The Mangled Husband
By Kevin Crispo
“Will you preach my husband’s funeral?” she asked. The paleness of her face and the emptiness of her stare made her look like a zombie. Everything about her exuded a sense of death, everything but the soft floral fragrance of her perfume.
He agreed to preach the funeral and wondered about her emotional state now that an ice pick of grief had stabbed its way into her heart. Perhaps she felt like an ad for When Bad Things Happen to Good People. He thought of what he would want to hear if he had just lost his spouse. Nothing. Nothing anyone could say or do would change the circumstances. So what did this widow need? Someone who knew how to walk with those who walked through nightmares.
She appeared to be having a conversation with the floor. “Next month would have been our seventh anniversary.” She moved a finger along the smooth surface of her wedding band and told the floor, “I tried to warn him. I tried.”
“I know you loved him,” the pastor said.
“Yes, and I wasn’t the only one. He was loved by many.”
The pastor prepared himself for the usual questions. Questions like, “Why did God allow this to happen?” Or “Why does God heal some people and not others?” He recalled a passage from the Book of Revelation: “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain” (Revelation 21:4). Of course, that promise means that suffering and death are inevitable. The question therefore, isn’t if you’ll experience grief—it’s when. As Stephen King would say, “The world had teeth and it could bite you with them anytime it wanted.” And the pastor knew today she was feeling the sharpness of those teeth.
What he didn’t know, was if she wanted to talk about her feelings right now. After a long moment of listening to the air conditioner mumble in its mechanical monotone, he asked, “When did your husband die?”
“Last night.” Her voice began to waver. “It looked like someone had taken a bucket of blood and splattered the house with it. He was…he was decapitated…and there was…another severed body part in the bedroom.”
The pastor’s jaw dropped like a gallows trapdoor. “What happened?”
“He was loved by many.”
“Huh? I don’t understand.”
She said nothing. But a faint smile crept across her lips.
© 2008, Kevin Crispo
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Labels: Apostolic Fiction, Crispo
posted by kdc at
7/17/2008 10:19:00 PM
3 Comments:
That was great! I hope there will be another part to this. I want to know more.
Keep this up bro.
I think that most of what we see is a facade when it comes to people. People have secrets and we assume that what we see and hear from a person is what we get. Truly we are sinful people saved by the grace of God and without it we would truly be lost.
I think this speaks well to the scripture that speaks of being unable to know a persons heart due to it being so wicked.
How much of what we show people is actually fiction?
Great Job!
HT
Kevin,
Horrifying. I wasn't prepared for the ending, despite what the title implies. I like the sense of immediacy the piece evokes. You're right their with the pastor as the truth is revealed. Good work.
I do have a few thoughts for you to consider, if you don't mind constructive criticism. As a writer myself, I know it can be hard to hear what other people have to say about my writing. But I have also found that my readers often have very beneficial feedback to give, and I hope what I would share will be prove in some way helpful.
What I stumbled on were some of the metaphors. They seemed, well, cliché, maybe too heavy-handed? For instance, this is just the way you'd expect a young widow to look: "The paleness of her face and the emptiness of her stare made her look like a zombie." Maybe understatement would be more powerful: "Her face was pale, her stare vacant."
This line seems quite effective: "an ice pick of grief had stabbed its way into her heart." It implies that her heart is hard and cold like ice, but grief is still penetrating.
Another thing you might try playing with is your verb tense. Maybe you have? As it is, you are writing in the simple past. Have you tried past perfect? For instance, the first line would read as follows: "Will you preach my husband's funeral? she had asked." The pastor is remembering the event as it had unfolded at a later time.
Quoting Stephen King makes it sound like you are writing an essay or a sermon. Perhaps it is the way you have introduced the quote that makes me think that. The paragraph is in the pastor's stream-of-consciousness, and I don't know, would even a pastor's inner dialogue be this structured?
"The question therefore, isn’t if you’ll experience grief—it’s when. As Stephen King would say, 'The world had teeth and it could bite you with them anytime it wanted.'" Another reason, the quote sticks out is because you use a proper noun to introduce it. Nowhere else in the story have you used someone's name, and here is Stephen King. If you feel the quote is necessary, you may want to reconsider how to credit King so the idea is there in the mind of the pastor.
Am I making any sense at all? If not, and you want me to clarify, let me know, and I will try to do a better job of explaining myself.
Thank you for sharing your piece. I look forward to reading more of your work in the future!
Blessings,
Rebecca Newton
Kevin,
That ending- totally caught me off guard. It really speaks to the human condition -our whole mentality. Though it shocked me, I enjoyed it.
AA
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