She Had it Coming, Right?

“I just… I just don’t know what to do Serg”

Frank shuffled uneasily in his seat, looking both ways across the sparse populace of Squires Public House to ensure he hadn’t pulled anyone unintended into his confidence.

“I know she is fucking around on me”

Serg leaned back against the shortened back of his bar stool, an exhale of breath escaping in a half burp.

“I don’t know Frankie – I mean I have known Sheryl a long time, I mean we grew up on the same block and she has never been known for anything more than sticking by the people closest to her”

Serg continued, his mouth a flat line “seriously pal – what proof do you even have?”

Frank’s eyes dropped downwards, a furtive glance as though peering toward the bottom of a well of golden liquid in an effort to rescue the perfectly succinct response to Serg’s query.

“It isn’t just one thing, and you know enough from what I have shared to know as much!”

“One thing after another – the distance, the disinterest in doing shut together anymore… I get that I am hardly anyone’s idea of the perfect mate or even maybe an ideal one anymore. I care more about my success at the office, probably care more about knocking a consistent two or 3 strokes off my game – than I do about any person in my life”

Frank pushed a weak smile through a tentative set of lips.

“Present company excluded of course”

Serg stared back sternly – Frank had never known him to so much as crack a smile. Almost one of those guys that has an identical expression for every mood, flat and emotionless at every turn. Either he was amazingly under control or entirely disconnected from the world around him. He joked, he chastised, he even laughed – somehow always from the same base point and mask of serenity.

Frank pushed on “I know what needs to be done, not even all that complicated. I need to invest a bit of asset protection money and just hire that P.I. Gordie at the office used to catch his sweet little Cuban fiancé in the feral act with the delivery guy…”

Serg offered – flat despite a forced tone of bemusement “Not sure what he was so wound up about – lady was just receiving a package on his behalf”

Frank laughed despite himself at the lazy, low-hanging humor “How long have you been holding on to that one?”

Without waiting on, even expecting a response to what was meant as an essentially rhetorical question Frank continued “I should just hire the guy and get what I need to end this fuckin’ charade without it costing me three quarters of all I have accumulated over the years”

Serg couldn’t help but offer an empathetic grimace towards his friend.

“This is what I should do, probably what I have to do if I am ever going to get out of this rut” Frank continued his exposition

“But I am afraid of the answers going down this road would bring”

Serg heaved a sigh toward his wayward chum, tossed in his direction as a pail of chum o’er the side of the USS Platitude

“Buddy…” Serg began, “whatever you decide to do, you can’t go on the way you’re going. No one can function like that, not for a day and sure as shit not for months on end”

He continued – “Hire the Private Eye. Or have your own affair to maybe purge a bit of the stress that way? Either way you need to get off this road you are driving sooner rather than later.”

Frank could feel the bile rising, swimming with a desperate fervor up the esophageal channel toward a welcome release.

He swallowed, anger rising with the tone of his voice “I have had it with this!!! That stupid bitch thinks she can treat me however she wants, fuck whatever she wants, and come out the other end a winner?!!!

“No matter what!” Frank huffed greedily, spat “She is going to get what’s coming to her!!!” 

A sigh from Frank as he both swallowed the rising tide of emotions while noting the approach of the pithy bartender, a groomed caricature of today's male replete with red & white striped suspenders, a mess of cropped man-bun atop his head bookended by a bushel of a beard groomed to the point where nary a hair ventured off script.

“Get you boys a re-fill?” Suspender’s and Beard offered, almost more a matter-of-fact than an inquiry into the thirst-quenching interests of the two men poured into the bar stools across from him.

“Not for me” Frank responded quickly. “I have a wife to confront”

The weak smile which stretched the corners of his mouth wasn’t to be trusted. None worth their salt could have seen as much, you almost didn’t have to be there to know as much.

“Appreciate it” Serg nodded dumbly, nudging his cup toward the happy millennial minstrel bouncing behind the counter.

He glanced toward Frank, lips pursed in contemplation over how to ease the sudden tensions and tie a bow around a sullen evening.

“Just do me one favor” Serg proposed, “don’t do or say anything tonight. Sleep on this and come at it tomorrow rational.”

“THE HELL WITH THAT!!” louder than intended, Frank realized immediately.

Softened to an angry mutter “If I don’t deal with this now - IT WON'T get dealt with!”

With the last, Frank stomped toward the exit with impressive intent, scattered patrons across the place couldn’t help but to take note of the volcanic stranger.

Into the night Frank dove, swallowed by the blackness, enveloped by the frenzied chill of the night air.

Instinctively and with nearly reckless disregard Frank moved toward the direction of home, a two-bedroom detached jobber at the crest of Senten Hillside.

The chill and the black did little to dissuade, Frank’s mood entrenched, and resolve hardened as the stony member dangling betwixt the legs of Michelangelo’s David.

“No more” he muttered angrily, meaning to hold under the breath but his drunk and his demeanor sprayed this out into the night for any within earshot to ingest.

The traffic was light at this hour of night, the streets equally bereft of pedestrian content.

Frank had slowed the forced march of the encumbered male as he neared the gaping maw of the walk leading to a familiar front stoep.

An unfamiliar sense seemed to leap from the darkness of his front lawn, a vibe that suggested without condition things were not the way they were meant to be.

Pace quickening, Frank moved up the asphalt laneway.

End over end he found his footing, moving up the drive toward the (darkness) of the front porch.

A sliver of light caught his eye from the (home) within, his mind slowed its pace around the proverbial racetrack.

He registered an open door, not agape but without question firmly ajar.

More than anything he a 3-foot hickory perturbance jutting from the face of his master door.

Franks’ eyes followed the handle to it’s metal cap, the head of the axe buried in the hardened surface of the entrance to his home.

This metal was not simply metal, its sharpened edge was coated and dripping (red).

With little to no regard for himself or the scene before him, Frank made his desperate grab for the axe handle.

Making quick work with an up-down levering motion, the weapon became his own.

Bursting through the door, again without a moment of stop and consider - Frank bellowed out “LENORE!!”

No response but the (blackness).

Again, up a decibel and accompanied by a frenzied glance about the scene laid before him: “LENOOOOORRE”

The silence shouted its retort, telling him nothing yet in unison drawing his eyes toward the main stairwell leading to the upstairs bedrooms.

A trail of red dotted the hardwood on a march toward the stairs.

Frank bounded up the stairs – two, three at a time as his middle-aged legs injected the dwindling testosterone reservoirs to move him at pace upward.

Knowing but not knowing, disregarding the (red) trail he immediately pushed right upon reaching the stairwells pinnacle, a beeline of sorts toward the master bedroom.

Erupting with gusto onto the scene, Frank shoved the bedroom door inward.

He locked eyes with the love of his life.

Lenore lay sprawled, her eyes a blue murk as though a marbled glass.

Lifeless.

Adorned only by the pulpy red mess of a tanned, near hairless lover heaped on top of her.

One would be forgiven for the double take to see two humans in the midst of the macabre two-backed stack of eviscerated flesh.

Everything started to happen in slow motion as e finally registered the sirens, though if his senses were to be offered complete openness they had been there in the background for minutes at the minimum.

Footsteps on the (red-dotted) hall below.

Authoritative shouts in hot perp-pursuit as they elevated.

Black-suited tin-plated men filled the hall behind him, somehow, they progressed against the stalled-out wheel of time.

As though a second press of a pause button on a remote control, time returned to normal speed. The shouts of the men behind began to register amongst his eardrums.

“DROP THE AXE AND GET THE FUCK DOWN ON THE GROUND NOW!!!”

Hands raised immediately, an innate sense of knowing a wrong maneuver would be answered with gunfire, Frank dropped the axe and slowly lowered to the floor.

Rough hands were immediately upon him, grabbing at his wrists. Metal bracelets clamped around them

They had him dead to rights – the loud talk across the open bar, him standing over the fresh-churned victim’s, Christ – the murder weapon gripped in his idiot hands.

Frank stumbled his way across the landing toward the stairs, his arms held firm at his back.

Rough hands pushed him forward, toward the stairs, toward the open doorway.

A crown had gathered – lit in bursts of red and blue lights against a (blackened) backdrop of the dead of night.

Frank registered little, crippled by shock and made mentally feeble by alcohol.

Into the back of the cruiser he went, sat hard and a leather paw immediately gripped the top of his head.

Frank turned without merit to eye the faceless crowd, neighbors of various happenstance and gauge of recognizably.

His eyes locked on one, and he frowned immediately on impulse.

Frank alone seemed to his visage from amongst the swell of looky-loo’s

He was hard to miss with that dead-eyed stare, his eyes noticeably flat amidst the Cheshire grin contorting the edges of his face.

Serg stood out, a living monument amongst a sea of marbled fright.