“Mrs. Smith’s husband found her dead on the kitchen floor. He first realized something was wrong when he didn’t smell the pore clogging, hot-grease aroma of the Fry Daddy heating up for the evening meal.She had been dead for hours when he finally found her, lying there on the cracked linoleum amongst mounds of Cheerios and Fruity Pebbles. Her children entered the room several times but thought she was only napping. Coroner’s report details show that she died from inhaling a piece of burnt French fry spit out by the Fry Daddy.”
Sara could see the story laid out in the morning paper and it gave her an odd sort of satisfaction. She took a drag off her cigarette and blew the smoke through a small crack in the kitchen window. It wafted through the small diamonds in the screen making a wispy, white cloud in the night sky. She took a deep breath and inhaled the smell of the hot, summer air. Fireworks went off in the distance.
In the window she could see a reflection of the couch and the television. Some old rerun of Fantasy Island was on. Her husband had just come home about an hour ago and had planted himself there in the middle where his butt had made a permanent imprint. The TV was turned full-blast because he could only hear out of one ear. Amazingly enough, his snoring put the television to shame. He had on his ducky pajamas, the ones that were way too small, and his belly hung over the top. Sara watched him scratch his crotch in the reflection. “What a Renaissance Man,” she whispered to herself.
Normally, Sara didn’t smoke inside the house. She liked standing out on the back patio and looking at the millions of stars. Three thousand, actually, that’s how many stars could be seen at any one time. She had read that fact in an astronomy book she bought at the college bookstore. She had often thought of going back to school and making something of herself but there was no time for that, so she bought the books and read them herself.
It made her problems seem so small staring up into that huge universe, knowing that everyone . . . everything, was hanging in balance by some invisible thread. Sara took another drag off her cigarette. One problem; one small, scientific-oversight; one upset in the system could throw the whole thing into chaos. It was very similar to her life. Tonight, she didn’t go outside to smoke because the dog had dragged a dead squirrel up on the patio.
Actually, it had killed the squirrel yesterday and she had asked Mark, her husband, to throw it out. He had come through swimmingly. Now, rigor mortis had set into the poor creature—the squirrel, not her husband, despite how it looked. Earlier today she had seen Fidget tossing it into the air like a play toy. Once, she had looked out the window and seen her four-year-old, squatting down, chubby hands on her knees, squinting at the thing. The six-year-old, Sam, had been trying to convince the preschooler to poke it with her finger. The backyard was really starting to smell, and she knew she was going to have to go out there and pick the damned thing up. She had an aversion to dead things.
The cigarette had burned down to a nub and Sara was holding it like a joint. She had never had a joint but it made her feel like a rebel to hold her cigarette that way. Really, she wanted to quit smoking, but it was her one vice. Maybe she would switch to cigars. Sometimes, when the kids were napping and her husband was gone, she would sneak into Mark’s secret stash of old Playboy magazines. He thought no one knew he had them. They were locked in his toolbox out in the garage. Sara was fascinated by the women in the magazines. It seemed to her that they were always sexy, confident, strong-willed and smoking cigars “Reel ‘er in, Buddy,” Mark said from the couch. He was talking in his sleep again. Usually, it was about fishing or hunting and sometimes she knew he must be dreaming about sex because he had a seventies porn smile on his face, and he kept licking his lips the way he always does when he’s trying to get a little action. Somewhere he picked up the idea that he was sexy when he did this. She used to think it was funny and even went so far as to buy him a leisure suit at the thrift store. He would strut-his-stuff like in a bad disco movie. It had been her little bit of voyeurism, but quickly she had come to realize that he was no John Travolta.
Sara regularly fantasized about kissing random men. It would be nice to feel a spark. Her fantasies was beginning to take on the feel of a bad romance novel, the kind where some meaty guy named Sven, the-Barbarian-with-manners, saved her from all her problems. Yeah, right! The truth was, Sven really was a crotch-scratcher. He would just do a good job hiding it from her during the dating period. She wasn’t even on the pill because her life had been sexless for so long. When she got pregnant the third time, after a night Mark had come home drunk and forceful, he told her she had gotten pregnant on purpose “to keep him from leaving.” Oh, the irony of that statement.
If only she could remember who she really was. She used to have dreams about her future. Dreams were not practical. That’s the lie she liked to tell herself. The truth was that the unknown scared her. She was in her thirties now. What would she do with herself? This was her existence and she didn’t even know how to begin to change it. Sara threw her cigarette on the ground and stubbed it out with her foot. A whif of eau-du-death caught her right in the daydream epicenter of her brain. She inhaled deeply savoring the smell of endings.
I’m not certain I understand the title, but I like the story!
And yes, Sven probably had crotch-scratching competitions with his twin brother Vlad from the time they were born. *laugh*
Ugh! Good catch. I started this as a novel and changed it to short story. The title doesn’t fit the short story version. Title change imminent. Thanks again!
At first, I was a little disturbed how you knew there were fruity pebbles caked to the floor and that my husband was half-deaf with a snoring super power. Luckily none of the rest of this fit! I am fascinated by how quickly I was roped into her life, though. I immediately want to help her quit smoking and fulfill her own dreams.
I guess Fruity Pebbles are the norm for stressed women with half-deaf, snoring spouses. Some women just need incentive I guess.