Mouth Execution

She watched the spots of creamy sauce spread out like a disease across the table. Each time he lifted his fork another splodge was added to the complex pattern. How could he still be eating? 

“Did you hear what I said?” She asked. 

His mouth moved rapidly, chomping and chewing the soft pasta in an unnecessarily vigorous manner. Like a rabbit on steroids. The seconds ticked by slowly as he continued to chew the same mouthful. It was inconceivable. Just swallow the goddamn bite already. 

She sat cross legged at the table as her foot bounced frenetically in the air. She concentrated on connecting the diseased spots, rather than looking at his rigid jaw (yes, rigid despite the fact he was chewing). 

“You’re not speaking clearly. Say it clearly, what you have to say.” 

He said as his fork hit the bottom of his bowl with a sharp twang. He spun the fork around to gather the fettuccine. The pasta clumped around the fork; forming a creamy lumpy head. A head that was swollen and engorged, that perhaps had taken a bad blow, she thought. The fettuccine continued to wrap itself around his aggressive, sharply rotating fork. 

“How much more clear can I be, Dave?” 

She said to the table, her empty bowl in front of her. How relieved she felt, no more of these painful meals, no more of Dave’s methodical 47 chews each time he placed a slither of food in his mouth. She glanced at him to read his expression but was distracted by his constrained and frustrated chewing. The quick, sharp chews, all traces of joy executed between his large, straight white denchers. 

The tightness in his jaw made her think of them in the bedroom. His finger pumping into her without passion, a tireless movement he performed with great struggle; furrow tense, eyebrows crinkled, it seemed the most laborious work in existence. He had the same expression now, as he set about annihilating each chunk of food inside his large unappealing orifice. He was looking at her, no, he was looking at something on her face. No, she couldn’t tell. It was like his eyes were out of focus. Too much concentration on chomping, she thought. 

He said, “you do this all the time. You say you’re not happy, you list the many wrongs that I’ve done, we discuss each point and then you change your mind.”

Her foot started bouncing in double time underneath the table. 

“This. This Dave. This is exactly what I can’t stand.” 

Something about her tone must have surprised him because he stopped chomping and looked at her, this time directly at her. 

“Zaphne, try to stay calm.” 

He stirred his pasta, scraping his fork against the ceramic, the scream of metal against porcelain echoing in their silent kitchen. 

She said, “how many times have I told you not to make that sound?”

He stopped stirring and furrowed his eyebrows at her, then looked out the window, which was black. She looked out the black window too, which made no sense, it was black. There was no escape from the kitchen where they sat. 

He twisted his fork in the pasta again. He must have two bites left at most, she thought, as she scanned his bowl. Why did she make pasta? She should have made a soft food so that he couldn’t justify and torment her with all this chewing. Mashed potato. Roasted pumpkin. Soup. Ah, the ideas flowed effortlessly now. No, she thought suddenly, soup would have been worse. Boiling hot, lethal, and she couldn’t bear to think of the slurping sounds he would antagonise her with. 

She stood up abruptly with so much force that the chair fell backwards and smacked against the ground with a loud clapping sound. She wanted to laugh. He actually jumped, his body flinched and he stopped his bite mid-chew. She held back the laugh though. She considered bending down to pick up the chair, it lay there accusingly, evidence of her mood. She picked up her bowl instead and walked to the sink, leaving the chair in its deformity on the ground, it was beyond help, she thought. Zaphne turned on the tap to rinse her bowl but the water caught the curve of the spoon and sprayed right back at her, splashing her face, her shirt and the surrounding bench area with cold water. She immediately turned the tap off and simultaneously looked over at Dave. He was still chewing and staring out the black window. She wasn’t sure if he actually hadn’t seen it or if he was only pretending that he hadn’t seen it. She grabbed the tea towel and dried herself brusquely. 

“Well, I’ve got things I need to do.” She said and began walking towards the kitchen door. 

“Wait.” He said, sounding almost like he was begging her. She wanted to keep walking, her mind wanted her to keep walking. She imagined herself safely down the corridor, snuggled up not in their room, but in his bedroom where she had been sleeping for the last two years. She imagined closing the door, locking it, and getting out his phone, opening up those messages. It was just moments away from her, mere seconds. But her body stopped. Her feet refused to move further. She didn’t turn back towards Dave, she just stood there frozen. Was the fridge always this noisy? She thought. She suddenly felt like she couldn’t hear anything above the droning moan of the monstrous silver fridge she found herself next to. The one Dave had insisted on buying. Monstrously big for the fact there were only two of them. Monstrously big for their small kitchen. What did that communicate? We have a tiny kitchen but an enormous fridge? She heard Dave’s chair move, it was a delicate, careful sound. He must have lifted his chair up before standing, unlike her. He was so unlike her. She should move. She should start her steps towards safety, towards heaven, but she remained still. 

His steps became louder as he walked towards her and he stopped just behind her, she could feel him standing there, without touching her. She could smell him. His breath of mushrooms and parmesan from the pasta. She wondered what they would have looked like to an outsider, two people standing in line, one behind the other, in their own kitchen, half a meter away from that enormous silver fridge. Perhaps someone who just glanced through the blackened windows might think they were mid-dance. Perhaps another would think he was about to inspect her hair for nits. These, and other odd thoughts, filled her mind as she tried to convince herself to walk away from him. He moved closer behind her and lifted his hand to lightly, barely, touch the top of his hand against her palm. He whispered in her ear.

“Come back to me.” 

The messages floated through her mind. Words upon words, phrases that stopped abruptly, that were complete in everything yet said nothing. She had to analyse them, she felt compelled to decode them, find the secret message she was convinced was there. 

He stretched out his fingers, opening up a space for hers to slide through and closed them around hers. Their hands clasped together in a way that felt to her as if they were inside out. His voice was lower, it felt like wet soil, it was earthy and she felt the tips of her roots in his whisper. 

“Zaphne, I’m right here…stay with me.” 

His mouth was right by her ear, right behind her. But the bed was warmer. It called her urgently, she felt like a bear about to hibernate, it was not her choice. It was in her nature, a matter of survival. 

“You can’t keep doing this. You know you’re tired. Come sit with me on the couch a bit.” 

He reached out his other hand and clasped her fingers between hers. He pulled her arms back slightly behind her, not enough to cause discomfort just enough to feel the pressure of his arms, the strength of his hands. She felt like a prisoner doing arm stretches.Could she sit on the couch? Could she pass the evening with her obsessive, robot-chewing husband? As she played out the imagined scene of them on the couch the unpleasant hot sensation began in her gut, searing her insides and rendering her incapable. She snatched her hands out from his suddenly and began to move again, a wild energy surging through her. He grabbed her around the waist, surprising her and pulled her back towards him. She spun around to face him. 

“Don’t you dare touch me.”

She hissed as she pushed her hands against his chest. He took a step back, slightly off balance and she felt a sudden relief, she could breathe again. He sighed and looked back out towards the blackened windows. 

“You have to stop someday.” 

“I don’t. And I won’t.” 

“Zaphne, come on, it's destroying you.” 

He spoke to the windows. 

She marched out of the kitchen, her socked feet padding gleefully on the carpeted floor towards her golden cage. She opened the door to her lair and closed it behind her, eager to climb into bed.  Everything lay exactly as she had left it. Nothing changed in his room, no one entered, no one left, except her. Things didn’t get old, rot and die. They didn’t fester. They remained intact, fossilised. 

The covers lay halfway down the bed where she had left them this morning. The pillow still had the imprint of her head. The papers balanced precariously on the nightstand where she had left them yesterday. How much glee she manifested from these simple observations, of continuation, of consistency, safe from any risk of unexpected things. She wriggled down into the bed and pulled up the covers. She grabbed the phone from the draw and entered the code that only she knew. She opened the messaging app. She checked the date like she did every time, just to make sure: two years, one month and three days ago was when the last message arrived. She knew that, she counted down each minute, each hour of the day keeping track of how much time had passed. She knew that, but she liked seeing the evidence on his phone, the concrete data no one could interfere with. She read the messages as if they were new, like she did every time. And then she set about her usual task. Carefully crafting the reply. She knew, any day now, that she would discover the right combination of words, rhythm and pacing. It was just a matter of hardwork and dedication. It was just a matter of making them all fit together and communicate the message in a way he would understand. That was all she needed to figure out. The perfect response.

She read his message again. Now it was clear what he hadn’t said. She couldn’t believe how stupid she had been, how she hadn’t seen how he was feeling, what he had been thinking about doing. It was so clear to her now after what happened, in the way the sentences stopped abruptly, the polite but detached undercurrent through the text. She flicked back to her drafts. 1,347 almost perfectly crafted drafts sat in the folder. They were almosts. Almost enough to stop him from what he had done. By now she had the words, it was just a matter of the construction. She could feel it in her body, each night she was getting closer and closer. 

A noise distracted her. She tried to lock the phone so the light wouldn’t be seen but she was used to her own one and she pressed the wrong button, instead the torch came on. Dave opened the door and stood in the doorway. He looked at where the light was coming from and she could tell from his expression that he knew exactly what she had.

“Zaphne…please…” His voice sounded frightened.  

“Dave, leave me alone. I’m busy.” 

He walked down to the bed and lowered himself to the floor, his arms around her shape on the bed. He looked like he was praying, his forehead pressed against the bed covers.

“Nothing you do can change the situation. You have to…” 

Was he crying again?  

“You don’t understand Dave, you never understand. I need to fix this, I’m so close now, I almost have it.” 

He was definitely crying, she felt his fingers moving in rhythmic thumps against her hips as his arms and back shook with each tremor. 

“I know. I keep thinking about that morning. I don’t know…why…I don’t know why I…I didn’t say anything. Zaphne…”

“What?”

“I…I knew something was wrong. I had, I don’t know, a bad feeling. I saw he was upset, he was different, something was off. But I didn’t…” 

He didn’t sound like Dave. His voice sounded like he had on a voice deformer, the covers muffling his usually earthy tones. She shifted suddenly, trying to free herself from his hot hands, his big, hot hands that were burning her, leaving guilty imprints on her flesh through the thick covers. She didn’t tell him what she had said to him that morning. Dave’s hot hands found her body again under the cover. She wanted to groan. 

“I keep seeing him when I…when I found him. I -” 

“Dave, please. I’m busy. I can’t listen to this right now.” 

She rolled onto her side and opened up her phone to read the last draft she had written. 

Our love for you 

Will never 

Die. 

Mum and Dad