Enjoy The Silence
Written by Melanie Alford 1989

"AR-THUURRR!!"

It was quite possible that no other name in the history of man had been spoken (or rather screamed) as many times as Arthur McMillan's had. Certainly nothing had ever been screamed out quite as loudly, or with as much vehemence. "Arthur! Clean out the cat litter! Arthur! Get in here and do your share of the laundry! Arthur! You'd better not be sneaking off to meet those loser friends of yours! You HEAR me, Arthur?!"

He heard, loud and clear. "Do your own laundry, your jabbering old nag, that's what you're there f--"

"Don't you dare talk back to me! I don't need to take this garbage!”

"Yeah, that's for ME to do, isn't it! I didn't marry you to be your slave! I'm sick and tired..."

"--AND sorry AND lazy AND worthless! You’re some husband all right! Lorraine down the street doesn't have this much trouble with her husband!”

"Lorraine down the street doesn't have balls like yours--"

"Don't cut me off when I'm talking!! Typical man, you just have to dominate everything, don't you? You just HAVE to step on everyone and everything, you never--"

"Shut up," he muttered under his breath as her torrent continued. He clenched his fists and screwed his eyes shut in a futile effort to get away from the noise. "Shut up, shut up, you never shut up, if only you would just shut up..."

Of course nothing would shut her up. Nothing short of homicide, anyway. He didn't want to go through all the legal red tape of killing her, so he opted for the less messy way out: he divorced her. He was set free and within a week was touring the singles scene again, a free man. It was then that he met Jessica.

Jessica was incredible, a raven-haired beauty who was as quiet and mysterious as she was lovely. No one knew that much about the woman, but Arthur fell hard for her. He spent increasing amounts of his spare time with her, taking her to parties, going to endless dinners, all the while telling her the story of his own life, from his childhood up to his unfortunate marriage, engaging himself and her in stimulating, fascinating (if one sided) conversation. That was the only really odd thing about Jessica. It wasn't that her speech was restricted to just "yes" or "no"--the fact was she did not speak at all. She nodded, smiled, shrugged, clicked her tongue appropriately--but she did not open her mouth to utter one word. Arthur couldn't have been more pleased. After living with ex-wife's constant shrieking, Jessica's silence was heavenly. A bit odd, but then very few wives are perfect. Arthur made her his that summer.

As they settled into married life, Arthur tried to stay home and be the good husband, but he couldn't do it. He liked going out and partying with the guys. He tested his new wife, staying out first one hour late, then two hours, then all night, without calling home or giving any notice beforehand. Amazingly, when he finally did return home, her reaction was always the same: never did she say a word against his absences. Arthur couldn't believe his luck. If he had tried that with the former Mrs. McMillan, he'd still be hearing about it. He didn't know why Jessica didn't comment, and he didn't really bother to think about it--at first. He went about partying in earnest without a second thought. At least, until one night, when after bragging about how his new wife had nothing to say about him going out whenever he felt like it, Arthur heard a buddy snicker, "Yeah, probably can't wait to to get rid of ya! The mouse plays while the cat's away, know what I mean?" And the whole bar laughed.

Arthur didn't laugh. Though he affably shrugged it off, the rest of the evening was spent wondering how much truth his friend had struck upon. He had chalked it up to Jessica being a good, patient wife, but hadn't his previous marriage drilled home the point that there WAS no such thing? Why hadn't Jessica ever spoken up on his behavior? Could the reason be that she WAS hiding something from him-- something that his nightly absences made easy to conceal? He left the bar suddenly, making some excuse that his friends saw through and had a good laugh at, thinking him pussywhipped. He didn't pay any attention to them and went straight home. He did not go out the next night.

Giving up a longtime habit of drinking and partying is hard, but Arthur did it, resolving to stay at home and discourage any potential signs of trouble. None ever surfaced though, and he relaxed, deciding his stupid pals had made him paranoid. Nevertheless he didn't go out much after that, because after all one couldn't be too careful. Besides, who needed to go out? He had all he needed right here; his gorgeous, silent wife, and his TV chair, and...

He frowned. He didn't want his damn TV chair. He didn't want to be stuck in the house every night. Of course it was a self-imposed exile, but it was because of HER. Where did Jessica get off, making him give up his social life like this? How would SHE feel, if he suddenly told her she had to stop seeing HER friends--

Arthur stopped short in the middle of this thought. Jessica didn't go out, except for when they went out together. As far as he knew, Jessica didn't HAVE any friends. Of course she didn't. To have friends, you had to talk to people.

"Why don't you ever go to visit Mike's wife, or Alice or somebody?" he asked her one night. But she just shook her head and smiled.

"Why don't you ever talk to me?" he then asked. "You've never said a word to me. It's strange, but this is the first time I remember acknowledging it. You've never talked to me, Jess."

She looked up at him, questioningly.

"That's right," he mused, almost to himself. He couldn't believe it. "Not one word. It's incredible. Are you deaf, or a mute or something?"

No answer.

He raised an eyebrow. "Is it some religious vow you've taken? Were you even allowed to marry me?"

Not a word.

His eyes narrowed. "You DO speak English... don't you?"

Arthur was stumped. Nothing he said would get an answer and he spent most of the night trying. The reply was always the same: none. He posed question after question and only stopped at daybreak, partly because he was stunned at what time it had gotten to be, but mostly because his throat was hoarse. He gave it up for a while.

In two days his wife's strange behavior caught his attention again, when the phone rang and Jessica didn't bother to answer it. Annoyed, he took the call and then took up the argument again. "Why didn't you answer the phone just now?" he asked her. "What's the matter? You ARE deaf, aren't you?"

She shook her head, looking at him.

"Has this happened before? How many important phone calls have I missed?"

She didn't bother to answer.

"Are you going to explain this to me?" he shouted.

She just smiled. Arthur turned away, disgusted. He stormed out of the house, headed for the bar--and then stopped in his tracks. He had to go back. If a phone call came in for him, he'd miss it.

From that day on he began actively badgering her. Being considerate enough not to yak on the phone for hours was one thing. Not answering it at all-- that was just plain bizarre. He spent the better part of a week trying to get answers about the telephone, and when that turned up nothing he tried the silence angle in general. He questioned her again and again-- he had to, there was little else for him to do at home while he waited for calls. He was doing his job as well as he could from home; the office hadn't seen him for almost a month now.

Life was becoming tedious. He did nothing all day except wait for calls and ask Jessica what the hell was wrong with her. It was something to do, and it filled the silence, which was starting to get on his nerves. It was always THERE, following his every sentence, filling every room of the house, just as loud and grating as--

As his first wife's constant talking had been.

Finally the day came when an important client was coming to town and would see Arthur nowhere except in his office. Arthur was at the same time relieved and full of dread. He didn't want to stay in the house another second, yet he dreaded leaving it. He did leave, though; ducking out a whole hour early, shouting goodbye from the driveway. Of course, there was no answer.

He went to work that morning reveling in the different sounds--birds chirping, traffic blaring; even the hush of wind blowing past his ears was friendly and welcome. When he stepped into his office, he felt as if he'd come back from the dead. All the usual office noise clutter rattled joyfully in his ears; keyboards clacking, phones ringing, machines humming, even secretaries jabbering on. It was glorious. He was so happy he almost didn't notice at first that his clients were nowhere to be found.

He frowned at his empty office. He asked several interns and temps where the clients had gone, to no avail. Finally the copy boy remembered some people standing in the office for a good portion of time early that morning, only to finally leave a few moments before Arthur had arrived. Further investigation finally turned up a teeny-tiny post-it note from Arthur's secretary, stuck to the telephone. It read:

Clients say sorry to miss you. Tried to call and resched.; no answer. Clients going to Farber.

Farber was Arthur's company's competition. He crumpled the note, furious and defeated. He called his secretary and screamed at her to make himself feel better, and then he went home in the dark. He was going to give that wife of his a piece of his mind.

Since the whole day had been wasted at the office, the whole evening was naturally wasted in traffic. By the time he finally reached home it was a quarter past eight and pitch black out. He burst into the house, furious. Noting vaguely that something was missing, he shouted for Jessica several times before finally finding her sitting alone in the darkened kitchen.

"What the hell have you done?" he shouted at her. "Did my clients call here today? Why is the TV off?" That was what was missing, he realized, the mediating noise from the TV had been silenced. "Why didn't you call me? Did you even ANSWER the phone? Don't you realize what important clients these were? We lost the account, Jessica, they went to Farber instead of us! We've lost hundreds of thousands of dollars!"

As always, she gave him no answer.

"Are you just going to sit there and smile?" he exploded. "Don't you realize how important this is to me? No, you don't, do you? You've never cared about anything I do! You've never once asked me, when I come home at night, ‘How was your day, dear? What happened to you today?’ You've never even asked what I DO for a living! You just don't give a damn about my life! Do you?"

Silence.

Arthur was only enraged by her tight-lipped reaction. "That's all you ever do! All you do is sit in this house, day in and day out, and you never say a word! You won't take my calls, you won't talk to anybody, you've never told me anything about yourself--how do I know what you used to be? How do I know who I've married? You could be a psychopath, or a prostitute, or--" He was trying to think of something really awful, something that would make her jump up in fury and cry, scream, "It isn't true!" or at least frown--anything besides that horrible, unblinking smirk! "--or a Democrat!! How do I know you're not some criminal, or harlot, or God knows what kind of monster you are! Huh? Do you think I needed to marry some crazy troublemaker, some neo-feminist; is that what this crazy silent treatment is? Some crazy empowerment thing you crazy broads came up with? For God's sake, don't just SIT there!! Will you open your damn mouth and SAY SOMETHING--"

His stream of curses was cut short as something hard and sharp caught in his throat. For a second he thought it was a bit of food from lunch that had dislodged from his teeth, and caught in his esophagus. Then he realized that the intruder was coming from outside his body. And yet... it was inside. So that meant...

It was then that he saw his wife's mouth had indeed opened. A long, purplish, rubbery tendon of muscle and flesh was extending from her lips, stretching across the kitchen. The end, a fanged barb, was burrowed in his own neck.

Arthur choked and gasped, gripping the thing in a frantic attempt to pull it out of his throat, to no avail. He tried painfully to make some question, but all that came were strangled coughs. His vocal chords were mangled and useless. He stood there, terrified and unable to scream, as his lovely raven-haired wife leaped from her chair and lunged at him, arms outstretched, tipped with claws aiming for his heart.

+++

The morning light filtered grainily in through the kitchen window, on the red-spattered wall and the sopped kitchen floor, upon the mutilated body of Arthur McMillan. In the doorway, staring at the room, Jessica sighed wearily. "I'm sorry honey," she spoke softly to the morning light. "But you just wouldn't shut up."

She picked up her suitcase, took one last look around the reddened kitchen, and turned around and left the house.

The End

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