Crawl Read Free

subterfuge, Juliet parked across the street, knowing deep down something was amiss. She shuffled over the asphalt, feet never really leaving the street. Stumbled onto the grass and up the porch steps, her keys tinkling together, far too heavy in her extended hand. The knob swallowed her offering, turned, and the door floated inward. Sounds flooded over her, nasty words and expulsions of orgasmic glee. She slammed the door, silencing the cadence of the lovers on the couch. Juliet braced herself against the door frame of the entrance to the living room, lifting her head to see the naked bitch scrabbling for her clothes, and Colton, sweating and panting, trying to cover his massive erection. The thing bobbed under its own weight below a tuft of curly brown hair, looking intent on impaling someone. Or ripping them in two. Juliet saw it, dismembered and twitching, on the floor of the kitchen beside a bloody butcher’s knife. And that’s what made her move. Out through the front door, down the steps, across the grass, into the street, and behind the wheel. She screamed the entire way. Because she was scared. Because she was terrified of the violence she wanted to see done to her husband. To her beloved Colton. Tires squealed as she rocketed away. Sobs wracked her while she fled. The sky opened up and sent torrents down to wash it all away. To wash her away.
    And to think, poor Colton felt neglected.
    Now, Juliet gripped the sides of her seat, fighting back the building rage that threatened to bubble forth from her.
    In a voice not much more than a whisper, she said, “Don’t… just don’t . Keep on and you will end up losing me, Colton… if you haven’t lost me already. If you try to make this about me again, I will get out at the next stop, walk to the nearest bus station, and take a Greyhound the rest of the way to my mother’s. So I suggest you stop talking, unless the subject is the weather or some inane sports trivia you seem to be so fond of. Are we understood?”
    He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. His face said he understood perfectly. Gone was the dejected, rejected hubby’s countenance. Now, Juliet looked upon a scolded child, one that knew what he’d done and figured he’d better accept his punishment before Mommy went and fetched the belt.
    Their old friend Silence returned, and they crossed into Georgia smothered by his presence.

2.
     

    Juliet first noticed the ’50s model Mercury coupe with the JXSAVES license plate fifty miles south of Columbus on I-75. Colton was coasting at a steady eighty-five miles per hour, weaving in and out of slower traffic, and cursing now and then at the latest errant douchebag he considered unfit for America’s highways and byways. They were making damn good time, and Juliet wasn’t sure if it was Colton’s normal impatience or his desire to be rid of her because of their last conversation.
    The Mercury, black as pitch but streaked with reflections from their Subaru’s headlights, maintained the same speed as Colton, two car lengths ahead of them.
    Colton slapped the steering wheel. “Speed up or slow down, man, make up your mind.”
    “If he’s upsetting you that bad, why not just pass him in the slow lane?” Juliet asked, studying her recent manicure and pretending as if she was not interested in this dick-measuring contest by automobile.
    “It’s the principle of the matter. He needs to get the hell out of my way.”
    “We need to see about getting you some anger management classes when I get back.”
    In the ensuing quiet, such an awkward thing it was, Juliet looked over at her husband. He would glance her way then back to the road, a glimmer of boyish hope in his eye and a smile crinkling the corners of his rectangle of a mouth. She hadn’t a clue why such an affect should be gracing his face.
    “What?” she asked.
    “You said, when you get back .”
    “Don’t read too much into it, Colt. I’m just carrying on friendly conversation.”
    “But