The Way It Ends

by Marnie Vinge

  I repeat his name. He looks at me again. His eyes are feral. The knife shines in the moonlight pouring in through the windows on the wall of the studio. I wonder if they provided good light for whoever painted here. I imagine her—the person, the artist—in the early morning, using that best light of the day. I shake the image from my mind and return to the present. I note the length of the blade. It’s easily long enough to penetrate Birdie’s womb and sink deep into the marrow of her spine. The thought rolls my stomach.

  “Did you love me?” I ask him. It’s the first thing that comes to mind.

  The question catches him off guard. He cocks his head like a dog hearing a high-pitched whistle. His eyes narrow, incredulous. He can’t believe that I would ask him this. Not now. It’s the reaction I want.

  “Did you?” I prod him.

  “Ione—” he begins. I cut him off.

  “Did. You. Love. Me?” I punctuate each word with a pause, taking command of the conversation. “It’s an easy question, Tom. It’s a yes or no answer. You’re not going to pass or fail. It’s not like your future hangs in the balance.” My voice holds an edge, an old pain coming to the forefront of my mind.

  “Of course,” he says. His voice becomes sad, the timbre lower, barely vibrating enough against the stacks of paintings and the concrete floors to be heard. He chokes on the assertion. It’s enough to make me doubt him. It’s enough to push me on.

  “No, you didn’t,” I say.

  “Yes, I did,” he repeats the assertion, ready to die on this hill.

  “If you had loved me, you’d never have gotten involved with me,” I say. “I was your student. I was vulnerable. You were in a position of power. It never could have ended well, no matter what you say.”

  I have him here. And he realizes it. I can see it in the way his face falls for the briefest of moments. But instead of acquiescing, Tom has to be right. So, he argues. But this is what I want. I need to stall for time.

  “I loved you more than I’ve ever loved anyone,” he says. His words are thick with emotion, or the mirror of it. What he’s learned over the years to mimic to make himself more human and less vampire, feeding not off of blood but energy and emotion provoked in others.

  “Which isn’t saying much,” I say. I let the statement hang in the air, bold and unencumbered by gestures indicating weakness. I don’t avert my eyes; I don’t fold my arms over my chest. I stand, tall and still, and I look into the eyes of a monster.

  “You don’t know what love is, Tom.”

  The statement does something to him. He stands, paces. He brings his hands to his face again, rubbing it as though he can peel away the mask he’s worn for years and maybe reveal something of who he really is. But I have my doubts. That part of him is buried so deeply that it would take an archeological team to scratch the surface of his reality.

  “Shut up! Shut up!” He points the knife at me and reaches again for his waistband. He draws the revolver and gesticulates with it. “You think I didn’t love you?” he spits the statement out, like something foul in his mouth. “I worshipped you.”

  “No, you didn’t, Tom,” I say, my words smooth as a stone. “I worshipped you. I sacrificed for you. I put my life on hold for a year after you. What did you do? You punished me. You punished me for not giving anything more at your altar. Because that’s what this is all about, isn’t it?” I raise my hands and look around. “This place. You want to be worshipped. You need to be a messiah. But people don’t need you to save them. You can’t save them.”

  “This baby is chosen,” Tom says, trying to regain some ground.

  “Chosen by who? You?”

  “God,” Tom speaks the word like gospel. Like it was ordained by Christ himself.

  I laugh. “Chosen for what?”

  “You wouldn’t understand,” he says.

  “That’s the problem though, isn’t it? No one understands,” I say. “You brought these people here and promised them streets of gold, but all they got was a studio full of rotting art.”

  “Shut up!” he says again. This time he points the gun at me. I don’t flinch now. I inhale deeply, recognizing that he’s a moment away—one wrong word away—from pulling the trigger.

  “Let her go, Tom,” I say.

  He brings both hands—both weapons—to his skull in an attempt to drown me out.

  “No!” he roars and points the gun at me again.

  It’s then that the door creaks open one more time.

  VANESSA

  “Birdie?” Vanessa calls into the gloom.

  She takes a step toward the sound of shuffling feet and the fallen paintings. It takes her eyes a moment to adjust, and then she makes out Tom’s silhouette. The barrel of the revolver in his hand glints in the moonlight. He points it at Ione, whose blonde ponytail glows in the moonlight.

  She spots a leg sticking out from behind a stack of paintings and recognizes the shoe. A tattered slip on not suitable for life on the ranch, a relic of a former life somewhere urban. A life that Vanessa played a part in. It’s Birdie’s.

  “Tom,” she says slowly, almost elongating the name into two syllables. He looks briefly from Ione to Vanessa.

  “You wouldn’t understand,” Tom growls at Vanessa, finding the sight on the gun once more, steadying his hand and taking aim. He pulls the hammer back.

  “Tom, stop,” Vanessa says. Her voice commands him; it doesn’t plead. She isn’t begging. She’s telling him what to do. After so many years of letting him silence her, she’s done. She steps forward confidently towards the arms of fate.

  Tom quickly shifts his aim, pointing the gun directly at Vanessa’s chest. Her heart thunders, scrambling to circulate the blood needed to keep her standing. The thought of a bullet tearing through her torso gives her pause only for a moment. A natural reaction she supposes. It’s probably unnatural that she continues to step forward.

  “Put it down, Tom,” she says.

  “Stop!” Tom shouts. The gun shakes in his hand, the effort to keep his composure slowly eroding whatever is left of the image he’s built up of himself. It falls away, pieces of armor chinked, and battle worn. Watching it, Vanessa can’t help but think of the man that she married. A man that knew what he wanted in life. A man that wanted a wife by his side while he got it. And now, she sees him crumbling into ruins.

  Tom drops the weapons at his side and looks at her. There’s something in his eyes that’s familiar to her, but not coming from him. He wants her to find a way to make this stop. There’s a part of him that wants her to end this.

  And Vanessa intends to oblige.

  “It doesn’t have to be like this, Tom,” she says.

  “Listen to her, Tom,” Ione pipes up.

  “You shut up,” Vanessa points a finger at Ione, but her eyes never break away from her husband’s. “Stay out of this.”

  Birdie moans in the darkness, a constant reminder that time is slipping from Vanessa’s hands like sand through the waspy waist of an hourglass. It’s precious and has to be seized. She needs to get Birdie out of here. If Tom gets that baby—she doesn’t want to think about it—she’ll never see it again.

  “Tom, let me have the gun,” Vanessa ventures. If she can get the gun from him, she only has to contend with the knife. She stretches out a hand—a peace offering, an olive branch—and hopes that he’ll reach back in the darkness.

  “Why should I give it to you?” Tom asks.

  “You’ve already taken enough, haven’t you?” Vanessa asks, a threat creeping into her voice. The weight of years bearing down on the sentence and threatening to break it into tears. But Vanessa won’t allow that. Tom made her weak once, and she won’t tolerate it again. He and Mark both did. She won’t compromise herself for a man again.

  Tom flinches at the statement. A hint of emotion behind his eyes that, for once, betrays feeling for someone other than himself. There’s guilt there. There should be.

  “Vanessa—” Tom tries.

  “Shut up, Tom,�
�� Vanessa says.

  She takes a step towards him—towards the loaded, cocked weapon.

  “Let’s end this,” she says. “They’re waiting for you out there. There’s no escaping it, Tom. There’s a man waiting to arrest you and take you to prison.”

  Her words agitate him. He paces in a short line, rubbing his forehead with the butt of the gun, momentarily taking his aim away from her. She chances a look at Ione, who seems to breathe again for the first time in minutes.

  “This isn’t happening,” Tom mutters to himself. “This isn’t how it was supposed to go.”

  “There are a lot of things that didn’t turn out the way they should have,” Vanessa takes another step forward. “But no one else needs to die.”

  Tom looks at her and she can see, glistening in the moonlight, the hint of tears gathering on the lower rim of his eyelids.

  “You need to give me that gun, Tom,” she says.

  He looks at the weapon for a moment as though contemplating the choice—weighing his options.

  “I’ll put it away,” he offers the compromise, unwilling to give it to her just yet.

  Vanessa inhales the stale air of the studio, the scent of decades old paint offending her nostrils. She exhales, weighing her options. They’re limited. She nods.

  “Put it away,” she says.

  Tom lowers the gun and tucks it back into the waistband of his jeans. Vanessa breathes deeply, echoing her former rival’s sigh of relief. It’s temporary, at best. She knows this. After tucking the weapon away, he kneels in front of Birdie.

  “Step back,” he says to Ione, the knife still in his hand.

  She does as he instructs, backing up two steps until a stack of paintings stops her. She looks at Vanessa.

  Vanessa looks from the girl to her husband. Ghosts, both of them. They seem like figments of her imagination, no more real than her vision of Mark. Each of them signifies a part of her that has died—been reborn—out here. She studies Tom as he kneels in front of the pregnant girl before him.

  She’s not a girl, not really. She’s a woman in her own right. But we are all young when facing a predator. They exploit our weaknesses—the places in our armor where the light gets through. They pour their darkness into us until we’re more them than ourselves. For a moment, Vanessa feels pity for the girl.

  Tom brandishes the knife, looking at it in the moonlight. The blade is almost white, almost glowing. The light reflects off of it and illuminates two trails down Birdie’s cheeks. Glistening white snakes that run from her eyes to her chin. She draws a breath and another contraction seizes her.

  “I didn’t want to have to do this. You know that, right?” Tom says, almost a whisper. Vanessa barely hears him.

  “Tom,” she says, her voice stern. She takes a step forward.

  Tom reaches for the weapon in the waist of his jeans and his eyes bore holes through her. She stops.

  He returns his focus to Birdie. Vanessa looks at Ione. She realizes what he’s about to do. The baby isn’t coming fast enough to suit him. He draws Birdie’s shirt up, revealing a pale moon of a belly, taut making room for her child.

  He lays the knife against her skin.

  “I’m so sorry,” he murmurs. He reaches a hand up to touch her cheek. She recoils from him, turning her face away. Anger seizes him.

  “Tom!” Ione cries in the darkness. She steps forward, her legs coming into the light again.

  “Step back,” he growls at her. His voice is unrecognizable. Vanessa feels a chill descend her spine, using her ribs like the rungs of a ladder. This is it.

  “Tom,” now Vanessa speaks. Her voice calmer than her counterpart’s.

  “I have to do this,” he says. He looks at Vanessa, his eyes almost serene. The wildness that was there has retreated back into its master. “You understand that, don’t you?”

  Vanessa says nothing.

  Birdie screams as the blade penetrates her stomach.

  VANESSA

  7 YEARS AGO

  Vanessa didn’t shred the results of Tom’s test. Something made her keep them. She tucked them into the nightstand drawer on her side, next to where she kept her phone. She’d started putting it on Do Not Disturb sometime over the course of her affair with Mark, the idea being that if he texted her in the night, Tom wouldn’t hear it. Not that Tom gave her the same courtesy. There were many nights she woke to find him slouched, sitting up on the side of the bed, discerning messages on his phone when he should have been curled next to her, his heartbeat keeping time with her own through the night.

  When she looked back at it, she thought she might have kept them to punish him. She thought there might have been a part of herself that wanted him to see them—that wanted him to know there wasn’t even the most remote possibility that the child was his. She wanted to hurt him the way that he had hurt her. Worse, maybe. Definitely, if she was being honest with herself.

  But like so many of the wounds within their marital body, she let it fester. She hoarded the information like the nuclear codes. She was ready to bring them out when they became necessary—when the apocalyptic moment of their relationship finally came.

  As the weeks went by after the ultrasound, she could feel that moment encroaching on the carefully constructed semblance of a marriage they were fostering. She felt like a failed horticulturist, nurturing a plant that she’d begun to suspect, on some level, could never survive the winter.

  In spite of that knowledge, she promised herself that she would try one last time. If not for Tom, then for the ability to say, when it was all over, that she had. She wondered sometimes if he was entertaining the same notion of things. If he hated coming home on time, leaving the university and his affair behind. It had been weeks since she’d caught him in the middle of the night on his phone. For all she knew, the affair with Ione was over.

  But then one night, she heard him on the phone.

  It was well past midnight. His voice was strained, arguing. It wasn’t the kind of conversation that he’d have with a colleague. It was intimate. The tone that of a man trying to reason with a woman when he was so obviously in the wrong.

  Vanessa sat up in bed, able to hear Tom in the study that was next door to their room.

  “I love you,” he said.

  The words were razors spit from his mouth into Vanessa’s mind.

  She sat up straighter, her body straining alongside her ears to hear the nuances of the conversation. Maybe he was ending it.

  “I want to see you,” he pled.

  Something about the way that Tom was speaking made Vanessa realize he was leaving a voicemail.

  “I’ll leave her,” he said it as easily as though he’d been reporting on the temperature of the pool outside. It came off of his tongue like an observation so mundane that it didn’t arouse even the slightest feeling in him. There was no pain in his voice, no regret. There was no hint at the fact that they’d shared eleven years of marriage before this point. “Call me back.”

  The words were like a lit fuse to the anger she’d buried so deeply over the affair—the affairs—this one and those that had come before it. She’d played the role of dutiful wife. She’d taken her place beside Tom and never asked for more. She could have followed her own career, advanced as a nurse, maybe gone back to school. But she hadn’t. She had sacrificed so that Tom could do all of those things. And for what? So that he could screw his students, come home to her at night, and pretend like everything was fine?

  She threw back the covers, no longer concerned about making noise. She wanted him to hear her. She wanted the sound of her footsteps to quicken his heartbeat, to make him hang up the phone in what he thought was time enough to conceal his vocal missive from her.

  She padded into the study and just as she’d thought, he’d gotten off the phone. He was sitting the device on his desk as she walked in.

  “One of the adjuncts caught a student plagiarizing,” he said with a smile as though to say, what can you do?

  “At
1:15 in the morning?” Vanessa’s voice quavered.

  Tom shrugged and stood from the desk, leaving his phone behind. He stepped up to her and placed his hands on her shoulders as though she needed to be comforted. She shrugged him off.

  “It was her, wasn’t it?” Vanessa’s eyes stung with tears. All the rage, the betrayal, the heartache that she’d held so close to the vest was bubbling over the edge of the pot, ready to meet the flames below and evaporate in a cloud of flesh-burning steam.

  “Who?” Tom said with a laugh.

  The way that he lied was effortless. Like it cost him nothing. It didn’t wear at the edges of who he was. It didn’t worry away his integrity because he had none. He was hollow. His heart a stone. He cared for nothing but himself. Vanessa swiped at her eyes.

  “Don’t play stupid with me, Tom. Don’t treat me like I’m too dumb to know what’s going on,” she said, her voice thick with unshed tears built up over the course of a decade.

  Tom reached for her shoulders again, once more trying to turn the tide in his favor. He leaned down to kiss her. She turned, making his lips land on her cheekbone.

  “You’d really get off the phone with her and try to sleep with me?” Vanessa shrieked, batting his hands away.

  “Vanessa,” Tom said. He reached once more for her shoulders.

  “Stop!” she said.

  He grabbed her and shook her.

  “I don’t love anyone but you!” he shouted.

  The words were shells, hollow forms inside of which the emotions they named should have rested. But coming from him, now, they meant nothing. Vanessa would have died to hear him say those words not long ago. She would have thrown herself on the train tracks for Tom to tell the world that he loved no one but her. But now, she just wanted him gone.

  Instead of yelling at him, she crossed her arms.

  “I want you to go,” she said.

  Tom laughed.

  “Where?”