Forever And Always
by Bob L. Morgan Jr.

            It was hot that summer of nineteen ninety-eight. The one where people were dropping dead from the heat. It had been over one hundred degrees for the last month and life was only going to get hotter. Life was not going to get better, Jonathan Wayne knew as he sat on the park bench next to his lover and listened to the never ending complaint.

              "I just can't take it anymore," Brian told him ,"I just can't take all this sneaking around. Hell, I came out of the closet over ten years ago and went through pure torture with my family and now I'm going through it all again because you can't tell your wife that you love me and not her."

              "You don't know my wife," Jonathan said  and tried to look into his lovers eyes. Brian jerked his head away and watched a squirrel run up the side of a tree. He couldn't bare to have any man, even his lover, see tears in his eyes.

              "This is the end of the nineties," Brian said his voice shaky."This is Houston Texas for god's sake, not some fucking outpost in eastern Russia. People can be what they want to be in this day and age. But I can't because I have you."

              Brian snapped his head back around so that he stared fiery eyed into Jonathan's face. God, how Jonathan loved those fiery green eyes and how he loved Brian's long blond hair and how he loved his muscular body when it pressed up against him.

              Sometimes, Brian was all he could think about. That muscular chest and stomach and that tight ass. He would never look like that again himself. Jonathan had never looked like that when he had been Brian's age. Now he was forty-five. Being with Brian made Jonathan feel young and alive. It was a feeling he could never give up.

              "If you don't tell her tonight then it's over between us," Brian said with a finality that was unmistakable.

              Brian stood up and after turning his back he took two steps away from where he had sat next to his lover.

              "Don't call me," he said,"until after you tell her you want a divorce."

              Jonathan stood up and unconsciously extended his hand reaching for Brian.

              "Please don't do this,"he whispered, but he knew it was the right thing to do.

              Neither of them could go on living a lie. Jonathan watched as Brian walked away. His heart in his chest felt like it had turned to lead.

              He knew what he had to do.

*   *    *

              That night at home Jonathan made a dinner of fried pork chops while his wife, Wanda, sat and laughed at the sitcom Roseanne.

              I may as well be dead, he thought as he looked down at the sizzling pork in the cast iron skillet. I had a chance for love but I threw it away because I don't have any guts. What am I going to do. I can't live like this.

              Jonathan was racked by an involuntary sob. Then the floodgates were opened and as Jonathan held to the sides of the cooking stove he began crying uncontrollably. Moans escaped from his lips and tears ran in torrents from his eyes. The sadness in Jonathan was unbearable.

              "What in the samhell is the matter with you?" Wanda’s shouting voice cut through Jonathan's sorrow. Cut him to the heart. "My momma always told me you was nothin but a little bitty sissy and look at ya. Yer just a standin there cryin like a baby for no reason at all. I'd slap the shit right out a ya but the effort ain’t worth it. It's just like momma told me. Yer fuckin worthless. You better not burn those chops or I will slap the shit out of ya."

              Jonathan looked into his wife's face, directly and hard for the first time in many years. Wanda was a good six inches taller than him and outweighed him by at least a hundred and fifty pounds. It wasn't easy for Jonathan to look her directly in the eye, but he did.

              "I want a divorce," Jonathan said through clenched teeth. Once started Jonathan could not stop. He told Wanda of his years of emptiness and unhappiness in their marriage. He had tried to talk to her before but she never listened and she always put him down telling him he was weak whenever he needed some tenderness. He told her about his love affair with Brian and how he had finally found someone who cared about how he felt. Jonathan tried to tell Wanda how love depended on kindness and the sharing of feelings and that was when she started laughing.

              Wanda stood in front of Jonathan and she pointed her finger at him. "You're a fucking pansy," she howled in amusement. "I should of known. You've always been a sissy-boy." Wanda doubled over in uncontrollable laughter. "Oh this is great," she said  between giggles," this is so great. I gotta tell everyone. Mamma's gonna love this."

              That was when Jonathan snapped. With a burst of speed he snatched the cast iron skillet off the fire on the stove.

              "Shut up!" he screamed and brought the skillet down on his wife's forward leaning head. Something crunched and pork chops and grease flew in the air as the blow with the iron skillet landed.

              Wanda staggered backward and Jonathan followed her screaming,"Shut Up! Shut up!" With each ,"Shut up!" Jonathan brought the skillet down on Wanda’s head until she fell to her knees. As Wanda tried to feebly ward off the blows with her left hand Jonathan kept smashing the skillet down into his wife's skull until she was on her face and she was just a twitching mass beneath him.

              Jonathan looked down at the bloody body of his wife. His rage was spent. His mind went in a single moment from uncontrolled anger to a kind of icy coldness.

              I had to, he thought. Jonathan's mind ran through a catalogue of memories of Wanda screaming at him and slapping him and hitting him over and over again and his only thought was, I had to.

              Wanda stopped twitching after a few minutes and when Jonathan checked her pulse at her neck he found she was dead.

              Blood was everywhere. Jonathan grabbed his wife by her two feet and dragged her to the bathroom. He was grateful they had hardwood floors. The blood would come up with a good mopping.

              Jonathan thought his back would break when when he hoisted Wanda’s body into the bathtub. But this was necessary to do what he had to do.

              Jonathan cleaned up the kitchen and the hallway. He mopped and scrubbed until  not a trace of blood  remained in the rest of the house. He then got a roll of Hefty trash can liners from under the kitchen sink. He put these on the rim of the bathtub. Jonathan then went out the back door of their house and crossed the lawn to their storage shed. He got a hacksaw that was hung on a nail.

              He looked at the blade on the hacksaw. He blade was old and rusted.

              "Well Wanda," Jonathan said under his breath as he inspected the blade,"You are a tough woman but I think this will do just fine. You're not as tough as you thought you were."

              Back in the bathroom Jonathan kneeled over the tub and sawed off Wanda’s left arm as close to her shoulder as he could. He put it in a hefty bag. He sawed the other arm off as well. The bone of the right arm gave him a great deal of trouble. He had to put his feet on Wanda’s side and jerk it loose. He put that one in the bag with the first.

            Jonathan looked down at Wanda in the tub. "Now you're a victim of arm robbery."

              He then cut off her legs, one by one and cut up her torso so finely that it appeared to be cutlets from a butcher shop. All of this he placed in plastic hefty bags.

              All that was left of Wanda was her head. Jonathan went to the closet and got an old hat box that contained an old cowboy hat. He hated that hat. Wanda   insisted that he where it when they went to a rodeo years earlier. He threw the hat in the trash and carried the box to the bathroom.

              He took the lid off and laid the box on the floor. Jonathan picked up Wanda’s  head by the hair and stared into her dead eyes. "My dear, you've never looked better. Laugh at me now bitch,"he said and put her in the box and put the lid on.

              It was well past ten p.m. when the cutting and cleaning was done. Jonathan carried the plastic bags out into the back yard and dug holes in the flower garden that he'd been growing for years. It was a large flower garden and Jonathan spread Wanda around so that there were no unnatural looking bulges in the ground. At about four a.m. He was done. Wanda’s head went under the bed. He didn't know why, but Jonathan wanted to keep her head around. Maybe, every now and then, Jonathan just wanted to remind himself and her that he had finally won.

   *    *

              The next day Jonathan took a sick day off from work. Brian was thrilled when Jonathan called him and told him that he'd sent his wife packing back home to her momma. They agreed that a candlelit dinner at Jonathan's was definitely in order.

              Jonathan prepared a wonderful dinner of broiled shrimp for the two of them and chilled a bottle of champagne for their celebration. Everything was going so good that about a half hour before Brian was due to arrive Jonathan pulled out the hat box from beneath his bed.

              He took the lid off and lifted Wanda by the hair with his left hand.

              "Are you happy dear?" he asked, "are you? You made things the way they are by being such a horrible bitch! But I'm rid of you now." He punched Wanda with his right fist. "Did you like that, dear? I did," he said. "Well I don't have the time to really enjoy myself." Jonathan looked closely into Wanda’s face and smiled. The eyes twitched.

              Jonathan screamed! He dropped Wanda and staggered back. The head on the floor rolled and righted itself on the stump of the neck. Jonathan's heart was pounding and he stared at the head.

              There was no more movement. No more twitches.

              Jonathan watched the head until he was sure there was no movement of any kind. His heartbeat finally slowed and he leaned close to the thing that had once tormented him so much. No movement. Not a sign of life. He laughed to himself.

              That must have been a trick of the light, he thought.

              Then he said it out loud to reassure himself. "That was just a trick of the light." Jonathan's voice was shakier than he would of liked.

              He put Wanda in the box and slid her beneath the bed.

*   *    *

              The dinner went better than Jonathan had ever dreamed it could. They ate the shrimp, feeding it to each other, and sipped each others bubbly. On the couch Jonathan and Brian attacked each others bodies like sex crazed teenagers. When he felt the time was right Jonathan led Brian into the bedroom.

              Jonathan slowly undressed Brian and as he took off his shirt he kissed him all over his shoulders and chest and then down to his stomach. Brian moaned in pleasure.

              Jonathan heard  giggling.

              He looked up to his lovers face from where he was down on his knees. "Is everything all right?" Jonathan asked.

            "Oh yes," Brian panted and fell back on the bed and stripped off his jeans. "Everything is perfect." He reached for Jonathan and pulled him onto the bed. Brian hungrily stripped off Jonathan's clothes. Both of them were panting in lust on the bed.

              "Yee-haa," came clear to Jonathan's ears.

              "What?" he asked.

              "Well, go ahead and ride him. You Texas faggot. Go ahead, just like John Wayne,  ride him cowboy."

              Jonathan looked at Brian with an expression of total horror on his face.

              Laughter came pouring up from beneath the bed. "well, ride him cowboy. Give him one just like the Duke. Ride him like the stallion stud you think you are. You flaming Texas faggot." The laughter wouldn't stop.

              Brian looked into Jonathan's horror-struck face. "What's the matter?" he asked.

              Jonathan opened his mouth to speak and a new torrent of foul language issued  from under the bed.

              "Well fuck him John Wayne. Give it to him. Go ahead, spread his cheeks and yell , remember the Alamo. Go on, give it to him, just like John Wayne. You Texas faggot." the laughter went on and on. It bore into the center of his brain.

              "I'm sorry Brian," Jonathan told him trying to keep his voice steady and failing. "I've got to be alone tonight."

              He got out of bed and handed Brian his clothes.

              "I don't understand," Brian said and brushed tears from his eyes. "I know this is a hard time. But I'm there for you when you need me."

              Jonathan got dressed. He was thinking, you have no idea how hard this time is for me. He said,"I'm sorry."

              "We can work it out," Brian told him. They kissed and Brian left.

              The laughter was still going on in the bedroom when he went back in. He pulled the box from beneath the bed and opened it. When he saw Wanda’s eyes open he dropped the box and screamed. The head rolled out onto the floor and again righted itself on the neck stump.

              "Thought you'd gotten rid of me didn't ya. You Texas faggot. You'll never get rid of me. I'll always be with you."

              "No!," Jonathan yelled and kicked Wanda as hard as he could. Wanda flew across the room.

              "Weeeeeee," Wanda yelled as she flew through the air. She smashed against the wall leaving a brownish splotch.

               When she landed and righted herself again she said, "You can't hurt me. I'm already dead, dummy." Then she started laughing again.

              "Then laugh at this, Dammit!" Jonathan yelled and from a drawer in a bedside table he drew a chrome plated 45 revolver. He aimed at the head that was Wanda.

              She laughed more and he pulled the trigger and knocked a chunk out of her forehead.

              "Good shootin!" Wanda shouted. "Guess you Texas faggots have got to know how to shoot your gun. You'll never get rid of me."

              Black blood spouted from the hole in her forehead.

              He pulled the trigger again and Wanda’s nose disappeared in a red spray all over the wall.

              "You'll never get rid of me,"she howled,"Never! Never!"

              "Yes I will," Jonathan said back, calmly this time.

              He raised the pistol to the side of his head and pulled the trigger.

   *    *

              Jonathan was only dimly aware of what he was passing through. He felt like he was floating or flying or falling, which one Jonathan did not know, but he did feel movement. The movement stopped and he realized he was in a room of pure white. If there were walls then they were so smooth and blended so well with the ceiling that he couldn’t tell where they were. Jonathan was alone in the room.

              He felt his way along and found the walls. The room was really small. It was like a circle. By following the wall you always came back to where you began and it took no time at all.

              "Where am I? " Jonathan said out loud.

              All at once he was not alone. Wanda stood in front of him in all of her three hundred pound six foot tall glory.

              "No," Jonathan said and backed away from her.

              "Oh, yes," Wanda answered. "You don't get away from me, you Texas faggot you. You don't get the choice of where you go. I do get the choice. But guess what? My  heaven is giving you your hell. I'm gonna just love tormenting you. I have eternity to get tired of it and that won't be long enough."

              "Oh, no. God please no," Jonathan wailed, but he knew down here no prayers would be answered.

 ©2001 Bob L. Morgan Jr.

 Bob L. Morgan Jr. currently is marketing the novel  (Blood And Rain) under the pseudonym of  John Dark.