In the Belly of the Beast

1

 "Heaven help us, and hell leave us be," the old lady muttered through toothless gums as she shuffled down the sidewalk.

The wind whipped around her ankles and flirted with the hem of her thick woolen skirt. The top button was missing from her coat, so she gathered it about her neck in a weak arthritic grip. The claw of her right hand clutched the handles of a cheap black purse.

She inched along the sidewalk in small, unsure steps and marked her progress with the delicate caution of the very aged. She would never have ventured out today had it not been for Geoffrey, but the boy had almost had a stroke when she suggested postponing her trip until tomorrow.

"Maybe it won't be so cold and windy tomorrow," she had told him.

Maybe her old bones wouldn't wither beneath her skin tomorrow. Hadn't the man on the radio said it would be warmer tomorrow? It would be so much better for her if he would just be patient, just wait a little longer. Until tomorrow.

But he had thrown a fit.

"Couldn't she see he needed his stuff now? What was wrong with her? Why was she giving him grief? Wasn't it her job to do what he asked? What in God's name was he paying her for?" he raged.

It wasn't enough, she decided. Whatever he was paying was not enough.

She pulled on her coat and reached for her old pocketbook.

When she opened the door, the frigid blast knocked her sideways. She looked over her shoulder in the vain hope that he would take pity on her. 

He must have felt the icy air barrel down the hall and rush through the opened bedroom door for he bellowed and hurled obscenities at her on her way out. She refrained from slamming the door.

It would have been a spiteful little protest, one that would have given her much pleasure, but such things only kindled Geoffrey's anger.

He would hold onto those feelings while she was away, letting them seethe inside his belly, churning, incubating, growing, while he waited for her to return home from the errand, cold and exhausted. He would unleash them then, spewing out the acid abuse of his pent-up fury on her with all the force he could muster.

She closed the door softly and made her way gingerly down the steps. A rueful smile shadowed her expression.

It had not always been this way, once upon a lifetime ago.