is to come