Harold and his Funny Ways

She watched him potter about the kitchen. Totter, that would be a better description, he used to potter, but now he tottered. As she watched, she found herself wondering how long they had been married. A woman should know these things, but she didn't. Harold did though, he always remembered important dates.

She smiled to herself as she watched him rinse the cloth out. Now he would fussily hang it over the dish draining tray, every corner perfectly aligned, a geometric masterpiece. It took him longer to hang it perfectly these days, his hands trembled and his eyesight wasn't so good anymore.

He stood back from the cloth and studied it for a moment. She knew he would go back and correct it, it wouldn't meet his standards, it never did the first time. Next, would come the tut, followed by the shake of the head, then the tuneless whistle as he straightened all the angles.

He had always been like this. Never changing throughout their long marriage, she supposed it would be forty-two or forty-three years they'd been married now. Harold would likely be able to tell her to the very minute. But that was Harold, always pedantic, always the perfectionist. If he'd been born a few decades later she supposed he would be diagnosed with OCD, or some other condition. But for her, it had always just been Harold. Him and his funny little ways.

The crease on his trousers was laser straight, Harold had never let her do the ironing. She was too haphazard he'd said. He also insisted on doing all the housework, laundry, gardening, cooking, and shopping. Her friends had laughed about it, telling her how lucky she was, telling her how their husbands wouldn't even raise a finger when it came to helping around the house. She had laughed along too, but that was years ago, she never saw her friends anymore.

The hob was always next on the list, the ceramic hob was years old now, but looked exactly the same as the day they bought it. It was unblemished, not a single scratch tarnished its gleaming surface. She heard Harold extracting a brand new toothbrush from its packaging. The toothbrush, a new one each night, would be used on the underside of the knobs and around the little steel poles they attached to.

Every night the knobs would be removed in the same order, bottom left corner first, then he would work clockwise around the hob. The knob was removed and placed in a bowl of warm water and detergent, while it was steeping he would dip the toothbrush in a different bowl of soapy water and diligently scrub the knob seating. Then it would be replaced and lined up perfectly before he moved on to the next switch.

Finally, he would attend to the toothbrush packaging. The paper portion would be removed carefully from the plastic top and placed in the paper recycle bin. The plastic would be left to steep in the toothbrush bowl so that the paper residue stuck to it could be removed before it was placed in the plastic recycling.

Attention to detail is how Harold described it, he always said it was important to mind the details.

It would be the floor next, the last kitchen chore of the evening. He lifted a measuring jug and poured three jugs of hot water into the mop bucket, then one of cold water. Each jug was filled precisely to the one-litre mark, finally, he would add five capfuls of bleach. The freezer would then be wheeled out on the castors he'd had installed, and from that far corner, he would work his way towards the door. Where she was standing.

She looked at her reflection in the highly polished piece of steel she held. An old woman looked back at her. She had been beautiful once, as beautiful as Harold was handsome. They made a perfect couple everyone said. But it hadn't been an easy marriage, not with Harold's funny ways.

Everything was regimented, right from the start, it was all about routine. Even their sex life was routine. So routine she could probably calculate how often they'd done it - if she could remember how long they had been married that was. Tuesday night was sex night, they even went to bed fifteen minutes earlier to accommodate the act.

It couldn't be Monday night, that was put aside for the weekly shop. Of course, she didn't go, Harold was adamant that he did the shopping. He even put it away, everything stored with military precision, all the labels perfectly aligned and facing the front, every item in its allotted place.

Wednesday the upstairs bedrooms were meticulously cleaned, even though nobody came to stay anymore and they lay empty from week to week. Despite this, he still changed the bedding, cleaned the windows, meticulously polished every surface, and even shampooed the carpets.

Thursday night was the bathrooms, Friday night was the downstairs rooms, Saturday it was the car, and Sunday the garden. She used to love the garden, she could spend hours sitting out in the sun, simply appreciating the beauty of the plants with the scent of freshly mowed grass in the air.

That hadn't lasted long, Harold hated the randomness of nature. He had the lawn replaced with astroturf and the flower beds replaced with paving stones. Gardening merely consisted of scrubbing the stones with a strong bleach solution and checking every inch of the turf for foreign objects.

But that was just Harold for you, him and his funny ways. She looked at herself again, the black eye from last night's beating was still prominent. The only time that Harold didn't follow the same routine was when he was beating her. There was no pattern that he followed when he was mauling her, he screamed and cursed, gouged and slapped, punched and kicked. Then he would usually rape her, she didn't count this as part of her sex life, it was animalistic and brutal. Tuesday nights were clinical and clockwork.

He was getting closer to her now, slowly and carefully mopping each inch of the floor. He always used the same mopping motion, diagonally from left to right away from his body, then from right to left towards him. It was the most efficient way of making sure the entire floor was cleaned perfectly he always said.

He was close enough now that she could smell his antiseptic cleanliness. The scent had never changed since their wedding day. She couldn't remember how long ago that day was, but she could tell you exactly to the day how long ago Harold had last let her out of the house. It was thirty-two years, one-hundred and sixty-six days ago. Harold had decided on that day that her friends were too untidy and banned them from coming back. She had protested, but he'd beaten her to within an inch of her life and told her if she ever stepped outside again he would kill her.

Harold had finished mopping, he still hadn't seen her, he always worked backwards towards the kitchen door. Now he took a microfibre cloth from his pocket and began to polish the door handle, satisfied he took a step back and bumped into her.

Time seemed to slow for her as he turned in surprise. She looked at the stainless steel knife in her hand, it was immaculately polished of course, she admired it for just a brief moment before plunging it into Harold's chest.

At first, there was a look of stunned astonishment on his face. Then it was disgust. She almost laughed as she pulled the knife out, he was trying to clean the blood from his shirt with the cloth.

The second plunge of the knife sent him staggering backwards before collapsing on the floor, his dulling eyes staring in disbelief at the pooling blood on the sparkling kitchen floor. With his remaining strength, he made a half-hearted effort to clean it with the now bloody cloth, but she could see his strength was fading.

She smiled as he lay dying, life wouldn't be so very much different with him gone. Jail would mean having a strict routine and not getting out, so no change there then. But the beatings would stop, the merciless poundings that were so unstructured, a mayhem of kicks and punches that seemed to let out all Harold's undisciplined side in one compressed action. Even as he aged and weakened the adrenaline rush of the beatings and subsequent rape seemed to fill him with furious energy, the savagery had never diminished.

He was beckoning weakly at her, just a twitching finger, but its meaning was unmistakable. Still smiling, she bent down and put her head close to his. He was whispering something, blood foamed from his mouth as he did so. She put her ear close to his lips.

"You...you, need to clean up properly," he gasped.

"Fuck you," she said.