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The revolver feels warm in her hand, heavier than her limbs. The assistant had asked if it was for her husband and Bonnie bit her tongue to stop her lips from curling as she said ‘oh yes.' She ponders, for the eleventh time today, whether she should just put it away and start on the dinner.
But the air feels unnaturally warm on the porch and the odour of the mines cloys to her skin. If she licks the back of her hand she can taste it, taste him. She savours the taste; it’ll be the last time.
All the leaves have fallen from the trees and yet she’s still standing outside their wretched little house. She’s god knows old (they haven’t celebrated her birthday since she was sixteen) and from out here she can see the stripped trees, completely still, dark and lithe in their beauty.
She hitches up her tattered sundress, the flowers on the fabric have long withered, but it’ll do the job. Her husband loves her legs; he tells her that much when he’s biting into them as Bonnie crawls across the floor in tears.
And that’s the sweetest thing he’s ever done. More forgiving than the punches to the gut, the clumsy kicks to the head. Her old man’s ever the image of a punch drunk lover and a rogue boxer with a broken nose and a dwindling number of teeth. He hasn’t boxed in two years but he fights with her every night. The girls told her all the boys do it.
Bonnie hears his pickup pull into the driveway and remembers when she used to be happy to hear that noise. Her comely old man coming home, she’d grin like a light bulb, big brown eyes blown up like a waning full moon. He littered her with kisses rather than bruises back then but this time she’ll kiss him on forehead with a bullet in his head.
She steps back into the house just as he steps out of the truck, he calls after her, voice hoarse, but she keeps walking.
Shutting the screen door behind her, she knows there’s no time for second thoughts, no time to make dinner and hollow apologies as her mouth fills with blood.
She walks into their tiny bedroom, hearing his screams behind her, hot on her neck but she keeps the gun in her hand, so heavy she could drop it and she swears it’d keep falling.
He grabs her by the shoulder and she turns just as the handle hits his jaw with a soft crack, they’re both stunned but she brings the muzzle to his forehead as his mouth turns into an ‘o’ shape and oh god there’s blood everywhere .
Bits of her husband are strewn across the pale walls in red, grey and black. Bonnie never did care much for art back at school but it’s the most beautiful painting she ever did see.
She drops to her knees, shins sinking in warm blood and she cries like she hasn’t for years. She cries like she’s a child and dear god, it feels so good to run her calloused fingers through her hair whilst they’re coated with his blood.
It’s her baptism and she’s been born again, embryonic and crouching in a foetal position, no longer trying to claw back into the safety of the darkness.
She’s covered in scarlet, from her head to the worn out soles of her feet.
Standing up with more ease than ever before, she walks over her husband’s twitching body with a whole new feeling of lightness.
She’s floating. It’s only now that she realises the revolver has never left her hand but it’s no longer a dead weight.
It’s like another limb; she swings it about in the air like a kite, shooting bullets into every wall in the house.
She shoots into a mirror and throws her head back, possessed by laughter as her reflection falls apart and crashes onto the ground.
Back on the ground, she hitches up her sundress once again and walks out of the house, autumn leaves wet under her feet. She moves towards the trees, their dark bare arms stretching out to her like long lost family members.
And when she turns back, blinks only once, the whole house is alight.