Simmering Resentment

He’d hurt me so many times but always in such small ways that people either didn’t believe or laughed at me. Constantly pecking away at me as if trying to spill my blood he made my life a living hell. I couldn’t sleep unless he did, he wouldn’t let me. Still I couldn’t just run away, he was my responsibility. I was the one who raised him into this monster he became, his fathers DNA overwhelming my loving care. I don’t know if it was sleep deprivation or some deeper resentment bubbling beneath the surface but I couldn’t take it anymore. I saw him in the yard and out of the corner of my eye on the kitchen counter, the knife.

He was fast and nimble but I was stronger and outweighed him by over a hundred pounds and that wins in enclosed spaces. I don’t remember much about what happened next only the feeling as his warm blood rushed down my hands. I stared down horrified at what I’d done, his tiny head barely attached to his body anymore. Tears poured down at the realization, I’d loved him once, when he was small and cute before this all started. I then realized that I had killed him and as awful as it is I felt relieved.

I wondered how I was going to explain the hypocrisy, all this time excusing his behavior, telling others that it was a phase, how could I admit that I was the one to finally snap. I was just about to lay him on the ground when I felt his tiny body jerk in my arms. Startled I dropped him and watched as he stood on his two feet. I screamed internally as he began to run, his dangling head flapping against his body. I raced crying into the house slamming and locking the door behind me. I watched from the kitchen window as he kept running around with no rhyme or reason. The gushing from his wound soaked the yard, much more blood than I'd suspected his body to hold.

That's how my husband found me when he got home, curled up in a bloody ball on the floor sobbing into my knees . He rushed to my side and asked if I was okay. I brushed aside his hands and pointed to the window. "Is he dead?" I managed to gasp out and his eyes widened as he rushed to check. A moment later he was back at my side and I could feel his body trembling, then he spoke. "I guess it's chicken for dinner!"