17"And it sounds to me like you need a good beating you bitch," he all but cooed in her ear as he gripped her upper left arm. Not wanting to wait around any longer to feel his hand on her bottom or even better, her face, she whipped her right arm around and smacked him a good one on his cheek.
"You have no right to beating me Jack, only my father had that responsibility and guess what?"
He only stared up at her, his eyes wide in disbelief. "That responsibility was unduly carried out, you bastard."
Running her fingers through her hair, an idea came to her, the kind that was impulse and never regretted, no matter the consequences.
"Geri, what's gotten into you?" he asked, doing his best to act like he hadn't just threatened her.
"What's gotten into me?!" Geri all but screamed. "You have you sonnavabitch! How DARE you ask me what's wrong? Don't go around acting like you give a rats ass about me Jack, the whole town even knows that you don't."
"You better take that back baby.." He whispered forebodingly while snaking his arm around her waist again.
The whiskey on his tongue was overwhelming. "When I married you Jack you promised me love and happiness, and do you know what I got? A whole shit load of broken securities." As Geri looked her husband in the eye, her hand traced hotly down his chest, resting on the hilt of his gun and drawing it from the holster slowly. She backed up quickly, as not to give him a chance to take the gun from her. Turning it languidly in her palm, she looked up at Jack again, her green eyes boring into his.
"You wouldn't." was all he managed to say. She pressed the gun to his leg and smiled at him.
"I would do this just as much as you would have beaten me till I bled and begged for your forgiveness, Jack." She pulled the trigger and his screamed pierced the air, like a bird taking flight for the winter, the last time they would leave their perch. Without taking her finger off the trigger, Geri raised it to his gut.
"Darling, I'm tired of the bruises, the beatings, and your filthy drunken rages. I'm tired of the defiling rape, the accusatory glances in town when I go to the feed store to buy my own goddamn food that's meant for pigs. Do you know what that's like Jack? To eat other people's leftovers because your husband refuses to spend his "hard-earned" money? No, I don't suppose you do. All that you've ever been able to spend money on is whores at the tavern you jackass. Well, guess what Jack?"
Feeling the warmth of his own blood trickling down his leg, but doing his best to keep a straight face, Jack kissed his abused wife one last time, crushing her soft lips to his before she pulled the trigger on his stomach.
Geri fell to the ground before Jack, telling herself that she was now free. No more long nights being locked in the cellar, no more long afternoons dreading the time that her husband would come home to rape her, then go to the saloon and pay skanks to sleep with him, because he claimed his wife was a bad lay. There would be no more of that. Not even the rotted noose that was sure to hang around her neck before the end of the month could make her mood diminish, the feel of freedom overwhelming.
Jack fell backwards, grasping in the air for Geri's red curls, wanting to bring her down with him one last time, but failing miserably. His cold gaze met her green one, the last thing he saw before his heart stopped beating and the blood kept cascading from his stomach in rivulets to the now stained floor that his mistreated wife had scrubbed just the day before with him standing over her, a gun pressed to her neck..
Geri stood up, and kicked the sorry excuse for her husband, the same man that had pledged to love her, to make her happy. But, of course, in Arizona there was no such thing as a respectable man anymore, as Geri thought.
"Good-bye Jack, dearest." She whispered into his ear, the ear that would no longer hear her screams, the ear that was now that of a man that had just been paid a visit by the sweet red-headed angel of death he could have formerly called his wife.
Geri smiled down at her abusive husband, the death of her past clearly written all over his bloodstained shirt and trousers, now running down to the now tainted floor, the moon shining down on his blood turning it to a milky blackness. She pushed back her long sleeves and moved her hands beneath his arms to his underarms, and hauled him into the dark night, trailing his blood through her living room that had encountered many rapes and thrown male fists. If the walls could talk, they wouldn't have condemned Geri, like the town was likely to do, but would have applauded her instead, would have congratulated her on her new found freedom from wedlock.
She stopped at the small shack outside of the large plantation house that now belonged solely to her, and kicked open the door, not yet ready to set down her burden. Moving shovels out of the way, she finally found what she was looking for way in the back. The buggy.
Heaving Jack's dead weight onto the back of the buggy, she pushed it out of the shack. Racing around to the stables, as if fighting time, Geri brought out two horses, their names lost to her because Jack refused to tell her their names, but their use obvious. In her youth, Geri had ridden many horses, her dresses hitched up with pins so that she could ride how the men did, with a leg on each side. With lack of funds when she was younger, she hadn't the money for any saddles, so instead had learned to ride like her mother, without it. Her mother had never once been beaten by her father, but had instead been truly loved and appreciated. A luxury that had evaded Geri.
She walked them around to the buggy, and tied the ropes to the harness, doing her best to hook them up how Jack had in the past. Finally thinking that she had it right, or at least adequately tied to the buggy to serve her purpose, she sat atop the brown horse, whose muscles gleamed under the moon, not unlike Geri's happiness. Even though she had committed the unspeakable, she was happy beyond belief.
Riding the horse into the night, she rode for two hours, not bothering to acknowledge the rising sun that was now beating against her soft, pearl skin. The horses didn't seem to notice their heavy burden of the buggy and dead man that followed behind them like an omen, they rode like it was their last romp outside of the stables, of which it most certainly wasn't. Eventually, Geri pulled softly on the reins, the horses obeying her gentle tugging, dragging it to a stop in front of a pond that she had frequently visited when Jack had left for long trips to deliver cattle that she had mostly tended to.
Going to the back of buggy, she pulled Jack's body down, and dragged it to the closest side of the pond, the one that she had bathed in, had relished in the tranquility of. "Sweet dreams, hon." She whispered as she pushed him into the water, the early morning sun rippling against the soft waves that Jack's body made while it slid into the cold wetness. His blank eyes stared up at Geri from under the cloak of the water, almost accusingly saying that he was sorry for the past years, just like a sibling would say sorry when he really wasn't, only saying it so that he could get on with the day. In Jack's case, he was getting on to the bottom of the small pond, his future no longer important to Geri as she unhooked the buggy from the two horses, and instead tied them together gently.
Hitching up her skirt again, she rode home, not bothering to beat the afternoon. She stopped only once, to pick a small purple flower and put it in her red, curly hair.
A/N: Ok yall, I know this is kind of depressing and sort of weird so far, I promise it will get better. Geri is only ridding herself of her past, and things will soon get better...maybe. Well anywayz, I know this is wayyyyyyy different from my other stories of historical romance so far, please tell what you think... -thanks a bunch in advance, wendy