Meekly Wife

She didn't mean for it to end up like this. It just sort of...happened. A loud slam of the front door, heavy footfalls that echoed through the house until her husband found his way to the kitchen, and the slopping of food rolling around in his mouth as he chewed. Ruthie watched him with the empty eyes of a woman whose cup had run more than dry. It was brittle. Fragile to the touch with the feeling that it could shatter if handled too carelessly. The couple sat beneath the flickering kitchen light. The enticing smell of fried chicken, corn and mashed potatoes eclipsed by the stench of alcohol, cigarettes and cheap perfume that always seemed attached to her husband.

Husband. What a funny word. It was heavy like the thin silver band on her ring finger. It pricked like finding a thumbtack in your shoe. Just an endless poking that soon became a stabbing sensation that twisted inside her until she could bear it no longer.

Her first thought was simply to walk away. The first night she tried it she walked until she felt the ache make its way from her feet to her spine. She walked until she felt a warm burst on the soles of her left foot and leaked into a deep red stain on the fabric of her shoe. Ruthie doesn’t know how he did it, but he did this.

The second night she tried, she waited for him to go to sleep. He stumbled home late as he always did and fell onto the couch, falling asleep without needing any intervention on her part. She, regretfully, allowed the smallest droplet of hope to infect her as if God had finally heard her and gave her just the opportunity she needed. She stole the truck keys out of his hand, packed her clothes and just when she could feel freedom on her fingertips, the hum of a stalled truck struck her down. The fool had forgotten to get gas on his way home. Ruthie could confidently say, he did this.

Tonight, would be her third attempt. She needed him in such a deep sleep that no matter what he did or didn’t do, she’d make her escape. She spent the evening bent over a hot stove that filled the kitchen with heat so intense that her dress bore the unladylike mark of pit stains and flour. The chicken sizzled in the oil until it turned a golden brown color that made her stomach flip from how good it smelled. However, the real treat was the mashed potatoes. Drenched in gravy, the fluff of the potatoes tasted mouth wateringly delicious that beckoned anyone to eat more. It would be the perfect place to hide the crushed opioids.

Ruthie picked at her food, carefully pulling the skin from the chicken with shaking hands and constantly glancing up at her engorged husband whose face had become so round over the years that his once button nose had turned into a snout, and he looked more like the pigs he used to care for.

The pigs. That would be the perfect place to lay him to rest, Ruthie daydreamed. She pictured the pigs in their neighbor’s farm sinking their teeth into her husband’s flesh. Eating, chewing, and licking at him until he was unrecognizable. When the police finally identified him, she dreamed she could shrug her shoulders and say, ‘That’s just Earl. He liked to drink. It was bound to end badly eventually.’

The mere thought of it caused the corners of her thin lips to turn upwards into a small, almost unnoticeable smile. She lifted a napkin to her lips and wiped it to hide her growing excitement for the future.

Finally, her husband sank his fork into the mashed potatoes. Her eyes followed the utensil and when it entered his maw, she dropped her shoulders in relief. She couldn’t believe it. Freedom was here.

“H-How do you like the food?” she asked, keeping her head down to avoid eye contact so he wouldn’t see her joy.

“Fine,” he grunted, “Salty,”

It was always something with her. The food was too salty, the house was never truly clean, the animals were too loud even though they didn’t even have any animals anymore. It was never enough. Ruthie was never enough. Would the opioids be enough tonight, she wondered. The heaviness that seemed to weigh on his eyelids assured her that perhaps they would be.

“I need…,” her husband coughed, “Give me water, Ruth,” He lifted a weak arm to point to the sink.

Without saying a word, she followed instructions. She took steps that seemed a little too slow for his liking, but his wife was never one to rush. She took her time pulling the glass out of the cabinet and filling it with tap water. Though, it was impossible to stop herself from glancing over her shoulder to watch him.

The smallest seed of pleasure planted itself inside her as she watched him struggle to keep his head lifted. He propped his head up on his palm to keep his head up while his other hand kept shoving food through his thin lips. Albeit slowly.

Ruthie finally snapped back into reality when she felt the cold water spill over the cup and onto her hand. She turned the faucet off.

“Where’s my water?” her husband demanded.

“Right here,” she assured him. She turned back to him and placed the cup next to his plate.

“Finally,” he coughed. Ruthie stood frozen like she forgot that her feet worked or that she was supposed to be acting normal. Her husband raised the cup to his lips then glanced over at her. He paused.

“What you doin’ standin’ there?” he questioned with an eyebrow quirked up. Ruthie blinked at him before turning to walk back to her seat.

“Nothin.’ Just got lost in the moment, I suppose,” she quietly dismissed him.

“When aren’t you lost?”

His words struck her like a baseball bat. The bright flash pain that felt like a shock at first before spreading through her into a dull ache. She couldn’t find the strength to look at him. All she could do was keep her eyes trained on his mashed potatoes while she slid pieces of chicken skin into her mouth.

His plate was nearly empty. The potatoes were all gone. She had done it.

Her husband gulped the water down like it was going to save him. He stretched the empty cup to her.

“More,”

Ruthie looked between him and the cup with wide, expectant eyes. Not that he noticed. All he saw was his empty headed wife being lost again.

“Fine,” he pushed himself up from his seat, the chair falling backwards onto the wooden floor, “I’ll get it myself,”

Her husband dragged his feet to the sink like they were made of lead. That seed of pleasure started to grow inside Ruthie as she watched him struggle to keep balance, tipping from left to right, front to back, drool and dribble spilling from the corners of his mouth and down his chin until he made it to the sink. The creak of the old faucet cut through the silence between them then he stopped. His free hand gripped the edge of the sink to balance.

“Earl? Do you need---?” Ruthie started before this tower of a man finally collapsed to his right. The loud crack of his skull making impact with the counter before his body hit the floor. Ruthie rushed to his side with hope in her heart. Hope that maybe he was concussed just enough for her to make her escape. Instead, his eyes kept fluttering as he fought to cling onto life and consciousness.

“W-Wha---what you smilin’ for?” he asked through his haze. Was she smiling? Ruthie forced a frown on her face, but it was too late. She had been caught. Her husband raised an accusatory finger to her.

“You did this to me,” he weakly accused, “You! The church lady! My wife!”

Something evil took over Ruthie in that moment. Earl strained himself trying to stand up, reaching out for his wife to help him as she always had but instead, he watched her run up the stairs. When he heard the bedroom door slam shut, he thought he knew what her plan was. To hole herself up in the bedroom until he sobered up enough for her to talk some sense into him as she had done so many times before. What he didn’t know was that Ruthie wasn’t in the bedroom. She waited in the shadows of the neighboring hallway for the right moment to strike because she finally figured it all out: freedom wasn’t something that’s given; it’s taken.

Those few minutes of Earl making his way to the bedroom felt like an eternity. Heavy footfalls on each step echoed like he wanted her to feel real fear for the first time in a long time. He was too drunk to see her hiding when he passed her. She listened to him calling her name again and again and again as he searched their bedroom for her.

Then silence.

Ruthie didn’t let her curiosity get the better of her. She waited. A minute or two later, he came out; leaning on the doorframe of their bedroom and loading his gun with a lazy certainty in his expression like it was an inconvenience to teach his lost wife a lesson.

“You can’t kill me, Ruth,” he yawned, “Not without goin’ with me,”

She brought her hand to her mouth to stifle her panicked breaths. She knew what she had to do. He dragged himself across the hallway, back to the staircase and started going down. She waited for the third step then ran out from her hiding spot, throwing her whole body into his back and watching with glee as he tumbled down the steps to the first floor. A gunshot went off and the bullet flew past her, grazing her ear as she lifted her hands over her head to dodge.

But the stream of warm blood that fell down her neck was nothing compared to the pool of blood that surrounded Earl’s head like a grim halo of death.

That evil thing inside Ruthie guided her words and actions that night. When the police came, she told them what happened. Tears of panic and grief flowed freely down her cheeks so that the police had no choice but to believe that they came from a place of real terror. She told them how he was a drunkard who spent their money on loose women and cheap alcohol, and how he didn’t see his wife as the woman who kept his life afloat but a machine to cook, clean and please him. Where the evil thing started to show itself was when she said that he attacked her first. Tossed her around the kitchen and demanded that she sin against God in the bedroom for him. When she ran upstairs to hide, he followed her then tripped on his way back downstairs as he dragged her out of their bedroom to do god knows what.

And to her surprise, the police believed her. It was only Ruthie after all. Sad, mousy, meek little Ruthie who couldn’t even raise her voice to someone. Much less, kill her husband.

Maybe Ruthie had her own luck after all.