This is a re-print of a story that I published 10/31/13 under the title “My Husband” It recently went through some new editing and so I decided to republish it. I apologize to any of my readers who remember reading it in 2013.

In nature it is delightfully calm after a storm, and so it was with us. Spousal abuse is always bad, but even while I suffered from my injuries, I savored those violence-free times of calm and tried to eke them out and make them last as long as possible. The period after The Event was especially sweet, that is because, this time, I effected a personal transformation and knew, from the onset, that it was to be the last time that I was hurt.

The Event had temporarily sobered him. Perhaps the shear impact of the violence and cleanup affected him; with the result that he spent more time than usual at home. He still jogged in the morning, and I loved to lie on the bed and watch him get up. He slept in the nude so that I could admire his beautiful body. When he arose and donned his jogging paraphernalia, I’d watch the ripple of every well-tuned muscle. During this period, after The Event, he would reach over and gently stroke my glossy hair before he left. While he was gone, I’d arise and prepare myself for the day so that when he came back, I could greet him at the door and give him a taste of my feigned love. For, yes, after The Event it was feigned, although sometimes I, with my newfound resolve, still got temporarily sucked into his charm. I made a rule for myself that, even though it disgusted me, I should greet him when he returned from his run. I would let myself rub against his wet skin to seal the illusion of my undying adoration.

We always ate breakfast together, he a bowl of cereal and milk, and I, milk. After he left for work I’d go for a walk, often a very long walk. Sometimes I’d be gone all day, involved in other activates, but I made sure that I was home, groomed and waiting at the door, when he returned in the evening. At first, after The Event, he would arrive home early so that we could sit together on the sofa and watch television. His taste didn’t match mine but I pretended to watch with him. Sometimes I even sat on his knee although I could tell that he didn’t like this much.

Soon, as I had suspected, he began to slip into his old habits. It began by his returning in the evening with alcohol on his breath. I suppose that he was dropping in on a bar to have a couple of drinks on the way home. On these occasions I continued to meet him at the door. I silently braved his off-time kicks, in my desire to maintain the illusion of my uncompromised love. It got even harder when he began to bring girls back with him. Before The Event he had never brought them to the house although I knew, knew only too well, that he was unfaithful to me. Now, I suppose, he thought that he could do anything, even flaunt these women before me. I pretended I didn’t care and greeted them with the same appearance of affection as I did him.

The moment after The Event, I knew what I had to do, although I hadn’t any idea how I would accomplish it. Over the weeks of the calm I had time to work out a strategy. It all hinged on his indulging in another drinking spree for only then would he be vulnerable enough for me to entice him into his basement. The trick was going to be how I could avoid getting hurt again during the encounter. The basement was quite small, more undercroft than a true basement with only one, very small, ventilation louver. During the calm I spent some time digging in the garden to make sure that the ventilation louver was completely covered in dirt. Initially he kept this lower level locked but he took to storing his alcohol down there and as time went on he became careless so that when he was out I could go down and inspect it.

It was as I expected, and smelt musty with a distinct odor of rotting which was not well disguised by the two by six rectangle of newly dug earth in the middle of the otherwise well packed earthen floor. It was that spot which had concluded the activities associated with The Event. He had a few bottles of water stored down there. I made sure that they were all broken and spilt. I even destroyed the whiskey bottle from which he had imbibed immediately after The Event. Sometimes I would sit on that two by six slightly mounded rectangle of dirt to gain strength and resolve from it. It took me several weeks to modify the support to the rustic wooden access stairs, but by the time he was bringing the women back to the house, they were so rickety that I knew that they would soon collapse. I half hoped that he would take one of his women down when he went for another bottle, thinking that their combined weight might cause a collapse.

I was patient, very patient and one day in late October I knew that my moment arrived. He came home much later than usual and was as inebriated as he was on the day of The Event. In the end I  didn’t have to do anything; he did it all himself. As he lumbered down the rickety stairs I heard them groan and collapse. He yelled as he fell and was then silent. I had him. I backed up against the basement door and heard it give a loud click. For several days I heard him moaning and complaining but the sound was muffled on the outside by my carefully placed dirt and on the inside it didn’t matter. After a week I was convinced that he was dead and that I needed to let someone know.

I slipped outside and sat upon the front doorstep and started to wail. The mailman noticed me but at first he did nothing. At the end of the second week the mail and newspapers had accumulated and even he began to look concerned. When the police arrived I rubbed up against them wailing miserably.

“Here Kitty Kitty, what’s the matter? Where are your master and mistress?”

I answered by arching against their shins and followed them into the house. I waited by the basement door but it was the last one that they opened. The smell that emerged was strong and even I had to draw back. A ladder was brought and they examined his body which lay on top of my grave. I didn’t stay to watch them dig up the mounded dirt of my makeshift resting place. I didn’t want to watch the exhumation of my murdered human body. I was now free. I quietly glided away to live the rest of my lives in peace.