White Picket Fence

By: Lizzie Bundick

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The house sold for a relatively good price. Not to high, not to low and the realtor was happy with the commission. It was a house that spoke of dreams with the brilliantly polished cobbled stone path, the pristine white door and the traditional white picket fence that surrounded the whole package. The couple that first bought the house was the living representation of the American Dream. He was the CEO of a computer company and she dreamed of hearing the patter of little feet on the wood floors one day. It was never to be.

What no one can see beyond the dream is the truth.

At home, at work, he thinks nothing of her. Another accessory to his perfect collect. Just another prize he’s won in life. Only when she’s with him at fancy company parties and his friends are all joking around about how they would like to sleep with her does he think about her. His thoughts are not pleasant. Trophy, that’s what he calls her. Trophy burnt dinner last night because she’d start crying when he’d started yelling about work. Stupid Trophy should know better than to burn his dinner. They had fought about it this morning. More like he had yelled and she had cried. Damn Trophy should know better, and she’d better make up for it tonight.

All people are deaf; they have to be because none of them hear her crying.

Her hand shakes as she reaches for the bottle. It’s not even eleven and she’s already on her third glass of sherry. He shouldn’t yell like he does. She didn’t mean to burn dinner, it was a mistake. Those electric stovetops take so long to heat up and then they stay hot for so long. She downs half the glass with one desperate gulp. She tries so hard to please him. To make him happy. When he’s happy, he’s the man she fell in love with. So gentle, so kind to her, but when he’s angry, he’s so different. She starts to rock back and forth, the glass clutched to her chest. She will not start crying again, she will never cry again and she downs the rest of the sherry.

It could be the shadows that cover the block at night that hide the pain and the anger

Trophy had dinner on the table on time for once. She hadn’t burned it either. Good, good. She looks nice tonight. Her hair was up, and she’d put her makeup on. He liked how she would spend time on her appearance for him. All for him. She would always be all for him. He smiled while eating, she would always be his, always.

Maybe if she didn’t need to believe in true love so desperately, it would be easier.

He said those words, those three little words she needs to hear just to survive. Only when he said them, he didn’t mean them and she’s crushed. How could he not mean them? After all she had done for him? How hard she tried to be just perfect, just right for him? How could her crush her by lying about the one thing she wants as desperately as those three little words? She slides from the bed, never again will he lie to her about those words.

Defiance requires courage, this is something like cowardice, only she doesn’t feel afraid.

It feels so cold, and she’s surprised at how comfortably it fits her hands. They aren’t shaking, like she believed they should have been. Why doesn’t she feel sick? Or scared? Or anything at all? There is only numbing relief at this. It’s heavy in her hands as she turns back to bed. The weight of it comforting, but she didn’t feel strong. She still raised it, still aimed and shattered the silence she had lived in for so long. The air is filled with the deafening bang of her freedom and the scent of sulfur and blood. Her tears are cold and silent as they fall, but the barrel is warm as she presses it to the side of her head. The air is filled with the sound of her defeat.

Questions are all that is left behind when the veil is lifted, the answers are dead.