Goddess Of Ruin

GODDESS OF RUIN

She lifts her head from the sofa pillow and gropes for her cigarettes. Her hair is everywhere, a fine tangle that somehow avoids the flame of the lighter. She lights, she inhales, she holds, she releases. She finds me with her red-rimmed eyes, the mascara from the night before smeared and adding to the ruin. "I hate you," she says.

That hurts, even though I know she is talking to herself. "I hate you, too," I say, but my lie is different than hers.

She hacks up some of last night's tar and the blanket slips and she's unaware, and she's beautiful in her unselfconscious innocent corruption, a tired saint of disaster.

It is all an act. Nothing happens to her that she doesn't ordain; there are no accidents. Her life is as carefully controlled as it is hopeless. She knows her story will not end happily, and she will use all her power to make sure of that.

Several hours earlier…

I do not know how I ended up here. I am not even entirely sure I know where I am. All I know is that last night something inside me snapped. Once again I had come home from a hard days work down at the shipyard. It had seemed like an ordinary enough day. I walked into the house expecting to find my wife in the kitchen preparing my supper. Ours is, or rather was, a conventional relationship.

Instead of her lovingly preparing potatoes for dinner she was bent over the sink and the milkman was giving it to her hard and fast. I stood, I watched, I said nothing as my wife moaned with pleasure and the milkman whispered filth in her ear. My mousy, well behaved, quiet wife loving every minute of this illicit affair. I waited. I leaned against the doorframe and watched dispassionately as the milkman screwed my missus with enough force to make the china on the sideboard rattle. I stood, I watched, I said nothing. How I stood there and did nothing I do not know. Anyone else would have shouted out or attacked the other man. Eventually with a scream and a roar they both came and the rattling subsided. They leant up against the worktop and gathered their strength while their breath returned to their lungs.

Once they seemed more composed I gave a little cough. Two heads turned around and saw me leaning against the door, arms crossed, standing quite casually, surveying the scene in front of me. The milkman removed his now flaccid penis from inside my wives’ cavity. He buttoned up his trousers and hastily beat a retreat out the back door of the house. I stood, I watched, I said nothing.

My wife lowered her skirts, smoothed out her apron and started to peel the potatoes for supper. I smirked and took my seat at the table. I picked up the paper and began reading, aware that my wife was desperately trying not to look around, desperate to see what I was going to do but knowing that to look would invite trouble. Ours had always been a conventional marriage... she did not do what I said; she got what was coming to her. “So it is the milkman on Tuesdays is it Jeannie?” I commented while I perused the sports pages. I waited for a response, none came. The bitch clearly thought better of questioning me. “What about the postman Jeannie? Is he on Thursdays? Or do you just alternate them?” I goaded her, I waited for a response but none came. “You sounded like you enjoyed it.” I commented, as if I was saying that the weather was fine. Jeannie put the knife down. Her hands were shaking so badly that the potatoes and her fingers would have been cut to ribbons if she had tried to carry on. She knew what was coming, or at least she thought she knew what was coming.

I walked to the sink, picked up the knife and finally looked my lying, cheating wife straight in the eye. She looked scared. I felt an enormous surge of power, standing there holding that knife and looking at my wife. I composed my features into that of a calm person, serene even. I picked up a potato from the bowl in the sink and started peeling, humming a bright tune to myself. Even with my calm demeanour my wife still shot me a sideways look as if to say ‘Are you mad?’ She could not believe I was not furious. I finished the potatoes, put them on to boil and turned on an extra ring. I beckoned my wife over to the stove and we both looked at the ring, turned up high and glowing red. I grabbed her hand and pressed it down onto that burning ring. She screamed but not like before. This was not a scream of pleasure, it was a scream of agonising pain as the skin on the palm of her hand began to sizzle and burn.

I backhanded a slap across her face, catching her nose and cheek. She crashed into the sideboard, the previously rattling china falling onto the floor with a thunderous crash as blood began to course down her face, over her mouth and down her neck. She clasped her now black hand to her chest. Her breath was coming out in gasps; she cowered but did not take her eyes off of me. Her screaming had subsided for now, she knew to be quiet. That being noisy only made things worse. “You think you know pain now??!!” I screamed, “You will be begging to die by the time I am finished with you!” I grabbed her by the hair and pulled her out of the kitchen and up the stairs to the bedroom. I was not serene anymore.

Upstairs I threw her onto the bed. She lay curled in a fetal position with her injured hand cradled to her bosom. I laid her out on her back and proceeded to use the knife to cut her clothes, not really being that careful and occasionally nicking the porcelain skin of her torso. She did not resist me, she knew better. I could not believe this little tart had committed the ultimate betrayal. She knew she was mine and only mine. I spread open her blouse and dress, then went to work on her underwear, cutting the straps and front of her bra and slashing her panties open at the crotch. My dear wife shook underneath me as I worked. She was almost paralysed with fright now.

I had not done anything this severe before, but then again she'd never been caught fucking the milkman before. Silent tears slid down her cheeks, she had stopped screaming for the time being. I removed her stockings and used them to tie her hands and legs to the bed so she could not struggle. I went down to the kitchen and grabbed one of the freshly delivered bottles of milk the milkman had conveniently forgotten to pick up on his way out.

I removed the foil top from the glass bottle and took a swig as I walked up the stairs. I stood in the door and took another mouthful. Walking forward I spat the entire mouthful of milk at her face. She sobbed and shook and tried to get away. I poured the remainder of the bottle over her head. “You like milk so much?? I hope you choke on it!” I snarled at her, but she didn’t choke. There she lay, bound, covered in milk, sobbing and shaking. I looked at my wife, practically naked, then at the bottle in my hand. I knelt at her feet and pushed the bottle, now empty, into her. She started screaming again, thrashing about as best she could, trying to get away. She started bleeding from her vagina, muscles being stretched to capacity. When I had the bottle completely inside her I started punching her repeatedly in the abdomen until I heard the glass break. With that she let out an inhuman howl, as the muscles contracted around the shards of glass. The blood now gushing freely from her mutilated slit I left her again.

Passing through the war zone that was now the kitchen I went out back to fetch my axe from the shed in the garden. Night had now fallen and the lights in the neighbours’ homes illuminated the garden. Checking the axe was sharp I walked slowly back to the house. I had become strangely numb. It was as if someone else was doing this. This wasn't my usual style, a slap here, a punch there, keeping her in check. This was worse than anything I had ever done. I realised then I intended her to die.

I walk up the stairs, hitting each step with the axe. All you can here is that cheating cow's sobs, my footsteps and the thud as the axe hits the steps. I walk back into the room and when she sees the axe she starts screaming with renewed strength. “What to chop first, that is the real question here.” I muse as she looks at me, eyes wild with fear. I wanted to prolong her agony so I started with her arms. As I swung the axe over my head ready to strike she just shuts her eyes, preparing for the inevitable.

I cleanly chop her right and left arms clear of her body, just below the shoulder. She has stopped screaming now, no strength left. I chop off her legs just below the hips. I stand again at the foot of the bed, my fallen bride now barely conscious as blood spurts from all over her body, covering the bed, walls and floor.

“All you had to do was be faithful. Was that so much to ask? I guess it was. I’m going to find him next. You had better believe he is going to get what is coming to him.” I whispered, like a lover, in her ear. I stepped back, seeing her eyes finally on mine, not begging for life but begging for death and with one final swing I decapitated my near dead wife. I surveyed the scene, seeing what I had done. I then left, taking the axe with me.

The whereabouts of the milkman were well known. I walked to the end of our street, turned right and walked for a mile or so. How I managed to do this without being seen is anybody’s guess. Covered head to foot in blood with an axe covered in gore I made a very conspicuous sight indeed. I reached the milkman’s’ house and kicked in the door. The milkman ran through from his living room to see what the noise was and when he saw me he looked very afraid indeed. “I’ve come to cancel our order.” I said as I swung the axe. I caught him on the shoulder and he fell to the floor. He was so shocked he couldn't speak. “This will teach you to stay away from other peoples wives.” I shouted as I swung the axe again, this time impaling him to the floor with the axe through his chest.

I turned to go to the kitchen and was confronted with the milkman’s widow. “He finally got caught out then” was all she had to say. Her auburn hair was caught by the light and shimmered like finely spun silk. "Yeah, finally caught out. I take it he's done this before? I need a knife." is about all I could say. She walked to the kitchen and came back with a brutal looking bread knife.

Without asking what I wanted with the knife she walked into the living room and kneeled down in front of her husband, now gasping on the floor. She silently opened the fly of his jeans, took out his still flaccid member and proceeded to use the bread knife like a saw, severing the appendage from his body. He tried to scream but could not due to the extensive damage to his chest. She stood up, cock in hand and watched as her husband succumbed to the sleep reserved for those with extensive blood loss. I personally thought he had gotten off lightly.

She glanced at the body of her now dead husband and walked to the kitchen. Curious I followed. She picked up a bottle of brandy, poured two glasses and passed one to me. Going back into the living room we sat on the sofa and drank brandy. One brandy lead to another and another.

I laid her down on the sofa cushions, unbuttoned her now blood-soaked blouse and began kissing the tender skin between her breasts. The salty taste of her sweat mingled with the sweet taste of her now dead husbands' arterial spray. I continued kissing my way down her body, savouring the taste, feeling the adrenalin still coursing through my veins, removing clothes and covering her whole body in sweet kisses. Her moans becoming more insistent and ragged I unzipped my sodden jeans and, checking the knife was a safe distance away, screwed the wife of the man who had driven me to murder my own.

She lifts her head from the sofa pillow and gropes for her cigarettes. Her hair is everywhere, a fine tangle that somehow avoids the flame of the lighter. She lights, she inhales, she holds, she releases. She finds me with her red-rimmed eyes, the mascara from the night before smeared and adding to the ruin. "I hate you," she says.

That hurts, even though I know she is talking to herself. "I hate you, too," I say, but my lie is different than hers.

She hacks up some of last night's tar and the blanket slips and she's unaware, and she's beautiful in her unselfconscious innocent corruption, a tired saint of disaster.

It is all an act. Nothing happens to her that she doesn't ordain; there are no accidents. Her life is as carefully controlled as it is hopeless. She knows her story will not end happily, and she will use all her power to make sure of that.