Suffocation the cause of death. The official cause. Ask me, there’d been damage done before that.
Subtle, like. Little at a time. Sly, like she ever was.
Not that I’m saying she deserved it. There’s a difference
between administering physical pain to
someone too feeble to resist and the sort of mental torture she used to dish out on a regular basis ...
Well, perhaps the difference isn’t that great. Not when you
don’t have the ... I was going to say wits, but it was experience he lacked.
Experience and a sense of self-preservation. Though you had to say he preserved
himself well enough in the end. After all, she housed and fed him, however
unwillingly, and he – coming up to thirty-nine now – never had to worry whether
there’d be food enough on the table. Never had to strive to better himself
beyond the meniality of a mechanic.
But, from the striations on her back, the mottled blackberry-stain
bruises on her legs (they fade so slowly in old age) and the marks across her
chest, resembling, at a glance, a scattering
of sun-faded, long-dried flowers (I couldn’t allow my mind to think
about what had been used to make them) I’d say he used his work experience –
and the tools of his job – to extract his revenge.
And got away with it.
[written in response to House of Writers word prompt 104]
