Inkling

I have the patients of a saint but sometimes I could have easily killed that woman. It was the third time that week I’d burnt the tea waiting for her to get back from work. I sometimes struggled to see how important marking those kids’ exams could be; she should have brought them home and marked them there with me. I’d tell her this from time to time and she just gives me that smirk and said ‘you haven’t got a clue have you’ like I was some idiotic pet she felt obliged to maintain. I am far from stupid, I am a writer for Christ’s sake; I only wrote an advice column but I had been working on my first book. That’s probably why Janet felt ignored; I tried to keep her happy.

Want to hear something funny, I put her through university working a job I hated and when I wanted to go to university to write she said I was selfish. I just wanted to get out of my dead end job and do something I was passionate about, but she couldn’t live without my money. A year into my course we started seeing a marriage counsellor who she eventually had an affair with. His wife found out and told me, and then he broke it off. Janet still doesn’t know I knew about them.

She’d finally come in at 9pm; she’d finished her last lecture at 3pm. I couldn’t help but ask ‘what kept you so late?’ straight away she hits the roof screaming, telling me I was smothering her. After my castration she bounded up the stairs and I guess she went to bed. I was far too upset to go to bed so I’d stayed up all night writing again, but mostly I thought about where she went after work.

Eventually I have figured it out. All work and no play made Janet a cranky bitch. She’s stressed herself out from working such long hours and I wasn’t helping by nagging her every time she walks through the door. She finished work that day around 4pm so when she got back I thought we could drive to a restaurant or pub and have a good night out together like we used to. Of course all my plans got ruined. Stupid cow didn’t come home till 11pm, supposedly she’d got held back at a staff meeting and then decided to go the gym at half fucking nine at night. Something was wrong she wasn’t flushed and she hadn’t taken a gym bag.

Curiosity got the better of me; I’d sat outside her college waiting for her to finish work. It was a Thursday and she always came home late on Thursdays, even though she finished at two. She walked out of reception and went straight to her car, I panicked thinking this might be the day she came home early and she would wonder where I was. I didn’t have to worry long because she began to drive away from the city centre, away from home. She finally stopped at a car park outside a small travel lodge off the motorway. She waited in the car for nearly half an hour before a rusty little fiat panda pulled up beside her and a young boy all of 19 got out and sat in the passenger side of our car.

It felt like a dream, I wasn’t really there and I couldn’t have seen what I saw. My hands gripped the steering wheel turning my hands into pale rocks, my foot hit the floor and the car lurched forward. I aimed straight for her and the pervert hoping to take them along with me. I can’t remember much after that, just lying in a hospital bed for three months crying.

Later at my hearing, I learnt that when I crashed the boy had died on impact but my darling wife had survived, her only injury had been losing her tongue. The young boy, Ethan who was actually 18 had bitten down so hard when he was hit he had bitten off her tongue and swallowed it. Needless to say she didn’t say much in court; she had her jaw wired shut. My lawyer pleaded temporary insanity but the judge deemed me ruthless and cold hearted and sentenced me to twenty years without parole.

So now I’m in my cell, writing what I hope will be my first book. In here no one is late, no one goes missing, but most important of all I have my peace, respect and I can finally write without an inkling of suspicion.