You knew the day was going to come eventually, the day when Karradine rolled back into town and made like you were still his bride.
“You ran off,” say.
“Twelve years ago and two days,” Karradine will say, leaning against the radiator cover with both hands.
You tell him you didn’t count the days. He’ll say you did, but you didn’t. You didn’t! You didn’t know that you could go ten seconds without Karradine, let alone over twelve years, back when he first roped you in. He was able to convince a young, scared girl like you to join his corral of fake wives. Brides. But it turns out you were so young he was just the first of many sideshows you’d throw a passing glance.
That’s where you have the advantage over Karradine. He doesn’t know how quick you fell in with another crowd, even more destructive than his, but that was nothing compared to the crowd that came after that, and after that, and after that. Karradine doesn’t know that he was essentially just another nobody in your world. In a sea of nobodies. He was the first nobody, the very first, the one who took your belief in goodness away, but just because he was the first that doesn’t make him something special. If you’ve had a life of nightmares, that doesn’t mean the first one is more powerful than the 145th. Karradine doesn’t know he’s not that big a deal to you, so you can just go ahead and look him in the eye and tell him he doesn’t barely merit a flutter of your eyelids. Tell Karradine he’s a nobody, nothing of consequence to you, and send him on his way.
“So,” Karradine will say, his hands still gripping the radiator cover, holding up his weight. “You ready to come home?”
Your answer comes in a blur. You pick up a decorative, Mexican, hard-glass egg and you wheel it over your head and down once, twice into his. You dig it down hard enough to smash a skull to pieces, not just a fatal crack, but to pieces in his sack of skin. The first nightmare is the first and you can’t have any others until you have your first, so it has to die for all the others to go away. The first is important. Karradine has to say goodbye.
Happy You’re Lorraine Of Lorraine’s Beauty Shop And Today’s The Day You Kill Day!