Seeing my box-house standing against the dark sky like a dimly lit pumpkin made me realized I hadn’t eaten anything. My stomach made squishing noises but stopped once I stepped through the door. I twisted to my right and opened the cabinet- my one source of food retrieval; momma doesn’t cook. A fleet of fruit flies whirred past me and I tossed what looked like rotted mangoes into the trash. I didn’t find much at first, but after several trips back and forth from the refrigerator to the cabinet I learned to lower my expectations and eat crackers.
Momma was in the living room asleep on the couch. Her breath made coarse draining noises and the throw blanket across her stomach hovered up and down with each draw and release. I didn’t try to keep my chewing down, she sleeps heavily enough. I inhaled the whole box in a matter of seconds and dropped it in the trash on the way to my room.
Throughout the morning I tore through all the books on my dirty floor searching for means of symbolic murder I could use on those guys; none of them seemed to satisfy how I wanted to kill off Bruce. He was my last target. That was until a book bookmarked with a rolled up piece of paper in it caught my eye. Reading my writing (that was inside of the bookmarker) I made out that I recorded a line that came from a Sylvia Plath poem. I remember how she died. Her death, though a suicide, fit my preference of wanting Bruce to burn somehow. Though there isn’t any symbolic meaning, nor reason to believe that there is, I know I want him to burn. I think agreed with myself then, I will make him go the way Sylvia did, I’ll burn him up.
I hovered to the window like a sleepwalker, I had a scrap of bread in my hand (and I don’t know how) and was plucking bite size pieces from it and eating slowly. The neighborhood was asleep and I felt, for the first time, quite alone. I finished and walked out into the yard, I knew I was waiting for Bruce, and therefore waited patiently. For the first time since I was nineteen I shimmied onto the roof and sat as simply as if I were on a blanket on the beach. I looked at the few stars above the aerials in the distant buildings, “City of Angels,” I heard myself murmur. And I was the devil amongst them. Wait, that’s a different city isn’t it, not Hollywood? Hell I don’t know I’m just a hick what the hell do I know. For a reason I didn’t know, I took in breaths like a ceremony, like they were my last ones. Had I pushed my luck tonight; will Bruce get the better of me; will Clementine be hurt? That was when a glimmer of light etched into my eyes from the street, the black Buick rolled beneath lamp posts and curved its way into the driveway of Clementine’s house. Bruce.
I lowered myself onto the flat yellow grass and ran full speed to the house. I went into war mode, knowing that in the end Clem and I would have our life together and this would have been worth it. Dropping and crawling out of view, I neared the window in the backyard and listened to the inside. Everything was quiet. My heart froze, what if Clem was in there, what if Bruce was expecting me? I couldn’t take the risk. I rolled on my shoulder and peeked through the sliding glass door into their family room. He was there, removing his sunglasses and putting them on the table in the kitchen. The handle was just a foot from my head, it looked unlocked. Bruce had disappeared by the time I decided to act and I stood on the carpeted family room floor all alone.
The inside of their house was something I used to dream about as I watched Clem from behind the fence. Now that I was standing in it, it was more greatly perfumed, spacious, cool and inviting than I could ever conjure a dream about. I almost wanted to leave just to preserve the memory of the most peaceful household in the world until I remembered that I was on a mission, and that an evil man lived in this peaceful house. Peeking the corner, I found my chance to turn the oven on. I was relieved that the dashboard didn’t make beeping noises.
“Okay,” I whispered, my tongue lulling as I concentrated on punching in the settings, “Oven . . . Bake . . . Four-fifty degrees.” A toilet flushed upstairs and I retreated to a coat closet in the wall. Bruce went to the kitchen with the remote in his hand and powered on the TV as ice crumpled out of the fridge into his glass. He poured iced tea and sat in front of a baseball game. It would take about, I guessed, eighteen minutes for the oven to heat up. I hope Bruce won’t notice until it does. I just wonder where-
