[Pride 2020] Another Cheater

Trigger warning for domestic violence

I’m petrified as a corpse, but soon I’ll become one. No power, no phones, everything completely closed off. I’m trapped in my own home. But this isn’t my home; a jail cell of my own making. Norman is outside, walking around the house with a knife and a smartphone. He shouts my sins while I cry and cover my ears. I don’t want to listen to them but it’s too late. He stops and stands behind me, separated by a window.

I know what’s coming and I’ve seen his face.

A face of anger that darkens his eyes in blackness. As black as the color of my betrayal. He uses the knife to knock on the window. He then presses my smartphone to the window and I see my crime and punishment along with the horrific view of the executioner who will carry it.

“Please, forgive me!” I say.

Norman keeps knocking on the glass until the knife pierces and breaks it. It is already too late. I run to the living room, hiding from him. The executioner has broken his way deeper inside our home. He searches for his prisoner while I wonder whether to run or make my stand. Kitchen or the front door? Such wise and deadly decisions. I decide to run to the kitchen and grab a knife, but Norman catches me. We fight like beasts but I get the upper hand and punch him.

Front door now.

Easy escape from the executioner but not from my sins.

Norman tackles me and pierces my right hand with his knife, first blood paid. He punches me and I fall unconscious.

I awaken, tied to a chair in front of him. The man I loved, got married to, and lived with is now hearing my plea even though he already knows the verdict.

“Please, let me go!” I say.

“Since when, Marco?” Norman asks.

“Norman…please just untie me and I won’t call the police,” I say.

“Since when?” he keeps asking.

“Don’t make it worse than it is,” I say.

“Too late for that,” he says.

“Okay then,” I say.

Confession time. We were like any couple with their ups and downs. Some friends never liked our monogamous relationship since it turns down the excitement and amps up the disconnection. Norman worked a lot and was always exhausted. From there his obligations increased and my affections were ignored. I still loved him, but I was also tired of the decline of our relationship. We couldn’t talk about work, solutions, vacations, fun…you name it. Recommendations from my best friends were to secretly hook up with someone or establish an open relationship. As I kept confessing, I smelled the horrors of my husband’s reactions.

“It was insane but I was so exhausted of us,” I say.

Desperation searched for pleasure and pleasure ended with madness.

“One night, I met up with someone I talked to on a dating app,” I say. “There was this impulse that kept getting stronger until it made me mad. The night we met, everything went faster. We kissed in an instant and continued from there.”

Norman’s face is a pandora’s box. His eyes want to shoot me while his mouth wants to dismember me. Still, I continue confessing so he can understand all my regrets.

“I swear that after what I did, I vomited. It was a mess and I couldn’t carry it. I wanted to end it but it didn’t happen. That guy kept texting me and for some reason, he fell in love with me. I waited so long to end it while trying to reflect on my mistakes and find some way to repair them.”

As I finish telling my confession, I’m left less relieved because of Norman’s repulsion with it. I don’t blame him, but the worst is yet to come. He places his knife on my left hand.

“Oh, God! Please stop! Don’t do this, I already told you the truth and I deeply regret it!”

“You’re rotten. Just like him,” he says.

Norman takes out his smartphone and shows me the photo of my hook up. The guy was murdered, his throat slit. I scream and cry. I know that I’m next in line. He beats me to the point that I fall to the floor. Still defenseless, I see his knife fall, too. The beating continues, but I manage to grab the knife. He grabs my neck and tries to choke me.

“Sorry… I’m so sorry,” I say.

“Shut up!”

Having untied myself, I manage to stab him through the neck. My Norman, the Executioner, is long gone from this world. Crawling and standing up, I see my mess. So much blood has been dropped because of me, but the blood has been paid.

The following morning, my wounds are being tended to while the police tell me that they’ll question me at the hospital. Seeing the corpse of my husband carried out is horrible, knowing that I survived is unthinkable, but realizing that I’m among a group of cheaters who survived is reprehensible.

The news will soon spread. Mass domestic killings in which the victims are cheaters. It’s frightening but some consider it a wrath well deserved. Some executioners lived, some criminals survived too, but this curse continues. Somewhere another cheater being executed right now or has somehow managed to survive.

Either way, I don’t want to hear their confessions, too.

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