Obsession

I had just dropped Sammy off at the Knight's house for little Kayla's birthday party and was headed back to my brother's townhouse that I rented. I was all set to watch the Peach Bowl by myself. It was one of those nostalgic afternoons that I hated so passionately. This stupid townhouse in which I was forced to live had all the happy memories, the ones before the bitch went nuts.

We had gotten married young, so idealistic and naïve, but we were happy then. My Katie was beautiful and perfect. She was sweet, and everybody loved her. We did everything together, and I think that’s where things went wrong. You can’t have a cake, eat it, and expect there to always be more cake. At some point, cake becomes a problem. Either you’re so attached to your cake you don’t want anyone touching it—my beautiful bride. Or you need something a little more substantial, say some meat and potatoes, to go along with your cake—me,

We had lots of parties. In the beginning, she was an awesome hostess. By my side all the time, making sure everyone had beer, wine, snacks, whatever. Eventually she got tired of all the mess and all the cleanups. She wanted things to quiet down. She wanted me all to herself. I tried giving up a night here and there, but it was never enough. She wanted it all to go away. She wanted to have a baby. So, we had a baby. It just made matters worse. So, the cake ran out, and she turned into a nasty shrew.

I hated being here. I hated being the one all alone with the kid and the bills and the realization that I would never be able to move on because of what she had done to me. I wanted to be a responsible parent. Fucking bitch. Thank God for birthday parties and Mic Light. They kept me sane. I didn’t want help. I could do this by myself. I made my bed; I could lie in it. I just wanted to be a good dad. I love my little girl. I really do, but things weren’t supposed to end up like this. We were supposed to be a family.

I got home, dumped my beer in the fridge, went upstairs to the bedroom, got out of my clothes, and went back downstairs to watch my giant TV in my underwear. No single man should be forced to wear clothes in his own home if he doesn't have to. The parties had ended so long ago, who cared what I wore when I watched my games, right?

As I was trotting back downstairs, something caught my nose. It was just a whiff, an odd smell, kind of musky. Must have been some residual smell from one of the moms at the party.

I turned on my television and got ready for the big game. I loved my TV. Once she changed her tune about the parties, she started getting crazy jealous of all the attention I got from my friends. She couldn't make a new friend to save her life; she always shared mine. She'd go to bed an hour into one of my shindigs with some sorry assed excuse about having to get up early the next day. My friends couldn’t understand what happened to her. They thought she was a freak.

Don’t even ask about our sex life at that point.

When she got pregnant with Sammy, she fully expected me to give up my parties. She wanted everything but wasn’t willing to compromise at all. My parties were a part of me. The bitch needed to get a clue.

I popped open a beer and ordered a pizza. The game was a college bowl game, which I always loved. Clemson and Auburn promised to be a good game, too. And the marching bands. Gotta love the marching bands. I was in band through high school and college, even got thrown off the field once in college for marching around with my bass drum in pink bunny ears pretending to be the Energizer bunny. The crowd went wild.

Football was always my thing, my obsession, I suppose. I started playing when I was in junior high school in central Florida for a little school in Auburndale. I was a wide receiver, and I was damn good. Our school made it to state finals for two of the years I played. I ended up in the marching band, though, because I blew my knee out at the beginning of my sophomore year. The doc said if I kept playing, I’d probably hurt it again and end up needing a knee replacement. My folks decided to bench me permanently, so I marched trumpet instead. I already played, but then I marched, too. At least I got to go to all the games for free. I watched all the games: college, pro, playoffs. When Sammy ends up in high school, I’ll probably go to all those, too.

After the pre-show, the coin toss, and the kickoff, things got off to a nice start. The pizza showed up, and then I proceeded to get drunk.

I passed out somewhere between the second quarter and half time and missed the marching band. I had no idea what time it was. Fortunately, Sammy was staying overnight at Kayla's. It would've sucked if I'd had to go get her in my state. I hated it when she saw me like that. It really is quite awful.

***

That whiff from earlier was stronger, like it was right beside me. It was right beside me. I recognized it now. It was the perfume Obsession. I loved that smell, and the beautiful woman wearing it. I looked at her face, her beautiful blue eyes, her blonde hair. We were walking through Times Square, on our honeymoon, looking for some good Chinese food. We'd just seen City of Angels at the Virginia Theatre. We stopped by our hotel and the concierge recommended China Piece on 46th.

We got to 46th, and it looked like an alley. We glanced at each other, shrugged our shoulders, and carried on. How could the concierge be wrong? He wasn't. It was fabulous. We got back to our hotel and fucked all night. As honeymoons went, ours rocked.

Our relationship was great for the first year and went downhill from there. After Sammy was born, she just went crazy. The doctors and friends and family all said it was post-partum. I knew better. She was a nutcase before the baby. She was jealous. She was abusive. She'd throw things, yell, scream. God forbid she'd cook or do the laundry. The house was a pigsty, and she thought "I" drank too much. Shit. I knew where all her empty bottles were buried. She could drink my ass under the table and keep on going.

A year or so after Sammy was born, it got so bad that instead of throwing things at the wall, she started throwing things at me. Finally, she just started hitting me. She'd get pissed off because I wouldn't fuck her fat, lazy ass. Then she started in with the surprise attacks.

It was in the middle of the night, and I was sleeping off a bender. I had crashed in the bed, on top of the covers with my clothes on. I’m sure I was snoring up a storm. All of a sudden WHAM! She punched me right in the nuts.

“You … Bitch …” I gagged, rolling out of the bed onto the floor. I ended up puking all over the carpet. I couldn’t breathe. I was heaving in pain, disoriented in my drunken stupor, clutching my crotch, and unable to move.

I could hear her laughing. “Fuck you, asshole!” More hysterical laughter. She’d had a few herself, it appeared. “Serves you right, coming up here, drunk off your ass, snoring to wake the dead. Now maybe you’ll shut the hell up.” I heard her climb back in the bed giggling like a teenager.

Slowly, the pain faded, and I could breathe again. I reached up and grabbed my pillow and the comforter off the bed.

“Hey, fucker!” she started in on me.

I stood up and glared at her. In the moonlight coming through the window, I guess she saw how pissed off I was, and she backed down. She knew she’d crossed a line. She let me walk out the door with the comforter. I remember thinking, what the hell had happened to my wife? I didn’t understand how the woman I had married had turned into the nutcase I lived with. Were my parties really that big a deal? What had I done to her? I decided to slow down my extracurricular activities a little for self-preservation. Maybe she’d chill.

She didn’t pull that one again, but once in a while, she’d wake me up with a hot iron or her curling iron or cigarettes. One night I caught her trying to put a plastic bag over my face. Too bad for her I hadn't had that much to drink that particular evening. Apparently, a lack of partying in the house hadn’t helped much. She was too far gone by then. I ended up stopping all the partying after the bag incident. Despite my evasion, she scared the shit out of me.

She started dieting and going to the gym, thinking I’d want her if she lost her baby weight. She looked great, seriously hot, but she was still a bitch. And I still couldn’t bring myself to touch her. I was too scared she’d do something even crazier.

Things just went along for the most part. I kept it all hidden from family and friends, like some weak, stupid, battered woman. I completely ditched my own family because they wouldn’t leave it alone. I couldn’t listen to them, especially my mother. I felt like such a fuck up. I'm supposed to be a man, for chrissake. I couldn't believe how ridiculous my life was. A friend of mine at work suggested that I get some help, some counseling or something. I just laughed at her. Fuck that. I was fine. Just ignore it and eventually the crazy bitch would completely crack up, and I could have her committed. Then I wouldn't have to worry about it anymore.

A few months later we had to go into New York for some stupid party for her family. We left Sammy with a babysitter and got dressed up for the night out on the town. We took a train into the city.

It wasn't a busy time on the train, and we were going the wrong way, so we had a car all to ourselves. She had outdone herself, bought a new dress, scarlet. She never wore red anymore, because it was my favorite color on her. She was beautiful in it. The dress was off the shoulder, skintight, slid up her thighs so you could see the tops of her thigh-highs when she sat down. Her hair was bleached and pulled up so all you could see was neck. She looked amazing. She smelled like sex.

She walked to the front of the train, trailing the musky scent of her perfume, Obsession, behind her. She hadn't worn that perfume in over a year. She was up to something. I just stood there paralyzed, holding on to the rail like an antelope on a Saharan plain that knows the lion is near.

As the train began to move, air swam through the car like a wave and her scent washed over me even stronger. Mesmerized by her musk, I pulled myself through the train to where she stood waiting for me.

The look on her face was one of power, not love, never love. I could see the rage in her, but I didn't care. It had been too long. I wanted her. The perfume had mixed with her natural scent, and I was high. She knew she had me; she could see it in my eyes. She grabbed my swollen dick, and the light of victory shown bright on her face like a sun. She pushed me onto a seat and pulled me out of my pants. As I slid my hands beneath her dress to pull down her panties, her eyes gleamed at me. She hadn't worn any.

My hands slid further up into her dress to cup her breasts. As I squeezed them both, she arched her body against me. I rubbed my face against her taking in her smell. As I dragged my fingers down her back, she lowered herself onto my lap.

She slammed her body down on mine again and again, offering no love or communion. All she wanted was the fuck. In the beginning I pictured Tom Cruise and Rebecca De Mornay in Risky Business, in the end, not so much. When she finally came, I was glad. I just wanted her off me. As she stood up, she saw my dick was still hard, and she knew. She smirked at me as she straightened her dress and walked to the doors of the train to wait for our stop.

I just sat there with my pants open. I knew the smirk was a facade. I knew the rage boiled even hotter now. She may have gotten her rocks off, but it infuriated her that she couldn't get mine. No, she didn't fuck me, had only fucked herself, in more ways than one, in so many more ways. I could see her start to tremble.

The party we were headed to was being held at China Peace, our honeymoon restaurant. As we walked down 46th street, her scent started to overwhelm me again. She took my hand in hers. She dragged me over to a side street, another alley. She pushed me up against a wall and rubbed against me like a cat in heat.

"Kiss me," she said.

"No," I said, trying to push her away.

She clung to me, digging her nails into my skin, threading my hair between her fingers. She began kissing my neck, biting, not nibbling, all along my throat. I moaned. I grabbed her ass and hauled her against my aching crotch, bringing one leg up to wrap around my thigh. I turned her around and slammed her against the wall. She brought one of her hands down to unzip my pants. She pulled my cock out. My nuts ached, and I swore into her hair when she brushed them with her fingertips. I pulled up her other leg and wrapped both her legs around my waist as she guided me into her. I pounded her against the wall for about five minutes, making love to her neck and mouth. And then I dropped her on her ass.

"Suck it, bitch, finish it" I said.

She looked up at me, stunned. "What?"

"Suck it and finish it now."

She was shocked, but she did it. When she was done, I helped her up. She had her smirk back on, but it was different this time. She had her power back, and now she was all over me like she owned me. And I guess she did in a way. For that moment in time, she was in control, and in that same moment, I hated her even more. She put her arm around my waist as we walked the rest of the way to the restaurant.

We got to the restaurant, and her whole family was there. The party was for her grandparents. It was an anniversary or something. The night ended up a blur. We were there for about an hour, eating fancy Chinese hors d’ oeuvres from a well-stocked buffet, and drinking champagne. They had the little donuts that everyone loved, dumplings, tiny egg rolls. There was a sushi chef making everyone’s favorite sushi rolls. They had Crab Rangoon, sweet and sour pork, and pepper steak. They had stuff I couldn’t even name. There was a little string quartet playing pop cover songs in a corner, which sounded better than you’d think. They were good. Everyone was having a blast, even the bitch.

Whatever happened during our little interlude in the alley hadn’t worn off, so she was walking around smiling and happy. She was still being nice to me, something she hadn’t done in years. She even left me alone to go mingling with a couple of her cousins on the other side of the room. A couple of the guys asked if I’d turned her into a Stepford. I told them, nah, I just banged her good. They thought that was hilarious.

Since she was off doing her thing, the guys and I hung out and talked about the Giants’ chance for a Superbowl run that year. We were all certain they’d never get that far. They’d won in 86 and 90 with Parcells, but he was gone now. After Handley took over, they sunk horribly. Former Broncos coach Dan Reeves was at the helm now, but we were losing two of our best guys. We weren’t optimistic.

The wives and a couple of the female cousins came over. I checked to make sure the bitch was still occupied. She had managed to engage one of the sushi chefs, and it looked, from where we were huddled by the bar, like he was teaching her how to make sushi.

I watched her for a couple of minutes. She was having so much fun with the chef. She was smiling and laughing, and she looked like my Katie again. Maybe it was some weird afterglow of our interlude on our way here. Maybe it was wishful thinking on my part, but maybe that night could be a fresh start for us. Maybe we could get some outside help and make another go of it. We had Sammy, and I was done with my parties. I knew she was nuts, but looking at her just then, I could remember, I could see the woman I had married.

The girls were gossiping about some of the other female cousins, passing along information about who’d had what babies, what marriages were on the rocks, besides mine of course. Their whole family knew mine was in trouble. Everyone knew my wife was nuts. There were a few “bitches” in their family. Whenever one of them managed to catch a husband, and keep him for very long, some of the other members of the family would keep an eye on him and help him out. They really were some good people.

We stood there talking for about ten more minutes or so, and then out of nowhere, she came storming over.

“What the hell is this, Thomas?” Her good mood seemed to have worn off, and she was quite clearly drunk. “I can’t leave you alone for two minutes, and you’re hitting on someone else. And it’s my cousin no less!” She was screaming at me like she was deranged. The music stopped and everyone just stared while she ranted. “You are such a bastard!”

My vision of ten minutes earlier vanished into fog. The alcohol had gotten to her, and she started screaming about our sex life, fortunately a lot of it was unintelligible. I tried to get her to calm down. I even tried to pull her off to the side. One of the guys tried to help; her dad tried to help.

All of a sudden, she had a knife, a very, very sharp sushi knife she apparently brought with her from her session with the chef. And then everyone backed away. Everyone except me. I was frozen, on the spot. She’s going to kill me.

“Uh huh, see now. I got you right where I want you,” she said. Her eyes were huge and fixed. She wasn’t blinking. It was like she was on drugs. It shared the shit out of me.

“Katie, sweetie, please? Put the knife down, ok?”

I could deal with hot irons and cigarettes, but a knife? The bitch was seriously mental, and she was seriously going to kill me.

“Fuck you, Tommy the two-timer. I’m going to gut you like a fish.”

And she lunged. The sickeningly sharp sushi knife slid right into my gut with no more effort than a foot putting on a sock. I slumped over, stunned, as she twisted and jerked. When I fell backwards, she held onto the knife, and I slid right off the tip onto the floor like the gutted fish she wanted.

We were all drunk. The whole fucking family was too drunk to do anything but stand there gaping for a minute, including her, thankfully. Finally, one of the aunts, who didn’t drink, took a half full bottle of champagne and smashed her really hard over the head. Champagne and glass went everywhere. Thank God for teetotalers! The maître d´ called 911, and someone managed to grab some towels or napkins or something to ride herd on my gaping fish wound.

The cops and an ambulance showed up and hauled us both away. She pled insanity, and won, so she got 15-20 in the nut house, and I got life as a single dad. Fortunately, she had terrible aim and she missed all my major organs. I do have a great scar, and chicks dig scars. Unfortunately, it’ll be a long time before I trust another woman enough for her to see all the scars making a mess of my heart.

Her family has been pretty good to Sammy and me. They take her for a month during the summer, and they get her one weekend a month. She loves hanging out with them. They really are good people; it’s just the bitch that’s whacked. Sammy’s a good girl, too, and there’s no point in punishing her for her mother’s crimes. I try to keep my bitterness away from my little girl.

“Where’s Mommy?” she’ll ask me sometimes.

“Mommy’s very sick and in the hospital.”

“Can we go see her?”

“No, sweetie. She’s too sick to have visitors. The hospital won’t allow it.”

Thank God that’s the truth or the in-laws would be trying to take her down there. They understand that I don’t want Sammy to have to deal with that until she’s old enough to deal with that. I don’t think they really want that either. Now, at least, Sammy is pretty normal, despite having me for her single parent. She loves me, and I try to do the best I can by her. She wants for nothing, and I keep my personal demons as far away from her as I possibly can.

***

In my drunken dream state, I’m back at the China Peace. I can see her standing there with the sushi knife. I know what’s coming, but I can’t move. I know I need to move. I know she’s going to gut me and turn me into the latest new spicy roll. She comes closer to me, and I can smell her perfume, the Obsession. It’s strong, so strong it wakes me up.

I sat up on the sofa and shook my head to clear it. I really do hate that smell anymore. Shaking my head didn’t work. I could still smell it.

The game was over, and the news was coming on. I started to clean up my mess. I headed off to the kitchen to put my left-over pizza in the fridge when a name rather rudely caught my attention. I went back into the living room, and there’s a picture of the bitch on TV.

“…contact local law enforcement. We’ll be keeping you updated. John?”

Crap. I missed the story. What’s going on? What happened with Katie? Contact law enforcement? Damn! I started flipping channels, plopping down on the sofa. I found another news program just starting, again with her picture and three others in the corner of the screen.

“Good evening. I’m Blake Green, and this is Kelly Jones. There was a breakout early this morning at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital in West Trenton, New Jersey. Three patients from the ward for the criminally insane have escaped and are believed to be armed and extremely dangerous.”

The three pictures zoomed to the forefront, hiding the anchors and the set. There’s the bitch, in the middle, looking crazed and awful, like the psycho she was. She wasn’t smiling; her hair was still bleached blonde, but all straggly. And I was scared. I was thinking about sushi knives and grabbed my gut where the bitch stabbed me four years before.

“The three individuals are Edward Johnson, Samuel Parsons, and Katherine Mancini. The three may or may not be traveling together, and it is not known where they may be headed. If you see them, police have warned not to approach but to call the number now posted on your screen. We’ll be keeping you updated. Kelly?”

I sat there stunned. I knew where the bitch was headed. I had no doubts, and if it was early this morning ... I turned off the TV, staring at the place where her image had been. She could be almost anywhere. I smelled the smell again, only it was much stronger. It was like she was in the room wearing it.

Because she was. It was like all those stupid horror films. There she was, reflected in the screen, standing behind me. I jumped up off the sofa and rounded on her.

“Hi, Tommy. Long time, no see.” Her voice was calm, sane almost, but her eyes, those eyes were just as crazy as they’d always been.

After our little sushi knife incident, I’d taken to carrying a gun. Even though she was locked away, I’d gotten paranoid. But, today, I was pretty much naked. No gun in my tighty-whities.

“Yeah, hey, Kate, you’re looking good.” She was circling around the sofa, trying to get at me. I circled the other way. Seriously, like some damn movie.

“You, too, babe. Been working out?”

“No, no time. Got a kid to raise.” Circle.

“True, true.” Like we’re old friends, just catching up over coffee. “How is little Sammy, anyway? They won’t even let me send her a birthday card.”

“Wow, that sucks.” I was glad she had no contact with our daughter. I wanted Sammy to forget about her mother, like she was dead. “Sammy’s good. Happy kid. Misses you.”

“That’s nice. I miss her, too.”

I’d circled around and started backing towards the kitchen, hoping to find something to defend myself with. I got into the kitchen, but unfortunately, as I got there, I realized I don’t cook or do much in there except store dishes. There wouldn’t be anything I could use, maybe a knife or two.

“Aw, Tommy, are you looking for this?” She reached behind her and pulled my only good steak knife out of her belt. So much for that great idea. “No sushi chef this time. I had to make do.” She smiled at me.

“I guess you did.” I was frantically trying to think of something I could use to keep her from gutting me again. I had nothing.

I circled through the dining area. She followed me, with a smirk.

“I don’t know what you think you’re going to do. My family isn’t here to save your sorry ass this time. And don’t think that after I’m done with you that I won’t go settle up with them. Fucking traitors. My own family.”

“Come on, Kate, they were trying to keep you from becoming a murderer. That was really nice of them.”

“Give me a break, Tom. They took your side. Every last one of them. Even my own fucking mother. Every time she comes to see me, I can see it in her little piggy eyes how much she hates me for what I’ve done.”

While she ranted at me, her eyes got crazier and crazier. I watched her, looked at her closely. She was a mess. I couldn’t believe it was really the same person I had married. Her beautiful blonde hair was dull and lifeless, mousy, matted, and limp. Nothing like the picture they’d put up on the news story. Her face had aged at least 15 years in the 4 she’d been locked away. Her yellowed skin sagged all over. She looked like one of those pictures you see of young drug addicts after a few years of doing drugs non-stop. Of course, that’s sort of what they had done to her. Was Katie even in there anymore?

She had lost what little grip on reality she had. As she got deeper into her rant, she started to turn away from me, looking up at the school pictures of little Sammy on the wall, and I saw the only chance I had to escape that knife.

“She’d rather spend time with her granddaughter than me. I’m her daughter; she gave birth to me, for Christ’s sake! The kid isn’t hers; she’s mine! And my dad, my daddy!”

She was standing beside the dining table, close enough that if I pushed the table hard, it would slam her into the wall, hopefully knocking the knife from her hand. The chairs all had wheels, so it would make the table a little easier to push and the impact a little greater when that chair hit her.

I could see her get more agitated; the gloss of her eyes was getting foggier, and her rant kept going.

“I’m supposed to be his little girl! His favorite! He won’t even come see me! I’m shit to him, a disappointment beyond help, beyond redemption. I am scum. I am nothing to him. He’d rather I was dead! And it’s all your fault!”

And then it happened, she turned the wrong way, but I shoved anyway. The chair hit her right in the gut as I shoved the table towards her. They both pinned her against the wall. I shoved hard enough, and that chair flew so hard that it took the breath right out of her. She dropped the knife. I went for it, lunging across the table, and I stabbed her straight through the heart.

“Tommy?” It was a gurgle, as blood came up from her lungs and out her mouth.

Her eyes lost their craziness, and she was my Katie, my girl. In that instant I saw my beautiful bride, her sweet smile and all our dreams. Her beauty had been shaved away by jealousy and rage, crushed into the filth of her insanity in the nut house, but in that one moment as her life drained away, I could only see the woman I had married, the woman who had given me Sammy. I could still smell her perfume.

“Katie, I’m so sorry.” My own voice was hoarse and choked.

I couldn’t say anything else; I fell backwards off the table, almost losing my footing. My hands and arms were covered in her scarlet blood, my favorite color, the table, too. I was stunned. She fell over onto the table, awkwardly as she was still propped on the chair. After a minute, her weight pushed everything forward, including me, and her body slunk, slid, slopped to the floor in a sickening thud.

What would I tell Sammy? How would I explain this to my little girl? I had killed the evil bitch that had ruined my life. I had just killed my wife, the mother of my beloved child. I was really a single parent now. It hit me like a 300lb defensive lineman. Maybe I had always hoped that the nut house would fix her, that she’d come back to us and our lives would be normal one day. Maybe I had always been waiting for her to come home to us, crazy as she was. Maybe I wasn’t the best single parent. Maybe a whole lotta nothin’. My lineman punched me in the gut, and I felt like I might puke.

I needed to call the police. Shit. I needed to call her parents. I picked up the phone and called my mom.