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But then she screams.
Her eyes ablaze with horror and indignation and disgust.
She marches towards us with boiling anger, arms thrown out, yelling at us, calling us immoral, sinners, devils, heathens, as if she hadn’t committed adultery first, as if all those terms don’t apply to her.
By now Ray is on his feet, my cock quickly tucked away in my trousers, and it seems all her fury is directed at me. Her finger is in my face, her eyes wild like an animal in a cage.
“I knew you were like this,” Marie says, seething, breathing hard. “I knew you were one of them. A defective sinner going straight to Hell!”
I throw my hands up, trying to stay calm but failing. “You were cheating on me, Marie! I know you were. You can’t hide it, can’t deny it.”
But I don’t dare tell her how I found out.
“I was cheating on you because you’re a sodomite!” she screeches. “Because I knew your true nature, I saw the evil, the darkness that dwells there. I knew I married a man without scruples and I needed my body to be cleansed of you, my soul freed from the mire that is your own!”
I point at Ray who remains silent and scared. “By fucking another sodomite?” I exclaim.
“You coerced this man,” Marie says, going to Ray and grabbing his bicep. “You forced him to do such a foul, immoral deed. Your true nature is no more than an animal’s, Ichabod. But you won’t get away with this, you’ll pay for this.”
“I’m leaving you,” I grind out at her. “That’s how I’ll pay. I’m divorcing you, you adulteress tramp.”
“You aren’t leaving me!” she screams, and before I know what’s happening, she’s slapping me across the face, the pain like sparks. “You can’t! I won’t allow it!”
I press my palm against my cheek, trying to reign in my temper. I never let it out, I never let it get the best of me, but now she’s provoking me.
Now I’m the animal in the trap.
“I don’t care what you allow,” I tell her, the rage building inside me, my skin feeling too hot, too tight. “I’m divorcing you, and you can’t do a single thing about it.”
“Oh, but I can.” She bares her teeth. “I’m getting you fired!” she yells, and when she sees the horror in my eyes, she grins. “Yes, I’m telling the world what I saw here. Ray will cooperate, won’t you Ray? The school board will be the first to know, Ichabod. You’re about to lose everything, everything, your job, your house, your wife, all because you’re a sinner, a bloody sinner, I—”
“You will not!” I scream at her, marching forward and shoving her hard against her shoulders.
Marie yelps and goes flying backward, her feet twisting and scrambling in an attempt to keep her footing, but she’s falling back toward the ground.
The back of her head smacks the wooden floor with a sickening crack, having just missed the rug by inches. The sound of that crack shoots right through me, yanks at my heart, at my soul, filling me from top to bottom with ice cold dread.
Blood starts to pool from under her hair, her eyes are open and focused on the ceiling.
Everything slows down.
I let out a strangled cry.
Run toward her, knees slamming on the floor, pleading for her to be alright.
“No, no, no, no, no,” I cry. “No, Marie. Marie.”
I gingerly touch her face, trying to get her eyes to look at me, and my hands are shaking.
She blinks slowly, her eyes open again, staring at nothing.
The blood spreads.
Ray remains where he is behind me, hyperventilating.
“Marie!” I cry, pressing my trembling fingers to the side of her neck, feeling for a pulse.
There is none.
I stare at her chest, it doesn’t move, her mouth, there is no breath, her eyes are still as death.
“No,” I say again. “You’re not dead. You can’t be dead.”
I look over my shoulder at Ray, who looks close to fainting. “We have to do something. Ray! We have to do something!”
But Ray doesn’t move. He’s in shock.
So am I. I’m in shock, and yet there’s something I can do.
There’s something I can do.
I remember medical school, how the cadavers came to life when I touched them.
I look back at Marie’s lifeless face, and I know she’s dead. She’s dead.
But she doesn’t have to stay dead.
I put my hands on her cheeks and close my eyes, trying to conjure up whatever energy I have left in my weary, war-torn heart, and once I feel it moving through me, I try to push it through my hands onto Marie.
Please work, please work.
She twitches under my hands.
I open my eyes to see her open hers.
She stares right at me. Pupils like a black moon.
But there’s no gratitude on her face. No relief to be alive.
