Vent Your Frustration

Yvonne smashed the meat cleaver over and over into the cake. The banging merged with her screams and reverberated throughout the kitchen. 

She couldn’t believe her husband had missed his own birthday party. A party they had been planning for two months. A party he was fully aware of, not one that was a surprise, which might have made the whole situation more understandable. 

And what caused him to miss the party? Not work or a medical emergency. No, he missed the party she had slaved over for a damn golf game.

“What the hell are you doing?” her husband asked from the doorway.

“It’s either the cake or your head, Clarence,” Yvonne answered. She turned toward him, cleaver raised and dripping icing, and asked, “Which will it be?”

Unrepentant

Tia watched the paramedics lift Tucker’s body into the ambulance. She knew the neighbors watching probably wondered why she hadn’t shed a tear, him being her husband of twenty years, but all her tears dried up long ago.

She watched as cops went in and out of her house, evidence bags clutched tightly in their hands. She knew the house would be a jumbled mess by the time they were done, but nobody cared about that. All they cared about was what happened to Tucker, one of their own.

She knew the pictures in her nightstand drawer would disappear. None of them would ever let proof of Tucker’s abuse get out if they could help it. The problem was, she had made sure they couldn’t stop it. A copy of all the photographs was in the mail to the local paper. Her sister, a reporter for the paper, was going to publish them in the late edition.

Tia was scared her sister would lose her job, but Leigh told her it was worth it. She’d been trying to get Tia away from Tucker for years, and since she never accomplished that, she was determined to help Tia after the fact. She didn’t care that Tia was guilty.

Guilty of killing her husband in his sleep. Guilty of beating him with his own baton. Guilty of enjoying it.

Tia didn’t care what happened to her anymore. Tucker had already taken everything from her, everything that mattered. He took her trust and peace of mind years ago, but those Tia had learned to live without. He had taken her dignity with every blow of his fist, and her sanity with every demeaning word he screamed at her. He had dwindled her self-worth down to nothing over the years with his constant tirades over everything thing she’d done wrong, but she had grown used to that.

But when he beat her so badly that he killed the baby she had been wanting, the baby conceived when he raped her a few months earlier, Tia gave up. 

She waited, regaining her strength, until a time when Tucker was unsuspecting. He’d pulled a double shift and was dead on his feet by the time he came home earlier that night. By the time Tia was done with him, he was dead off his feet as well.

Her sister thought Tia had a case. That she could get off because of the abuse. Tia didn’t tell her it no longer mattered. She knew her sister needed something to hold on to, a way to clear Tia’s name. Tia wondered if Leigh would still try to do that after she was gone.

Tia hated hurting her sister, but she was so tired. Tired of hurting, tired of life. Just tired. 

The two officers guarding Tia were talking to each other. Tia knew they didn’t think she was a threat, not to anyone else anyway. She used their distraction to her advantage and quietly pulled her insulin and syringe out. She had counted on them letting her keep the medicine after the paramedics told the cops stress could bring about a hypoglycemic episode. One of her guards turned toward Tia, but not before she injected herself with a lethal dose of insulin. Tia watched him turn back to his partner, not concerned after he saw that it was just her medication. 

Tia asked to be placed in a patrol car. She told the officers she was tired and needing to sit down. The officers complied. Tia watched activity swirling around outside the window and thought back to earlier that night.

Given the chance, she would do it all again, she decided. It was past time Tucker was stopped. She had thought about leaving him numerous times, but couldn’t bear to think he would find another woman to abuse. She thought she could handle everything, and she did for years, but she finally figured out there were some things nobody could handle.

As Tia felt her body slow down, she smiled. She knew it wouldn’t be long now. The last thing she saw before she slipped away was Tucker’s face. Tia knew she’d see him in hell again soon.

Time Out

Candy and Monica cringed in the corner and held each other as close as possible while they listened to Mary yell at Sebastian. They knew from the sound of her voice that this wasn’t going to end well for their friend. 

“You ungrateful little monster,” Mary yelled at Sebastian, and then slapped him across the face. “How dare you steal from me.”

“But we ain’t had no food in two days, Mother Mary,” Sebastian pleaded his case.

“You’ll eat when I say you eat,” she told him and then picked the five-year-old up by his collar and dragged him toward the cellar door.

Sebastian screamed and begged to be let go. He kicked out at Mary, but the woman was too strong for him to break her hold. All the children were scared to death of the cellar. They didn’t know exactly what was down there, but they knew it was awful because nobody who went in there ever came back.

“Please, Mother Mary, don’t send me down there,” Sebastian begged. “I promise, I’ll never steal again.”

“Oh, I know you won’t,” Mary replied, and then opened the cellar door. Before she headed down the stairs with Sebastian, Mary told the other children to stay put or they’d be in trouble when she got back.

Candy and Monica gathered the younger children close and all stayed huddled in the corner. Try as they might, they couldn’t hear what was going on downstairs. Candy wasn’t so sure they really wanted to.

Down in the cellar, Sebastian couldn’t believe his eyes. Cages lined the cellar walls, but it was what was inside the cages that scared him most. Each cage held a child, or the remains of one, anyway. Some were only bones, but others still had flesh attached. 

Sebastian threw up all over Mary’s shoes when he passed the cage that held Robert, his cousin who he hadn’t seen in two months. He remembered the day Mother Mary pushed Robert threw the cellar door. Sebastian had tried to go after them, but Candy held him back and put her hand over his mouth so he couldn’t yell out. “Hush, little one,” Candy had said, “you don’t want to join him, do you?”

There was no fight left in Sebastian by the time Mary placed him in a cage. He crumpled to the floor and hugged himself close. Mary slammed the cage door shut and locked it. 

At the top of the stairs, she stopped and faced Sebastian who was staring at her, too terrified to speak. “Bad children get put in time out, Sebastian, that’s just the way it is,” she said and then left the boy alone in the darkness.

Shoot Low, Sheriff

“Shoot low, Sheriff, he might be crawling.”

Sheriff Clarence T. Darlow had no doubt the low-life, snake-in-the-grass was crawling on his belly through the brush, trying to avoid what was coming to him. 

“Over there,” Deputy Barnes yelled, and then took off to the right, the sheriff close behind. 

They ran through the undergrowth for a few minutes and then spied their prey tangled in some barbed wire. He was trying to free himself, but wasn’t having much luck. 

“Looks like we got ourselves a stuck pig,” Sheriff Darlow said to his deputy. 

“Now look, Sheriff,” Jacobs began.

“Don’t you, now look, Sheriff, me,” Darlow snapped and punched Jacobs in the gut. “You ain’t got nothing to say that’s gonna make this better.”

“But she wanted to go with me,” Jacobs pleaded.

For that one, he got a sock in the mouth and a boot in the groin. The deputy turned and walked back toward town, not wanting to see what happened next. Although, he wasn’t about to try and stop the sheriff. Nobody in town blamed the man for what he was fixin’ to do.

“I don’t care what she wanted, boy,” the sheriff told Jacobs. “She’s only sixteen.”

“People used to be married by time they were sixteen,” Jacobs said.

“People used to be burned at the stake too,” the sheriff replied, which caused Jacobs to start struggling in the barbed wire again. 

The sheriff just watched him for a while. He enjoyed the pitiful cries of pain and anguish Jacobs made while trying to free himself. After a while, Sheriff Darlow’s back started hurting from standing, however, and he was ready to get things done and over with.

He stepped closer to Jacobs, which stilled the other man’s actions. “Now you listen up, boy, and listen good. You touch one hair on my daughter’s head again, and you’ll remember this here fondly it’ll be so much better than what I do to you. I don’t care if she’s sixteen or sixty, no daughter of mine is gonna date a scum-sucker like you.”

“Seems she was the one doing the sucking, best I recall,” Jacobs had the stupidity to reply.

***

Deputy Barnes heard the kid yelling clear back on the street. He turned the radio up in the car to drown it out. When the sheriff climbed back in the cruiser, he was covered with blood and his knuckles were busted. He was also beat red.

“I’m too old for this shit,” he muttered and slammed his door. “Take me to Doc James. I need to get my hands bandaged up, and then he can come get Jacobs.” He grunted, and then added, “What’s left of him.”

“You didn’t kill him, did you, Clarence?” Barnes asked.

“No, but I wanted to,” the sheriff replied. “It was only respect for his daddy that stayed my hand. Well, his daddy’s moonshine anyway,” he added and they both burst out laughing.

Reached My Limit

Rachel placed the headphones over her ears and sunk into the tub. She cranked the volume up loud enough that she’d miss a tornado if one come through. 

She had had it at a normal level, but that didn’t work. Her husband had ignored her pleas for some alone time, instead he had knocked on the door five times since she entered the bathroom. After the last time, when he asked where the flour was, Rachel snapped. 

“It’s in the kitchen, with all the other food,” she yelled. She then got in his face and told him, “I’ve reached my limit, Mike. I need some time to myself; just a few damn minutes to relax. Is that too much to ask?”

She didn’t give him time to answer, but slammed the door in his face. 

The scared look on his face would have made her laugh on another day, but today she didn’t care how overwhelmed he felt dealing with the twins. Let him have a taste of what I go through every day, she thought and settled more comfortably into the tub.

Rachel soaked for an hour and a half. She felt revived when she emerged from the bathroom, until she walked into the kitchen and saw the mess her husband had made. Flour covered every counter, plates were stacked sky high in the sink, more plates than it took for three people to eat a five-course meal, and trash littered the floor. 

She was aching for a fight when she stormed into the livingroom, but stopped short. Mike lay sprawled on the couch, snoring for all he was worth, with both babies sleeping soundly on his chest. 

I guess some of us have higher limits than others, she thought and headed back to the kitchen to clean up.