
(A short-short story)
The mad man looked around the room; the fog holding his mind captive obscured his visions of the scene before him. He was human, intellectual, yet unable to cope with the naked truth; that he was a monster to his wife and children. He expected perfection from his wife, tranquility, infinity of pleasure. His children he ruled with an iron fist.
He stood in the bedroom where the scent of her lingered in the air, the fight had started when she told him that she was leaving; that mentally she was already gone! He picked up the phone dialing 911, stared at the gun in his hand and turned to look at the thick red liquid crawling across the floor from his wife’s body. His children were all at school and would not be home for hours. He did not care if they were first on the scene. Soon he would be gone too, they would be together forever; or so he thought when the deadly shot slammed into his face.
Days passed when the faceless man woke in ICU, his hands tied to the rails of the bed, life supports pump life saving air into his lungs. His children had been removed from the house of death to their grandparents. Blind, the man eventually was moved to the local mental hospital where he would remain the rest of his life reliving each day knowing that he and his wife were no longer together.
©elizabethannjohnsonmurphree