Ander - Part 4: Subchapter 37
37
"The weather sure is fine today, isn't it?" Laura said, peeking out the window at all the beautiful buds starting to bloom in her garden. There were marigolds and hyacinths and lilies, but the yellow roses were her favourite by far, like miniature suns. Emily was the one who gave her the seeds a few years ago, and by the gods did they spring right up! She's already filled several vases and arranged them so that their sweet aroma could spread to all the corners of the house. "Markus?"
Markus didn't answer, or even acknowledge that she had spoken. He simply sat in that old, creaky rocking chair of his, staring out at nothing, his cane resting across his lap.
"Markus?"
He grunted something, but it was difficult to understand him these days. The left side of his face has been pulled down into a permanent sneer ever since his stroke, and his words came out all in a mush.
"What was that, dear?"
"I said all this heat isn't good for the crops!" he shouted, making her flinch. "Are you going deaf, woman!?"
"Sorry, dear."
He grunted something else, but Laura knew better than to ask what he had said. If you've been married to a Fox like Markus for almost your whole life, you begin to read the signs of his mood much like a farmer would read the signs in the sky. A storm was coming, and the only thing you could do was batten down the hatches and hope it passes by without doing too much damage.
"LAURA!!"
"Yes, Markus?"
"I told you to go make me some damn tea! What is wrong with you today!?"
"I'm sorry, dear. I was just looking at the -"
"Those damn roses! Every year you're on about the damn roses! Bring me my tea or I'll rip those godsdamned roses out by the roots, you hear me!?"
"Yes, dear."
"Good gods!"
Laura hurried to the kitchen to make his tea, but she wasn't particularly worried, not then. Markus was always grumpy to some degree, and it's steadily been getting worse ever since he had his stroke. 'Stroke' was such an ugly word, though. Almost aggressive. Back when she was little, the greyfurs used call it a 'having a shock', as in 'Poor Martha had a bad shock last week'. Yes, that was a better way of putting it. Markus simply had had a bad shock, that's all. That's why the left side of his face looks like a melted horror and he has to clack around the house with that cane, dragging his bad leg behind him like a sack of potatoes. But did he ever give up on his family? No. Even when the farm started going downhill and the labourers left for more verdant employment, he still worked hard, bending and squatting and walking and digging and sowing and ploughing, just like always, and now there were days he could barely stand. Was it any wonder he was always so angry when he was constantly suffering from so much pain? And then she went and daydreamed about roses when all he wanted was some tea. She should be ashamed.
I'll fix that frown right up, she thought happily and threw a few extra logs into the stove. It was her job, after all. As his wife, she was in charge of making him happy, and if he wasn't happy, if he... went into one of his moods, or... lost his temper, then that was because she wasn't doing her duty. But if she smiled and brought him his tea and kept him happy, then there was nothing to worry about.
Nothing at all.
The stove was getting nice and hot, so she put the kettle on and gathered all the little things needed for a lovely spot of tea: cups, saucers, some biscuits, a bowl of sugar cubes and maybe some of those -
He's the reason Sarah never visits anymore.
She froze mid-reach. Now, where did that thought come from? Sarah didn't visit quite as much as she used to, admittedly, but it could hardly be called 'never'. She had a family of her own. Responsibilities of her own. She couldn't be expected to make time for a doddering old pair like them. Of course not.
"WHERE'S THE BLASTED TEA, WOMAN!?"
"It's almost ready, dear."
He mumbled something, and that sound was to her ears what the rumble of thunder was to other Foxes. The storm was coming, and if she wanted to get through it unscathed, she'd have to do her duties absolutely perfectly. But she still wasn't worried, at least not any more so than she always was on any given day. It's simply become a part of her life, so fully ingrained into her routines she barely noticed it anymore, like the way she always felt peckish around noon, or always felt sleepy an hour after sunset. The worry was just there, reminding her that she had a job to do, and she'd better not mess it up. But let's be honest here, if she messed up a simple little task like serving tea, then surely she'd deserve whatever came. What kind of a wife couldn't make her ailing husband a soothing cup of tea? A bad one, of course.
She gathered everything onto the tea tray her mother had left her (the one with the swirling flower vines around the edges that so perfectly matched the patterns on the cups) and her timing was so perfect that, just as she was done filling the pouring jug with milk, the kettle whistled its readiness, shooting steam from its spout.
"About godsdamned time!" Markus shouted from the living room, but it was a good kind of shout, a happy shout, if that made any sense. Maybe the thunderclouds would pass today without incident.
Laura dropped a teabag into each of the cups (freshly bought from Lucile's camellia farm), and then poured the piping hot water over them, loving that soft sound it always made. No other beverages could make a sound quite like that, and no other beverages could make such a lovely expansion of colour, faint at first, but steadily growing bigger and darker, sending its heavenly aroma into the air through the steam, making the whole room smell so lovely and warm.
"Laura!"
"I'm coming, dear," she said and gathered up the tray, not knowing that this would be the last cup of tea she would ever serve her husband.
She went to the living room, walking very slowly, the tray held perfectly flat in her hands, the cups and saucers tinkling a merry tune with each step.
In the days that were to follow, Laura would wonder why things happened the way they did. She's walked past that crack in the floor for almost twenty years and nothing bad ever happened. It's been a part of their home ever since Markus put it there on the day Sarah told them about...
It's just always been there, the same as the worry that always slunk about her heart, reminding her that she had a job to do, and she'd better do it right.
So why... why did she have to trip?
Her dress caught on the jagged edge of that crack without warning, pulling her back like a misbehaving toddler. It was only a little stumble, but that was all it took. The pot, the cups, the saucers, the milk, the sugar, it all went tumbling over the edge of the tray and crashed into Markus's lap in a horrific mess, splashing scalding hot water all over his legs.
"YOU CLUMSY BITCH!!" He jumped to his feet and all the crockery crashed to the floor and exploded into a thousand white shards. The sound was like death itself rushing to meet her.
"I'm sorry, Markus! Oh I'm so sorry! I'll clean it up, I'll clean!" She pulled her handkerchief from her pocket, got down on her knees, and started to wipe at his trousers with it, dripping with milk and tea.
"Get away from me!" he thundered, but Laura kept wiping. If she could only undo it, make it so that no trace remained, then maybe he would forgive her. Maybe there was still time. She could -
He kicked her right in the face, sending her sprawling, but the pain was nothing new. She had gotten used to it by now. What hurt her worse was the knowledge that she had failed her husband yet again. All he wanted was some tea, and she had messed it up so badly.
She suddenly became aware of a new source of pain far worse than the ache in her face, a deep throbbing in the palm of her hand. But the room was still spinning...
She blinked a few times, hoping to clear her head so she could get to work on fixing her horrible mistake, but the image that swam before her eyes didn't immediately make sense to her.
She was looking down at her hand, and the long, curved piece of porcelain sticking out of it. She saw the blue pattern and recognised it as a shard of one of her tea cups, but what on earth was it doing embedded in her palm? That wasn't the proper place for a tea cup at all. And so much blood! She watched it flow out from the center like a spiderweb, following all the little wrinkles in her pads until it dripped down from the sides and between her fingers, dripping... dripping... dripping down onto the crack in the floor, the crack Markus had made in anger when he found out that Sarah was pregnant, the crack he had almost put in her skull. It dripped down into the darkness, as though it wasn't really a crack at all, but a hideous black mouth drinking her blood, and loving every single drop.
She looked up, and there he was, standing over her with his cane raised high above his head, his sagging face transformed into a hideous half-leer of fury, looking down at her just as he had looked at Sarah on that dark day almost twenty years ago.
"Why can't you ever do anything right!?" he barked, spittle flying from the dead corner of his mouth.
"I'm sorry, Markus!" she pleaded, torn between begging for forgiveness and running for her life. "I didn't mean to! It was an accident!"
"Look at the mess you made!"
"I know, I'm sorry! I'll clean it right away!"
"You snivelling bitch!"
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! Please don't hurt me!"
It was in that moment that Laura realized she was pleading for mercy in a sticky puddle of milk, tea, and her own blood. She must look the most pathetic thing in the whole world right now.
"Hurt you? Oh I'll do more than just hurt you, you ungrateful bitch! I work my fingers to the bone! I work so hard I can barely walk! All for you! And you disrespect me like this!? How dare you!?"
"I'm sorry, Markus! I didn't do it on purpose! It was just an accident! I can -"
She sensed it coming before his backswing actually started. Maybe she noticed a twitch in his shoulder, or a change in his eyes, but no matter how many times she replayed the events in her head afterwards, she could not pinpoint the exact moment when she knew he meant to strike her, and strike her for real. She pulled her face back at the last moment and his cane sliced through the air a mere finger's width from her ear. In reality, the sound of that cane was only a whisper, but it sounded much louder to her. It sounded like a scream.
He tried to kill you just now, she thought, watching as he raised his cane for a second strike.
He's really trying to kill you.
He's trying to kill you.
"Bitch!"
She tried to get up, but she forgot all about the sliver of tea cup in her palm, and when she put her weight down it, pain exploded throughout her hand in a brilliant burst, blinding her to what was coming next.
She heard his cane slicing through the air the instant before it made contact, making a sound like a child blowing into the neck of a bottle, and then there was a bright line of pain scorching across her shoulder, so bad it made the cut in her hand feel like a pinprick. She screamed and crawled away on all fours, each step driving the porcelain shard deeper and deeper inside her palm, but she didn't care about the pain. There was only one nonsensical thought repeating itself over and over in her panic-stricken mind, and that thought was that she would have to clean all these nasty red handprints she was leaving everywhere, and clean them quick, otherwise Markus would be so very cross with her.
He struck her again, right between the shoulder blades, and suddenly her face smacked against the floor hard enough for her to see stars.
Am I going to die here? she thought as Markus struck her again and again, the blows raining down on her back, her legs, her arms. Bright, burning lines of pain fused together all over body, turning into one big giant throbbing ball of agony. Is my own husband going to beat me to death?
She rolled onto her back, the pain so intense she wondered if maybe she had broken something. She looked up at her husband of forty years, and she knew no amount of pleading could change what was coming. She wasn't looking at Markus anymore, it was the storm. The storm was on top of her, and storms could not understand mercy. That didn't stop her from trying, though. Trying was the only thing she had left. If she didn't get out of this, if she didn't even try, then who was going to clean up this mess?
"Don't..." she pleaded, shielding her face with her bleeding hand. "Don't... don't!" It seemed like that was the only word she still knew.
"You bitch," Markus said, his breath heavy from exhaustion. He raised his cane to deliver the final blow, and that's when there came a knock at the door.
Everything stopped.
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