the lesson-a short story by km sutton

Darkness falls over the rural country road. The old dirt road started its life as a footpath. Progress had made it necessary for a road to be built there, in order to construct a sprawling estate for the software media mogul. He used his estate to escape the modern world he helped to facilitate. The gates of his estate were a mere mile from this dark spot. A car with its lights off was making its way slowly along the road. The woman in the car knew, like everyone else in the small town knew, he was at some big conference in New York. He was there to help reassure the country that 9/11 hadn’t crippled the economy. The town was proud of this patriotic son and his connection to their little community. She didn’t care about that. All she cared about was that this was a remote location and she needed time for this final act of intimacy with the man who was her husband.

She pulled to the side of the road and came to a stop. She’d smoked half a pack of cigarettes on the way. She opened the trunk and pulled on a pair of gloves and lifted out the old wheelchair. She’d paid cash for it a month ago at a medical supply store in Kirby. She’d drove the two-hour round trip when he thought she was visiting her mother at the hospital. If his corpse weren’t rotting in the car he would have beaten her after seeing the odometer mileage didn’t match up. He’d been on top of her from the moment her father gave her to him. People didn’t believe that kind of thing still happened in this country. He’d given her father fifty thousand cash for her hand. The wedding was a farce. Everyone, including the parish priest knew her shame. She would have died at her father’s hands had she refused.

She dragged the body into the wheelchair. Pushing him into the woods she remembered all the beatings and the torturous rapes. He’d wanted her to get pregnant. She’d managed to prevent it with a screwdriver and Jim Beam for anesthetic. He’d removed every screwdriver from the house after finding her with last one. She was properly punished that night. He gave her a sponge bath with bleach. He said to wash the sin of killing their child off her. She saw the murder of her possible children as a mercy killing, which she preferred, rather than subject their innocent souls to her same miserable fate.

After about a mile of pushing, the terrain became too much for the wheelchair and she had to drag the body another mile and a half before she was satisfied. She returned the way she’d come and collected the wheelchair. She packed it back into the car and drove back toward the small town, and then through it.

She considered her future. It had to be better than this. She decided to change her name to Angelina. She loved that Angelina Jolie. She had finally become as strong as she had when she poured the arsenic into the pecan pie mix. She watched him eat it, watched the convulsions, the painful death that ensued, and then the realization in his eyes. He should have known what would happen. Between her father and her husband, they had taught her all the lesson she needed; that cruelty had its uses. There was no hope, no love, no emotion; the only thing that remained was malice. With a smile she considered her future, as she let her hair down. She would find a battered woman’s shelter in some city. There would be opportunities there to continue her work. Many men to teach the lessons she’d learned. Death is coming to town.

km sutton is an african american lesbian living in the lap of luxury (so she says) in the middle of nowhere. she has been a closeted writer for many years. welcome to her coming out party!!