Critique is always welcomed - Marilyn
I could feel the tension in the air. Everytime my brother and his wife were in the same room together, it happened. We all held our collective breath, waiting for an argument or a real fight to start. We weren't wrong this time either.
I saw him shove her just a little bit, but enough so that she surely felt it. Since she'd had a couple of drinks, she stumbled. He laughed. Great, I thought, another fun-filled family get together.
Mom and Dad were pretending they didn't notice. My brother, Ed was their favorite and no matter what he did, it was all right with them and they'd defend him. I, on the other hand, knew he wasn't a nice person and tried my best to avoid him. It worked unless we were at our parents home as a family.
I looked at Carrie, his wife again. She looked like she wanted to strangle Ed and I couldn't blame her. Figuring I'd try to diffuse the mess before it got going, I went over to her and asked her if she wanted to help me out in the kitchen. Knowing exactly what I was trying to do, she accepted and off we went. Ed looked after us, with a look of disgust as he too, knew what I was doing. Little sisters are apparently pretty transparent and this wasn't the first time anyways.
Once in the kitchen, Carrie looked at me and said, "I'm leaving him. I can't take it anymore." I felt more than heard the kitchen door open and a silent alarm went off in my head.
"Be quiet a minute," I said to Carrie.
Too late, it was Ed and he'd heard. He stomped into the kitchen, face red as a beet and started hollering for Carrie to get her coat as they were leaving. She did, looking terrified and out the door they went, him swearing at her all the way. My silent alarm had the hairs standing on end all over and I had a feeling that this was no ordinary fight. He'd heard what she told me and I knew that he'd never let her go.
It was the last time I saw Carrie alive and the last time I saw Ed outside of a prison cell. I'll never ignore or doubt my silent alarm again.
mn - 2007
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Comments: 13
Right, Rob, the "if onlys" could save a lot of lives if they'd only open their eyes. People mind their own business when sometimes that's the last thing that they ought to be doing.
I'd even go deeper on the characters and their feelings. Expand it a bit. This is POWERFULLY done, Marilyn.
Kathryn, I forgot to put fiction in the tags! Expand it? Edit after an update? Argh! I'll wait a day, since someone already said that their article and images disappeared ;) Thanks for the vote of confidence, I'll edit/add once it's (shhhh) safe!