Thud. Thud. Thud.
The boy was still there.
Thud. Thud.
Alice could sense it, to her very bones she could sense it. The child sat, feet swinging restlessly, on the ornate cedar stool that had always been there. A wedding present – an antique – from Ron’s grandmother, though she’d always hated it. Alice kept her eyes firmly averted. She tried to joke to herself that it was easy since the chair had always been an eyesore. But she could feel it.
Thud. Thud.
She could feel it; feel the boy’s gaze– feel those familiar eyes – stabbing into her. A burning gaze that bore through the overcast day, bore through the gloomy room, bore right into her back. Shifting shades danced in her vision, swirling, swaying, sashaying across the room – they were taunting her, Alice knew it. They whispered – everyone whispered about her, even if they pretended when she couldn’t see them – mumbling half-forgotten dreams and lost hopes into her ear as her vision swam. Why was it swaying? Why was everything swaying?
Thud.
“Shit!”
The knife parted flesh easily – so very easily, she murmured with wry sort of humour. Red beads welled up through the split skin. Bubbling up from beneath like magma turns to lava. So very red. It contrasted nicely with the monochrome of such a dreary day, she couldn’t help but think. For a moment, Alice just stood there and admired. She stared intently at the wound with a sort of hazy focus. It felt like she was forgetting something. She tapped the fingers of her uninjured hand restlessly. A drumming, thudding sort of rhythm. Oh well.
Since she hid her pills, it was if an overcast sky had become blindingly sunny. The fog had dissipated; her head felt clearer than ever… even if there was always a thought just out of reach, flying away on the breeze. But if it slipped away, then such a thought couldn’t be that important anyway. Right?
Alice forced her eyes to follow the droplet of blood as it ran down her finger, falling next to the potatoes and seeping into the cutting board; forever staining the wood scarlet. But still, Alice didn’t move from her spot; only breathing a relieved sigh.
Good. Good. Ron wouldn’t have liked it if she’d had to throw anything away. But Ron didn’t like anything these days. Alice worried her teeth against her lip before turning to look out the window. Out in the next yard over, her two boys were playing with the neighbour’s girl, their silhouettes merging in and out of the hazy afternoon gloom. Dipping in and out of reality, as fog swallowed them into a misty embrace before letting go once more.
Warmth bloomed within her chest as she gazed upon them – thudding, thudding, thudding. Her heart clenched: nightshade twisting their roots through her veins. A picturesque bouquet from afar, but should one venture close enough they would see the cracks – smell the poison – she hid within. Even Alice could admit – if only to herself – that resentment fertilised those fields of blooming spring; fuelled the sharp and bitter hate flowing through her veins. Of course, she loved her children with all that she was… but their father, well he loved them more. It was if to him, they simply could do no wrong; rather, the blame fell on her. Forever and always, it fell on her. Why? Why was it always her fault?  
Alice looked down, through welling tears, at her wedding band.
“Why can’t you be normal?”
Her arm throbbed in his bruising grasp as it clenched, harder and harder. His fingertips her only anchor in reality. She just wanted to float away, why was he keeping her tethered? His fingers tightened as she refused to respond. Dark bruises bloomed, matching the circles under her eyes. What could she say to make him stop? Nothing. Nothing at all. Responding would just make it worse, so what was the point? Alcohol stained his every breath. His unfocussed eyes were wide with rage as he shook her. Alice studied his features. The furrowed eyebrows. The snarling teeth. The angry eyes. Desperately, she searched for something familiar, a trace of HER Ron.
There was none. This was not the man she married.
“Why are you such a bitch?
The slamming of doors and punching of walls were meant to intimidate her – to make her feel small. She knew that. Alice had learnt it in college, back when she went. Before she’d met Ron. Before her whirlwind romance. Before the kids had come along and she’d left dreams of her bigshot future to rot.
Knowing what was happening, didn’t make it any less terrifying.  Alice didn’t understand what she had done wrong. She had only asked him to take their youngest with him to the store. Why was he so angry?
“Why can’t you do anything right?”
This was not the man she’d married.
Broken porcelain stabbed into her arms. Boiling soup dripped down her front, leaving scalding streaks. Flour splattered onto her hair, seeping into her scalp and mixing where his ring had cut her. She felt like it was leaking into her skull. Ron shouted, his face red. He demanded an answer for why there was an extra plate set at the table. Alice… she couldn’t understand what was wrong. This was not the man she married.
The child reached for her hand, grounding her back in reality. Alice frantically tried to pull away. Ron said not to acknowledge him. But his arms reached up, his touch soft as a feather, and pulled her face towards him. His touch burned against her skin, as Alice’s eyes met his. She flinched violently, her heart crawling up her throat. Ron told her not to look at him. He said if she didn’t look, if she didn’t acknowledge him, then he would finally go away.
“Mommy! Mommy! Listen to me!”
Gently, the boy looked at her. Gently… when had someone last looked at her like that? His voice was excited, but not raised; as if his words floating on a light breeze. Blue eyes met grey. Alice stared, she couldn’t help it, she was mesmerised. She hadn’t seen her baby in so long. He looked just as she had remembered him. Her hand reached for his cheek, as her eyes burned. She had carried him for six months– she choked on a sob – before Ron had come home angry and drunk. Alice couldn’t really remember what happened that night. A blur of screaming and pain and the sound of shattered glass. She remembered the after though. The exact blue of her hospital gown. The exact smell of the flowers Ron had gifted her, promising he would change, as if she would ever believe that (she had, she had hoped with all her heart that things would change). She remembered how Ron had carefully redirected every mention of their little boy. He would treat her like glass when all she wanted to see was her little baby boy. Alice remembered how indifference turned to violence (he could never keep his promises). Ever since, Ron had refused to acknowledge their youngest son.  Even as she had watched him grow alongside his siblings, it was like she was the only one who could see him.
Schizophrenia. That’s what the psychologists thought, as they prescribed her pill after pill. But Alice knew, deep in her bones, she knew that wasn’t it. She wasn’t like this before – she wasn’t, she wasn’t, she wasn’t. Still a diagnosis was a diagnosis. Afterall, Ron just said that she was fuckin’ insane.
“Mommy?”
Alice pulled herself from his grasp, returning to the countertop. Silent tears dripped down her cheek, but she wiped them away roughly. She wasn’t supposed to talk to him. Flour was strewn, like an arterial spray, across the marble. Ignoring it – ignoring him – Alice seized the dough and started to knead. Her eyelids felt so heavy–so very heavy.
She lifted the dough and threw it down.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Her head pounded to the same rhythm.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
It echoed. Tiredness weighed down her soul, her body, her mind. Alice scarcely noticed, as the boy’s voice accompanied the thudding echoes, his childish rhyme a soothing melody.
“Jack be nimble, Jack be quick,
Jack got wacked by a candle stick,”
Alice picked up the rolling pin, contemplated it for a moment, and started flattening her dough.
“Ron hit high, Ron hit low,
Ron slumped over with no blood flow.”
A voice – a whisper, they’re whispering – deep within her protested, but it was swept under her pounding headache; the angel on her shoulder drowned by a spring of rage finally welling to the surface. She rolled the dough ruthlessly – watching as it became thinner and thinner; until finally a split appeared. The dough, it seemed, refused to accept any more violent touches, any more bruising grips, anymore harsh hands. Now, it was willing to tear itself to pieces for a chance at escape.
“It’s raining its pouring,
The old man is snoring,
Put a pillow over his head
And he can’t get up in the morning.”
Across the counter, the kettle whistled as it came to boil. Alice gazed down at hands so small they barely covered her own.
“Mommy. Mommy. You know what to do.”
No. No. No.
“I can’t. I can’t,” Alice begged, pleading for his forgiveness, for him to understand. The pounding in her head grew louder.
“Mommy, don’t you want to be a family? He doesn’t want me…Do you not want me either?”
She flinched. Turning, Alice gazed deep into his empty eyes. She stared at his chubby cheeks; bereft of blood – of life – in his veins She watched as his little nose scrunched in disappointment, his face exuding misery.
Her heart shattered into a million pieces.
Surging forward, Alice pulled him against her chest. Determinedly disregarding the chill that permeated from his skin. She held him and imagined–for just a single moment – that everything was alright. That he was a normal little boy waiting for her to kiss it all better.
Then, the old front door creaked open with an ugly groan, shattering the illusion. In the first years of their marriage Alice had been constantly begging Ron to fix it – now she was just thankful for the warning.
“Alice!” Both mother and child flinched. Ron’s voice echoed through the house, rough with the history of binge-drinking and chain-smoking. He hadn’t always been like this; Katherine missed the man he was. But lay-off after lay-off, had transformed him into something she barely recognised. “Where are the boys?!”
Tiny hands tugged at her blouse. “Mommy. He’s gonna take me away.”
No. No. She’d just gotten him back. Her precious little boy. He was hers. Pulling herself together, Alice reluctantly uncurled his fingers and ruffled his hair reassuringly.
“Don’t worry, baby.” Alice murmured, steeling her resolve. “You stay here. Mommy’s going to make it all better, alright?”
Slowly, Alice stood. With a shaking hand, she reached across the marble countertop and grasped her discarded rolling pin, still speckled with flour.
“They’re at the Masons’,” Alice said, silently creeping towards the entryway. Decorating the walls, dozens of crosses sat – nailed haphazardly. Ron claimed that they warded off ‘the crazy’. Alice snorted. She wasn’t the crazy one. He was the crazy one.
Alice continued forward, oblivious as a cross caught against her sleeve. It swayed drunkenly as she passed before falling over with a dull thud against their wedding photo. A crack appeared across the groom’s smiling face.
She struck.
Thud.
Ron groaned as he hit the floor. Katherine sank to her knees – as if in prayer, as if in absolution to a god that has never listened – and with a primal shriek, continued to rain blow after blow down upon him.
Squelching crunches echoed through the house. Blood pooled on the carpet, creating a sickening mix of brain matter and flour. The spray covered Alice like a fine mist. But she kept swinging. She continued her blows long after the groans ceased, long after the twitching stopped and long after his face became unrecognisable. Only once a decade’s worth revenge was repaid did the rolling pin finally slip from her grasp.
It hit the wooden floors with a dull thud. Breathless, Alice simply gazed at her work in admiration.
“Ronny-Wonny, pudding and pie,   
Kissed his girl and made her cry,
But when his son came out to play,
Ronny-Wonny went away.”