By Nightfall (429 hits)
Category: UberMadness! EntryRating: 2 on 3 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Parlor Trick (View user info) at 2005-08-23 11:20:55 EDT
This post was an official UberMadness! entry. Click here to view the original matchup.
She had been waiting in the basement for over an hour when she heard the sound of his key twist in the outside lock. The door to the kitchen was shoved open. He had arrived as always, like the unrelenting force of the night when the day surrenders.
She felt the weight of her husband in the room above her. She heard the screen door sigh, hesitate then click into place. The metal clank of the lock concluded - He was in. He was sealed again in this box of a house with her, the mouse who married the hungry cat.
She caught his nicotine scent mixing with laundry soap and the wet basement walls. She sat soundless on a simple wooden chair in the shrunken concrete room and listened to him above.
Ron Fonger was not an animal. He was a senior veteran with the Fairfield Police Department. He was a protector and a respected keeper of order. By the book and then some, he had earned his right to take aim and call the shots. Of course there were always unexpected causalities in the battle for what is right, but nothing that couldn't be erased from the permanent file.
It was understood by most, if not Leslie Fonger, that concessions had to be made in the business of protecting those in need of it. Small scarifies were required for the benefit of the greater good. Ron was, in his mind, a knight, a hero worthy of the comics, elite, undercover, and superhuman.
One man's hero is another's villain. Leslie heard his gun belt the drop to the floor and door of the refrigerator open. She heard the snap and hiss of the opened beer, the slide of the plate and the refrigerator door close again. Ron didn't notice that the light in the refrigerator failed to come on.
"Leslie?" His heavy boots shuffled on the checkered linoleum floor above her. She had left the sandwich next to the beer. She prepared the prerequisite ham and Swiss buttered with extra mayo and a single slice of tomato, made to perfection, one more time, for old crimes sake.
He had only to show her once how to get it right. Standing behind her, his thick hand gripping her wrist. "Into the butter and onto the bread. Into the butter and onto the bread." he repeated through gritted teeth as he moved her arm. The soft fabric of the dough spit beneath the buttered knife.
Over six years had passed from the day when the young rugged officer gave Leslie a warning instead of a ticket. She gave him her number but he had already taken it. On their first date he reached beneath the table and felt the curve of her worn denim knee. With a grin and a shake of a finger she pushed his hand away. He returned it, warmly whispering in her ear "Please do not refuse me, " and she couldn't.
In a haze of romantic intoxication, she left her loft apartment with the ceilings painted blue. At Ron's insistence she quit her job as receptionist at the insurance company. He would take care of her, and she relinquished herself to him.
Beneath the heavy hand of her husband, the years progressed and Leslie was given several courses in homemaking and how to best perform the duties of a wife.
"Just wash the clothes and lift up your skirt then scrub the tub until it hurts." He made up this useful ditty that was funny only the first time she heard it.
He had suggested that she was to keep her travels from home limited to the grocery store, as there were bad guys out there - and he would know.
"Do not refuse me," he said matter-of-factly in her ear as he pried her knees open. She had rolled over complaining of a stomachache. "Do NOT refuse me," he said again forcing inside. "Do NOT..." he instructed again and again until the point was made.
Leslie found that being a quick study in the school of Ron Fonger was necessary to pass domestic survival. But unlike the days that made the months and years before, today was graduation day and she had a parting gift for her mentor.
She looked up through the basement shadows at the shards of evening light being broken by her husband's mass and the loose fit of the basement door.
"Leslie, where are you?" his footsteps moved from the kitchen to the living room. His hand groped for the light, found it, flipped the switch upward and nothing happened. "What the hell? Leslie!?"
--
Time has a way of changing the shape of things, slowly behind your back until all of a sudden -- something else is there. New variables work their way into the equation and what was a given becomes an unknown.
Ron Fonger never would have guessed that, just one hour earlier, his dutiful and properly submissive wife quite deliberately emptied a full gallon of clear liquid laundry soap at the top of the basement stairs. The now empty loose-capped bottle was left nearby believably on its side.
Two weeks earlier Leslie had been given a new variable as she sat in the restroom at the Quality Food Mart with her pants around her ankles. She starred in disbelief at the colored lines on the First Response Early Pregnancy Test. The idea struck her as ludicrous. She being pregnant was perfectly impossible, forbidden and quite likely according to the two blue lines and her calendar - true.
She had taken seriously her husband's position that he would sooner cut out her womb then allow another child into this disturbed and dangerous world. She was sure she had taken every pill. But it took only three minutes in the restroom of Quality Food Mart for Leslie to come to the conclusion that she had something she had to protect and concessions would have to be made.
--
Ron flipped the switch again, again, and one more time as if by the force of his will the light would come on. He yanked the chain on the small table lamp by the couch - nothing.
Leslie waited quietly and motionless on the chair in the basement. The small concrete room was darkening beneath the slow decent of the night. The electrical cord to the sump pump hung where she had disconnected it earlier that morning. The legs of the wooden chair appeared to bend and wobble where they met the surface of the near foot of water that had collected.
"Leslie?! You blew a fuse! God damnit! I told you, you can't iron while you're doing the laundry." His boots stomped throughout the upstairs looking for his wife and clearly the responsible party for his inconvenience. The door at the top of basement stairs flung open.
She watched as the large blackened silhouette of the man she married, till death do us part, lowered his foot onto the first soap-covered step. His foot slipped sending him crashing to his knees, arms out and hands catching then sliding on the next slippery step. He tumbled and slid, slick hands unable to grasp the already loosened railing. A smile crossed her lips as he splashed into the cold water at the bottom.
Gasping he tried to stand, his broken ankle giving way and dropping him back into the water. She stood on the chair, a better view. On his knees in the water, his frenzied eyes tried to focus. The night was filling the space between them. From across the room his eyes found hers and they settled in a rare moment of understanding.
"Hello darling." She said simply as she teetered the ironing board making the green eye of the iron wobble on the surface. Ron's eyes followed the long coiled cord to the outlet on the wall. Small ripples in the water hurried in his direction. "Did you enjoy the sandwich?"
Ron opened his mouth in mute opposition. Which was fine as Leslie was in no mood to talk and Ron's sacrifice had been decided for him. She placed her hand on her stomach and for the good of their child, declared him a causality and rocked the iron into the water.
The liquid surface cracked and in the flash of her decision Leslie saw the disbelieving eyes of her husband. He lurched upward in an involuntary salute, and he slumped into the water the instant the breaker popped and lights went out. His hair sizzled and the smell singed the air.
The room fell silent. The things within it now dressed in colorless shadows. The red flag on the breaker box said go and Leslie stepped barefoot into the cold water. She moved carefully around the form of her husband floating face down and cautiously went up the stairs.
Before reporting the tragic accident to the Fairchild Police Department, she sat in the darkened kitchen with a half eaten sandwich and enjoyed the company of the fallen night.
User Reviews
Submitted by charminglybeef (user info) at 2007-01-21 22:58:53 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
You should write more.
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2006-02-15 20:04:01 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
brilliant
Submitted by electrictoothsyndrome (user info) at 2005-10-27 10:26:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Horray for the elite 8!