Simply Shorts Page 8

I don't know how it began or exactly when it began, but somehow it did begin. The love of my life, my wife of five years one day became a creature, so hideous I no longer recognized her. My own wife a stranger. It didn't happen all at once as you might imagine, but in tiny increments, so minute as to be hardly perceptible to the human eye or brain.

  My wife Amy and I had always been enamored by old Victorian style homes, but for years weren't able to afford the kind of house that we desired. We both were college grads with good paying jobs but we just couldn't come up with the down payment to make our dream a reality. But not to be denied, we pinched pennies and saved every dime we could until finally we had enough.

  We moved in on the 1st of December, and two happier people in the world you couldn't have found. We felt like newlyweds again. We spent hours shopping for just the right furniture, paintings, extravagant carpets, and statues to make our home a true old time Victorian mansion.

  Truly happy, we thought the exuberance we felt would go on forever. We talked of children and how wonderful it would be to see them grow into adulthood in our beautiful home. They in turn would marry and give us grandchildren, all of us living happily ever after in our mansion.

  It started one day, just a small thing, but as I said, that's the way it began. I came home as I did everyday around six. As was her habit, my wife would already be home making supper. She loved to cook, and since I couldn't even boil water, the arrangement was just find with me. I loved to come home to the aromas permeating the kitchen from a pot of something totally delightful she was cooking. She would always surprise me with something new and exciting. We would sit at the big dining room table with candles lit and enjoy the dinner she had so lovingly prepared and discuss the events of the day.

  But such was not the case, that first night, when it all began. I entered the house expecting to smell a meal in preparation but to my surprise the air was stagnant and stale, almost musty or mildewy. Fearing my wife might be sick, I yelled out her name. “Amy?” There was no answer and I really began to worry something was terribly wrong. “Amy,” I yelled again. No answer.

  I entered the kitchen and to my shock and surprise she was sitting in a chair, staring out of the window, a large butcher knife in her hand, that she was stabbing into the kitchen table aimlessly. She did not hear me approach. I yelled again, this time with a great deal of urgency in my voice. “Amy, honey, are you okay?”

  She turned slowly and looked at me with blank eyes, not seeming to even recognize who I was. Then a smile came over her face. Not the sweet smile that usually appeared on her face, but a strange smile, almost haunting. “Oh, hi, Matthew.” She turned her head and went back to looking out the window.

  “No dinner tonight,” I inquired.

  “Oh, I thought we'd go out tonight. Get out of this stuffy old house for a change.”

  We went out that night and had a wonderful time. She seemed fine the rest of the evening. Maybe she was just tired from a long hard day. I dismissed it as that, and didn't give it another thought.

  The air in the house after that night took on a certain dampness and a unique odor I couldn't quite explain. But I paid it little mind, thinking it was just the way an old Victorian was supposed to smell. I was happy, my wife was happy, what could be wrong? Things went along several days without incident and I forgot all about the night when she had sat at the kitchen table, staring.

  Until one night I came home, again not smelling dinner cooking on the stove. I called out, “I'm home Amy.” There was no reply. I looked in the kitchen, no Amy. I looked in our bedroom, she was not there. Finally I peered into the study and to my shock and amazement, I saw her standing there, totally nude, staring at a picture that hung on the wall. It was one of many, an Impressionistic oil painting of an old man in a violent sea, struggling to stay afloat in a wooden row boat.

  Even though I had seen the picture a hundred times, I never really saw it. The man in the wooden boat, I thought was looking at the sea, in my remembrance I thought he was, but as I stared at the picture, he seemed to be looking directly at Amy, with an evil menacing leer on his face.

  “I think we should move this picture. Put it over the fireplace. What do you think, Matthew?” She said with a voice that seemed somehow strange, a eery melancholy timbre to it.

  I said, “Sure honey, I'll take care of it the first thing in the morning. Let's go get you some clothes before you catch your death.”

  She turned around to look at me, but suddenly and unexpectedly fell on the floor. I gently picked her up and carried her to our bedroom and placed her underneath the covers, she was sound to sleep, or in a trance, I wasn't quite sure.

  The picture of the old man in the boat leered down at me when I went back into the study. I removed it from the wall with the thought to place it over the fireplace as Amy had suggested, but instead took it out back and tossed it into the garbage. It rattled in the empty can. I placed the lid over it, so I could no longer see it. It seemed to stare at me.

  Returning home from work the next day, I was afraid of what I might find. Again I found Amy in the study, naked, staring at the hideous picture on the wall. The picture I had thrown in the trash was back on the wall, over the fireplace, that was brightly blazing. The man in the painting was now three times larger, his face was horribly disfigured, his eyes burned as bright as the flame in the fireplace. I found my self transfixed by the apparition, as if the painting was drawing me in with some kind of unknown energy.

  That's when it happened. It was very sudden and unexpected. As I watched a horrible monstrous spirit rose out of the painting and entered Amy's body, she twitched and fell to the floor unconscious. Coming back to consciousness myself, I yelled, “Amy!” I ran over to where she lie on the floor, still writhing, as if fighting with some unseen force.

  She was so cold, very cold, and the temperature in the room seemed to have dropped below freezing, my breath white hot in the pungent air. She lie still, I feared her dead. I prayed she was not as I picked her up and again carried her to bed. She did not wake the next morning, and I was frantic, out of my mind. She was breathing, although very shallowly, and her face was pale as death.

  I called in sick for the first time in years to stay by Amy's side. She slept, I paced the room, debating as to what I should do. No one would believe my story, they would think me mad. I could tell the doctor she hit her head and fell unconscious on the floor. Sure, the doctor would believe such a story. I paced, she slept. I continued to pace, she did not wake. Finally I passed out from exhaustion.

  I must have slept through the night for I was awakened suddenly by a new day breaking through my bedroom window. Amy, however was still asleep. I grew more frantic and and afraid she would never again wake up. Maybe she had some form of sleeping sickness. I had decided to call a doctor, not knowing what else I could do, when suddenly she awoke.

  But when Amy woke up, she was no longer Amy, what she was I did not know, but the creature who lie in the bed panting with a face of death and eyes red like fire, was not my Amy.

  “Amy,” I said, “Honey, are you okay?”

  “Amy's not here, I'm Desiree, That little slut is in hell, and that's exactly where I'm going to take you.”

  She tried to grab me but I was too fast. I ran from the room, quickly locked it and moved a huge couch in front of the door, thinking that would certainly stop her from getting out. I sat on the couch for a moment, trying to catch my breath, and trying to come to grips with the situation I had found myself in.

  I ran to the study to look at the hideous picture that was the source of all my terror. The picture was still hanging over the fireplace, looking as it had since the day I purchased it. “Curse you, damn picture,” I yelled and snatched the horrible thing off of the wall with one swift motion. My intention was to burn the terrible portrait and send it back to hell where it came from.

  As I turned Amy or the creature was standing right in front of me, eyes burning red, hair white a
s snow. She had a butcher's knife in her hand and a smile of pure evil on her face. She swung the knife, the blade barely missed me. “Time for hell, Matthew!” She screamed with a shrill voice that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. She swung the knife again, this time slicing a big gash in my arm, blood dripped down on the portrait I still had clutched in my trembling hands.

  In desperation I swung the picture and managed to knock her off balance long enough for me to escape. I remembered the gun I had in the drawer in the kitchen. Oh my God, was I really planning on killing my wife? I saw no choice.

  I managed to make it to the kitchen, I eased open the drawer, but I was too slow, she was on me again. I swung the gun and managed to knock her on the floor. My hand was shaking badly, but I loaded the pistol just in time, as she lunged towards my chest with the knife. I fired once, twice, three, maybe six times, I lost count.

  As the life went out of her body, Amy returned long enough to smile and say goodbye, and then she was gone. The spirit spun round and round in the room, then it burst into flames, engulfing the portrait of the man in the boat, consuming it, and it was gone.

  I was convicted of the murder of my wife. I got life without parole. They didn't believe my story. Who could blame them.

 

  Echo Park