Yours Truly 2017 / Cascadia College / Bothell, WA 2017 YT Online Book | Page 63

The Crow
Rhea Abbott

Thomas Brighton had been sulking in this
jail cell for fourteen-and-a-half years and never
once had a visitor, so he was amazed and confused
equally when he looked up one day and saw Yvette
standing on the other side of the bars. Adding to
his surprise was the fact that though she was the
one person he wanted most to see, she was also
the last person on earth who should have wanted
to come here. At best, he had been an absent
father, and at worst: a sadistic husband who had
inflicted emotional tortures upon his wife that
did damage more permanent than what he’d ever
done with his fists.

When last he saw Yvette, his hands had
been around her neck and he’d been crushing her,
squeezing her to within an inch of her life. Since
then, he’d had almost fifteen years in this place to
replay that scene — his last act as a free man —
and though he hated the therapy sessions he was
required by law to attend, they had brought him
to an important realization: in her last moments,
his wife had been leaning into his grasp, had been
trying to help him choke her, and he had spent
many a tearful and sleepless night contemplating
just what he had done to make her choose death
over another day of living.

What made the therapists’ jobs more
difficult was that Thomas had loved his wife —
loved her dearly. They’d been all but twitterpated
over each other for the first five years of their
marriage. Then, just before their daughter Sarah
was born, Yvette had started acting strange: staying
out late with her girlfriends, taking phone calls in
the other room, running errands that had never
needed running before. Hell, it wasn’t just strange,
it was downright suspicious and Thomas began to
wonder if there wasn’t something he ought to be
suspicious about. They’d started arguing then, loud
enough to wake the neighbors sometimes. When
Sarah was born, the arguments went underground
but they were still raging on, oh yes they were,
brooding and festering like a roiling pain in your
belly you try to ignore and wait out until it cripples
you. Finally you find yourself right where you knew
you’d end up and the poison at last comes spewing
out in violent rushes and no matter how it hurts,
there’s just no stopping it. The poison, in this case,
was a “fuck you” from her and a backhand from
him. The first time he hit his wife — the very second
it happened — he knew it changed everything. It
changed him and it changed her and he set some
very big things in motion that could never be
undone.

After that first time, letting his hand fly
felt like a reflex; it was just too easy to shut her
evermore acid mouth with a slap — much easier
than the battle strategies and apologies and
accusations. God, how he hated that game, how
really sick he was of the verbal facade. But he’d
found the shortcut, hadn’t he? And even though the
preluding thought and the tightening muscles and
the sharp sound and the stinging palm all felt like
some awful dream, he did it anyway because it was
cleansing — truncating the dance of words to the
quick and snapping reality back into harsh focus.
61