Cause of Death by Laura Dembowski (ereader iphone .TXT) 📗

the knife in my hand. I figure he might loosen his grip on my throat, but instead, he tightens it.

“Let go,” I manage to gasp. It hurts my throat and my head. Everything is throbbing and shaking. I can feel myself growing weaker.

“You don’t have it in you. Killing Lana was easy for you, for some reason, but you won’t do it again.”

I’m even more hurt that he thinks I would have had an easy time killing our daughter. How could he say such a thing? In a moment of pure adrenaline, my last gasp before taking a mighty fall, I plunge the knife as hard as I can right into his throat. Relief fills me when it sinks in. The skin around the knife is pulled taut, and torn, already starting to bruise, more gruesome than the stab wound itself.

His hands fall away from my neck. I fall to the stairs and catch my breath, gasping for air, treasuring the oxygen that is filling my lungs. I hear Dave moaning a little, but for the moment I can’t look. I am focused only on my breathing, on making sure air is getting into my lungs and that my trachea hasn’t been permanently damaged, leading me down a more painful path to death than I was just a few moments ago.

After my fear that I am about to die subsides, I look at Dave. He is grasping at his throat, but blood is still spurting out. I wonder how long it will take him to die. I wonder if he’s in pain, or simply shock. I wonder if he’ll be able to save himself by holding his hand over the wound.

And then he goes and pulls out the knife.

“Nooo,” I say, as a reflex, feeling as though I am in slow motion, my hand reaching out to his leg. When the knife comes out, blood sprays everywhere. I know it will only be a matter of moments before he is dead. Doubts fill my mind, but second-guessing will do me no good right now. Dave is gone even if I call 911 right at this very moment. It amazes me that even though I was prepared to kill Dave if the need arose, my instincts to save him still kick in, outweighing any other desires in my body.

Whether I can ever convince anyone I didn’t kill Lana no longer matters. I now have blood on my hands, permanently. I have killed another person, a decision that will forever affect the rest of my life. It is not something I can take back or change. I have to reconcile myself to it and learn to accept and live with my decision—one I made only to save my own life. This is what I will tell anyone who wants to listen. There is no point in trying to pin this on someone else. No point lying, creating some elaborate story that the police will poke more holes in than a block of Swiss cheese. I killed Dave, but I can explain why without flinching, because I will tell the truth.

I stay on the stairs and watch in horror and curiosity as Dave starts to fall to the stairs. His hand drops the knife. I cannot look away. I’m not even sure I want to look away from it. I want to see, perhaps only to make sure he won’t come back from the dead like in a movie; turn on me; kill me.

After a moment, his eyes close, and then I see his chest stop heaving up and down. I want to check his pulse, but I wait a few more moments. Suddenly I am fearful of every single noise I hear. The creaks of the house. The car horn from down the street. The birds singing outside. I turn my head left and right, fully prepared to see a ghost, but I see nothing. It is just me and my dead husband.

Finally I work up the courage to touch him. I feel around his neck and wrist. Nothing. No pulse. No breath. No heartbeat. He’s gone.

Bye, Dave.

Chapter 18

Margaret

I call 911 because I really don’t want to dispose of Dave’s body. Besides, I killed him in self-defense. He was about to kill me. It’s a miracle, really, that he didn’t. I am a miracle. I’ve always known I was special, but now there is no doubt in my mind; I am meant to be alive.

The police are at the house in a flash. Bet they know the way by now. They knock and yell and then pound on the door. When I open it, mere milliseconds before the police break it down, I’m disappointed, though not surprised, to see Detective Hutchinson standing there. I’m sure she uses her detective senses to perceive when there is an incident at my house, which for the record, there have been far too many of lately. I never thought I’d be a part of so many police investigations, and yet here I stand, a mere bystander, as the officers walk into my house.

I’m distracted, thinking about how much cleaning I’ll have to do once they leave, when Detective Hutchinson taps me on the shoulder.

“Mrs. Moore,” she’s saying. I look at her—blankly, I fear—because she looks at me with concern. “Why don’t we sit down?” she says in a soothing tone. “I think you might be in shock.”

Could she be right? Am I in shock? I suppose it’s reasonable that doing something as violent and frightening as killing another human being—while fighting death, no less, one you’ve spent most of your life loving, or at least living with—could throw one into shock.

The mere suggestion that I am in shock puts me into a mental fight, trying to save myself from this malady. I am stronger than this. But then I look around the room, police officers everywhere, Detective Hutchinson sitting on the sofa next to me, and I realize no one is on my side.

Dave’s gone.