Lucid Waking

Archive for September 12th, 2006

Read the Captions

           Bold and black the letters on the newspaper headline struck her heart like an arrow: “Wife kills husband and refuses to explain.” She stopped and shakily picked up the paper. The picture on the front was a fuzzy black and white picture of a woman being escorted away by the police. She was dressed in a business suit and appeared to have light color hair in layers. She was staring straight ahead at the open door of the police car. The woman in the paper looked just like her in the other pictures. She put the paper down and tried to walk away.
           “I know what you did,” the note had said and its words rung true in her head, now. “And I’ll give you one last chance to change or I’ll make sure you can never do it again.”
           The cause was only a small side affair that had lasted a couple months, and she honestly had no idea he was married. She should have known, though. Before he told her about his marriage, she would imagine herself being Mrs. Hartland, wife of the most famous undefeated lawyer in the country. Then after three months, he broke the news to her and only a little time after that, the notes started pouring into her mailbox. Then, they were small pieces of paper tucked into her car door, post-its on her desk and emails that had the identical address to a very good friend of hers. She had lived her life in fear of the worst until she saw the headlines and surprisingly now that she thought about the situation, the pit in her stomach started to lighten. She had thought her life was on the line, but now she realized she wasn’t in danger of being killed; Mrs. Harland was referring to her husband’s life. She had a strangely ghastly thought that she would do it again if she knew what her options were. Heck, she thought with disdain, if I knew he was going to get killed for this affair why should that concern me? She stopped in shock at her macabre thoughts and walked into the park. She sat down on a bench with a shudder and pulled a novel out of her purse, trying to calm herself down.
           Someone was watching her from the roof of the nearest building. The red dot on the top of her head flashed briefly before he pulled it. His shot rang true and he quickly crouched down below the edge of the building’s roof as people’s screams and yells could be heard from the park. He crawled back to the door and ran down the stairs to his apartment two flights down. He picked up the paper from the table and tossed it into the garbage can. “Poor dear,” he thought with a smile. “She didn’t read the caption; it wasn’t Mrs. Hartland being arrested it was Mrs. Cohn.”