The italics in last line of this story were today’s Story a Day prompt. I like where this story is going, I’ll definitely come back to develop this one.

The gun was a last resort, of course. Everyone knows that. You don’t break out a weapon first thing, you start with words, or maybe even a dirty look.

In our case it had started with a note, which is technically words, but it’s a shitty way to deal with a roommate. Her first note said that I had better stop drinking her milk ‘or else’.

‘Or else?’ who says that in real life? Not grown-up human beings I tell you that. Of course, grown-up human beings would be smart enough to realize that their lactose intolerant roommates are the least likely culprit for drinking the milk and would instead ask their greasy, human flotsam of a boyfriend if he had drunk the milk. She didn’t think of that of course, and he probably liked the entertainment of stirring up drama.

So, yeah, that’s where it started, with some missing milk. It shouldn’t have gone on beyond that, but things unfolded in the way that things tend to do, and nothing got resolved about the milk. The whole situation soured after that. My food started disappearing out of the fridge, my laundry ended up with stains, one of my sneakers went missing, those were the relatively minor things. I could have maybe waited her out if that was as far as it went but I had vastly underestimated the nature of her cruelty and I had no idea that such a small thing could set someone off so throughly. There is no roommate test that could have predicted the trajectory.

I think my relative calmness about the small indignities threw her for a loop, she felt some sort of need to get me as riled up as she was. Her next campaign was subtle, I’ll give her that. There might have been a reasonable explanation for the basket at the top of the stairs that I tripped over. And the shard of glass might have gotten into the tub by accident – say if she had broken a water glass in the bathroom and the shard had gone flying.

There was no reasonable explanation, however, for the knife that I found buried to the hilt in my pillow or the hypodermic needle jammed point-outwards between the seats of my car. I called the police but they didn’t seem to think that they would be able to prove anything. My landlord didn’t even answer the phone.

If I had anywhere else to go, I would have left, but I didn’t, so I stayed.

I bought a gun.

And then I waited.

When I heard her and the greaseball come in, I clicked off the safety, swearing that if she showed her face here today, my room would be the last one she ever entered.

(15m writing, 2-3 editing)

The worst thing you could tell Maria to do was relax. She thrived on her tension. She held herself tightly, like a cord had been pulled taut in her spine and if you introduced any slack, her whole body would collapse. She talked fast, she moved fast, she acted fast. She was like a caricature of the uptight career woman, all well-cut suits and clicking heels. She was one of those women who seemed to be carrying a clipboard, even when she wasn’t, like she was checking everything off on some sort of list that only she could see. Her eyes scanned every room quickly, her movements were precise and she kept her arms pressed tightly to her sides, like her elbows were sewn on to her ribs.

The contrast here in the waiting room was almost unbearable. Here, Maria’s cord seemed to have been cut. She was slumped in a corner on one of those peculiar yellow chairs that seem to exist only in hospitals – you know the kind, a sort of mustard-y vinyl with chrome arms with a chunk of wood stuck on as a handle? The square edge of the handle looked to be digging into the side of her bicep but she didn’t notice. Her suit was rumpled, her high heels were under the chair – one stood up and one on its side. She seemed to have misplaced the inner clipboard. There was no movement at all, fast or otherwise. Looking at her gave me a pain like something jammed up under my ribs.

It was one of those times where you know you have to say something but you have no idea where to start. I figure though, that if you don’t know where to start then the beginning doesn’t matter that much.

“I guess the Doctor has been out?”

She turned her head toward me so slowly that I couldn’t be certain she was actually moving. Her eyes didn’t seem to be focused on me at all.

“Oh, Mandy. Uh, no the Doctor hasn’t been out. We still don’t know anything.” She spoke like her audio had been slowed down for effect. Hearing her was worse than seeing her, it made it all seem too real. My Dad was in the operating room, they weren’t sure he was going to make it, and the Doctor was still in the trenches. I had held it together throughout the phone call, and the flight, and the taxi ride to the hospital, but seeing my step-mom like a puddle in the corner of the hospital waiting room was the thing that tightened my chest and brought the tears down. If Maria couldn’t keep it together then I was lost.

She knew that it was supposed to make her feel bad, the way they talked about her, but really there was a sort of power in it. If people couldn’t help but talk about you it was probably worth it no matter what they had to say. And if her legs drew the eye, if her breasts held attention, then she had them for those few minutes, didn’t she?

It seemed like it would be worse not to be noticed at all. The thought lurched her stomach like she was hitting turbulence. What would it be like to just be there? To not be noticed? To blend in with the walls, with the desks? To be just one of the girls, curlers and make-up testing on a Friday night. Or worse, to be just one of the guys, drinking beer and stirring up girly belches to make her guy friends laugh.

She was more than that, she was bigger, she was better. The guys might have thought they were using her, rolling off and hurrying home, but they were fools. She had drawn them in to her web, and they were helpless – when she was done, she just cut the threads loose and let them drop.

She wasn’t stuck with some loser boyfriend that way. No one told her what to wear or how to cut her hair, or expected her to laugh at their jokes. They didn’t joke with her at all, and that was how she liked it. She didn’t have to be coy or play any games, there was no one to please but herself and that pleased her just fine.

The mothers talked, and the teachers gave her warnings of increasing sharpness, but she wasn’t buying into it. The guys tried to brag, and the girls tried to shame her, but they were missing something. Guys can only brag when they get one over on someone, but she was in charge all along. Girls can only shame you if you feel ashamed. She had been tired, bored, excited and satisfied by the guys she drew into her web, but she never once felt ashamed.

She slipped into her heels in front of the mirror, tugged down the hem of her skirt and the neckline of her shirt. She fluffed the sides of her hair, and put another layer of red on her lips. She nodded at her reflection, grinned and winked.

She had the web ready, it was time to draw a few pathetic creatures in.

(slight trigger warning for descriptions of aggressive behaviour)

       “I can’t believe he hasn’t left yet.” Her voice was soft, with a sort of apology in it. The way she was curled around the pillow at the end of the worn grey couch meant I could barely hear her. It wasn’t the first thing that I had to get her to repeat today, but this one had taken the most repetitions to be coherent. It wasn’t the volume, it was the content that my ears wouldn’t wrap around.

“Cara, I don’t want to tell you what to do…Wait, no.” I took a breath, I wanted to get this just right. “I do want to tell you what to do. You need to kick him out.”

“I’m not kicking him out. I love him! He loves me.” She was looking up at me now, the mascara smeared under her eyes made her look like a football player. “We’re just having a bit of a bad patch. I just need to try a little harder. If I could just stay on top of things, we would be fine..”

I bit the end of my tongue to keep my first words in.

“You don’t understand, Diane. He works so hard, all he wants when he comes home is some peace and quiet. And maybe to have his supper ready at a decent time. That’s not a big deal, I should be able to do that. Why can’t I just do that?” She drew in one of those ragged breaths that we all do when we want to stop crying. “He’s not asking much.”

If it was just supper and some quiet, I could maybe see some room for compromise between her and Dean, but I knew that it didn’t end there. The house was spotless because of the cleaning schedule she was supposed to keep. His shirts had to be ironed and hung a specific way or they’d be torn down and thrown in a pile to be re-ironed. Her outfits were closely inspected to ensure that she was ‘decent’ before she could go out.

It was a dangerous road she was on. So far he hadn’t hit her, he was apparently wearing her spirit down first. I felt it was coming though and this might be her last easy chance to get out. She could probably feel the danger, too, but once you get stuck trying to please a person like that, you lose all perspective. There are so many details to manage that you forget how to move your mental camera back and get a better view.

“You’re right, Cara, either of those isn’t asking too much, but you work, too. When’s the last time he made supper?”

Before she answered, I realized that I had asked the wrong question.

“Hang on. First, tell me when you get off work.”

“Six o’clock, but I don’t get home until about twenty after.” Her eyebrows were practically meeting as she tried to figure out why I was asking.

“What time does Dean finish?”

“Four-thirty. He’s home around 4:45.”

“And he doesn’t make supper because?”

“Well, he needs to relax a bit after work, take some downtime. He works so hard.”

“What time does he like to eat supper?”

“Well, we’ve compromised. He’d prefer to eat at six, but if I make sure to take out something the night before I can usually have something ready by 6:45 or

7:00. I couldn’t manage tonight though, work ran late and there was an accident on the crosstown so I was caught in traffic.”

“So, he gets almost two hours to relax after work and you get to rush in, whip supper together and get it on the table? And tonight he got super mad because he

had three hours after work to relax but you were being too chatty while preparing his supper a little later than usual?” I deliberately kept my tone neutral, just presenting the facts as I heard them.

I practically heard the switch as she pulled the camera back and got the wide view.

“Yes. That’s exactly right.” She let go of the pillow and sat up, swinging her legs down off the couch to put her feet flat on the floor. “And there was a pile of shirts on the closet floor for me to re-iron after supper, too.”

I smiled at her realization. “So, tell me Cara, when is your time to relax after work?”

She smiled back. “I guess that would be now, Diane.” She took the crumpled tissue from her fist and wiped the mascara from under her eyes. “Can you maybe pour us a glass of wine?”

When I came back in with the wine, she looked like herself again, leaning back on the couch, her feet on the coffee table. Dean hated when people did that, but it was her table, in the house that she had bought long before he was in the picture, and she was obviously remembering everything she owned. I handed her the wine and we raised our glasses and nodded to each other before taking a sip.

“I can’t believe he hasn’t left…yet.” Her eyes held a dare this time and she was grinning. “I wonder what else I need to do to get him to go?”

(60 minutes total – writing and editing)