Member-only story
The Not-Murder Story (Short fiction)
He was from a small town, or he was from a city. They had met only a few months before, or they had been married for years. There were children, or there were no children. They were together constantly, or he had just returned from deployment. He was successful, or he had just been fired from his job. His high school teachers called him clever and charming, or dense and belligerent.
The children flitted from the refrigerator to the back yard. They were running with ice pops in their mouths. Their sky was the constellation of his rages and the calm in between. At the moment it was calm; he was not there.
Once she got the children to stop running with the popsicles in their mouths, she turned her attention to the dog, who lay whimpering under the table. Rocco was a white teacup poodle, a tiny dog. He had been her companion since before she met the man. The man tried constantly to edge Rocco out of her life, once dropping him on a roadside across town, once kicking him down the stairs. Yet the dog persisted. She called him.
Rocco got up hesitantly, when normally he would have leapt into her arms. His eyes were closed, but that made no sense. Then she understood, a queasiness growing inside her. He had glued Rocco’s eyes shut with some kind of industrial epoxy. The dog’s tears had not stopped its eyelids from drying shut.
