She looked amazing.
“Wha-what do you want me to do?” I asked.
“Take off your clothes.”
Stripping while holding a cat was not an easy task. But I managed to do so without dropping Vivian Purrbox or falling down.
When I was naked, Claire sat up. Crawling towards me, the plastic squeaked under her knees. “Don’t drop the cat.”
“Uh…”
She took me into her mouth and began to suck. Although I was extremely uncomfortable in the present situation, my soldier stood erect, proud and ready to serve.
With her mouth full, she spoke. “Likey?”
“God, yes…”
“Mmmm…” She sucked a moment longer, then pulled her mouth away with a wet popping sound. “Here.”
She raised a knife up to me. I could see my sweaty, puzzled reflection in the blade.
“Take this and cut your cat open so she can bleed out on my skin.”
My penis retracted like measuring tape. I pulled away from her and stumbled against the dresser behind me. Vivian Purrbox, oblivious to Claire’s morbid request, purred softly in my arms. “What the hell did you just say?”
Claire got on her knees, resting a hand on her glossy thigh and pointing at me with the knife. “I won. So you have to do what I want in the bedroom.”
“You tricked me.”
“Don’t be mad.”
“You want me to pour my cat’s blood all over you!”
“Don’t be mad.”
“How can I not be mad?”
“I’m not a freak.”
“This is pretty damn freaky, if you ask me.”
“That damn cat hates me. She’s tried to kill me.”
This wasn’t the first time Claire had claimed Ms. Purrbox was an attempted murderer. At least twice a week Claire would make such farfetched accusations.
“How many times does she get right in front of me when my hands are full?”
“Cats just do that.”
“She’s trying to trip me, hoping I’ll break my neck. And what about that time I was listening to music in the bathtub? She tried to knock the radio in the water!”
“Claire.”
“I know you’d never get rid of her unless…”
“So this was just a ruse to get me to kill my cat? You planned this all along, didn’t you?”
“Not at first, but…” She nibbled on her bottom lip.
“But what?”
“Well, I knew you were going to pick up the game today, so while I was at work I looked up some gamer channels and watched them play so I would know what to do.”
“Claire, you didn’t.”
“I did. I let you win all those matches.”
I should’ve known. I’d never been able to beat her before, so why had I thought I’d suddenly acquired the talent to do so. “Damn it, Claire.”
“I feel awful.”
“You really should. Because it is awful.”
Claire’s head dipped. Every so often she glanced up at me with her lovely eyes. As angry as I was, I sort of understood why she’d taken this route. She really hated Vivian Purrbox, and I was pretty sure the cat’s feelings were mutual. But I also knew Claire wouldn’t really make me go through with it. What she was asking was inhumane. And she really wasn’t an evil person.
“Here,” Claire said, reaching for me. “I’ll suck on you to help keep your mind off of it.”
Evil bitch!
She grabbed at my shriveled sniper, but I pulled away again. “This isn’t going to happen,” I told her.
“You have to keep your end of the bet.”
“Not really. You just admitted to cheating.”
“I did not cheat! I won and you have to do what I want.”
“But why like this? Why her blood all over you?”
“That way I can bathe in her death…I want to smear her patronizing essence all over me, absorb the finality in knowing I’ve beaten her.”
What kind of dark-magic bullshit she was talking about?
“And I’ll have you all to myself,” she added.
So that was it? She was jealous of a damn cat? Vivian had come to live with me long before I’d even met Claire. So she knew what she was getting when she agreed to spend her life with me.
But Claire was the one I’d married. Someday she’d be the mother of my children. We’d grow old together. Vivian was already old. She maybe had a few years left on her, tops. This could be considered a mercy killing to prevent the cat from suffering later.
I lowered the blade to Vivian Purrbox. A quick glance at Claire, and I saw she was smiling. I looked back down at Ms. Purrbox. She lifted her head, eyes squinting. She sniffed the knife’s shiny surface, then turned away, already bored with it.
“Paul, don’t stall this any longer. I want the cat’s dead blood on me!”
My wife was absolutely bananas. “Let’s play one more match.” Claire showed me her teeth. “One more match, and if I win, we forget this ever happened.”
“And if I win?” she asked.
“I’m not killing the cat I’ve had for almost ten years so you can bathe in her blood!”
“Fine!” Claire sat back on the bed, folding her arms over her chest. The pouting stance squished her breasts. “If I win, I get to cut off your pinky toe.”
“Are you completely insane?”
“It’s your toe or your goddamn cat. Your choice.”
“I choose neither.”
“Then I’m going to go stay with my mother.”
Jesus, not her. If Claire went to her mom’s, I’d never see her again. Didn’t matter if I told my mother-in-law the ultimatum Claire had given me. She’d side with her daughter.
Well, you should’ve slit that old cat wide open for Claire and doused my sweet daughter in its essence!
“Fine. Pinky toe it is.”
Claire looked disappointed. “Really? You’d rather cut off your damn pinky toe?”
“I don’t want you to leave, so if that’s what it takes to keep you here…”
“Just kill the fucking cat.”
“Can’t I just get rid of her?”
“No. I have to know she’s dead. She’ll come back and you’d let her stay.”
“No, she wouldn’t.”
“Paul, I’ve taken her away many times and she always comes back.”
“You…what?” First I’d heard about that. “You’ve tried to ditch my cat behind my back?”
“She tries to smother me when I sleep!”
“Claire, I think when this is over, you’re going to have to see a shrink or something.”
“I’m not crazy.” Even as she said it, I noticed a nutty twitch in her eye. This worried me more than I wanted to accept.
“The cat is not being butchered. We’ll play the damn game your way.”
“Remember, you asked for this.”
“I did not. You did.”
“Whatever.”
Claire walked around the room, huffing out all the candles.
Neither one of us bothered to get dressed. Naked, we sat next to each other on the couch, tongues poking through our lips in serious concentration. The only sounds were our thumbs clacking across the buttons of the controllers and the intense cheers of the audience in the game.
After a mostly one-sided battle, Claire had me in the kitchen, a cutting board under my foot and a meat cleaver in her hand. The way she lopped off my pinky toe without hardly a flinch was disconcerting, but that feeling was quickly outweighed by the hot pain blasting up my foot.
Blood sprayed Claire’s breasts as she knelt between my legs, watching me scream and hop around the kitchen like a parent that had just spanked her kid for the first time. I slipped in my blood and landed on my side hard enough to shake the fridge. If I would have been watching this on TV, I would’ve found it comical, even somewhat erotic, but thanks to the pain of losing a toe, eroticism and humor was the farthest thing from my mind.
After my agonizin
g tantrum through the kitchen, I felt dizzy. Claire bandaged my foot without speaking. When she applied the last bit of tape to hold the gauze on, she clucked her tongue. “Should’ve killed the cat. Now you have to come up with a story about how you lost your toe when I take you to the hospital.”
Claire took a small container from the cupboard, then filled it with ice. She plucked my toe from the cutting board and dropped it on the ice.
“Rematch,” I said.
“Paul, it’s over. You need a doctor so he can reattach it. It’s a clear cut, so their shouldn’t be any problems.” She snapped her fingers. “That’s it! You were chopping veggies and dropped the cleaver on your foot. That’ll work.”
“After the rematch,” I said.
“Are you that obsessed with winning that you’d risk another wager?”
I stared at her, unable to remind her it was her obsession that put me in this predicament in the first place. After a few minutes of back and forth, we’d settled on a new wager: her pinky toe against either my left foot or my cat’s head. I accepted the bet on my foot. No way was I going to kill my cat, and no way was I going to cut off my foot. This had to stop somewhere.
We played the game and I won. I could tell Claire hadn’t allowed it to happen this time from the way she gripped the controller, causing the plastic casing to pop.
I chopped off her toe in an even more emotionless manner than she had mine. The gratification I felt watching her writhe around the floor, slipping in her blood, was intoxicating. I felt as if I was on ecstasy—or what I imagined the drug to feel like since I’d never taken it—and every pore in my body was alive and tingling.
I had sex with her right on the floor in her blood. At first, she didn’t like it, but I bet her she’d have an orgasm before me. The wager? Either she apologized to Vivian Purrbox, or we had to play the damn game again, and make a new wager.
Less than five minutes, I was spurting inside her.
I lost the bet.
Afterwards, we cleaned up the kitchen, then I bandaged up her foot and dropped her toe in the container with mine. We took some aspirin for the pain, then returned to the living room. Vivian Purrbox was sleeping soundly on the arm of the couch. I sat next to her, and Claire on the other side of me.
“What do you want to bet?” I asked.
“I’m really mad at you.”
“At me?”
Claire nodded, mouth twisted to the side and her lips pursed. “Very.”
“What the hell I’d do?”
“Well…you cut of my toe. And the rape on the kitchen floor.”
“You cut off mine first! And that was hardly rape. Quit being so dramatic.”
“Fine. It wasn’t rape, but you still cut off my toe.”
“Again, you cut off mine first.”
“Because you wouldn’t…”
“Yeah, yeah. Kill my cat. I know.”
Claire punched the couch cushion. “Just kill her and we can stop this!”
Flinching, I looked around as if people were standing all around us. “A little louder. I don’t think the tenants on the bottom floor heard you!”
“Okay. You want a wager? Fine. If I win, I get to cut off your damn cock.”
I stared at her. No way was she serious. But the look on her face, the coldness, the hollow stare in her eyes, told me she was very serious. “Claire. Listen to yourself.”
“I heard what I said just fine. Either your proud member, which might I add is quite magnificent, or the cat. If you don’t want to cut off her head, just drown her in the toilet or something.”
“I can’t believe how cruel you are.”
“I’m not cruel! You are because you don’t love your wife.”
“So because I won’t slaughter an old, half-deaf cat for you, I don’t love you?”
“People do stuff they hate for their spouses all the time. Not you, apparently.”
“And if I don’t agree to this, my only other option is letting you take the meat cleaver to my privates?”
“Right.”
“What if I win?”
Claire shrugged. “It’s not going to happen.”
“Sound pretty sure of yourself.”
“I am.”
I nodded. “Okay. Fine. If I win, you have to kiss Vivian Purrbox on the nose and tell her how sorry you are. Then you have to let her sleep in the bed with us every night until she finally passes away by natural causes.”
“No.”
“Then no bets.” I sat back, crossing my arms. “It’s up to you.”
Claire turned away from me. I could hear a soft growl forming in her throat. After a few minutes, she stood up and walked to the TV. She grabbed the controllers and turned on the Xbox.
We selected our usual characters. In the menu, we turned off the time limit, made it a No DQ match, and set the stipulations to pinfall and submission only.
After fifteen minutes of back and forth brutality, I pinned Claire in the middle of the ring.
Instead of gloating, I set the controller down and turned to her. “I don’t ever want to play this game again. Okay?”
Claire stared at the TV, her mouth twitching.
“Listen,” I said, “the wager is off. I’m not going to make you kiss the cat. She doesn’t have to sleep with us. But this competition is done. I’m willing to move past it, if you are. To be honest, it’s going to take a long time for me to forget about it. But, in the meantime, we have to think of a story to tell the ER staff about our toes. The cutting veggies story isn’t going to work now since your toe is missing, too.”
Claire dropped the controller. Stood up. “A bet’s a bet.” She rolled her head on her shoulders, cracking her neck. Flexing her hands, she moved her arms as if she were warming up for a fight.
“No,” I said. “It’s not. It’s over. Let’s get dressed and drive to the ER. We can figure it all out on the way.”
“First thing’s first,” she said, turning around to face Vivian. She looked down at the sleeping cat. “Just a kiss on the nose, right?”
I sighed. “Right.”
“Then it’s over. I’ll shake your hand and be done with it.”
“We won’t be done with it for a long time,” I said. I was afraid of what kind of repercussions this night would have on our future. But I was also too tired and in too much pain to worry about it.
Claire took a deep breath and let it slowly out through nose. “Here I go.” She sunk to a crouch in front of Vivian’s face. “You love him and so do I, right?”
Vivian’s eyes cracked open. She yawned.
“How about a truce?” said Claire.
Vivian Purrbox titled her head. I noticed a soft purr emanating from her fluffy midsection. I smiled at the sight of my two favorite women finally deciding to put an end to their feud.
My smiled tilted when Vivian suddenly launched from the couch with a high-pitched yowl, all four legs spread wide, her tail erect and fluffed out. Claire barely had the chance to open her mouth to attempt a scream before the cat latched onto her face.
“Vivian!” I yelled.
But I was too late. Claire was already on her feet and spinning, pulling at the cat with both hands. Her front claws were sunk into either side of Claire’s scalp while the bottoms were digging into her neck.
I ran over to the twirling twosome, reaching out, but Claire’s shoulder whammed my chest. Staggering my back, my feet tangled together and I fell backwards. My back hit the coffee table, busting through the glass before pounding the floor.
The impact hadn’t only sent me down, it had caused Claire to stumble to the side. Her shoulder hit the window first. The glass shattered. The blinds folded outward. Claire’s knees hit the sill, knocking her feet out.
The last thing I saw was Claire and Vivian toppling through the window and vanishing on the other side. We were four stories up, so the dull splat of their landing on the concrete walkway below was faint.
I wanted to get up and go downstairs, but I couldn
’t move. I noticed a jagged blade of glass, slicked in my blood, was jutting from my stomach. I wasn’t going anywhere. From the heavy amount of blood spouting from the wound, I knew I’d probably be dead before anybody came to check on me.
Shaking my head, I realized I should have just done what Claire had wanted all along.
I should’ve killed the cat.
Story Notes:
My wife is very competitive when it comes to video games, but she’s also the greatest partner in beating them. When we were first married, and living in a tiny apartment, eating boxes of rice for supper, we didn’t have any money to spare. But we did have our old Playstation and spent hours playing it together. Sometimes, she’d help me with walk-throughs on the original Resident Evil trilogy. Other times, she’d whoop my butt in Tekken and tell everyone about it. I decided to write something about a man married to a woman that takes her need to win way too far.
A long time ago, I read a tabloid article about a man’s wife who was dangerously jealous of his cat and attacked him because he wouldn’t get rid of it. I never forgot that and wasn’t surprised when it popped up while writing the story.
Black Garbage Bags
Mama hollered for me at lunchtime. It was summer vacation in 1993, and I’d been outside most of the morning, doing chores in the awful heat. I headed inside, washed my hands, and sat at the table. My parents had already eaten, so there was only one plate with a ham and cheese sandwich and potato chips on the side.
It took no time for me to clean my plate.
As I chugged a can of Pepsi, Lee, our German Shepard started barking. He wasn’t one of those dogs that barked at every little scuttle or scamper. Since we lived on a private dirt road in the woods, his barking most likely meant we had a visitor.
Behind me, Mama was washing the dishes. She paused, hands in the water, and tilted her head. “Somebody here?” she asked.
“Don’t know,” I said.
I stood up and walked into the living room where a large bay window looked out on our front yard and the hay field beyond it. I spotted a car, the sunlight glinting off the windshield. It was white and brown with a bar on top.
Bone Chimes Page 7
