A Plunge

The sun sunk into suburban languor; the air was sultry and persuasive. What had merely appeared, but awhile before, to be a domestic strife and an ordinary occurrence was now progressing steadily and surely, toward an equally ordinary yet far more impressive display of physical expression; the Husband, the Wife: existing in mature cohabitation felt an intensity that was only matched by their previous exultance during the early years of wedlock. Back then, the admiration of one another had reigned supreme, and had very slowly dissolved to make a place for a homely serenity, finding root in the shared foundations of companionable doubts, delights and anxieties. There were moments of considerable joy, wholly cosy and home-grown.



Yet, as the years proceeded the victories of their united lives grew less and less frequent, the sorrows a more bitter realisation of loss, or failure; the tendency to exchange stories not so consistent due to a lukewarm reception; and conversation really did fall fll out of favour between the man and the woman. Perhaps they were soul-mates ill-chosen; it would take an especially thorough examination of both the bright and dark segments of their marriage to decide in what way they’d been mismatched. There had been no considerable drops in their mutual luck, and they had never been put through any devastating ordeals or faced extreme hardship. Perhaps this could partly be held to blame; it was the uneventful nature of their partnership, in so far as the most significant occurrences can be taken into account, as well as the increasingly heavy atmosphere perpetuated by the presence of the other - without a faith, common ideal or philosophy to unite the two in a way which could be declared impersonal.



And something on that night, somehow anticipated by both, gave without apparent reason a harder tug on the bond connecting them; a chord snapped, and all but culminated in a quick decision.



The husband took the initiative. Suddenly, with smooth, somehow responsive actions that were entirely lacking in pre-meditation, he darted to the turned figure of his wife and, lifting her by the lower half  of the torso, tossed her flailing figure quite smoothly over the low and familiar window, so that the upturned lady was quite helpless in her short downward plight. As to whether or not he cared about his future capture (which was not merely probable, but definite) the murderer disappeared off into the far reaches of night as a triumphant phantom intent upon adventure, chaos, and the wreaking of as much havoc as was expectedly possible, in his intoxicatingly disturbed state of mind.