...

26 views

Crashing Down
#WritcoStoryPrompt44
The violence of the crash, the noise, the small table overturning, helped bring her out of the shock. She came out slowly, feeling cold and surprised, and she stood for a while blinking at the body, still holding the ridiculous piece of meat tight with both hands.

All right, she told herself. So I’ve killed him.

As she stood over the body, who was her husband till moments ago, the past eight years flashed across her eyes. How they met, how he proposed to her, how they decided they will not bear children, rather he took the decision for them, how he was always travelling for months at a stretch, how he used to come back with a new scar every time. She was always left wondering.

Until that fateful evening.

She was alone at home. He had been away for nearly two months now. After seven years of marriage, she had stopped waiting for his return from his 'business trips'.

She was immersed in her book when the phone rang. Very few people had their landline number. It must be family.

An unknown man's voice took her by surprise.

Have I forgotten what he sounds like on the phone?

Her doubts were answered when the man started giving random instructions to her. He first asked her to check the pictures slid under the main door of their house, and then wait for his call.

What pictures?

The man hung up. She went to the main door to find an envelope lying on the floor. She peeped inside and brought the envelope in the living room. The pounding in her chest told her she needed to sit down to witness this.

What she saw didn't surprise her much. The pictures were of her husband, from his youth. In most of them, he was receiving some award with an Israeli flag in the background.

In two pictures, he was with a woman. They looked like a couple. She shoved away the word 'married' from the thought.

There were no pictures of kids. Seemed like he was truthful to her to at least some extent. Or so she hoped.

She was gawking at the woman in the picture when the phone rang again. The same man asked her if she had seen the pictures. He said her husband was a Russian spy. Somehow, the only thing that surprised her was her inability to be shocked at the disclosure. She knew too much to believe his fake Polish accent to be true.

The man asked her to meet him at the nearby coffee shop later in the evening. He was going to tell her the complete truth.

What shocked her again was her calmness at the thought of meeting that stranger to discuss her spying husband.

The meeting with the man had left her clueless, but not shocked.

She was just an assignment. Their marriage had felt like work for the past couple of years anyway.

He had used her, and still was, for portraying a better image to the world, while he went on doing his job as a Russian spy in the US. She felt used anyways every time he took a decision that changed the course of their lives, without consulting her.

And when time came, the assignment would be over.

That meant her too.

As directed by the man, she waited for an alert for the next couple of months. It was two days before their eighth anniversary that she got the call again.

Her husband's assignment had ended and he had been summoned back to Russia.

Her time was over. Or she could decide otherwise.

On the occasion of their anniversary, he said they will not go out, rather dine at home.

'So he could kill me easily.' She was certain.

She met with the man at the nearby coffee shop again. He gave her the poison that could save her life. If she used it for the killer first.

She cooked steak just the way he liked. Everything present at the dinner was what pleased him. Being the chef, she had prepared chicken soup for herself. It calmed her. She needed the calm to watch him die having his favourite steak.

'Why aren't you having steak? It's delicious! Come on, get some for yourself too."

She had to obey the order. That was the instinct. She got up and went to the kitchen. She was returning with the steak on a plate when she heard the phone ring.

Her heart skipped a beat and stopped in her track. It was her husband's mobile.

"Why are you calling right now? It's...It's not safe.....No, it cannot be done.....I said no... I cannot do it....She's my wife, that's why."

His sound dropped to a whisper by the end of the conversation. Her husband's conversation made her forget she had an order to obey.

She was imagining the half eaten stake on his plate when she heard a thud. She came near the kitchen door to take a peep without letting herself show. Talking on his mobile, he had stood up from the table and walked to the glass cabinet. As the steak started to show the effect of her life-saving poison, he dropped the mobile on the ground and clutched at his throat.

It will constrict his air passage and he will die of suffocation. The man had told her.

His body jerked forward, struggling to breathe. The glass cabinet lay in his path. His left hand held his throat while his right hand jutted at the glass cabinet. She had then realised she was clutching the steak on her plate with her right hand, crushing it causing all the juice to ooze out between her fingers.

The second jerk from his body, his final failed attempt at gasping for some air, had jolted the glass cabinet to lose balance. Both her husband and the glass cabinet had come crashing down, one shattering on the ground, the other shattering her life. With that grounding, the plate from her hand lost the grip and shattered to the ground as well.

The violence of the crash, the noise, the small table overturning, helped bring her out of the shock. His last sentence had jolted her to the core.

"She's my wife, that's why."

© Ishita Nigam Garg