Recapitulation: The contents of Gertrude Wilborough’s grave included more than mere jewelry. Barry and Jenna also discovered a “Last Will and Testement,” perhaps her final will, which could change the entire distribution of her estate. As Barry peruses the document, Jenna sneaks out of the grave and starts throwing dirt in on Barry. Trapped, he takes a few seconds to reach out and touch the face of the woman whose funeral he first attended.
He grew weary of her attitude, her childishness, the way she blackmailed him. Tired of not working, tired of not getting paid, tired of having to get dirt dumped on him from above. Tired of it all. Barry had enough. Fury borne of frustration infused his muscles, his lungs, his heart. He snorted like a bull, the air flowing through him, generating more and more power. Dirt rained downward, but he didn’t feel it. Registered it only as unimportant information. Right now, the two things that mattered were the wall in front of him and the woman beyond.
He crouched down, far deeper than he normally would, and sprang to, catching the wall and hefting himself forward in one fluid motion. Like a dolphin, he sprang up from the ground, landed on his feet in a crouch. Jenna just stood there, the shovel in her hands shaking, little groundling droplets tipping from the pile on the shovel blade. Her mouth hung open, disbelief cramming it wide.
“How, how did you, how.” She just stared at him. “How?”
Barry closed the gap between them and wrenched the shovel from her hands. She cried out, so swift and final was his move. Barry smiled. The weight in his hands made him feel whole. That he was in power again made him feel whole. Made him feel holy even. At this moment, things had changed, and he could do no wrong here. He was in charge.
“You’re going to tell me how to drive that stick shift of yours, right now.”
“Huh?”
“Listen, wifey,” and he spat the word as if venom coated every letter, “you’re not the only person that can make stupid demands. You tell me how to drive that car of mine.”
“That Volvo’s mine.” Jenna’s defiant lip curled, but Barry saw right through it, saw Jenna for what she was, some punk little bitch.
“No, that car is mine now.” He crossed his arms, the shovel slanting diagonal across his body, the blade next to his ear. His feet planted should width apart, Barry now looked for all the world like an enforcer. Jenna cowered, backed up a step. She’d never seen him like this.
“Alright, here’s how you drive it.” For the next five minutes, she walked him through the basic mechanics of operating a manual transmission, the nuances involved with the clutch on this car, even how to back out of a parking space. She threw words out faster and faster, trying to give him the information, trying to push him away with her soft reedy breaths.
“Thanks dear.” Barry laughed. “As if I’d ever get married to someone like you. You screwed with the wrong man honey.” Quick as the weather, he whipped himself and the shovel into a batter’s stance. Jenna’s eyes popped out of her head, and her valiant effort to run worked for a second. Mid-stride, the blade flat shattered the side of her skull. On the follow-through, Jenna’s body carried into the air for a few feet, before smashing into a gravestone, upending over the top, slumping upside down into the ground.
He set into the dirt, collapsing the hole into itself, when Jenna groaned from behind the gravestone. Barry looked up at her, flat on her back, her dress hiked up around her thighs, a small revolver strapped to her leg. What a sneak, she had a gun all this time.
Barry peered to his right, then to his left. Still no one there. Perfect. With confident strides Barry met Jenna, still alive in the most clinical sense of the word. He reached down between her legs, pulled out the revolver. Thumbed the hammer, pressed the barrel against her temple, or what he thought was her temple; the crushed skull made finding landmarks hard.
“Good night Jenna.” He pulled the trigger. A quick report echoed through the graveyard, heralding Jenna’s transition from present tense to past tense. Blood, bone chips, skin, hair fanned out across the ground like a malfunctioning firework. Barry pocketed the snub-nose, then resumed shoveling the dirt back into the hole. Part of him wanted to just throw her in, but that would be too easy. As he took handfuls of dirt to mop up the human residue now cooling next to Jenna’s head, he thought about the possibilities, before deciding on the best choice: his own grave.
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