The Anniversary Party

              While not the intended effect, the outcome was surprisingly satisfying.  As I died on the muddy bank holding my dying wife in my arms, I was sadly content. The night itself had been a sweet and sour end to our story, though I could never have imagined one more fitting.

         She’d deserved every morsel of what she’d got.  Her snide comments and disapproving looks had earned her a fair share of pain in our bitter battle.

         Our game began earlier that night, on what had begun as a quiet Saturday evening at home. 

         Madge looked up from her women’s magazine and said: “You don’t like me anymore do you?”

         She seemed blissfully unaware that for years I’d dreamt of her mangled body sprawled at my feet, like the dog she was.

         “I don’t hate you, Madge.  You’ve just become so-frigid.  I miss the happy, free girl I married.”

         “Frigid?” She said standing and tossing her magazine atop the coffee table.  “In what way?”

         I closed my newspaper and said: “It isn’t just me, everyone feels it.  You could fog the windows of room just by walking in.”

         She smiles curtly with her hand on her hips.  Her red hair was quite long and hung around her shoulders.  “What about you?”

         I looked up at her, an invitation to elaborate.

         She understood my gesture and crept close to me.  Then closer.

         “You’re boring and predictable.  Can’t you do anything you haven’t done?  I’m so frigid because I’ve been drained by your blandness!”

         She stamped away and I opened my newspaper once more.

         “Gordon put down the damn newspaper,” she said, re-entering the den.

         In her hand was a series of plates which I recognized as her coveted wedding china.  She tosses them at the walls around me, eyes wild as a jungle.  The plates crack and bounce on the walls, finally breaking atop the tile floor.

         “Hot enough for you?” she asks.

         “Madge, you need to calm down.  Perhaps a pain killer or five will do the trick.”

         She dropped the remaining plate in her hand and disappeared once more from the room.  I discarded my newspaper and walked to my bedroom.

         “I’m leaving,” she said from the other room.

         “Go ahead, sweetie.  But only take the car that’s registered in your name.  Otherwise, I’ll have no choice but to call the police.”

         Flurried with rage, she rushed into my bedroom and spat in my face.  I wiped the warm saliva from my eye and wiped it the bedspread.  “You son of a-”

         “I’ll leave,” I said.  “It’ll be worth it to be away from you.”

As I passed through the bedroom and by the bottom of the staircase, she pushed herself on me like a rabid dog.  I fell, knocking my head on the wood.  I laid in shock for a second, as blood began trickling from the gash on my head.

         I jumped quickly and pushed her forcefully.  Madge sailed through the doorway of the kitchen and landed hands first onto the stove top.  Sadly, Madge’s hands landed directly into a pot of boiling water she’d started for tea minutes earlier.

         She screamed and turned with the pot in her pink, steaming hands.  She flung the pot through the air, dousing my face with the searing hot water.  Instinctively, I grabbed the pot from her grip and slapped her across the face with the molten hot bottom.

         She covered her face with her raw hands, and I did the same.

         Madge paused and looked down at the kitchen counter where a pair of pruning scissors from our garden laid.  Before I blinked, she’d slit me multiple times on my arm.

         As I shielded myself, I couldn’t help but be surprised that my wife was such a robust fighter.

         She laughed her same pompous laugh as I applied pressure to my cuts.  As she continued to cackle, I pulled the heaviest cookbook from the shelf next to me and dropped it, spine-first atop her foot.

         She backed away in pain and jabbed me once more with the pruning scissors.

         She paused for a second and seeing an opportunity, I grabbed her by the shoulders and flung her over the countertop where she crashed into the nearby barstools.  They and she toppled to the floor.

         Madge popped back up with a splintered piece of wood in hand and shot it at me like an arrow.  The sharp edge hit me squarely in the gut, both cutting me and ejaculating all the oxygen from my body.

         I fell against the liquor cabinet as blood began spurting from my side.  I yelled at the intensity of the pain.

         “You’re crazy!” I yelled.

         “No,” she said quietly as she crept back around the bar and close to me. “I’m a woman.”  She then hurled another splintered chair leg at my side.

         I yelped, but a nearby wine bottle glistened near the liquor cabinet.  A very fine Barbaresco.  Very expensive and aged, perfect for- I smashed the glass bottle over her head quickly.  The bottle exploded upon impact and she sank to the floor covered in red wine and landed atop the broken glass.

         “How dare you,” she whispered through clenched teeth as she stood up.  She backed away quickly and flung open a kitchen drawer.  She removed a large mortar and pestle set which she proceeded to aim at my face.

         The pestle hit my eye jubilantly and the pestle, my crotch, respectively.

         The pain was high, but I refused to allow such behavior.

         I opened a flour canister and approached her.  “This is for The Way We Were and Love Story,” I yelled as I bathed her in a cloud of flour which she vanished into.

         She screamed and flung at me like a ghost, with puffs of flour left behind in her trail.

         With all her force, she grabbed my throat tightly and threw me out of the window near our breakfast nook.  I was severely weakened as I landed atop the large shards of glass.  Fittingly, I also landed atop the thorniest patch of our rose garden.  I turned and looked at the old goat.

         “This is for the Godfather,” she said laughing through the empty hole in the house.  She pulls a shard from the window pane and stabs my chest.  “Parts One, Two and Three!”

         I jump from the rose patch and pull her floured figure through the glass and into our front lawn.  I drop her but not before swiftly kicking her in the stomach.

         She crumbles into a ball and looks up at me. 

         “What did I do to deserve this?” She cried. “You’re a terrible husband,” she said as I swung our fat Tabby cat Bruno at her.  The old cat was frightened and surprised and landed at her breast and clawed my wife feverishly.  Old Bruno then leapt from her and disappeared into the darkness.

         I laughed loudly, tossing my head in the air with my voice echoing in the empty countryside.

         Madge rose up from the green lawn and said: “I got something real nice for you, Mister.”  She pulled a set of keys from her pocket and ran to her vintage Mercedes parked just feet away.

         Madge started the car with precision I’d never seen and sped at me just as quickly.

         I ran quick as I could, however, her rage was driving.  I couldn’t keep up and the old Mercedes hit me. 

         I flew over the front end, tumbled across the roof and hit the pavement behind the car.

         Madge jumped out of the car laughing.

         “That was uncalled for,” I said pulling my keys from my pocket.  I ran to the Rolls Royce as she hopped back in the Mercedes and we sped off down the long, twisty road leading back to town.

         I pulled up right beside her and scraped the grey sports car, coaxing her further and further from the road.  At last her car tumbled down into a small ravine and smoke shot up into the sky. 

         I leapt from my car and ran down. 

         Madge had been tossed from the vehicle and flown through the windshield. 

         She fumbled out from the small pond, wounded and drenched in moss and the bright green foam that floated atop such small ponds.

         “You don’t like me do you?” She asked.

         “I hate you, darling.  Simple as that.” I said.

         She laughed, tossing her head up to the sky and shaking it.

         “Happy anniversary, dear husband,” she said approaching me with a silver pistol in hand.

         “It’s our anniversary?” I asked backing away as Madge continued creeping closer.

         “I hope you like what I got you,” she said eyes wild as an angered elephant.

         Without a second to spare, I pulled my trusty revolver from my pocket and fired.

         Bang.

         Bang.

         Bang.

         Madge fell to the ground quietly.

         “You shouldn’t have,” I said smiling.  My gaiety was short-lived, however, for Madge soon jerked her arm up and fired three shots of her own.

         Bang.

         Bang.

         Bang.

         I dropped my gun and fell to the moist grass.

         We’d done it.  After all the years of marriage, we finally were about to be parted by death.

         As I looked my wife over lying face down in a pile of sediment, I felt sad, not victorious.

         It couldn’t end this way, we meant too much to each other.  I crawled next to her and hugged her one last.  She returned my sentiment and kissed me.  Madge had also realized how much she loved me.

         “Happy twenty-fifth,” I whispered kissing her.

         She laid her head on my chest and released one of her final breaths.  Finally, Madge eyed our nearby pistols and said: “Twenty-five years is the silver anniversary.”