101 Words

When Frank came home from work, Andrea was waiting for him at the kitchen table.

That was not odd in itself as she was sitting there most evenings when he arrived.

The difference was that last night, after an argument over frozen sausages, he’d bashed her brains out on the marble countertop, drug her body to the tool shed, and hid it behind the mulch.

Frank ignored her. The same way he ignored the giggling little girl under his bed who kept him up nights.

He began frying the thawed sausages waiting on the counter.

Andrea said nothing; silence was good.

She never carried herself properly. “Stand up straight, Anna,” her mother chided. “Smile like you’ve got a secret, girl.”

Her mother was tall, regal. But Anna was always bent over a book. “You’ll never find what you’re looking for in there, child. They’re just words.”

Anna looked out onto the garden. Her mother’s favorite yellow tulips waved in the gentle morning breeze. So tall, so regal. Anna placed the garden snips in the pocket of her jacket. “They’re just flowers,” she thought to herself.

The first tulip fell silently to the ground.

“Smile like you’ve got a secret, girl,” Anna whispered.

The palest hues of pink, shaken free, are scattered by the wind and fall gently to the ground. He stands a distance away, hidden and watching, the halo of her veil blurred by his tears. He had thought he loved her very much. Thought he still did.

Shaking their heads, guests leave, his reputation damned. He didn’t know what stopped him, found no answer to explain his fear. His wedding suit had become another man’s suit and he wept.

No wedding ring for him today. Instead, he would wear his shame as a shackle, his guilt binding them together for ever.

There was no way back.

It felt like magic. It felt immense.

All the stuff was there but everything looked different. She wondered if she looked different to everyone else.

She knew deep challenges lay ahead. Yet she felt stronger than before. The prophecies were within her. But she must seek counsel.

She would fuck up. It was inevitable. And, dismemberment would follow. She breathed deeply. Relief and renewal.

The lessons were set. The book was open. The symbols made no sense. She was the seeker. But the questions were more difficult to find than the answers.

This was the path.

“I lost ten pounds after the break-up, so I guess it was worth it,” Esmeralda told her friend as they mall-walked past The Cheesecake Factory for the umpteenth time.

“Good for you,” her friend replied. “I gained like twenty pounds after Jerry left me.”

“Jerry was a big piece of crap,” Esmeralda said.

“I know, I know. But there was just something about him.”

“The only thing about him was the way he treated you.”

“He wasn’t really so bad.”

“He was screwing your sister!”

“I think he still is.”

“I’m hungry. Let’s get something to eat.”

“And drink.”

“And drink.”

I opened the cabinet and there she was. A large roach carrying an egg case. A mother doing what she must to ensure the survival of her offspring.

I sensed the visceral power of half a billion years of evolution, trial, and tenacity that surrounded her. She was representative of a lineage that made our own story pitiably puny and insignificant in comparison. She moved slowly, with an almost alien, ancient grace. I was humbled by it.

Her kind would be on this planet long after we have passed into unrecorded history, but not today. She did not survive the encounter.