Newlywed

[sensitive, themes of murder and death]

The first thing I notice when I walk into my newly purchased condo, the one we bought after our honeymoon, is the painstaking silence. But not the silent, late night homecoming like those many nights before I met her, the silence… it’s watchful. Can silence be watchful? I have no idea, but that's exactly what it feels like, like those pristine white walls Jenny loved so much were following me as I walked past the entrance and the kitchen. I see the hallway light is on, and the bathroom door is open.

I take in a deep breath to breathe in the fresh air of our new house, the sweet perfume of dying wedding flowers and immediately start coughing and spluttering as a choking, sharp stench lodges itself deep in my throat. What the hell is that?

Bleach?

It’s clinging to the air like a newborn baby to its mother, infesting the space with that sickening smell and burning my throat as I walk past the white lights in the hallway. I cough and splutter as I cover my mouth walking into the living room. There she is, my beautiful bride. A smile creeps across my face as I see her standing so serenely near the couch, peeling off a pair of yellow rubber gloves.

“Hey honey!” I say as I walk into the room, plopping down my leather briefcase by the glass doors that separated the living room from our kitchen. “Been doing some spring clea-”

And then I see it.

Bile creeps up my throat as my eyes trace the body of the man before me, sprawled across our now crimson stained cream carpet, his left leg bent at an unnatural angle that makes my stomach churn. His half open, glazed eyes stare up at the light above him and his lips parted slightly, as if he were frozen permanently mid sentence, his blonde, almost white curls matted with drying… blood that had seeped into the fabric of his FedEx vest. I gag as I take a stumbling step back, tripping over the arm of Jenny’s new armchair and my breaths begin to shorten.

She smiles innocently at me, specks of red dotted across her collarbone, exposed by the stretched out neck of one of my t-shirts that she uses to sleep in because it “makes her feel closer to me”.

“You’re home,”

I don’t know what happened here but it seems fairly obvious, judging by the bloody DVD player in her hand, ripped violently out of its socket so that the copper cables at the base are exposed and frayed, but as I trace her perfect features I don’t see the slightest sliver of guilt so it can’t be that she did… that. Right?

I can’t feel my legs as my back crashes into the back of our dining table and it’s as if my windpipes are tightening. I dig my hands into my pockets, shaking around, searching for the familiar metallic rough shape of my keys. Shit. They’re at the entrance. I stumble towards the exit, my vision spinning and blurring in the salty water from my tears. I'm so disoriented that I don’t see Jenny moving into my path and grabbing my shoulders as I make the feeble attempt to run out of the house.

“No… no, no, Jenny, get out of my way… I have to- I gotta-” I choke on my own words as my hands flail to push her out of the way but she stands firm, a type of freakishly strong firm as she meets my gaze with calm eyes, no panic, no hysteria. I feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up as she holds me in place.

I brush her hands off my shoulders as I break out in a blind anger, regaining a small fraction of my strength.

“Jenny, I didn’t sign up for this,” I rasp out. I regret it immediately, she is my wife after all and I did say in sickness and in health. But this… this is beyond sickness. I expect her to be angry but she remains in perfect composure. As if she were studying me, calculating, almost as if she were assessing damage.

“I know sweetie, but you’re a part of this now,” a sincere yet chilling smile lingering on her face. “That’s Jacob, and you have to help me get him out of here”

Before I know what I’m doing, I’m staring at the rubber gloves, the plastic sheets, the gallons of bleach, the q-tips, the lighter, all laid out in advance in the bathroom as she softly explains which roads have the least amount of cameras, which neighbours ask the most questions, how long it would take for people to realise he’s gone.

By dawn the apartment is spotless, as if nothing had happened. But the scars of what I had done had not been washed away, they could never be.

That same morning, as Jenny is in the shower, I attempt to dive into work to avoid the pain of looking back but in my exhaustion, I open Jenny’s computer instead of mine. The second I realise that, I go to slam the lid shut, but something, a folder in the bottom left corner of the screen catches my attention. I quickly check whether the water was turned off, and I double click on the beige rectangle titled with my name. ‘Vince - Final’. And my breath quickens with the sharp agony of what I had stumbled upon.

The bleach. The meticulous planning. The perfect crime.

It was just... rehearsal.

My chest heaves as I click the red X and close the lid of the computer, just as I see a cloud of steam emanating from our shared bathroom.

“You okay hon?” she asks, her eyes earnest yet now I see. Cold, brutal, ruthless.

I swallow hard.

“Yeah”

Later that night I stood in the kitchen, pondering my options as I realise one thing.

That rehearsal wasn’t just for her. Unknowingly she prepared me, taught me and now I knew exactly what I had to do.

By dawn the apartment was spotless once again as I sat by her computer and I changed the file name to ‘Jacob - Final’ and bought a ticket to Canada in the name Jennifer Hoffman.

Tomorrow I go to the police.

I believe that adhering to our wedding vows was the glue of our marriage, so I did.

Till death do did us ‘part.