Haunted

Monty awakens in a drowsy daze, his vision blurry as he takes in his bedroom. As his vision finally begins to take focus, the brown fuzzy blobs take the form of halfway packed boxes. Moving day is vastly approaching and it’s high time he and the little missus move of the lake with all its memories and heartbreak. He rubs the traces of last night’s slumber from his eyes, kicking the blankets from his legs.

He rises to his feet, a pounding headache slowly beginning to take form. Monty heaves out a loud yawn and he turns to the door, his wife attempting to enter the room unnoticed. She freezes upon seeing him, giving him an attempt at a smile.

“Oh! You’re up,” she says with a faux tone of cheerfulness. “I was beginning to think I’d have to finish packing up the rest of the house myself.” She rises to her full height of 5’ 8”, brushing her reddish hair off her shoulder. Monty’s eyes gaze over her body, scantily hiding behind her nightgown and thin robe. He grunts in response, stumbling passed her to the bathroom.

He barely shuts the door behind him, springing a quick leak before having to endure the conversation about yet another fight. They’d been happening more often ever since the funeral. He shakes the depressing thoughts from his head, flushing the toilet and washing his hands before rejoining his wife in their bedroom. He leans against the door frame, staring at her as she sits on the bed with shifting eyes.

“Go on,” he says, forcing himself to remain calm. “Tell me once again how wrong I am.” His wife rolls her eyes in return and hastily ties her robe around her.

“Honestly,” she says in a hard tone. “I don’t understand why we have to do this every morning. Why can’t last night just stay in the past? Where it belongs.” Monty presses his tongue against his teeth as he attempts to form an answer.

“I don’t know, Sandra, you tell me, because last night I believe we were talking about Sebastian and Reagan,” he says, the vein by his temple beginning to throb with his growing irritation. Sandra shakes her head and glances towards the window, the sunlight shining through the blinds.

“I thought we agreed to never talk about them again,” she replies, her voice trailing off as her eyes turned towards the ground in shame. Monty scoffs.

“I know your wine helps you with coping with the loss of our children, but sadly for me, Sandra, I can do nothing but try and cope with how I lost my only children and now, I’m trying to piece back together this failure you want to call a marriage. As I have been since therapy,” his voice is solid like stone, not an ounce of sympathy lingering within.

Sandra’s eyes shoot up at him in surprise, darkened with anger. “How dare you?!” She exclaims, rising from the bed. “I am your wife! You cheated on me and were going to leave me! If our children hadn’t died, would you still be trying to fix this? Us?!” Monty takes a step back, unaccustomed to his wife’s anger shining through so proudly.

“I don’t know,” he says, his voice hardly above a whisper. He looks at the ground in shame, recalling that night so clearly. It was just weeks before the accident. Before their children had perished. “I don’t know.”

“You weren’t willing to make our marriage work until after our children died! Tell me how that makes everything I’m enduring okay! I find out my husband is not only bonking his co-worker, but he’s going to divorce me. Then I have to bury my children. You don’t know-”

“Don’t you dare say I don’t know, Sandra!” Monty’s voice is heavy with rage, rippling with loss. Tears burn in his eyes. “You think I wasn’t there? You think I don’t remember pulling my children from the lake?! I get it, it must’ve been painful hearing I wanted to leave you, but I wasn’t happy! Neither were you if we’re really being honest here. It wasn’t fair to me, you, or the kids if I stayed. I may not know what it’s like to have an unfaithful spouse say they want a divorce, but don’t you try sitting there saying I don’t know a damn thing about what you’re feeling, because I do!”

A traitorous tear sneaks down his face as he glares back at her. Sandra stands there, arms folded over her chest in stunned into silence. “I can’t talk to you when you’re like this,” she says in a soft voice, attempting to make a break for the door. Monty steps in front of the doorframe, blocking her exit. “Monty, this isn’t funny. I’d like to finish packing up the house so we can finally move out of here. Please let me through.”

Monty does not budge. He simply stares, noting the growing wrinkles around his wife’s eyes and lips. “You scream at me and I have to endure it, but the second I raise my voice, I’m the bad guy? How does that work? What I said isn’t untrue, is it?”

Sandra sighs heavily, tears forming in her eyes as she shakes her head in denial. “I was perfectly content as your wife and I-” Monty takes a step closer to her, his heart thudding in his chest.

“Being content and being happy aren’t the same thing, Sandra, and you know it. Why is it so hard for you to admit it?” His voice softens and she struggles to meet his eyes.

“I was happy. I won’t pretend we didn’t go through some rocky patches, but I loved you enough to make it work. We’d started sleeping in the same bed again before the accident.” Monty sniffles, fighting back the onslaught of tears.

“That was because I didn’t want to tell the kids until after our vacation about the divorce. Made no sense to ruin one of the few things they had to look forward to every year.” Sandra looks away, tears slowly beginning to drip down her face.

“She was so good in bed you were willing to throw away nearly sixteen years of marriage, your family, everything we’d built together. I was going to be another single mom who’d have to exchange the kids back and forth with her ex, while he gets to bonk the woman younger than me.”

“She’s literally three years younger than you are,” Monty protests, groaning with frustration. “Why do you always focus on that? It’s not like she was ten years younger!”

“You still cheated! You cheated and it drove me insane, because I never understood what I ever did to deserve that!” Monty looks away now, his stomach begins to twist into shameful knots.

“You didn’t,” he says, his voice vacant of emotion now. “I just…I know what I did was wrong, Sandra, but I…I love her. I couldn’t help myself. It wasn’t anything you did or said…I just wanted something else. Turns out it was Bailey.” A slap stings his cheek, leaving a petite red handprint. He cradles his cheek and looks at his wife, shocked.

“Don’t ever say her name. You promised me you were done with her.” Her voice trembles with the cracking of her own heart.

“Don’t hit me,” he replies. “I gave her up to try piecing this back together with you. For you. I understand you’re angry with me, but don’t you ever hit me again.” Sandra slinks back, her gaze falling to the floor.

“Please let me out, Monty. I’m feeling very cornered right now,” she says defeatedly.

“You’ve never made a mistake? You’re so perfect that I’ve never had to look over one single flaw?” She crosses her arms over her chest, tears falling freely now.

“Of course I’ve made mistakes,” she admits with a trembling voice. “Some you don’t even know about.” Monty chuckles sarcastically.

“Well fill me in. If I can overlook those, then perhaps you can learn to overlook my infidelity.” She shakes her head and rubs her nose with the back of her hand. He sighs heavily and walks over to her, resting his hands against her love handles. “Darling, if we are going to work on us, then we have to start being honest about the things we have done wrong. You know mine already.” Sandra shakes her head and suddenly, Monty’s stomach is filling to the brim with dread.

“I just want to finish packing. There’s too many memories here.” She slips from Monty’s arms as a memory flashes through his mind. Sandra had stood on the deck, telling him she was going to take the children swimming while he was at work. He’d come back just two hours later and they were gone.

Monty stalks after Sandra, catching her by the arm as she enters the living room. “You took the kids swimming that day,” he states matter-of-factly. She winces in response, glancing at his constricting fingers around her forearm.

“Monty, let go. You’re hurting me,” she says, trying to pull away, but he holds her tightly, his brain begins to work double time as the day continues to play through his mind.

“You told me you were going to take Sebastian and Reagan swimming when I was leaving for work.” Sandra continues to pull against him and Monty jerks her towards him. “Didn’t you?!”

Her body begins to tremor against his. “Y-yes. I took them swimming. What does that have to do with anything?” She says with a quaking voice. “Please let me go…” Monty releases her, pushing her back towards the couch where she falls back onto the cushions.

“Where did you take them?” Monty digs his nails into his palms.

“O-Out by that f-floating board.” His eyes widen with realization.

“That was too far for either of the kids to swim…and I pulled them out by the dock. So, where did you take them, Sandra?!”

“I t-told you I-”

“What did you do to our babies?!”

“I drowned them, okay?!” Her shrill confession echoes through the house and her eyes widen as she realizes what has erupted from her guilty lips. “It was an accident though! I-I thought if something had happened to the kids…you’d see how much we needed to be together. To protect them.” Her voice becomes weak, trembling with tears.

“You drowned our children so I’d stay with you?! How crazy can you be?! Sebastian was going to turn fifteen…and R-Reagan…she’d just turned ten. What gave you the right to do that?” Sandra shakes her head, curling her knees to her chest.

“I t-thought…I was sad…it was like the times after I was pregnant. Like I was suffering with postpartum again…and I just…I…”

“You murdered our children!” Monty yells, sparking something sinister to cast over in Sandra’s eyes. She rises from the couch.

“How is that any different than what you did?” Her voice is icy and her posture strangely rigid.

“My having an affair is not the same as murder!” He yells back. Sandra chuckles coldly in response, sending a ripple down Monty’s spine as he watches her skin grow a pale blue.

“But you did murder, Monty, you murdered me.” Her voice seems to echo in his mind as she grows paler, droplets of water beginning to fall from Sandra’s hair as it grows soaked. “How could you forget?” Dark bruising blossoms around her throat and Monty begins to step back in fright.

“W-what are you?!” He screams back. Water begins to flow from Sandra’s mouth like a faucet.

“I’m your wife, Monty. I’m the wife you took out to the dock and strangled as you held me under water. ‘A just punishment,’ I believe you called it.” The rest of her words come out with a sick gargling noise.

Monty screams out and he feels his body being shaken. His eyes widen and he glances around his padded cell. A male orderly looks upon him with fear as an almost unseen nurse injects him with a sedative. With their constant requests that he settle down and relax, he begins to fall back into a dreamless sleep.

“Poor guy,” the orderly says to the nurse as they exit Monty’s room. “Losing it like that after his kids died.”

“Don’t have too much sympathy,” chastises the nurse, giving him a stern look. “He did murder his wife. Drowned the poor dear.” The two nod to each other and without looking back, they close the door on Monty Parker, ruined husband and father of two.