Paul Curtin - Gray Snow

He took his fork and knife and separated the first piece from the rest of the slab. It was a deep red and steamed as he cut it. A good medium-rare. Perfect. He skewered the meat with his fork and placed the morsel into his mouth.

His face twisted. He knew the meat had been frozen, but it was bland, all pepper but not savory. “Did you salt this?” he asked.

She looked at him as if he had interrupted her greatest moment of ecstasy. “Yeah. Does it not taste good?”

He told her it was fine, even though it tasted like dog food. “Just needs a little more salt.”

He grabbed the salt shaker and covered his steak. Popped another chunk into his mouth. The luscious, salty flavor washed over his tongue. Now he was in ecstasy.

“Better?” she asked, looking hopeful.

“Much better.”

“I hoped so,” she said and took another bite.

ELISE STUCK THE disgusting slice of meat into her mouth and faked as if it were the best thing she had ever tasted. She chewed, even moaned, but she was just trying to get it down.

She had to act like she wasn’t doing the hardest thing she had ever done in her life, but it needed to be done. Michael had been right. Sean wasn’t the same man she had married. He wasn’t even the same man who had protected them from the intruders. What he was now was a shell with everything inside rotting. That didn’t give her a right to kill him, but she saw no other choice.

Sean told her with confidence that the three of them had a food supply that would last them at least a year. He made it that way. He murdered Andrew, poisoning him and allowing his windpipe to collapse. Used the medicine designed to stabilize a seizure and relax his son’s body so it didn’t become so stressed that his brain had an aneurism. But when someone wasn’t having a seizure attack, it could stop the major organs from functioning. Sean knew this, and he used that knowledge to murder the boy.

One day, the food would get really low. He wasn’t the kind of man anymore to sacrifice his wellbeing for anything. He would kill them, she was sure. First, he would start with her and then he would kill his son. She knew it wouldn’t be cruel in how he did it, not like making Michael kill his wife, but death was death. As much as she looked forward to Heaven, she couldn’t imagine leaving her son back on Earth, alone, among all the destruction and death. In danger from his own father.

She still loved the man in front of her, or maybe the man he used to be, but she knew he didn’t love her the same way anymore. He loved the idea of her, and when that idea became irreconcilable in his plan for survival, she would be disposable. She knew that. She knew.

She knew.

She ate another chunk of steak and watched her husband chew. Sean always liked his meat salty. He sprinkled a little more onto his steak and took another bite, savoring it. Most men don’t get to die eating steak. It was a better death than her brother got.

He had switched the waters earlier. She planned for that. There was a small hairline crack near the top of the spiked glass, so she knew which was which. He took a sip from it. It was good that he was drinking it, but she had alternatives if he didn’t. It was a shell game. Put the water out first, and he would be so occupied with it, he wouldn’t consider the other options she might use.

Like putting crushed pills into the salt shaker.

Sean had thought of himself as steps ahead. She had to be better. As hard as that was.

Her husband pulled up his napkin and wiped the meat juice off the corners of his lips. “This might be the best thing I have ever tasted,” he said.

“I’m glad,” she said, taking another bite.

It would take a while for the sleeping pills to work. Longer than the duration of this meal. She would have to occupy him, make him think the symptoms were natural. If he got even the least bit suspicious, he would resist the sleep and his paranoid mind would jump to the right conclusions: that Elise had done it.

He slowed. “Is there something interesting about your plate?” Sean asked, swallowing a bite.

She looked up at him, but couldn’t keep the tear from forming along the edge of her eye. “Just thinking.”

“About?”

About you dying. About the grand sin I’m committing. “About things.”

He nodded. “About things.”

“I don’t want to ruin the moment.”

He took her hand and came around the coffee table. This was it. What had to be done. Her heart hastened, and she sensed her calm exterior withering. It wasn’t just about what she would do, but what came after. How this was the last time. She had thought it would be easier. He was murderous. He was a monster.

And she loved him.

So she relaxed into his arms and kissed his mouth. A few minutes later they were naked, bodies pressing against one another under the thick blankets. When he entered her, she couldn’t stop the tears. He paused, said: “You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“You sure?”

She nodded a bunch, and they kept going. She rocked on top of him, Sean asking a few times if she was okay because the tears wouldn’t stop. He had no idea what was happening, what she was doing. That feeling, of betraying him in the most intimate of ways, stuck in her gut like a barb, clinging to her intestines, pulling, digging. When he climaxed, the look in his eyes. She would never forget the love there, the lust, the pleasure. No fear of death. No sickness. She lay still on him, wanting to keep him inside for as long as possible, kissing his cheeks while tears coursed down her own.

He whispered, “I love you,” and she told him the same. And she meant it. She meant it so much.

They lay afterward together under the blankets, Sean putting on a pair of long pajamas and socks beforehand. When he returned to her and yawned, she knew the pills were taking hold. She swallowed and nuzzled up against him, absorbing his heat, the tingle inside herself still lingering, remembering what he felt like inside her, cherishing it and storing it for the long, lonely nights to come.

Fifteen minutes later he was asleep. She rose and put a hand on his chest. Said his name, but he didn’t reply.

She waited, watching him breathe in and out slowly. Stayed that way forever. Then she dressed herself, listening for Aidan upstairs, for Sean waking up. Nothing happened. She would go through with it. She had to. She had to.

The shotgun was filled with duds, knowing Sean, so she grabbed the gun, still holstered on his jeans. She attached it to her own hip, feeling the weight of it there, its bulk. Removed it from its holster and held onto it, now feeling its power. She had shot this very weapon countless times, knew the damage it could do. A sickening sensation bubbled up from her legs through her whole body. She re-holstered it.

Sean didn’t wake. So she looped her arms under his armpits and dragged him backward. He was heavy. Heavier than she was expecting. She moved him in slow, deliberate sprints followed by a few seconds of rest. He kept sleeping.

When she unlatched the door to the garage, he groaned. She stopped. He muttered to himself and then a stream of drool ran down his cheek, but his stirring went no further. She blew a rogue hair away from her eyes and bowed her head. This was wrong. This was all wrong. Dragging her husband outside to freeze to death. She looked over to the staircase and imagined herself going up those steps to Aidan. To deliver the news. Aidan’s face when she said it. How this would crush his soul.