Helen’s saying something fractious on the phone to John, who’s acting as if she’s stabbed him in an artery just below the throat and wants rave reviews from the 3 of us for his acting.
She gets louder and we can hear everything.
“Let’s sever this John. Come on, you want what’s best for me, you always have even when we were making those movies about randy housewives. You would turn the heating up for me during the filming. You were really there for me love, and I appreciated it. But could you do this one last thing? Sign the divorce papers honey, when the bailiff comes this afternoon, will you do that?”
He insults her, as harsh as a Slavic survivor of the gulags spitting at Stalin.
The three of us get up to leave but John pulls out a hand gun from his baggy corduroy trousers and puts two bullets through one his wife’s favourite paintings.
Now no-one is talking. Bodies are immobile and our six eyes are focused on John.
He’s transfixed on the damaged painting on the wall which has shifted on its hook and hangs uncomfortably low on the right. It’s an oil work by Helen of her naked sister Caroline peeling oranges. The neon-peelings have formed a small mound in front of her vagina at the apex of her two spread legs.
John is still holding the phone. “I wanted Caroline from the start,” he yells, “do you remember, my persistent wife, but no-one would let me have her. She had potential, you see Helen, and you didn’t so they thrust us together. Two pieces of useless shit dumped in the corner of society to re-produce and shut up, and what a sordid little thing it became.” He throws the phone into the air and blows it to bits with one shot.
John had made a bomb earlier in the year when he considered starting an anti-establishment militia group and bringing down Mount Rushmore. He’d found a point in life briefly, he said, but the whole fun of the thing was building the bomb.
The shoebox-sized bomb is on the dining table. Our six eyes watch John move to the bomb, arm it and run out into the pastures and hills of north-western somewhere. Incredibly, the three of us hesitate. The bomb fizzed and coughed and seemed less threatening than John himself.
When John returned an hour or so later, we were watching some of their homemade porn movies shot, mainly by dudes they collaborated with after meeting online. In this one, Helen is having missionary sex with the local preacher in the enlarged chicken coup. The smile on Helen’s face … genuine, unyoked delight.
Then the bomb goes off.
This story was written by Keith Nunes, who lives beside Lake Rotoma in New Zealand where the he undertakes a great deal of reflecting. He’s had works published around the globe, has placed in competitions and was a Pushcart Prize nominee. His book of poetry/short fiction, “Catching a Ride on a Paradox”, is sold by the lunatic fringe.
