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Kristie walked through the club with a confidence she hadn’t felt before. The last time she had been to the James Club had been a year or two before she became involved with a guy that treated her like she was his possession. He abused her as much physically as mentally. In the three years they had been together, he had destroyed her self-esteem and almost broken her spirit. But, John, that was the bastard’s name, couldn’t break her. He had been a drunk and a womanizer, and she had put up with that shit for three years. But, the last beating her gave her turned out to be the last thing that he ever did.
He came home from work drunk one night and it was the wrong day to be almost incapacitated. She was twenty-two, and he was twenty-six. They had been dating for three years, and only the first was good. John had been a good man, but, as soon as she fell in love with him and moved in with him, become dependent on him, he changed. It started with a push after an argument, then it became a slap. Within six months of the first push, it was a closed fist punch that split her lip and gave her a mild concussion.
She put up with his beatings, and even started to believe that she was as worthless as he told her she was. But, one night he came home and she had decided that he would never hurt her again. She had been pregnant, and although he never knew it, she had lost the baby. It had only been four months into the pregnancy, barely into the second trimester. She woke up one morning; sore from the punches to the kidney he had given her when his dinner was not hot, only warm. She had peed blood throughout the night, but she was only slightly alarmed. She knew she was pregnant, but she was scared to tell John. He didn’t want kids and wouldn’t understand that the pill didn’t always work.
She sat on the toilet and peed. She finished and stood up, an intense pain ripping through her abdomen. She called an ambulance. Two hours later, at the hospital, they told her that she had a miscarriage. She didn’t cry or even falter in the least. She thanked the doctor and refused to stay the night. She was home three hours after she had first ridden in the ambulance to the hospital. The staff was amazed at how well she dealt with pain, but they never knew what it was like to have a grown man punch the skin of you body when he got a little drunk and a little bored.
She sat in John’s favorite recliner and thought to herself that she was kind of glad that she wasn’t going to have his baby. She felt sadness beyond description at having lost her baby, but she knew she could have another. This time, a baby that wasn’t his.
Sitting in the chair was normally something that she would never, and could never do. He didn’t allow it because it was his chair. She wore perfume and it permeated the chair. Sometimes, he just wanted to be alone and if he smelled her, he wasn’t alone. She thought he was joking, but thirteen stitches across her knee from a belt loop tearing her skin when he slapped her convinced her that she should never sit in his chair. Today, she sat in the chair making sure to wear extra perfume.
It would be impossible to tell what made her finally decide to end things with him. It could have been the look on the doctor’s face when he told her that she had lost the baby. Or, it could have been the emptiness she felt when she was searching through her cabinet for the receipts for the baby stroller she had put on lay-a-way. Either way, at some moment, Kristie had decided that she wanted a separation from John and it needed to be permanent.
She sat in the chair. It was actually quite comfortable. But, more importantly, it was located at the end of the living room, across from the cellar door, a cellar door that opened to reveal steep and dangerous concrete steps. The steps were old and cracked, leading to a concrete floor. The door was always closed, except, today it was open. She sat in the chair and waited. It was Friday, John’s favorite drinking day. Everyday was a drinking day, but, Friday was the day that his friggin’ fat bastard boss let him leave after lunch and enjoy his weekend. John usually came home at six, hungry for dinner and eager for a shower before he and the boys went out for some real boozin’.
Kristie knew his schedule, because for the past two years, it had been her schedule. She had to be home when he was home; he may need something from the fridge. She had to be home and make sure things were clean around the house. He liked to have friends over last minute and wouldn’t have time to clean and pay the bills.
When she thought of the abuse she had endured over the last two years, she got mad at herself. Why hadn’t she left? Why did she stay? She didn’t have answers to those types of questions. Partly, she stayed because she was afraid to leave. Mostly, she stayed because he would find her if she left. He wasn’t a big and scary man, but she was scared of his temper. However, today, she was afraid of her own temper. She promised herself that she would say her story and then leave, but she hadn’t packed. She had a vague idea what she was actually going to do. The cellar door was open and she was the person that opened it. She also remembered putting a shovel at the bottom step, although she only suspected why she had done such a thing.
It was seven thirty when he finally stumbled through the front door. Kristie could smell the beer the second the door opened, and that was exactly what she had hoped for. She had her eyes closed, pretending to be asleep in his chair. Oops, sorry honey, I must have dozed off.
He would be upset that she had been in his chair and he would want to talk to her about it. But, she had a surprise for him.
It all happened so fast, she couldn’t remember the exact details. She remembered he had walked in to the house and slammed the door shut when he saw her in the chair. She didn’t move in the chair, still pretending. He walked over to her in the chair and nudged her with his fist.
“Wake up. I’m hungry”.
She stirred a little and made a noise that sounded like a whine. He hated whiners. He poked her again, but she turned her back to him, forcing him to re-position himself to look at her. He was standing in front of the cellar door, but he didn’t know it was open.
“Come on you bitch, get out of my fuckin’ chair. I’m hungry and I gotta get back out to meet the guys.”
He nudged her harder, but she stayed in the chair. She heard him sigh, and could almost feel his anger. She was waiting for him to be on the verge of pulling her off the chair. The moment she felt him leaning in, she had a big surprise.
“That’s it. I warned you about my chair!”
He leaned in, and that’s when it happened. She jumped out of the chair as quick as a cat, pushing him backward with all her power. She didn’t believe she had the power, but something, maybe the adrenaline, made it feel like he weighed almost nothing and she could push him through a wall if she had to. She couldn’t remember everything, but she knew she had frightened him. She could see his expression change from fear to anger as he realized that she had been capable of scaring him. His expression, or what she could see of it as he fell backward, changed from fear, to anger, to bewilderment. He was falling backwards, and was going to fall hard to the floor. He still didn’t know that the door was open behind him, and by the time he realized it, it would be much too late. He was drunk and was more concerned about what he would do to her when he got off the floor, then trying to brace his arms to cushion the fall. He was falling back, and he was letting it happen.
Kristie watched as he fell through the open doorway. He must have sensed something was wrong because he let out a slight whimper when he felt himself falling past the angle of the floor, but that was the only noise she heard. Well, the only noise she heard except for the disgusting smack of his head off the concrete steps.
He slid to the bottom of the floor, lifelessly, with his neck craning at a skewed angle. She went to the top of the stairs and looked down at him. Slowly, she walked down the stairs. She expected this to be the hardest part. Just like the horror movies she watched when he was asleep, late at night. The part where the scared female heroine walked around the not so dead body of the killer and the audience waited for him to grab her ankle. But, unlike the movies, his neck was almost completely turned around and she knew her ankles weren’t going to be touched.
By the time she reached the bottom step, she had seen that she could go back upstairs and call the ambulance. She had a shovel next to the last step, but she wasn’t going to need it. It was over.
©2003 StoriesByEmail.com
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