CHAPTER TEN
The Witch is Dead
Rhema pulled her cookies out of the oven and set the baking sheet on the stove top. She didn’t know why she was making cookies. She didn’t even like the Kellys. Bringing the cookies to the Christmas party was too much of a nice gesture after all she had already done. As always, she was doing it for David, but she would never admit it, so she played nice and baked cookies for his sake and smiled in the neighbors’ faces, but more than anything she wanted to get away from them.
It was always the same boring conversation. Always about the neighbors, always about redecorating, work, or their children and how they were so perfect. How their lives were so perfect. Always the same hollow lies. Then, once they got comfortable, the truth was too boring to bear.
“I just don’t understand why I’m not happy.”
“It isn’t supposed to be so hard.”
Rhema would look at them like the idiots they were. They were like children that had never grown up. Life was never supposed to be easy, and she knew that because her life was never easy. She’d had to work hard for everything that she had. Mommy and Daddy didn’t have a legacy to pass down. They never doted on her, either. The domestic conversations irritated her, but she was satisfied that they suffered. She knew the reason that that their lives sucked, and it was because they weren’t “real” lives. They were just some Betty Crocker, Martha Stuart flops, and after keeping up the charade for so long, they had finally tired of it.
It didn’t matter if they were housewives or worked shitty office jobs. Some did enjoy what they did, but most didn’t, and the primary reason for that was because they were doing what everyone else wanted of them and not what they wanted. The perfect life didn’t exist, and it never had. It had always been a fantasy, a way to escape the mundane and the same stagnant daily ritual of what it meant to live an unoriginal life.
Sure, Rhema made cookies for David, but when it came to the big stuff, she had no interest in following anyone else’s agenda but her own, and God bless the soul of whoever stood in her way.
Rhema jumped when she heard banging on her patio door. She looked over and saw Elsea standing there, face white as a ghost, eyes bloodshot. She walked toward the door, face suspicious and painted with confusion.
“How can I help you?” she asked, cracking the door.
Elsea’s mouth moved, but the words didn’t come out.
“Spit it out, I have cookies to tend to for you parents’ stupid party.”
Elsea jumped at the command, and her face tightened and curled on one side.
“Are you having a stroke? If not, speak. It’s cold, and you’re letting my heat out,” Rhema said, frustrated, but Elsea stood there silent, still unable to find the words.
Rhema shook her head and started to pull the door closed.
“I killed Hannah!” Elsea blurted out.
The words didn’t come out smoothly. Her voice was hoarse, and Rhema could hear the snot blocking her breathing. She opened the door wider.
“Excuse me? I don’t think I caught that.”
“I killed Hannah. She’s dead.” Elsea’s leg started to tremble. “I killed Hannah. I killed Hannah. I killed Hannah …” She kept repeating it over and over until the snot flowed from her nose and tears ran down her cheeks. They all steamed in the cold.
Rhema thought Elsea would collapse right there on the porch.
“Get in here,” Rhema demanded.
Elsea didn’t move, so Rhema grabbed her by the shirt and pulled her in. “Are you bullshitting me right now? Is this your idea of a sick, twisted joke?” Rhema could smell the whiskey on her.
Rhema could not take Elsea seriously. She just doesn’t have it in her, she thought. She couldn’t. “If you killed her, where is she? I have to see this for myself.”
“The living room …” Elsea said.
“All right, killer,” Rhema said, leading Elsea to the kitchen table. “Sit down and stay. I’ll be back.”
“Use the back door,” Elsea spurted out.
Rhema looked at her, confused.
“You know, to make sure no one sees you,” she said, her voice lifeless.
Rhema looked back at her. “I’ll be fine.” And she walked out the back door.
She creeped over into the Kellys’ backyard. The patio door was swung wide open, so she walked in slowly, calling out Hannah’s name. She stepped into the kitchen and saw nothing, so she went further into the house.
When she made it into the living room, she jumped at the sight of Hannah’s lifeless body spread out across the living room floor. It wasn’t that she was dead but she didn’t believe Elsea had done it, and so violently, too. It was obvious that they had struggled, as the furniture was in disarray.
She did it. She actually it. She turned on her heels, eyes wide, and walked back through the yard to the house, very careful to not be seen.
Rhema walked back into the kitchen and sat down next to Elsea, throwing her leg up on a chair. “Well, you did do it, didn’t you?”
Elsea’s face turned green.
Rhema leaned back, resting her arm on the table. “Well, I hate to have to break this to you, but I am going to have to call the police on you. You came over here and got me involved, and I can’t harbor a criminal.”
Elsea sat in silence, shame and guilt all over her face. Rhema stared at it, absorbing the pain that it displayed. She wanted to cement it in her memory, and it reminded her of her own pain and how she had vowed never to feel that way again. A large welt across the right side of her face drew Rhema’s attention.
“Did she do that to you while you were fighting?”
Elsea nodded.
“Well, it could have been worse.”
Elsea hunched over in pain.
“What’s wrong?” Rhema asked, startled.
Elsea stood up and ran over to the trash can and vomited, holding her stomach and wincing in pain with each heave.
Rhema had seen vomiting before, but she knew that it shouldn’t have been that painful.
Elsea fell to the floor, writhing in pain, and her shirt caught the edge of the trash can. Rhema walked toward her, unbothered by the display, so she took her time helping. She couldn’t have a murderer dying on her kitchen floor because the last thing she need was the cops snooping around her house.
When the episode passed, Elsea rolled over, exposing her stomach. Then Rhema saw it. The bruising, some new, some old. Rhema looked at Elsea in dismay.
“Who did this to you?” Rhema demanded.
When Elsea regained her breath, she finally spit it out. “Hannah,” she whispered. “It has always been Hannah.”
Blood bubbled inside of Rhema. Beating a person was unacceptable. She knew what kind of pain that was. No matter how weird Rhema found Elsea to be, she knew that she didn’t deserve that.
“Are you still calling the police?” Elsea asked.
“No, I’m not.” She grabbed Elsea by the arm and pulled her to her feet. She threw her arm across her shoulder and helped her upstairs. Rhema took her to the guest room and helped her to the bed.
“Stay here. I’ll be back,” Rhema said.
“Where are you going?” Elsea asked.
Rhema walked down the hallway and into the bathroom. She turned on the shower and pulled some towels out and set them on the counter and walked back into the guest bedroom.
“I need you to take a shower and give me the clothes that you are wearing.”
“What?”
“Don’t question me. Just do it.” Rhema walked out of the room again and came back several minutes later. In her right hand was a bottle of pills, and in her left hand was a bottle of vodka. She sat down on the bed next to Elsea.
“Now, this is what we are going to do.”