Page 63 of Snow Creek

“I don’t want to live here for the rest of my life, Reggie. We agreed it was for a few years. Great. Fine, but, babe, that was a dozen years ago. I want to move on.”

Reggie ignored the remark for the longest time.

Amy finally spoke up.

“You are making me do something that I don’t want to do.”

That got Reggie’s attention.

Amy was full of resolve, but she’s crying anyway.

“I don’t love you like I did, babe. I want out. I want a divorce.”

Regina’s eyes bulged and she dove for Amy.

“You can’t leave!”

Amy pushed back hard. Regina was stronger, tougher and equally full of resolve. She wasn’t going to stop until she got what she wanted. “You aren’t going anywhere. You love me. You said so.”

“I did. Really, Regina, but it was a long time ago.”

“You little liar,” Regina growled as she went for Amy’s neck.

In a flash, Amy grabbed a knife from the counter, and swung it wildly, before ramming its tip into Regina’s eye. Blood squirted and Regina screamed at the top of her lungs.

“What did you do to me?”

“Sorry. Sorry.”

“Never leave me. Not ever.”

Somehow, they’d managed to fight their way across from one room to the next. What started in the bedroom had moved them to the kitchen. Blood gushed from the spaces between Regina’s fingers as she pressed over the agony that was her right eye.

However, Regina’s reflexes were sharp. She knocked the knife out of her wife’s hand and threw herself on top of her.

“You said you were mine forever.”

By then, Amy could no longer speak. Her eyes, wide open, began to bloom blood as the capillaries burst. Regina’s hands tightened around her neck. She wanted to stop. It’s impossible. It’s the kind of thing for which there was no turning back.

Regina stared at the ebbing life force. It’s like a beautiful, nearly invisible vapor that curls above before vanishing out the window.

“You’ll never leave me.”

“I would never leave you,” Amy insisted. “I love you, Regina. I’m sorry.”

Regina sat awhile, thinking. Her eye. She couldn’t go to the hospital. She made her way, nearly stumbling as she walked, to the bathroom. She took off her clothes, took a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and washed herself in the outdoor shower.

She tried not to cry. It hurt so much. Without a nanosecond of delay, Regina stepped away from the water, leaned back and poured the contents of the bottle into her eye socket. She screamed louder than she ever had in her life. Foam collected in her where her eye had been and she poured more, again and again.

Always with a scream.

That’s when the idea came to her.

* * *

Amy doesn’t say a single word while she watches Regina mix the powdery and crystalline poison she’d used to kill the barn rats. She’s sitting up in bed, and when Regina sits next to her, Amy reaches out and touches her tenderly. She holds the juice glass with the poison; they stare straight ahead.

Regina cries from her single eye.

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