Alice was once-again doing the mind-numbing chore of laundry.
“That bastard’s cheating on me!” she barked, smelling woman’s cologne on his shirt. “And after we had it out the last time! Marriage is a forever thing. I don’t want a divorce, but a piece of his hide would make me feel better!”
Alice hated wasting her Ph.D. in Forensic Accounting on the banal job of washing clothes every week. She resented Jim for never offering to help.
“I don’t know the names of the women he’s been with, but they all leave a trace of perfume on his shirts,” she spewed as her anger rose. “I know he’s been with some cheap sluts and with some higher class whores by the quality of their perfume. Like now!” she shouted, catching a fresh whiff on yet another shirt.
Alice viciously threw it into the trash. She sneered, practicing the lie she would tell Jim when he noticed it missing. “It got caught in the washer and tore, James.”
“WAIT! NO! What am I doing? Still washing his clothes after he’s been sleeping with other bitches?
Hell NO,” she furiously screamed, tears filling her eyes. “No more!”
Alice grabbed an armful of Jim’s laundry and ran up the basement stairs, falling socks marking the trail. She burst through the back door and into their tiny Brooklyn back yard, hurling his clothes onto the small red-brick patio. A large ceramic flower pot sat empty on the corner of the patio, despite Jim’s promises to fill it with dirt and plant the six-pack of dying begonias still sitting next to it.
“Another failed promise.” Rivulets of tears traced pathways into her makeup as they flowed down her cheeks.
A river of outrage burst out of its confines and poured from her mouth. “Damn you to Hell, Jim Arnold! How many times can I overlook the same perfumes showing up every few weeks? How many women have you been with since we married?”
She threw his clothes into the empty pot. “I’m very, very tired of hurting!”
The charcoal lighter fluid sat next to the grill. “Of having a cheating bastard of a husband,” Alice said, squirting the liquid into the pot.
“Of having him screw every whore in town.” A match ignited.
“Of total loneliness.” She threw the flame onto the accelerant-soaked clothes.
“And of all of those lies,” she shouted as searing fire erupted out of the pot and towered above her bent head. “I hate you! I hate you!” Alice screamed as the fierceness of her pain rose beyond the flames.
She wailed and collapsed onto the red bricks, crying inconsolably
.