Apartment Confessions - Writers Forum

snorrie · 09-29-2007, 07:37 PM

Okay, so no one wanted to critique this in short stories. I'll try it here. Anyone?

“Laura...Laura...come on, pick up. I know you’re there, so stop playing your little games. We have to talk.” The night before Calvin told her he had something important on his mind. He was coming over after he got off work today. Important indeed. Now it looked as though he was breaking up with her over the phone. That was his style, taking the easy way out.

Sprawled out on the apartment floor Laura stared up at a chandelier he had bought her a month ago. She listened to the drone of his voice over the speaker on an answering machine beneath her hand, while her finger rested on the stop button. Now his voice sickened her. His voice suddenly became background noise as she studied the hanging monstrosity reflecting light across the room. A little disco and she’d have her own nightclub.

She grabbed a nearby shoe and flung it up at the eyesore which he said symbolized their love and new beginning. A piece of it broke off and fell on a bed next to the window. How she hated that thing. It didn’t even go with any of the furniture, let alone the dimensions of the room, large enough to crush her if an earthquake shook it from the ceiling.

If the answering machine didn’t cut him off soon, she would. He kept rambling about priorities—his wife and children, how complicated the situation had become. She finally had enough and smacked the button which stopped his plea in mid-sentence. Perhaps now he realized she knew what was coming, and might hurt herself. He was right, but she needed him there or her plan wouldn’t work.

A knock jarred her from her thoughts and she turned her attention to the door. He must have been on a cell phone, a few blocks away when he got the answering machine. Laura licked her lips and drew a deep breath, possibly on the verge of reconsidering her plans. After all, people knew her as a kind, rational woman who never acted strictly on emotion.

“Laura?” Calvin called. “Come on, we need to talk. It’s the best for the both of us. If you would just open the door...”Best for both of them?

His words fell on deaf ears. Laura turned her head away, reaching up to a bed spread they had shared countless times in lust—according to Calvin in the throws of true love. She stroked the material a few times, lost in thought. It was soft and comforting, one of the last pleasures she would experience, his last as well.

“Just a minute,” Laura finally replied, “I need to get some clothes on, just got out of the shower." A lie. She was fully dressed and had been so since that morning five hours ago. Her hair was still wet, so it was a mere bending of the truth, not a complete lie. Unlike Calvin who lied all the time without any sense of guilt. Best for the both of them.

After she let him in, she immediately went to the kitchen, not giving him a chance to break it off right away. Calvin knew the drill and sat at a small table while she got him a beer. He indulged her that much, after the horrible experience he had put her through—sneaking around, late-night rendezvous’ at nightclubs out of town, avoiding anyone they knew, so as not to cause any undo strain on his wife and kids.

“You know this is for the best?” Calvin called out. She wasn’t in the room yet, taking her time with a familiar task of tending to his needs. She had become his maid, his mistress, his play toy which was a matter of convenience for him alone.

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right as always.” While she was talking, Laura slipped something into his glass, the drug which would eventually render him helpless.

There was no strain or waver in her voice. She had learned a lot about deception in the last few months and she now used it to her advantage.After he got his beer, she sat across from him, not the way they use to cuddle side by side gazing out the window at the downtown traffic. Intimacy had dropped off in the last week. They had become those couples in restaurants who never spoke a word to each other throughout the whole meal.

“I guess I’ve seen it coming for a while now. I suppose we just didn’t know how to do it. Of course, I’m sure you won’t be paying my rent anymore so I should move out,” Laura said.

The surprise on his face was clear, the first honesty he had shown during this whole fiasco. “Wow, that’s quite mature of you, Laura. This is a side of you I’ve never seen before. I thought you would be crying, asking me to take you back. Maybe I’m wrong about breaking it off. But since you are so young...”

“Eighteen,” she reminded him.

“Yes...eighteen,” he whispered. Apparently, her age kyboshed his sudden fanciful thoughts, reminding him they were from two different generations and his children were old enough to date her themselves. He closed his eyes and nodded in defeat.

Suddenly he slumped over on the table, spilling the beer. It was going smooth so far, the plan she had made when she found out he wasn't going to leave his wife, but instead go on a second honey moon to save his marriage. It would be so easy to just put the gun to his head and end it there, but she had bigger plans.

Another knock at the door. She grabbed a pair of latex gloves from a desk as she let in her friend Mena. It was obvious the girl was scared. She didn’t want to be there and actually turned around when she saw Calvin unconscious. Laura grabbed her by the shoulder and shut the door, then shoved the gloves at Mena, who took them after hesitating.

“I don’t know if I can go through with this, Laura.” Mena’s face was pasty, sweat greasing her skin.

“Mena, you know I need you. It won’t work unless you’re here. And if I can’t have him, then no one can. That wife of his doesn’t deserve him, stupid bitch!”

“Are you sure the doctor said you have inoperable brain cancer?” Mena asked. She reached for Laura’s head as if she needed to feel the tumor herself, but Laura slapped her hand away and just glared at her. “Okay, okay. I believe you.”

“Alright then,” said Laura, “put on the gloves. I don’t want any trace of gunpowder on your hands. The cops will immediately test your skin if they think you were involved in any way.”Laura put on a set of gloves as well and came out of her bedroom with a revolver. It was black, the color of death, dull and scratched. She had gotten it on the black market. No serial numbers or permits. The thing was clean.

At the sight of the gun, Mena sat down on the bed and almost fainted. But when Laura cocked the hammer, Mena’s eyes grew large as if she was in the stages of heart failure and couldn’t breathe.

“Come here,” Laura said, grabbing Mena by the shirt. “I need you to hold Calvin up in case he starts to fall over.”

While Mena steadied his limp body, Laura placed the gun in his hand to make sure his fingerprints were on it. She then laid it on the bed and instructed Mena to help her get him to the floor. His head smacked the hard wood, sounding like a melon. Mena flinched.

“Relax, his life is over so it doesn’t matter if he gets hurt."

Mena scooted away on her butt, up against a wall by the door, looking as if she just might flee the scene. Things were getting too real, unlike the other night when they pretended how everything would play out. Plus she had been drinking then so she was numb to the fact Laura would be dead the next day.

"Let’s get it over with, Mena. No use dwelling on this whole thing. If you don’t do it, then he will get off and I will be dead anyway from brain cancer. The doctor said I don’t have much time. Come on.”

Laura lay on the floor under the chandelier where they had postioned Calvin.

Mena put the revolver in Calvin’s hand the way it was rehearsed and then pointed it to Laura’s temple. She pulled the trigger. It was over.

The screen in the courtroom went black and everyone was silent, now looking to a defense table where Mena sat accused of murder.“I didn’t know Calvin video-taped it,” Mena said through tears.

Calvin got up smiling and left the courtroom.