Your worst Nightmare

Bed Of Roses!

I told him a thousand times not to leave the toilet seat up.

“Sorry love, won’t happen again.”

I stared at the potting mix I had so indignantly tossed onto the garden bed and pictured myself grasping his head and mashing his sorry face in the worm faeces. I wanted a divorce, pronto.

As I watched the worms rolling lavishly around the rose bush, I came to the conclusion that divorce was not the answer. In fact, this simple cycle of life was the impetus for my inspiration. You see, the prosperity of the rose bush is solely due to the worm’s repulsive existence, their excretions allow the roses to grow, to bloom. My husband’s presence, however vile, produced the house, the car, the shoes…oh the shoes. Divorce is definitely not the answer.

I gazed up at the clouds gathering overhead, dark and heavy as though trying their best to hold onto the moisture they knew would burst at any moment. I turned my head as Danny drove up the driveway. The clouds cast a shadow across the front of the house.

“Hi honey,” I called as he closed the car door.

“Good afternoon, love,” He beamed before whistling cheerfully. My stomach lurched.

“You know I hate that Danny.” “Sorry love, won’t happen again,” he apologised. I knew it was just a veil for his true, ulterior self. I smiled weakly, envisaging a lightning bolt striking him in half.

“Try showing off your ‘anointed pipes’ now.”

“What was that darling?” he asked.

“Oh, nothing sweetie.”

His thick skull bobbed up and down, assuming everything was fine and dandy.

“Just goin’ in for a shower,” He informed me. So casual...what a bastard. I ripped off my soiled gloves and threw them to the ground. My mind swirled like cream in a coffee cup as I suddenly became aware of my own thoughts. It was as though I had tuned in to my own private radio station. Why was marriage so hard? My gut instinct told me the issue lay in my husband’s brain tissue. He thought a perm was the scientific term for a single sperm. No further evidence was required to confirm…oh no, rhyming unintentionally…I have officially lost my marbles. I’ve begun exercising the possibility of my own psychotic disposition and it’s a vicious cycle of awareness and counter-awareness. Now I’m being bombarded by stress-inducing sounds which add fuel to my fire; the dog is barking and the shower is running and the dark clouds are grumbling and – “Stop!”

It took a moment before I realised I hadn’t actually yelled ‘stop’; it was just an overly-enthusiastic ‘mental urge’ for calmness. Breathing heavily, I craned my neck to see if any nosy neighbors were gaping at my frenzied state. In truth, I was a mess. A sweaty, dirty, tired mess. I returned to the aesthetics of nature to re-form my thoughts. I saw my lovely roses. Ah, yes, Danny. You know, if his brain were an actual tissue, it wouldn’t hold a drop of snot before crumpling under the pressure. I can see it in the eyes of the checkout-chick at the grocers, she’s thinking: ‘How can a beautiful, sophisticated woman like you be hanging around such a moronic twat?’ The more I thought about it the more I struggled to comprehend it. I had generously recycled his beer bottles, scrubbed his filthy jeans, cooked him delectable meals and given him outrageous orgasms that should’ve killed him. Yet he still proceeded to piss me off by leaving the toilet seat up and whistling at the top of his pathetic lungs.

Despite my buzzing fury, I noticed a black crow fluttering a few yards to my left. It perched itself majestically on the garden fence and appeared to be looking straight at me, straight through me. I was entranced by the creature, admiring its destructive yet beautiful talons. It swooped into the flowerbed and penetrated the soil with its mighty beak. It ripped out a large worm within seconds and guzzled it down ruthlessly before returning to its post.

My dream-like state came to a halt as water droplets began falling from the charcoal pillows in the sky – their battle to hold on evidently failing. My mind flooded with sinful thoughts. The only way I could truly be happy, was to never see Danny again. The only way I could do that and keep my mansion, my Mercedes and my designer red stilettos, was to play crow. I had to murder Danny and make it look like an accident. I began to think of how I would carry out such an act and found myself overwhelmed with dire fantasies. This was followed by the reflection that perhaps my problems were all in my head. Was my husband that bad after all? Was Danny still in love with me?

Once again, I found myself struggling to justify myself to myself. I ran thoughts through my mind, placing them on a metaphorical treadmill for at least a minute or so on level 6. Of course, like my usual stints on the damned machine, I succumbed to my own bloody exhaustion; my bouncing boobs and flabby belly all too much. It was simply too late; I wanted to play crow. My eyes flickered black. It was time to spread my wings…

I felt a tremendous rush somewhere inside me, the realisation that all my troubles would soon be behind me was curiously uplifting. The rain was teaming. I knew I had to move quickly. As I went to turn I felt a blunt object strike the back of my head. My vision blurred and I slumped to the ground, my face squelching into the wet soil. Danny breathed a sigh of relief as he stared at his wife’s limp body.

“Sorry love, won’t happen again.”