The Workbox; Epilogue

Attempting to adhere to my teacher's stupid insistence that second person must refer to the reader, or that you must know who the narrator is and who the character is exactly, or something like that...

Did I mention that she inadvertently said that I don't know what I'm doing by saying that a writer wrote a whole book in 2nd person but knew what he was doing?^^

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There it is again. There’s a slight echo inside of your brain, and you know that there’s something wrong with this situation. It’s me, after all – your conscience. You don’t understand how you are able to hear a voice when there is nobody else in the room, but I don’t really care. You’ve done wrong, and now you must pay for it, whether it is merely a long and tiresome rant by me, or something much more serious towards your health. Still, you, Samuel Montgomery, are a horrible person, and you’ll never be able to repent for your sins.

Your plan had worked all too well. After the conversation between your wife and yourself, it is all too clear now that she committed the deed. Of course, you had already known this for quite some time now; witnessing her cheating on you, the rage seeming to absorb every fiber of your body, causing you to blindly and coldly do the unthinkable. Perhaps you will rot in hell for the deeds that you have committed, but at this point you actually don’t care a single bit. It was your life that was destroyed; now hers shall crumble before her eyes, just in a more permanent way. A slight smirk passed your lips as you gaze at the blade, recalling the last moments of her lover, John Wayward. Being a carpenter allowed you to bring home the weapon without anyone questioning you, enabling you to hopefully get away with the deed, just like how you had done away with Wayward.

You never liked that city-dweller, and the fact that your wife had the indecency to have an affair with him simply shows how unsavory of a character he was to you. Every inch of your body seemed to overflow with frustration when you looked at the face of the man that your wife seemed to like more than you. Jealousy got to you, distorting your thoughts until you simply couldn’t take it anymore, and resolved to fix it for yourself. It’s better that he’s dead, rotting ever so slowly in the coffin that his own murderer made for him. He can’t hurt anyone else anymore, except possibly you.

Already you can feel the guilt beginning to set in, the “what ifs?” embedding themselves in your brain like maggots invading a corpse. Even though you try not to think of your victim, he breaks through the barrier, occupying your thoughts, layering your senses with a hint of paranoia. What if you get caught? What if somehow, your plan is discovered, causing the whole village to arrest you, likely resulting in an execution of some sort? No, that can’t happen to you, not yet, not now. Your plan still isn’t complete.

She still has to be finished off. Yes, as brutal as that sounds, the only remaining action is to end the life of the woman who ripped your heart in two, the one who pretended to love you, pretended to care about your well being. Whenever you look at her, you feel a lingering sense of betrayal. How could she go off with another man? Sure, her life is simpler than how she lived in the city (there are only so many trinkets a lowly carpenter can make/purchase for his lovely spouse), but you never imagined that she would go astray. It is even written in the Bible that adultery is a sin.

So technically, you aren’t doing anything wrong. You’re simply following God’s will. But nonetheless, you feel a sense of dread when looking at the open door which leads to the bedroom. She has already retired, too shaken by the death of her lover to react in a normal manner. Better for me, you think as you watch darkness win the battle against the light outside. Night has fallen, and now it’s time. Silently, you stand up from your sitting position, and walk towards the room. However, the small voice in your brain is telling you not to do this, that she could change, that you two could still be happy. But you know better. She’ll say that she’s alright, but your wife will never be the same. She’s lost the “love of her life”, just like you, whose lover is still in tangible form but has left in an entirely different manner.

Quickly, she may wake up any second now. You approach the foot of the bed, palms sweating, breath ever so shallow and fast. Can you do this a second time, to the one that you actually love? Yes, you can; you must. Only then will you be able to have revenge on the two-faced city girl who left you for one of her own kind. Only then will you be able to save her from the hardship she will endure if forced to mourn for eternity. Just one quick stab, that’s all it takes. So you raise the blade up, hand shaking, yet you pause for a moment, before finally stabbing down.