a seventy ninth story...'an excoriation'

There was a chink of light cast into the hallway from the half-ajar bedroom door.  Julian hesitated.  His right hand, holding a whiskey tumbler, was shaking with emotion, his whole body feeling post-fight adrenalin coursing through it.  But he stayed where he was on the landing.  He was old enough to know that to rush in and resume hostilities would only make both of them feel worse. 

Back downstairs in the drawing room, unsteadily he poured himself another whiskey, and slumped back into his deep, crimson-red leather arm chair.  The maritime clock on the wall said a quarter past midnight.  Julian rubbed the skin between his left eye and the bridge of his nose, took a sip of his whiskey, tried to calm down.  There was silence all through the building, but in Julian’s mind it was an uneasy silence, the echo of her shouts and screams still resonating.

‘Typical’, Julian scoffed, and took a gulp of his whiskey.  She always had to ruin everything, when everything was so much fun.  Another spike of anger rose within him, and in a flash he recalled all the other times.  And then her ingratitude at all the things he had done for her, and how he coped so admirably when she made scene after scene. 

Julian put his feet out in front of him on an oak footstool, and drained his glass.  Sorrow will come soon he thought, and he kicked the footstool away, rising groggily to fix another drink to keep the recriminations at bay.

Then a strange thing happened.

The soft, yellow lamp lights in the living room flickered and went out, plunging the room into inky-blue darkness.  Julian felt a sharp pain searing into his shin bone.  He had caught the low edge of the satin-wood coffee table.  ‘Fuck’, he cursed under his breath; the coffee table - yet another one of her purchases. 

Rubbing his shin, Julian lurched across the drawing room to the fuse box, behind long, heavy curtains that concealed the casement view of the garden and the Surrey Hills beyond, but just as he was about to get there the lamp lights flickered on again.  Julian stopped.  ‘Fine’, he said, and turned around to find his whiskey bottle.

~

Gah! Julian woke suddenly and with a chill down his spine.  He swore he had heard a window being broken, or had he simply been dreaming the all too vivid dream of someone who falls asleep hurting?  He rubbed his face vigorously as if trying to massage his head into a state of alertness.  The soft, yellow lamp lights were still on, but the maritime clock had stopped.

Julian looked at his wrist watch only to remember he had left it in the bed-room some hours earlier.  The maritime clock, stopped?  A family heirloom, it had run and run for years, but all things must end thought Julian, hauling himself into an upright position, and yes, there was the reason for his waking – his whiskey tumbler lay shattered across the varnished wooden floorboards, small, amber pools of liquor forming around the smashed glass fragments.

Julian’s head was thick. however, the thought of having to creep upstairs to bed and slide silently and apologetically under the bed covers, before confronting his wife in the morning, teary-eyed and fragile, ready to snap at the slightest sleight, brought him swiftly and uncomfortably to his senses. 

Before anything else, he had to sweep up the mess he had made.

~

The utility cupboard where they kept dust pans and brushes, floors mops and so on, was naturally under the wood-panneled main staircase.

Opening the utility cupboard door Julian was greeted by the rich, tart odour of shoe polish.  The new maid was still putting things in the wrong place. ‘It belongs in the garage’, Julian muttered, groping for the dustpan and brush toward the back of the cupboard, at once entertaining the idea of an extended morning in the garage scrupulously washing his sports car, and why not tomorrow?!

After a few fumbling moments his fingers found the unfamiliar shape of the dustpan, with a small hand brush lodged inside.  A sense of purpose had galvanised him, and he backed out of the cupboard, but as he did so managed to misplace his footing and suddenly he was tumbling backwards with mop and broom falling loudly with him. 

The clatter echoed on into the silence. 

And then, fffft, the lamp lighting in the drawing room down the hallway went out again.  Julian was pitched into the dark once more.

~

A power cut thought Julian as he began to re-stow the utility cupboard, what else could go wrong!  For such an old house things tended to function remarkably well, not that being in the Surrey Hills was exactly being in the middle of nowhere; still, there were days, nights even, Julian conceded, as he quietly propped up mop and broom once again, when it did feel lonely, and there were corners where shadows remained at all times..

..The time!

High time I went to bed, Julian decided, and made to move back towards the drawing room to the fuse box, to the light.  But he was stopped in his tracks for there was a glow emanating from the upstairs passage, filtering strangely into the stairwell where he stood, still – it seemed to be coming from their bedroom, the door, half-ajar. 

Another chill in Julian shot away to anger at himself, he had woken her, or perhaps she fell asleep with the light on? The next thought.  Julian grimaced in the gloom.  The decent thing would be to go and see if she’s OK.

~

Climbing the stairs, past the elaborately framed hunting portraits of yester-year, Julian kept an unusually tight grasp of the banisters.  His body was tensing again, and the adrenalin was running higher with each step toward the light.  The light was indeed from their bedroom door, half-ajar, inviting and repelling in the same instant. 

Julian had nearly reached the top of the landing now, and before venturing further paused a moment underneath a painting of a young woman posing on a lavish bed in an ivory white dress, her head curiously to one side.

I’m scared. 

Scared of your wife??

Julian felt perspiration break from the pores on his neck.

Don’t be so foolish he told himself,

Be a man!

And so Julian stepped onto the landing and with every hair standing on the back of his neck, and the sensation his spine was freezing, shielding his eyes, he approached the bedroom door, the light, now a glare, beckoning him on with an awful sense of the unknown, an awful sense of..

There with her back to him, sat bolt upright on their bed was his wife, head lolling on her shoulder, the reading light on the side table throwing a bold tone across the room, and with a jolt that nearly stopped his heart, Julian saw the crimson-red pool of blood pussing from under the seat of his wife’s ivory white night-dress.

And the coat-hanger that bought it all rushing back to him, abandoned by her side.