Hope floats

 Marvin watched with satisfaction as the white bundle that had once been his wife sank in the water of the lake, slowly disappearing from sight. She was finally dead. He almost couldn’t believe it. Ten years of misery were finally over. No more dirty looks, no more nagging, no more veiled put-downs disguised as simple observations.

He took another drag on his cigarette and played back the murder in his mind, enjoying every delicious second of it. How the look on her face changed when she finally realized he was really going to kill her, all the cockiness and arrogance draining out of her face, to be replaced by cold fear. The heavy feeling of the ax in his hand, and the jolt he felt when it slammed into her skull. Her scream as he raised it again and again, that was the best part of all, striking her until his arm grew tired.

He still had specks of her blood on his face; he didn’t want to wash it off, wanted to wear it forever, proof that it had really happened, celebration war paint of his victory over the Old Witch.

He walked back up the trail and got back in his car. He turned to the passenger seat.

“What’s that you say, Stella? Oh, you mean you don’t have any rotten, dirty insult to throw at me? Oh yes, that’s right, you’re at the bottom of the lake with your head split open.”

Marvin laughed, threw his head back and let himself really enjoy it, as a feeling of freedom washed over him, like a bird released from a cage after years of imprisonment.

He bounced up and down in the seat, so full of happiness that if anybody saw him they’d think he was crazy.

As he drove away, back down the dirt road to the main highway, he thought back on how long it had taken. He’d had to wait for so long, until he’d managed to drain their mutual savings account, turned it all into cash and hid it in a locker at the airport so that he could jet away after he’d killed her to someplace warm and sunny where they’d never find him. But then she’d found out, and his plans had to scrapped and instant action taken.

He could still see her standing there in the garage, her thin, severe face red with anger as she held the key to the locker with the money in her skeleton like wrinkled hand and screamed at him, threatening that if he thought life was Hell before, wait until now. And then he snapped. He grabbed the ax from his workbench and came at her, and quickly she realized that she’ d went too far this time, but it was too late.

For having to improvise, he didn’t think he’d done too badly. It was good enough to buy him time to get to the airport, get the money and disappear forever. Heaven in some warm paradise waited on the horizon, where beautiful, tanned young women waited with open arms.

 He reached in his pocket for the locker key. It wasn’t there. He slammed on the brakes, skidding on the soft dirt road. The key. A cold hand gripped him as realization sank in. In all the excitement and emotion, he’d forgotten about it. She must have put it back in her pocket. And where was the pocket? At the bottom of the lake.

He’d have to go back and get it. But how could he ever find her body? He’d weighted it down so well, with bags of cement and some old tire chains. And how could he afford the time? It wouldn’t be long before her horrible mother would wonder why she wasn’t calling, like Stella did every day, the two chattering like monkeys for hours on end. And it was Stella’s bridge night, all her old crony friends would be wondering where she was.

And every moment he spent next to the body added to the likelihood he’d be caught.

As he turned the car around, he hoped that he hadn’t done that good of job hiding his crime after all.