Daily Flash Fiction Challenge

The fight started in the middle of Lake Tranquil. Since voices carry across calm bodies of water, everyone on shore had to know something ugly was happening.

“Keep your voice down, Pete!”

“We’re alone out here.”

“They know our voices.”

Patti and I rarely fight. It would be so out of character for us to be using angry, obscene words, no one on shore would guess it was us.

The events of the day made the evening the perfect storm for a whopper of an altercation: My car wouldn’t start and I had to take the train into work. Patti drove me to the station, which put her late for her yoga class. (Oh, boo hoo!) Then I lost the Star account, so Mr. Hastings fired me. I took the train back. Patti didn’t answer her cell phone so I had to drop a twenty on a taxi.

“You’re home early,” Patti said as she gulped a tumbler of Merlot.

I decided not to tell her about my termination. “I landed the Star account.”

“It’s about time!”

I fixed myself a vodka martini...a double. She refilled her tumbler and sniped all through dinner and beyond.

After Letterman, I decided I needed to be alone and staggered toward the dock. I could hear her footsteps behind me.

"Weren’t you going to invite me?”

“Of course I was,” I lied.

Once we were in the middle of the lake, I dropped anchor and told her my news.

That’s when the screaming started.

When I’d had my fill, I pulled up anchor, smacked her in the head with it, untied the anchor line from the boat, wrapped it around her and dropped her into the drink. She sank like a rock.

A guy can only take so much.