Subliminal

He couldn’t take much more of his wife.

So he killed her.

It was a rather messy ordeal, and a bit more bloody than he thought it would be. “Who knew a single stab wound could bleed so much?” he mused to himself as he meticulously scrubbed the kitchen tiles where she had fallen.

He wasn’t quite sure what to do with the body, so he put it in the bathtub for the time being. His wife’s open eyes unnerved him. They seemed to bore into his soul and condemn him for his crime. “Murderer!” they screamed. “Murderer!” He reached out a shaky hand to close them, and then hurried downstairs to watch some television.

As he settled down in his favorite easy chair, a sense of calm washed over him. No more nagging or being told what to do. No more “bad weeks” where all she did was gripe. He felt freer than he ever had in his life. He clicked on the TV just in time to see Wile E. Coyote plunge off a cliff, holding up one of his trademark signs.

He shuddered. The scene played out on the Saturday morning cartoon reminded him of the corpse currently residing in his bathtub, which was the last thing he needed at the moment. He clicked the remote.

“Where were you at the time of the murder?” a sharply-dressed lawyer shot at a nervous-looking man on a witness stand.

Click.

“But-but John...how could you kill her?” wailed a redheaded woman to a sallow man on the other side of a prison visiting area.

Click.

“And I’d have gotten away with it if it weren’t for those meddling kids and that pesky dog, too!”

He sighed. It was no use. Nothing was going to distract him from his felony, and for the first time he felt a pang of guilt. Maybe he shouldn’t have...He shook his head. No. He had done the right thing. He was sure of it. He would forget about her as soon as the body was gone. Out of sight, out of mind, right?

He climbed back up the stairs, stomach churning at the unpleasant task ahead of him. Once in the bathroom, he sat on the toilet and stared at his former wife somberly. He thoughtfully tapped a finger on his chin. What to do, what to do. He let his eyes wander around the pristine bathroom his wife kept so clean, hoping for some inspiration. A toothbrush? Maybe if he scrubbed her body with it, it would get rid of all the evidence. No...that would never do. A shiny metallic blow dryer caught his eye. Maybe if he battered her with it, she would be unidentifiable. Yes. That would be what he had to do.

In one fluid movement, he grabbed the blow dryer off the counter and raised it over his head. He counted silently to himself. One, two...three!

But his arms remained in the air. “Oh well,” he said aloud. “I’ll just have to try again.”

This time he counted out loud, hoping it would help his willpower. “One, two...THREE!” he yelled. His arms lowered an inch, but would not go any more. In anger, he flung the blow dryer against the wall. It made a thud which reverberated around the tiny room. He sunk to his knees and buried his head in his hands. He knew why he could not do it. Even if she had been an utter pain, he had still loved her. And now she was gone, gone forever. His mind went back to all the good times they shared, forgetting the bad. Hot tears welled up in his eyes as he finally grasped the consequences of what he had done. He had taken the life of his sometimes sweet, caring wife. He didn’t deserve to live anymore. Despairingly, he turned towards the door, bent on finding the knife he had used. He wouldn’t have to worry about it much longer. He let the door slam behind him.

In the bathtub, his wife’s eyes slowly opened. She carefully stretched her limbs out, not making a sound. She reached behind her and unbuckled the restraint device strapped around her. Air rushed into her lungs as she took her first long breath in a couple of hours. Not moving, she lay there just breathing for a long moment. She smirked to herself. Her plan had worked. It always did. She reached down her shirt and pulled out the ripped blood packet, blood taken from her last husband after he shot himself. Her mind wandered to how the papers would portray her this time. A poor, grieving widow whose husband had killed himself out of the blue, most likely. That was what the seven newspaper clippings in her lockbox said. Now she would haven an eighth article, along with several million more dollars she would inherit. She was a scam artist, the best of the best.

Her first husband had been very much involved with technology, and that’s what had given her the idea. He had toyed with the idea of subliminal messages, messages flashed for a split second on a television or movie screen. The idea was that the viewer would subconsciously see these messages and the idea would be planted in their brain. He had given up on them, finding the process tedious and boring. But they had fascinated her, and she worked day and night until she was finally able to make a device that would do what she needed it to. When she hooked it up to a television, it placed subliminal messages in whatever show happened to be on at the time.

She had thought about what to put in her messages for a long time. At first, she was just going to tell her husband to kill himself, but she had quickly dismissed that idea. What fun was that? It would be so much more fun to watch his guilty conscience take over, so instead she had made the message different. It was very simple: Stab Your Wife. Flashed every five seconds on a TV screen, it eventually had the desired effect. Although it was a pain to have to dress herself in protective gear and hide blood packets all over her body every single day, it was worth it when her husband finally snapped and “killed” her.

Slowly, she got to her feet and climbed out of the bathtub. She wished he had put her in the downstairs bathroom, for it took her ten minutes just to get down the stairs in her condition. She went into the kitchen and drank down a glass of cold water, trying to wake herself up. Ideas rushed through her mind as she created her story. She had been upstairs taking a nap, and when she came downstairs to make dinner, she had found her husband dead and immediately called 911. She went into her bedroom, calmly stepping over her husband’s body, a knife through his heart. She reapplied her makeup at her vanity, ready to play her part. She picked up the phone and cleared her throat. Her finger was poised over the number pad when a slip of paper caught her eye. She pulled it out from under her husband’s heavy legal books.

Her faced turned white as she read it. The document, written in legal terms, turned out to be his last testament and will, in which he left all of his money to charity. This could not be happening to her. After all her planning...it was going to be destroyed by this? She angrily smashed her fist down on the desk and started to rip a jagged line through that pitiful will. She stopped herself. His lawyer undoubtedly had another copy. She struggled with her decision. There was no way she was going to stay around this hick town for nothing. Rising quickly, she took a suitcase out of her closet and began packing. “Yes,” she whispered. “This is a better plan.” She opened her notebook and quickly scrawled out a goodbye note.

I cannot take this abuse anymore. I am leaving you. Do not try and find me. I will cover my tracks.

She congratulated herself on her quick thinking. The police would think this was the reason he took his own life. She tore the note out of the notebook and set it down on the desk. Suitcase in hand, she walked out the door towards her next victim.

Her past brother-in-law watched her leave from his car down the street. “And there she goes. She’s the perfect murderess,” he muttered. “and it’s because she’s not actually a murderess.”

He stared at the figure now getting into her car. “I vowed someday I would catch you. But now I realize it’s never going to happen. You’re too smart. And that is why I must do this. This is for my brother and all the ones after him, sister dearest.” He slammed his foot down on the gas pedal, rocketing straight towards her little sports car.

She saw him coming. For one instant their eyes locked, hers finally showing fear and his showing pure rage.

As the vehicles came together in a fiery collision, she could feel a searing pain shoot through her body. “So this is what it’s like,” she thought dully.

“This is what it’s like to die.”