Laughing Out Loud

"Whaddya want me to do? Whaddya want me to DO!"

She kept asking that question until he had no choice but to kill her.

Jesus Christ, she had been driving him crazy lately with her nit picking criticisms, her sarcasm, and her accusations. How much aggravation was one man supposed to take?

Everyone has their goddamn opinions but Christ, some people just take it too far.

GOP's he called them. Grossly Opinionated People.

They know everything. They are always right.

What the fuck is that? No human being is perfect. Not even close. And one person's opinions are meaningless to the next person in line.

It is all about context. And perception.

Goddamn it.

"Whaddya want me to do? How can I change to make you happy?"

He didn't mean to kill her. That wasn't the plan at all.

Christ, once you got a corpse on your hands you're taking it to a whole different level.

He just wanted to change her perspective. Teach her a lesson. Make her more receptive to his point of view.

So he tied her to a kitchen chair. For three days.

He had knocked her out with a loving blow to the head. With his favorite baseball bat, which he affectionately named "The Club". He had hit a lot of home runs with that bat as a kid. Kept it around as a reminder of simpler times.

As he was tying her up a smile flashed across his face. Visions of the Three Stooges popped into his head. Specifically the episode where Shemp has a nasty toothache. Another character is tying a string around Shemp's tooth and Moe enthusiastically says "Tie a nice sailor's knot."

That's how light-hearted he was. He meant no harm.

By day three though, even considering she'd had no food, no water, he could not believe how weak she had become. It was pathetic.

He expected her to suck it up but it was obvious that was not going to happen.

That is when the switch got flipped.

He fed her cereal; made her think he was softening up. She had a hard time with it through the tears and the fear, but she choked it down.

An hour later after the sleeping pills did their work, she slept soundly in her chair. He slipped a plastic bag over her head, secured it snugly around her throat, pulled up a chair so they were knee to knee, and watched her die.

A while later he came out of what felt like a trance. Initially disoriented and lethargic, he quickly came alert as he realized what he had done.

Shit. What the hell was he going to do now?

A glance at the clock told him he had to be in to work in an hour. He called in sick. Told them he wasn't quite himself today.

Walked into the living room, settled comfortably in the recliner, turned on the TV and dialed up Seinfeld re-runs.

Two minutes later he was laughing out loud.