Fatal Unattraction

"I'd kill him."

Deborah opened her eyes, frightened. She sat alone in the throne that was her home. The competition for San Francisco housing was fierce and status driven but she was an outward winner. Cold comfort farm.

She'd just read about the plot line of a movie where society allowed one day per year when no crime could be charged, a sort of ritual purging. Deborah asked her heart what she'd do if she had that sort of ultimate freedom and it was that moment she realized her true desire: the death of her husband.

Even the mere thought of it brought relief, lifting a heaviness from her heart. The skies would open, the day would dawn and fresh air would once more fill her lungs. Please, oh, please remove that man from the face of this earth! She lay one simple act away from freedom's delight.

What a mess she'd made of her life. One ugly truth after another had come parading out of the closet, tearing her down, making a nightmare of the mirror - in every sense. She'd struck a deal with the devil: the promise of security and a family if only she kept her hidden doubts forever tucked away. She loved being the golden child leading the perfect life. But bit by bit that precious dream had been chipped away until finally she lived an open nightmare.

Her husband flat our told her: "He who makes the gold makes the rules." Those initial nights of wild sex and bursting orgasms had wrenched themselves into a chore, fighting herself to deny the mounting self-loathing. But his needs he had not the option to deny. Finding her lacking he searched for satisfaction elsewhere.

At first she was secretly grateful. To keep getting that same high the sex turned more extreme and desperate. She obliged his every request keeping in her image of the "perfect wife". She even gave in to her desire to be used and objectified, hoping to own his love as he owned her. Deborah knew she could not stay on that road forever.

Then he dropped the bomb. He didn't care what she thought, he wanted other women. She was not enough. If she didn't like it she could leave. At first she said nothing. This was punishment for being inadequate, she wanted to stay faithful to her image of the perfect wife. And besides, she could always leave. She had that sort of strength.

But on a night similar to this one, she asked her heart if she truly could go back to living without money. No. No way in hell. That she could not survive. It was something you read about in books or saw in movies and she never thought it real but now she saw with her very own eyes what she'd come to need to have. When she tried to picture her life without money she was consumed by a horrifying blackness, drowning her in a perpetual free fall. Doomed.

She was nothing, after all.

Years of sacrifice, to be the good little girl her parents taught her to be, had turned her into a spiritual paraplegic. Now, at 48 years old, she rebelled against her parents, hating them for teaching her to put her God-given interests last. Hell of a time to start puberty, lamented Deborah. Facing these nightmarish truths broke her. Her husband had the hammer she could not fight. Life from that point forward would be nothing but dreading one hammering after another.

Day and night she wrestled with the agony. Deborah had always prided herself on her friends and friendships but the Ugly Truths spoiled even that. If she broke faith, if she exposed her life of luxury a lie, if she betrayed the Code of Success to which she had subscribed, she realized she'd be exposing her friends' fraudulent lives as well - and they'd abandon her in ruthless ex-communication. Decades of self-lies left her with no way out. "A happy wife does not make plans for life outside of marriage," she'd slyly scold.

She wanted to rage. Suddenly she understood the TV news gunmen blasting people to pieces of whom she'd always professed incomprehension. What else can you do when there's nowhere to turn and no one to help? Who would pay her rent after her divorce? Who'd want her body racked by years of stress, never to be beautiful again? To whom could she even confess? The bullet exploding from the chamber would be her confession.

Hear me roar

She indulged herself with the thought of her husband dead. Sweet freedom! She could start over with her eyes open this time. No more dying by inches, no more perfumes of strange women she imagined as beautiful as the sun, no more heavy chains strangling her every move. Did she not deserve a second chance? Had she committed so many crimes she was sentenced to life without parole?

"What's one life more or less in this world? We just pretend to care every life is precious. They want to keep that image up just like I wanted to keep up mine. Hypocrite cops investigate every illegality but what of crimes of the heart? Do they solve those true crimes? What blinded me all those years? If my life is so valued how come there's no way out? Was I too dumb to live? Is the whole world the same?"

Disconnected. Shattered. Alone on an island with no ears for her screams or dreams. Justice had been served. In the twinkling of an eye her life had reversed. All the "bad people" who'd been "inappropriately" expressing their true feelings were suddenly the good guys, the Honest Ones. And she who nobly labored under lies to appear Normal and Decent, the bad guy, one of the Dishonest Ones. Still, this was a sentence she could not serve out. Somebody has to die.