U.P. Reader
Once Alice learned to load the shotgun, there was no stopping her. Never before had she contemplated killing Jerk. Although she had long thought about his death, she hoped it would be a quick one while he still had a job and she was the sole beneficiary on his life insurance policy. All hope of that was gone now because Jerk had quit his job and there was no longer a policy so there was no longer any reason to keep him in her life, but Jerk was hard to shake. He clung to her like an old burr clings to clothing.
The hatred Alice felt for Jerk had grown over the years. He had nurtured it. Unwittingly, of course, because Jerk was stupid. She thought of ways to pick him off. It would have to be done outside and during daylight, and it would have to appear an accident. Alice made sure folks knew Jerk was teaching her to use his shotgun. It was old and heavy. The barrel wobbled when Alice aimed. She told people she wasn’t a good shot—that she usually missed her target. Porcupines were her main concern. She shot them when they prowled around her place at night. They chewed her steps and wooden door frames with all the gusto of a kid chewing a juicy stick of beef jerky.
Alice was smart. She reasoned you had to plan these things far in advance, and you had to have allies. She’d learned that lesson at a young age. It was the only one she never forgot. You had to have allies if you were to survive. You couldn’t just phone your neighbors and say you had shot Jerk by mistake. No, that wouldn’t do. The killing had to be well planned, but not too well planned. Just enough to be believable when the sheriff came around.
It was almost midnight when Alice turned off the lights and went to bed. She couldn’t sleep. She was thinking about the shooting and how things rarely go as planned. Jerk was lucky, had always been lucky. Always came out smelling like arbutus no matter how much heartache or abuse he heaped on others. Alice hated him for that. Hated him for saying he was blessed by God, for she knew his god was the evil one, not the God of Abraham, but of Lucifer. How else could his luck be explained? He was a loser. A user. A psychopath. No loving godhead would bless such a monster, at least Alice didn’t think so.
She dozed off and awakened at three. Every night it was the same. Three o’clock rolled around and Alice awoke. It didn’t matter if she had slept for five hours or five minutes. She heard a noise on the backsteps. Another porcupine chewing on her porch? A bear tearing apart her trash can? An intruder trying to break in? She was groggy when she reached for the shotgun. Cautiously she opened the door. Jerk was standing there, drunk as usual, and wearing the hideous smile she had come to recognize as a prelude to abuse. It was too late to stop the trigger.
A feeling of relief ran through her as she watched him fall backwards. When his head hit the cement, he groaned. Alice knew she should phone 911 or a neighbor or just yell into the night, but she merely stood still and listened. The night was calm. No breeze stirred the leaves. No owls called to one another. As the moon came around the corner of her house, its light fell across Jerk’s face. It was twisted in agony.
Good, she though. Take a long time to die. Take twenty years. That’s what you took from me. Two decades of my life I’ll never get back. Alice had endured twenty years of verbal, emotional, and mental abuse because she was too ashamed to admit it was happening. Nobody would have believed her anyway because everybody loved Jerk. Everybody that is except those closest to him. He groaned again. Alice looked at him one more time before she closed the door and returned to bed.
The case was quickly closed. Not even manslaughter. After all, who would have expected a sweetheart lurking around your place at 3:00 a.m.? Porcupines, maybe, but not the man who loved you. From that night on, Alice slept peacefully until dawn. There was no reason to be on the alert. She had shot the monster who hunted her. Life was good.
