woman scorned, woman burned vi

3:41. Stanley is standing behind the glass of the balcony, squinting up the street, at nothing in particular. His hands are in his trouser pockets. He stands perfectly still. In the nursery, the girl whimpers again. Calmly, he turns away from the street and peers into the blackness of the hall, then turns back. He's been thinking. Playing back time: a year ago, two years ago, twelve years. Trying to recall the feeling of happiness.

Once upon a time, happiness was a young bride with laughter like sun rays. New lovers spending lazy mornings in clean, cotton sheets that smelled like a spring breeze, charting previously undiscovered erotic zones on smooth, soft flesh. Leisurely strolls on the high street, shopping for the latest fashions. Quick trips to the supermarket, buying produce for a salad-for-two.

The whimpers have gotten louder, quickened. She cries now. He's surprised by how cat-like she sounds. He sneers. Beastly, he thinks.

She shows no signs of stopping. Stanley looks at his watch. 3:52. Leslie has been gone nearly half an hour. In the street, he sees no indication that she is on her way back. There is milk; he has no idea what to do with it. Best to quiet the child himself, then. He'll have to pick her up. He turns away from the balcony after a final hesitation and marches to the nursery. Turns on a light. The child is howling, her tiny face is hot and red. The sight of her, her volume alarms him. He goes to pick her up. She starts to go quiet, but resumes after a moment's respite. In his confusion, Stanley drops her back in the crib, picks her up again, puts her back down. Leaves, comes back.

Shut the fuck up!, he screams. She does not.

Happiness never looked like this.
It is now 4:04. And he's standing over the crib with a pillow in his hand.

"I missed you," he says. The warmth of his breath in her hair creates dewdrops that are quickly camouflaged by the dark.

She pauses, gathering herself, her thoughts. They tumble out of blackness, quick and fast: a culmination of the hopes she had placed on her relationship with him, the ways he was supposed to make her feel. In the first weeks of their romance, he bit into her neck, licked the inside of her thigh, and she remembered craving. He moaned when she teased him, not too stiff to show satisfaction, and she recalled the joys of giving pleasure. In the weeks that followed, she laughed more, danced more, played more, sang more. Tired from making love to him, she slept more. And she began to feel more like who she knew she was and how this man, her friend, had saved her from a hell she didn't know how to escape.

But the friendship is over. She left him, but he had abandoned her. Coming back now is merely an insult, an unforgivable rubbing of salt into the still-bleeding wound of a months-long absence. She can see him for what he is: a mere lover of passion, whose only desire is to play the hero, feeding off the desire of others to idolize him. A narcissistic parasite.

Her legs are trembling. She's cold. Putting her hand on his shoulder, Lolia straightens herself and takes a step back. I have to go. And without another word or another glance at his face, she starts to walk away.

*

The shadow of the pillow crosses over her tiny hot face, purple with anger, shiny from her tears. Stanley's breath quickens, his grip tightens. Logic deserts him and stands aside, watching from the doorway with wry, smiling intrigue. Will he or won't he? The beast will decide. As the first muffled cries fill the room, he feels calmer, relieved. She doesn't struggle, or yet grow stiff. Quieting her is easy. Killing her, Logic chimes in. Yes, killing her, and the ease of it. Because he has never so much as scratched another human being, he is surprised by how little effort he requires to snuff out a soul, even one as new as hers. He can barely hear her choking.

*

"What? Why?" John runs after her, grabs her by the arm. "Where are you going?"

She slaps his hand, then his face. Oh, you're so fucking stupid, she spits. She is wild, furious with herself and ashamed for chasing an illusion into the cold of February. He is momentarily stupefied, wondering what changed, why she is so angry. That he is so obviously confused only annoys her more. You're a fucking idiot, John. Just piss off. Leave me alone.
He stops her from turning away again, grabs her by both arms and shakes her because it's as much his illusion as hers, and he is not yet ready to let go. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" he growls.

And so they struggle, one to hold on to a past dream, the other to escape it.

Let me go.
"No."
She screams. Let me go!
"No!"
They ignore or don't notice the wet spots forming on the front of her blouse, a visible reminder of the call of a child.
*

Logic pushes himself up from his position, leaning against the door frame, and strolls over to Stanley: trembling, in a cold, foreign sweat, as he suffocates his wife's bastard daughter. Casually, Logic taps his shoulder from behind and asks a simple question: What are you doing? When Stanley looks around, there is no one there. And when he looks back, he sees that it is his own rigid hand holding a pillow over two tiny feet, wretchedly still. He snatches his hand back, in fear and shock. The pillow rests on Francesca's face.

*

"Everything all right?" A faceless man hobbles out of the fog, cautiously because he sounds old, and would not be able to help if the answer to his question were no.

John drops his grip, hurriedly, guiltily, and Lolia flees, leaving him to tell the lie that all is well. He turns in time to see the hem of her dress flutter and fade into the night. He starts to call to her then stops, sensing finally the futility she could not convey.

He will not see her again.

*

She's not moving. And he is too frightened to lift the pillow and see what remains when life leaves the body. Panicking, Stanley backs out of her room and for a few surreal moments, contemplates running away. Imagines what will happen when Leslie returns from her lovers' tryst to find her judgment. The thought evokes a twinge of pleasure from which he recoils in disgust. What the hell is wrong with me, he wonders, in helpless dismay. He is pacing again, confused again, but the eerie silence that fills the flat is starkly different from what caused him to do the same mere minutes ago.

He knows he will have to go back in there eventually, and so he does it now. Stanley has never been one to shy away from a task, no matter how fearsome or discomfiting. The room feels different: the shadows created by the dim nursing lamp are gloomier, heavy. When he sweeps the pillow off Francesca's face, the first sight to greet him is her bloody nose and mouth. The blood, dark and thin, smells fresh. Her eyes are puffed closed. He reels, overcome, and stumbles backwards, crumpling to the floor. He is heaving, unable to breathe. A moment later, he realizes it is because he is sobbing.

As he struggles to get back on his feet and clean up the infant before her mother gets home, he hears a familiar voice behind him say, What have you done?