Slicing him open wasn’t really an option; Marissa couldn’t stand the sight of blood. In fact, she cringed anytime she saw a sharp knife, so the thought of shoving a blade into someone over and over again to kill them was one that sent her to the bathroom to vomit.
Shooting him would be just too chaotic, she figured. Plus with her luck, the bullet wouldn’t hit him properly and he wouldn’t die. And Marissa knew if there was anything she had to get done right, it was killing her husband Stan.
She plotted for days, months. She thought about all the movies and TV shows she’d seen, all the books she’d read that involved a killer. She was going to become one: a killer. It’s not that she was going to go around killing all men named Stan; but she knew she would go to prison, she knew she’d be labeled as a killer once she did it.
Killer. Marissa Mercoli, killer. Husband killer.
The idea of going to prison frightened her, but the idea of living her life knowing that her own fucking husband raped her when she was a child… Marissa felt submerged in a deep black hole. She felt trapped. The only light she could see and grasp was that which would come after killing the prick who raped her when she was only 9 years old.
“The gig is up, fucker,” she thought, squeezing out a bottle of eye drops into his carton of orange juice he always finished within three days.
***
Poor, poor Stan.
Marissa looked down at him, pants around his ankles as he lay in a fetal position on the blue tile floor next to the toilet.
“Did you really think I’d never figure it out?” she asked him, shaking her head. “Stupid fuck.” She kicked at his feet.
The paramedics came first, quickly followed by the police. Marissa was handcuffed and put into the back seat of a squad car.
At the station, Marissa was pushed into a cell until a gruff female guard finally came to unlock the gate and called to her: “Mercoli?”
The guard took Marissa to a secluded room and told her to take off her clothes. “Underwear too,” the guard barked.
Standing in the dank room, Marissa was ordered to raise her arms as the female guard snapped on a pair of latex gloves and started feeling around her naked body to see if anything was hidden.
“Open your mouth,” the guard ordered next. “Flip the top lip… the bottom… lift up the tongue.”
Marissa kept thinking about when she was 9–if she could survive that, she could survive this.
“Lemme see the souls of your feet.”
Marissa lifted a foot behind her.
“Other one.”
Marissa eyed the orange uniform neatly folded on the bench and prayed for the guard to tell her to put it on.
“Bend over for me, please.”
Marissa started thinking that maybe she should’ve called 9-1-1 sooner and gone into hysterics over finding her husband passed out on the floor of the bathroom, instead of nonchalantly calling hours after he died and shedding no tears.
“Cough.”
Tears seeped from Marissa’s eyes as she let out a whimper of a cough.
“Put on your uniform and lessgo.”
Marissa draped herself in the orange uniform and shuffled down the hall back into the cell where she waited for someone to tell her what to do next.
_____________________________________________
_____________________________________________
if interested, you can find more from Marissa’s story HERE.