It Had to Happen

“The strangest thing,” Carol will say, afterwards, “was that I knew it was right. It was—have you ever seen someone do something, and known it was wrong, without even having to think about it?”

“Of course,” the interrogator will say, “like a wild animal mauling someone.”

“Exactly! But,” she’ll reply, “no, you don’t get it. It—it looked like that, sure. But it was right to do it. It was doing what was best for both of us, for everyone.”

“And you don’t regret your husbands death?”

“No. It had to happen.”

Blood splashes against her face. Her nose wrinkles at the smell, bright and metallic and utterly incapable of covering the noxious reek spilling from Frank’s torso as the beast disembowels him. In the glimpses she catches around its feathered mass his body is a kaleidoscope of yellow and red and purple, flecked with scraps of white where his bones shattered in its grip.

Carol waits for her stomach to rebel. She waits for the taste of bile on her tongue, for an involuntary scream to claw its way out of her throat, for the tears to fill her eyes. She loves Frank, for all his flaws, so shouldn’t she feel something? Shouldn’t she at least want to run, to back away?

It turns towards her, something unpleasantly flesh clutched in its myriad hands, meat squishing between its claws. It’s hard to look at what it’s holding, like her eyes can’t quite focus on its prize—easier to look at the beast, at the beatific expression spread across its many-mouthed face. It doesn’t have eyes but she feels it seeing her, feels its awareness plucking at her soul, at the heart of who she is.

In a second it will turn and leave. It will vanish as quickly as it came, and she’ll be standing there in the blood and gore, waiting for the police to arrive. Waiting for the world to be different than it is.

Afterward, she won’t understand.

She’ll sit in the interrogation room, staring at herself in its mirrored walls, and wonder what’s wrong with her. She’ll ask herself why it spared her, and sob at the realization that she deserves to live.

But in the moment all she can think is that this needs to happen.