by Stuart Keane
Penelope sighed, her last breath passed. "You're … craz …"
Not affecting … controlling.
As Penelope's life ebbed away, she could hear Robyn laughing.
Bedroom Secrets
"Oh yeaaaah, there's nothing like a good, hard fuck in the mornings."
Richard rolled onto his slick, sweaty back, the silk bedsheets sucking to his mottled skin. He pushed them off with a meaty arm, groaning deeply. He ran a fat hand over his prematurely balding head, spreading the salty perspiration, and sighed. His penis, spent and sticky, shrunk and disappeared beneath his obese stomach.
He smiled. The arrogance in his voice was obvious for his audience of one. "Was it as good for you as it was for me?"
Lisa, his suffering wife of ten years, rolled away. Placing an arm beneath her head, she stifled sobs of anger, depression and sadness. It wasn’t a mammoth task; she was well versed in the art of pretence. Being married to a power-hungry, megalomaniacal fuckwit like her husband didn’t bring her many days of happiness and, on this cold, dark Tuesday, nothing was any different.
It hadn't started out this way.
She'd been happy once.
One of the few memories that kept her going was her wedding day. Her angelic elegance as she glided down the aisle, the way the light caught her dress and made her glow, made her shine with radiance. The reactions, the tears, the magic of it all. Lisa was never one for attention but, on that day, her special day, she didn’t care. She deserved it. After all, wasn't that what a wedding day was for?
Richard had looked handsome. Minus ten years rife with unhealthy eating, dependence on sugar and caffeine and the strain of running a shady but successful business, he'd been trim and proper. His head had hair, a generous weave of brown locks sloped to the side. His grey suit had brought out his eyes; his smile had lit up the room, and crossing it didn’t have him gasping for breath.
She remembered the first dance. The speeches. Cutting the cake. The honeymoon.
Hell, even the sex was magical then. It never failed to bring her to orgasm, once or twice at a time. She'd snapped several nails and broken a couple of beds during their lovemaking.
Now, it was tarnished. Sex was a chore. Her marriage was a lie.
She used to wake up smiling, happy.
Now, most mornings began with defilement.
She curled her knees to her chest, ignoring the trickle of cooling semen between her legs. She'd had her tubes tied months ago; she didn’t need to worry about any more attachment to this … this …
She could no longer finish that sentence.
With every passing day, no words did her abusive husband justice. With her back to him, the thought of his naked, jostling frame on top of her repulsed her. His green eyes, void of any human connection or emotion, burned a hole into her soul, his lopsided grin and brown teeth – stained through a massive over indulgence of fried chicken and Red Bull – almost mocking her. She imagined the words spewing from his flabby lips.
I'm a fat waste of space; I lucked out when I found you. Now, I get to fuck and sodomise you at will and you can't do a damn thing about it. If you do, I can ruin your life and leave you homeless.
Lisa felt her muscles tighten, her body physically offended by his mere presence. The bed wobbled as he adjusted his weight. She heard his feet pound the wooden floor. As Richard stood up, she rose a few inches in the air as the mattress returned to its normal height with a groan of springs. He walked away, stroking his bulging stomach. "Oh yes, nothing like a good fuck in the morning."
As Richard entered the en-suite bathroom, she felt another weight jostle the mattress. Seconds later, Twinkie, her beloved Labrador climbed over her and nestled into her arms. His eyes were bright with life, his tongue lolling and tail wagging in unison. Lisa couldn’t help but smile and stroke the dog, appreciating the affection.
"You don't realise that Mummy is sad, do you?" Lisa sighed.
Twinkie looked around the room, oblivious to his owner's pain. Lisa nodded, ruffling his golden fur. "I'm sorry Daddy named you after a baked good. I should have expected it really."
She heard the shower running. She cherished these moments, the solace of the twenty minutes he spent washing his large, bulky frame. For years, he'd asked her to help him, washing beneath his rolls of fat like some kind of scrub nurse. A friend had told her that, when in love, marriage takes work and you need to do anything for your partner.
She didn’t agree. This marriage was anything but normal. Even now, remembering the smell of his sweaty nether regions made her gag. A tear rolled down her face as the memories came flashing back. She buried her face in Twinkie's fur, which tickled her cheek and made her close her eyes. The dog laid its head on the bed, comfortable.
In the shower, Richard sang.
*****
The stench of fried chicken was right on schedule.
Oh shit, he's at it again.
Lisa sat up, opening her eyes. Twinkie was no longer on the bed. For a second she felt disorientated … then reality came crashing back.
That fucking chicken.
Lisa could reel off a list of reasons her marriage was failing, from simple things like lack of attention and ignorance, to more severe issues like Richard's ego – which affected everything they did as a couple – and his paranoid distrust of his own wife, one that had him accusing Lisa of adultery on a weekly basis.
The reason she hated the most, though, was his excessive money spending.
Six years ago, four years after their wedding, Richard set up his own business. He'd always had the gift of the gab, the ability to sell to the masses. People said he could sell sand to the Arabs or something as equally racist or stereotypical. His company, which wasn’t entirely legal, brought in a huge profit over the next few years because of this ability. Lisa hated his talking, his ability to polarize the masses as much as appeal to them. She found herself groaning on multiple occasions when he reeled off a boring, irrelevant story or when he proposed a new, expensive scheme that, in all essence, would be a waste of time. If it's not broken, don’t fix it, she would say on countless occasions. He never listened. Regardless of this egotistical stance, he had money to burn.
And boy did he burn it.
Each room of the house, a luxurious seven bedroom, three-floor mansion, had a 70-inch TV on the wall. Even the bathrooms had one, viewable from the bath, shower and sunken hot tub. Everything was state of the art and voice activated. From the comfort of his home, or the rare excursion to his office, he could program his DVR via mobile phone or ask the house to run him a bath in anticipation of his return. The toilets flushed on a single clap of the hands. The doors and windows only opened on retinal scans.
The house was a digital fortress.
And a digital prison.
Recently, he'd disabled Lisa's access privilege. She couldn’t leave the house. Richard's paranoia made her a prisoner in her own home, one that was fast becoming a living hell. Yet for all the digital advances, the mistrust and the excess visual aids, there was one thing that pissed Lisa off the most.
Richard had combined their bedroom with a kitchen.
When he'd proposed the idea, she'd laughed, not taking him seriously. She hadn't laughed in a long time and it caught her by surprise. In hindsight, Richard should have taken the hint and cancelled the plan. After all, who has a kitchen attached to their bedroom?
Which is why he went ahead and did it anyway.
The bedroom/kitchen took up the entire third floor. A long rectangle, the head severed by a single wall with a door on either side, which led into the kitchen itself. The bed stood central in the bedroom and Lisa rolled over on it, her tired eyes unsettled. They scanned the room slowly, taking in the full-length mirrors flanked by two walk in wardrobes, one per person.
She smiled at the exercise bike, both in ridicule – Richard wouldn’t know how to use one – and memories lost. Most days, she could wake up full of energy and ride it for an hour at a time. Over the
years, her energy slowly faded, sapped by her miserable existence and now … now, she never rode it. The morning light caught the cobwebs as they fluttered in the breeze.
She sighed and looked at the open door. Her ears pricked at the sound of spitting oil and woeful singing. Richard was cooking breakfast. The stench of oil made her gag and, on instinct, she wiped the silk sheets beside her. Lisa swore she could feel the fat in the air, slicking on her fingertips, the cloying stench making her feel sick.
"Lisa, get in here. Now!"
And there it was, a command, one she had to adhere to. After all, where would she go? She couldn’t leave or walk out. She was at her husband's beck and call.
Lisa, bitch, get in here!"
She slowly rolled off the bed, placing her feet on the cold, hard floor. The walk from the bed to the kitchen was nineteen solitary steps but, right now, it seemed the length of London, a mammoth task. As she walked towards another dull and annoying day, another chapter of her miserable existence, she wondered what Richard had in store for her.
Maybe he had a new car.
Perhaps the washing machine only responded to Japanese and he expected her to learn overnight. Hell, maybe he was going on a diet again – that one always conjured a laugh – but the stench of fried chicken all but dispelled that notion. Whatever it was, however mundane or stupid it sounded, she didn’t care.
Two steps from the kitchen, she paused. Her eyes flitted to the bathroom and she thought about cleaning up first. Lisa no longer felt the stickiness between her legs and bent both outwards, at the knees, as if to confirm her theory. In defeat, she thought better of it – she didn’t want to piss him off any further – and she stepped into the kitchen.
The room stank of cooking oil and the gurgling of fried chicken grew louder as she stepped over the threshold. It grew from a quiet bubbling to a hissing, spitting assault on her eardrums. The very sound made her nauseous and her head throbbed with miniscule stabs of pain. Her knees weakened and she lowered herself slowly onto a nearby dining chair.
Her eyes settled on Richard and instantly she felt her heart drop a few inches.
She closed her eyes for relief, but the haunting image remained.
Her husband wore nothing but an apron, previously white but now stained with old fat, multi coloured smears and age. From behind, she saw his naked form, the simple white strap cutting into the flab around his neck and shoulders. On her entrance, he'd been kneeling on the floor before the huge oven, his legs and buttocks spread wide, exposing his unclean anus. The fat on his spotted buttocks wobbled as they made a grasp for the tiled floor, the hair between them clumped with old excrement. Further down were his shriveled testicles, rocking inches above the tiled surface. He stood up with a gasp and leaned on the counter, the exertion too much for him. Despite the recent shower, sweat dripped off him, splattering the worktop.
"You called?" She muttered, rubbing her forehead. She opened her eyes again, which took a monumental effort on her part. Her husband turned in her direction and a sense of utter sadness struck her.
"You took your fuckin' time."
"I was sleeping," she lied. "It's eight in the morning."
"Sleeping is for the bone-idle. There's plenty of time for sleep when you're dead. You think I got to where I am by sleeping?"
"Yes, darling. When you're right, you're right." She left it at that, many thoughts rolling around in her mind. Bone-idle? You talk about bone-idle? You installed clappers for flushing a toilet and have the agility and fitness of a bowl of lard. Maybe a bit of exercise would do you some fucking good.
"To be successful, you have to make a sacrifice or two, now and then. It's all about the hard graft, the ability to put your life on hold while you chase success. Me, I was successful before the age of thirty. I didn’t stop there though, I wanted everything." Richard glanced around the kitchen. "And I got it."
Despite the derision at her husband's eccentricity, Lisa had no doubts that the kitchen was one of the finest she'd ever seen, more worthy of being a centerpiece of a home or restaurant than a second addition to a third floor bedroom.
Her eyes followed his, taking in the scenery.
The worktops surrounded the room, their fresh, charcoal colour gleaming under six spotlights that spread across the ceiling. Of the four walls, the fourth set of worktops central between both bedroom doors, only two held head high cupboards. Pine woodwork, scorched black to match the worktops, finished the décor. With the white walls and floor tiles, it created a very basic, but expensive looking room.
In the centre of the room stood a matching island. Above it hung a huge metal grid, which held various kitchen utensils and saucepans. They adorned the air, gleaming in the spotlights above. A chunk of wood fashioned into a chopping board sat, solitary on the island itself. It looked minimal and lonely at the same time. Metres of floor space circled it, giving Richard enough space to move his bulky frame around without collision.
All of the appliances were stainless steel, the most obvious being an eight burner double oven that stood proud opposite her. On either side of the oven was a double deep fat fryer, both sparkling in their infancy, one flanked by a hotplate, the other a chargrill. Right now, the left fryer was working on its contents. On the smallest hob stood a frying pan that spluttered away, the sound lost beneath the spitting oil nearby. The familiar smell of fried eggs and bacon wafted towards her.
Such excess. Lisa hated the fact she couldn’t enjoy the wealth, a comfortable lifestyle blemished by a selfish husband with no idea of morals. Most women would be happy, kept for life with a big bank balance. The husband would dote on her, shower her with gifts. Lisa was independent once, and she didn’t want for the wealth, but being able to enjoy it, participate in it once in a while – well, it would be nice.
Unfortunately, for her, Lisa's purse was bereft of bank or credit cards. She had seventeen pounds to her name, a small amount of money she couldn’t even leave the house to spend. If she wanted anything else, she had to ask permission.
She groaned inwardly. How did my life come to this?
"Are you happy?"
The question caught Lisa off guard, snapping her back to reality. She looked up, wrenched from her reverie. "Sorry?"
"I said … are you happy?"
Lisa nodded, and lied. "Yes."
"Do you appreciate everything I do for you?" Richard walked over to her. In his hand was a long fork, a plump sausage skewered on its prongs. Richard took a huge bite from it, grease and oozing fat drooling down his chin. It spattered his scraggly chest hair and apron, which stretched taut over the bulge of his stomach. A second bump, a little lower, caused Richard to walk with a slight gait. Lisa realised he had an erection and, once again, groaned inwardly.
"Answer me, you ungrateful bitch."
"Yes," she snapped. Her hand flattened on the tabletop, her nails scratching for grip.
"How dare you fucking lie to me!"
And with that, Lisa knew her day was about to take a change for the worse.
*****
Richard placed the plate of fried chicken before her, the china clattering on the table. Her eyes didn’t drop to it; the thought of eating such food this early filled her with nausea. The smell suffocated her nostrils, the smell of fat made her wretch. Richard kicked a chair out and lowered his substantial frame into it with a creak.
"Why do you insist on lying to me?"
Lisa said nothing, her eyes settled on no particular spot in the distance, ignoring her husband. He took a piece of chicken and bit into it, the crisp batter crunching between his teeth. The crunch soon disappeared beneath slurping and slobbering as his jaws worked on the greasy food. Lisa knew what she was missing; her eyes still pinned on nothing in particular. She imagined her husband's flabby face, his stubbly jowls bouncing as the grease slathered down his chin, his darkened teeth working the white meat into a pulp. The sound of something soft, probably a fried egg, interrupted the flow. The thought of the yellow yolk dribbling d
own his chin almost made her gag.
The slap caught her completely off guard.
The smack of the assault rang through the silent kitchen. Her head snapped to the side, her neck recoiling with the sudden impact. Lisa nearly fell off her chair, the legs squeaking on the tiled floor. The ebb of a burning sting coursed through her cheek, pounding her brain, inciting the throbbing headache she already suffered from.
"Why do you fucking lie to me?" Richard was seething now, out of his chair, spit and chewed chicken flying through the air, landing on her face and her clothes. He grabbed Lisa by the hair and slammed her against the wall, rattling her brain in her skull. She blacked out for a second. He wrenched her by the hair once more, tearing several strands from her scalp, and threw her back on the chair. Lisa's eyes widened, her equilibrium unbalanced. "I'm … I'm … not …"
"Who is he?"
"Who?" Lisa asked, genuinely clueless to this line of questioning.
"On the 2nd, you went for lunch at Caesars and paid for two people. Ninety pounds on lunch, for two. Now, I'm not a moron, but when you pay that sort of money for food, it’s a fucking date. So, I want to know who he is?"
"He? It was …"
"Go on …"
"My … my mother, I took my mother …"
"You think I seriously believe you?"
"Yes, why wouldn’t you?"
"You hate your mother."
"No, you hate my mother. Maybe because she hates you, she knows what you're really like."
"Oh really. And what might that be?"
Lisa said nothing. She simply held her hands out, the gesture screaming 'for example.'
Richard took a step back and punted Lisa in the face, snapping her jaw back. Her teeth rattled and she felt a slit open in her tongue, coppery blood immediately filled her mouth. The chair was pointless now as it slid from beneath her, clattering across the floor. She fell to the tiles in a heap.
