Relative Danger
Watching him smile and laugh carelessly is like holding a scolding iron to my chest, unable to release it. It burns further through my skin. Layer by layer. I beg for it to reach my heart so it may be over and I can feel no more. To be completely numb, paralysed even, would bring me more joy than listening to him regale his heroic tale over and over arduously. I swear if I am subjected to this monologue one more time I shall tear my own ears from my head. Why does everyone fawn over him so? How can they be so oblivious? I can’t be the only person around this table that knows him. Really knows him. The man who repeatedly, relentlessly and without remorse plunges his cold, unmanly hand through my bones and tugs at my heart. Each time destroying a piece. Slashing through an artery, tearing a vein in two. But he never allows it to break altogether. He patches up my skin so the damage remains invisible. But letting my torture continue.
His Mother is fixated on him. Looking across the grotesquely extravagant roast dinner, in awe of her son. How wonderful he is. How handsome, how well accomplished. She gives my knee an agreeable pat and a smile that tells me how lucky I am. The iron is ever piercing through. Singeing at my last few layers left. Each cell begs to be spared from the same fate that befell the others. But they too disintegrate into nothing. My father in law passes the carving knife to my husband with great pride. He stands to begin carving the beast lying prostrate across the vast table. How I envy it. So lifeless, no thoughts, no feeling.
But what is to stop him from meeting the same, sorry, ending?
I surge forward, lunging myself across the table like a famished lion; restrained in captivity for a decade, biting the head off his captor in one swift mouthful and tasting freedom. Chaos descends the dining room. His Mother leaps off her chair, shrieking. I feel someone try and grab my leg but I blaze ever forward. I grasp the gleaming carving knife between my fingers. The cuisine darts in all directions, frantically trying to escape the fate that will soon betide him. His father fails to restrain me as I whip the blade sharply at my husband’s throat. I feel the burning ease and the cells begin to reseal as I am repaired. The iron falls to the floor and I am free!
I wish. But instead I smile at my proud husband as he calves the lucky beast. He has conquered another piece, torn another vein. My torture continues.