Before the Boil

Caution : This story involved scenes of violence and self harm.

Before the Boil

I love him, Betty said to herself, as she watched her husband Mark with doe-eyes as he folded the laundry. She watched as his muscles contracted under his tight shirt while he folded the pants, dresses and other items of clothing. He glanced at her, sitting on the couch, crossed legged, a magazine in her lap. He made a silly face and smiled. She laughed softly, and blew him a kiss. He caught it and planted it on his buttocks. The nerve!, she though as she laughed.

Music was playing in the background. Soft classical music that suited the snowy day. Betty watched as thick snowflakes fell past the steamed up windows. She picked up her magazine. The article she had open read, “10 ways to know if you’ve got the right man!” With a quick glance at her beautiful husband, she turned the page of her magazine, knowing full well she didn’t need to do this quiz. Mark would never do anything to hurt her. A shiver ran down her spine and a sudden, odd fluttering in her stomach made her pause, but she shook it off.

Betty stood and made her way to the kitchen. It had just been refurbished, and she ran a finger along the new worktops, appreciating the softness of the natural wood. She grabbed the old fashioned kettle, filled it with water and placed it on the brand new cooking station. Turning on the gas, she lit the stove; the bluish yellow flames erupting into life, and flickering underneath the gleaming kettle.

While she waited for the water to boil, she got a mug and teabag. As she reached up to open the cupboard, she noticed a dark stain on her sleeve. Damn, she thought, I’m going to have soak it. She’d worry about it later, the stain was dry, it could wait.

She stationed herself at the bay window and looked out at the snow covered yard, thinking. She would have to shovel the snow to get to the car. She didn’t want to ask Mark, he had enough in his plate at the moment.

Mark was having trouble at work. One of his co-workers was being a bitch. Mark hadn’t given her all the details, but she knew he was affected by it. Men, she thought and smiled. They don’t know how to gossip.

Mark walked into the kitchen, carrying the hamper. The smell of clean clothes and seeing Mark standing there sent shivers down her spine. After all these years, she still got butterflies when she saw him. He set the hamper down and pulled Betty in for a hug and a kiss. They didn’t speak but held each other for a moment, swaying in time to the music. Betty rested her head on his chest, and breathed in his smell. There was a faint whiff of his perfume. She hugged him tighter.

Behind them, the kettle slowly began to whistle.

“Do you want some tea?” she asked, letting him go to turn her attention to the boiling kettle.

“Not right now, I’ve got to put this away. I’ll join you when I’m finished.” He smiled again, picked up the hamper and headed down the hall to the bedroom.

Betty was about to pour the water into her mug when she heard a faint notification sound she didn’t recognise. She moved back into the living room where Mark had been folding laundry and looked around. There was another ping from the phone and she located the source. It was coming from the armchair in the corner. She bent down and fished out a phone that had been stuffed behind the seat of armchair. She examined the screen. Two messages had appeared. The first read “Chloe, are you free for dinner?” It was from Mom. The second was also from Mom and it was just a series of question marks.

Chloe was Mark’s co-worker. The one who was a “bitch”. The phone was warm to the touch, and it was dirty. Blotchy fingerprints covered the screen, and the case was covered in some sticky substance.

She took the phone into the kitchen, washed off the sticky stuff and tried to unlock it. It had a passcode, so she set it down on the counter next to the stove. She had completely forgotten about her tea by now. She had turned the gas off when the kettle had boiled. She turned it on again to bring the water back to the boil.

The butterflies in her stomach intensified, but they weren’t nice and fluttery now. They were gut wrenching, painful. Something was tearing away inside her.

“Mark,” she whispered. He must have heard her however, because he appeared in the kitchen.

“Everything ok?” he asked, walking towards her.

Betty didn’t answer right away, but picked up the phone and held it out to him. He took it, obviously confused. He looked at the screen and read the same two messages she had. Betty watched as he mouthed Chloe. A look of dawning comprehension, followed immediately by confusion enhanced his features. He looked back up at Betty’s stony face.

“Why did I find Chloe’s phone in our living room?” she asked icily.

Mark glanced down at the phone again, Betty could practically see his brain working.

“I don’t know.”

His obvious confusion intrigued Betty. She had both her hands on the worktop, near the stove. She could feel the heat of the slowly boiling kettle behind her. If Mark was cheating on her with Chloe, he was doing a terrible job of hiding it.

“How did her phone end up in my house, Mark?” she asked, her tone icy.

Mark laughed, and Betty felt herself crumble inside. The laugh made it so much worse.

“I’m sorry,” he said when he saw her expression. “I have no idea how her phone got in our house, but I’m not having an affair with her if that’s what you’re thinking. I told you, she’s a bitch.”

“You’ve been talking about her all the time,” Betty said, tears in her eyes now. “You haven’t shut up about her!”

“Yeah, because she’s a bitch.” He crossed his arms. A sign of defence.

“Then how do you explain the phone?”

“I can’t,” he shrugged. “She must have put in my bag or something.” He smiled at her. “Come on babe, you know I love you.” He reached forward to hug her but she pushed him away.

“You have her phone! It didn’t just magically appear in the house did it?” Betty was refraining from yelling with difficulty.

“I don’t know. Maybe it was her idea of a sick joke or something.”

“What? To make me think you’re sleeping around with her? What kind of joke is that?”

It was Mark’s turn to get angry.

“You don’t believe me? Don’t you trust me? After everything we’ve been through together? After losing the baby? You really think I would do this to you?”

Betty’s face turned to ash. She gripped the counter so hard, her knuckles turned white.

“Don’t you dare talk about her, about my baby!” she said, her voice barely even a whisper. “You don’t talk about her!”

“You never want to talk about it!” Mark fired back, not keeping his voice down. “You need to talk about it! I need to talk about!”

“Is this why you’ve been screwing Chloe?” Betty half screamed now the irrational anger she sometimes felt brewing inside her. “Because I won’t talk to you, but she will? Have you been having cosy get togethers behind my back?”

“I’m not screwing Chloe!” Mark shouted back. “I’m not! I don’t give a damn about her. I love you and you need to talk about the bab-”

“NO I DON’T! You think I don’t know what you’ve been doing?”

“BETTY!” Mark said firmly. Tears ran down her face, and she could see that Mark’s eyes were also shiny with tears. “I haven’t been doing anything! The baby is gone and you need to accept-”

“SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! YOU ARE A LIAR! YOU’VE BEEN FUCKING HER, I KNOW IT!” Betty screamed, the anger inside her paramount, just as the kettle began to boil.

The whistling sound made them both glance at the kettle. Betty swung around quickly. Blinded by a white hot rage, she grabbed the kettle and threw the scalding water in Mark’s face. Mark screamed and withdrew, but Betty still had the kettle and she hit him around the head with it. Mark fell to the ground, still screaming, his hands clutching his face. Blood was flowing from the wound on his head that she had inflicted. She walked slowly towards him, still holding the kettle.

“Does that hurt?” she asked softly.

“Betty, what the hell?” he screamed. “You – you’ve – burnt me!” He let out another painful yell.

Betty stood still for a moment, watching the blood trickle down his face. The wound to his head seemed superficial. Betty set the kettle, its silver now tainted with red, back on the stove. Next to the cooking station were a set of knives. She picked the longest, sharpest one, pleased at the distinct swishing noise that come from pulling a knife from its sheath.

“I said, Does. That. Hurt?” she repeated through gritted teeth.

He couldn’t see her, because his hands were still clutching his face.

“You see,” she continued. “This is nothing compared to how I felt when I found out you were a good for nothing, cheating scumbag!”

“Betty, I- I…”

“Shut up! I don’t need to hear your lies!” She plunged the knife into the visible part of his neck. He finally took his hands away from his face, and looked at Betty in disbelief. Then the look in his eyes faded, and he seemed to shut down. He fell face first on the kitchen floor.

Betty dropped the knife and sat down next to her dead husband. She began to sob quietly. For twenty minutes she didn’t move, didn’t think. She was like an empty shell, surrounded in darkness and despair. Finally she got up. She knew she had work to do.

She cleaned everything so that the kitchen was immaculate. Scrubbing everything so hard her hands were bleeding by the end of it. She put all her focus into wiping away the blood stains that had somehow spread all over the brand new kitchen. She did all this without looking at Mark. He was nothing now, she didn’t want to see him, to touch him or feel him. She was keeping him at a distance for the moment. Tears fell randomly down her face as she worked tirelessly, endlessly, in a robotic fashion. She knew she would have to feel this pain, but she didn’t want that now. She relished in the manual labour, in the basic drive of it, not having to think about anything except getting the stains out of the floor and walls.

When she had finally finished in the kitchen, she knew she had to take care of Mark’s lifeless body. First, she went outside to shovel the snow out from the driveway. This took her the better part of two hours, until there was enough room to move the car in the driveway. As she approached the car, she was hit by a strange, rotting smell, like that of a dead animal. She ignored it.

She backed her old sedan up as close as possible to the front door. Then she went back into the kitchen, grabbed Chloe’s phone and pocketed it, and then set about doing the hardest thing she’d ever had to: dragging Mark to the front door. She looked down at him finally, and more tears fell from her. She could feel it now. She could feel the grief welling inside her. She had lost her best friend, her soulmate, the man that had always been there for her. But also the man who had betrayed her. She let the wave of sorrow wash over her, fill her like a balloon until she felt ready to pop. She sobbed harder than ever now. She sobbed until she had no tears left.

She stood there for what felt like an hour, just staring at his face. His eyes were fixed open, glaring into nothingness. They had turned dark in death, and Betty knew, now more than ever, that there was nothing but a shell in front her. A shell she had to dispose of.

This was hard work. Mark was heavy. After much effort, she managed to bring him right up to the back of the car. She popped the trunk. As it opened, a lock of blond hair fell out, and what she had smelled earlier in the driveway suddenly multiplied, and she had to fight the urge to throw up. She looked down into the trunk at the once beautiful face of Chloe Griffiths. It was sunken now, and the once green eyes were grey and lifeless. She stared back at Betty without seeing. She took Chloe’s phone out of her pocket.

“Here’s your phone bitch,” Betty said throwing in the trunk at her.

Half an hour later, she had driven to the small track by the lake, she was looking down at Mark and Chloe, lying side by side in the trunk of her car.

“You deserve each other!”

She breathed in the smell of the gasoline she had poured all over the car, then lit a match and threw into the trunk. The car caught fire. Betty walked slowly back, watching with fascination as the car was engulfed in the yellow light. The heat surprised her, but she did not regret her decision. He was a cheating bastard, and she was a homewrecker bitch. She watched until the car was nothing more than a smouldering mess, then left.

A week later, just after his funeral, Betty was searching through Mark’s things that were left in the house. She found a small box in the back of his closet. It was wrapped in white and gold paper. She picked it up. On the side was a little white label, with the word ‘Betty’ and a heart written in Mark’s handwriting. She opened it slowly. Inside was a beautiful diamond necklace. She let it slip out of her hands and onto the floor with a gasp. On the back she saw that it was engraved.

To my lovely Betty, happy 10th anniversary. I love you with my heart, always and forever.

He had planned this gift for their upcoming anniversary. A small seed of doubt hit her. She cried some more and sat on the floor, next to the necklace. She left it there. She pulled out her phone and went onto Facebook. She found Chloe’s page. There were plenty of messages from her friends and loved ones. “We miss you!” “An fallen angel has returned to the sky”. She ignored these messages and went back up her timeline, looking, searching, almost hoping there would be some mention of Mark. She’d already been through Mark’s phone, and had found absolutely nothing to suggest he had been having an affair.

She had gone all the way back to 2011 with nothing interesting to see. She went back to the top and saw that Chloe’s husband had posted a message.

My dearest Chloe, I miss you, I will always miss you. You were my heart and soul, the person I loved the most in this universe. We were so happy! It’s so cruel that you were taken away from me, and from all those who loved you. I think I can tell you all now, and I think it is what Chloe would have wanted. She was pregnant! We were expecting our first child and someone took that away from her, and from me. I can’t ever explain to you the loss I feel. I love you Chloe, I will always love you !

Betty dropped the phone, felt the room spin, and then everything went dark as she collapse onto the floor.

Later, Betty was sitting by the lake where there were still traces of the burnt car. Completely unrecognisable as it was, she knew what had happened here. She knew she had hurt a man, by not only killing his wife, but also his unborn child. And she thought of Mark, who had died for no reason at all. He had been the best of them, and she had betrayed him, but she would be with him soon.

Betty pulled the small handgun she had used to kill Chloe from her pocket and looked at it. It felt heavy and cold in her hand. She thought of the girl she had thought was sleeping with her husband. She had been pregnant, and lost a baby, just like Betty. They had almost been like kindred spirits. Betty thought there was some beauty in that.

Squeezing the necklace she had found in the bedroom in her left hand, she held the gun to her temple, looked down once at the chain and whispered, I’m sorry then pulled the trigger.