// DISCLAIMER: THIS FICTIONAL WORK CONTAINS MENTIONS OF DEATH, KILLING, AND PROBLEMATIC TENDENCIES //
She sat cross-legged on her carpeted living room floor, picking at her fingernails absentmindedly as she stared at the body bleeding out before her.
The fun part was over, sadly. Her little moment of cruelty, the sizzling snap of her sanity that had led her to grip the collar of her husband’s shirt and slit his throat.
Now she was back to being bored. Again.
She huffed, resting her chin in her bloody hands. The tangy smell hit her even harder, thick and cloying, and she wrinkled her nose. She hadn’t even considered the cleanup effort this whole ordeal would take. Joke’s on her for not thinking ahead.
She sighs and gets up to grab a hand towel from the downstairs bathroom. Her arm aches a little from her struggle, and she curses herself for not having considered how difficult it would be to actually kill a grown man, almost twice her size. It took a lot of struggling by both parties, and that coupled with the pathetic shock twisting her husband’s face and the hands grasping at her clothes made the whole thing such a pain.
She remembers how he looked at her after she’d committed the deed and shoved him to the floor, the disbelief and sadness and anger radiating in his eyes at her betrayal. She might’ve felt bad, had she been in a better mood, but honestly, he should have seen this coming.
She’s read her fair share of books, seen her fair share of movies and TV, and so she knows that for every good villain, there’s always a backstory. Irreversible childhood trauma, crippling mental illness with no treatment available, a traumatic brain injury. There was always some sort of reason for the person going bonkers, some kind of explanation for their bizarre behavior.
Personally, she thought that was stupid.
Why couldn’t someone just be evil for the sake of it, huh? Why did there always need to be some sort of tragic backstory, a tear-jerker that made the audience’s hearts explode with empathy for the person out there committing heinous crimes against humanity?
Why couldn’t someone be totally insane just…because?
It’s because people always tried to find the good in the dark world they lived in, she knew. There had to be some sort of explanation, because if there was just pure evil raging out there – unchecked – then how could people keep living their idyllic little lives? How could they wake up in the morning and appreciate the sun shining and the birds chirping? How could they be raging optimists that looked for beauty in all things ugly when there usually wasn’t any?
It was delusion, and she knew it.
Her mind would shatter those innocent souls. A giggle burst from her as she thought about that, about how her parents and friends and coworkers would react if they knew what she’d just done, or better yet, why she’d done it.
Because the answer is: she was bored.
No, her husband wasn’t abusive or a cheater or anything. He was honestly not too bad sometimes. She tolerated him. Whatever spark they’d once had was long gone, but they’d been living a comfortable life with each other.
She hadn’t fallen on her head one too many times as a kid (at least not that she could remember), and her family life was fine. Boring but stable, mundane but fine.
As she took her time rifling through the cabinets for a pretty-looking towel, she pursed her lips and really thought about it. What could have driven her to do something like this on a whim? She really was curious. Maybe it was, like, stress from work or something. Not that that was anything new – work was always stressful.
“Aha!” She’d found one of her favorite towels: light pink with a giant white heart sown into the fabric. It’d been a birthday gift, although from whom, she couldn’t quite recall. The person didn’t really matter quite so much to her, it was the item that she cherished.
She thought it would look so pretty if the heart were red instead. It’d become Valentine’s Day themed, and she’d always liked Valentine’s day. Well, the day after, really, because that’s when all the chocolate was discounted. She smiled, thinking about it. Valentine’s Day was coming up, actually.
The promise of infinite Hershey’s kisses added a pep to her step as she marched back to her living room, where her husband lay lifeless. The blood was starting to dry at this point, so she had to hurry. The stains would be harder and harder to get rid of the longer she waited.
She got down on her knees and scrubbed, like a good little housewife. She snorted at that, because apparently she wasn’t much of a wife anymore. She was a widow.
Ew.
She’d always assumed widows to be old and creepy, but here she was at the ripe age of 26, spouse-less. It was her own fault, but still.
Blowing a stray strand of hair out of her face, she rolled up her sleeves and kept scrubbing. Her arms were aching even more now, and really she was probably just rubbing the stain more solidly into the carpet, but she needed something to occupy her hands while her mind was lost in thought. Wondering what she would tell people. Wondering how she would get herself back into the dating scene again (after all, she hadn’t been single since she was 21). Wondering if she even needed to bother hitting the gym today, since she’d clearly already gotten her workout for the day.
Her hand brushed against her husband’s cheek – still warm – and her eyes drifted to his face. His skin was sickly pale, his eyes bugged out wide, and she felt a twinge of pity in her chest. She thought about what his last thoughts would have been as the life had drained out of him. He’d probably been wondering why she would do something like this, what warning signs he had missed. Or maybe he’d just been thinking about what he’d had for breakfast that morning – she’d read somewhere that when people are in traumatic situations, their brains sometimes inject them with certain thoughts in order to create a false sense of normalcy.
She, being the sweetheart she was, hoped it was the latter. She hoped it was the latter because it would be a shame for it to have been the former. She truly had no answers for him. She genuinely had no idea why she’d decided to spice up her Sunday morning this way, after all.
It had just been…an in-the-moment decision.
He’d understand.
He’d always told her she could stand to be a little more spontaneous.
She flicked his forehead, teasing, challenging his corpse as if to say, Well, guess who’s spontaneous now?
She chuckled to herself a bit. She really could be so funny sometimes.
He looked stupid with his eyes protruding out like that, and with his lips parted as well, he looked like a fish gasping for air. She reached over and gently pressed his eyes and mouth shut.
Then she went back to cleaning.