Storymania - Tangled Berry Bushes by E Rocco Caldwell

Tangled Berry Bushes
E Rocco Caldwell

His wife was a constant dripping water splashing against a tin pot in a sink. She always complained no matter what he did she would find something else to cry over from the tacky weather mane on top of the house to the oil stain on the garage floor. How he lived with her for twenty years was an example of pure human endurance or incredible sadism. He learned to block her out but recently she had been clipping away at his firewall with volley after volley of complaints concerning her garden and the tangled berry bushes. The only thing she held any form of emotion. It was a lovely garden filled with a variety of colorful flowers next to an ever-growing patch of berry bushes. That was her complaint; she wanted him to do something concerning those damn berry bushes! Everyday she made a point to jab him with criticism over the berry bushes. The damn vines are growing in with my rosette of elegantly designed flowers! I want you to do something about them! He couldn't use an herbicide because it endangered her flowers. She wanted him to physically dig the berry bushes out something that would require a lot of work and energy he didn't have. They extended ten feet wide and at least six feet high thanks to the fence. A growing entity capable of swallowing up the house in time with it's twisting vines. They loomed over conversations and added to the pain he carried in the neck that arrived sometime after his marriage and stayed like a deadbeat in-law.
Everyday she complained if not over the berry bushes than over money or him forgetting to pick up after himself. I'm not your mother she would scream and exploded into a rage. There were times when he nearly struck her but gained control of his anger and she would say, I know you would like to kill me but if you did I would reach up from my grave and pulled you down to hell with me! Comforting to know but not a bit of a deterrent because if he would ever kill her he knew she would be dead! The dead don't matter nor do they reach up and grab people and the best thing about them, they were quiet! That was when the idea came to him like a bolt out of the blue. He figured he would need a few things and a good story as to where she vanished to so he waited for his opportunity. It was an incredibly long wait filled with the continuous nagging but during that time he purchased bleach to clean the area where he would hack her into a bunch of pieces and lye to help dissolve the body while it lay in it's grave. The lye would keep the animals away too. He needed compose to help the grass to grow over the grave once she was buried. He went over the murder bit by bit, check and balance as days turned into weeks and than months. It was appearing that he would never have an opportunity to free himself of the anguish of her voice! God of mercy what had he done to deserve such torment?
Then her mother sent an urgency message asking his wife to come be with her while she convalesced after a difficult operation. Perfect, he thought as his wife told him how long she would be away. She would call her mother and let her know. The thing concerning murder is opportunity and being able to recognize it if a potential murderer desired to be successful hesitation spelled doom and that was his chance and so he went to the shed retrieving the axe while she hunted for her mother's telephone number. All along complaining over how messy the drawers were and how she could never find anything because of his filth. The axe felt refreshing in his hands, as did the blood pumping throughout his body making him lightheaded. Her cacophonous voice fingernails down a blackboard causing him to grind his teeth. She was easy to locate following her discordant sounds and before she could call her mother to tell her she would be coming, he struck her in the head so hard it killed her instantly.
The hacksaw waited in the shed and he propped her up on the workbench and began his grisly task of dismemberment. He never knew a body could bleed so much at each push of the saw. The precision he worked surprised even him and soon his wife was nothing more than blocks of meat. He waited until dark and dug her grave in the flowerbed than shifted lye all over the grave. He brought her out piece after piece until all of her was in the grave and then he dumped the remains of lye over her. Before he covered her with dirt he smiled realizing the nagging had come to an end. He then shoveled compose all over the gravesite and laid grass sod on it.
That night he slept like a baby and in the morning he went about telephoning the necessary people telling them that his wife had gone to care for her sick mother and would return afterwards. No, he hadn't a specific time to her return but he figured at least a month. He than telephoned his mother-in-law, a hag out of a Shakespearean play, that her daughter had been called away on business overseas and would return in a month's time. His mother-in-law figured that would be the time she needed her to recover so told him to tell her no to bother coming at all. He could barely contain himself and said that he would when he saw her next.
Bliss was as sweet as nectar and he enjoyed every bit of it. He never realized what peace could be but the few days after he murdered his wife he discovered it. Why hadn't he killed her sooner he realized? Think of the years of a wasted life he would have saved lost to stress? It was marvelous! He found himself sitting at the dinner table eating meals he enjoyed and sipping wine he wanted. What he loved the most was the quiet! The ticking of the grandfather clock in the foyer and the tapping from outside. What tapping, he suddenly realize it was coming from outside maybe the garden? He rose from the dinner table and rushed to the window and stared out at the starry evening and moon drenched garden with the wind stirring and the tapping. He couldn't figure where it was coming from and then as the wind stopped and so did the tapping.
The next night he was awakening by tapping from the backyard. The window was open and curtains danced in a cool night breeze, the tapping was loud so much so he feared it would wake the neighbors. He was up and out into the backyard but by the time he reached the garden the tapping stopped as did the cool breeze that crystallized the sweat to his face. He stared about the backyard wearing only his briefs, his heart racing. He was positive he heard the tapping just as his ears were filled with his breathing. That was impossible because she was cut up in pieces and incapable of tapping. Besides she was buried beneath dirt and sod, what could she be tapping against? It seemed so real though but dreams were like that he told himself. A dream filled with guilt over what he had done but that would wan.
The police arrived the next day two officers following up on a telephone call her mother made. She called her daughter's place of work and discovered she hadn't been sent out of town on business. The officers questioned him and he stayed with his original story of how his wife went to see his mother-in-law. The officers asked if it was okay for them to check the house and he allowed him. He waited in the foyer frightened that the tapping would start and alert the officers to the garden but it was all in his head! They could never hear it could they? After a short search the officers returned to the foyer and informed him that his wife never made it to her mother's house. He was shocked and began asking what they meant, what they were trying to imply? They believed his wife met with foul play! He wept right there in front of the two officers, the grieving husband with news his wife might be dead. The officers found it strange that he didn't know his wife failed to reach her mother's house. According to him she left nearly two weeks ago.
Within those two weeks the sod began to grow rich green grass but the tapping could still be heard so loud it seemed it would break the glass from the windowpanes. He knew the police was suspicious and it would only be a matter of days before they came back with a complete search warrant and began searching everywhere including the backyard. He had been hasty in killing her and the story he created feeble. Now the tapping was coming all the time and when the police arrive it would take them right to where she was buried! He had to stop it! He raced downstairs and retrieve a shovel and with the madness of the most insane he went to the back and started shoveling up the sod and dirt. She was dead! He cut her up into pieces and she was dead! The shovel struck the dirt and he nearly stumbled fighting to stay standing he was all over the garden. A night wind blew up and then he realized he had been a fool! She wasn't tapping from her grave it was the weather mane on the house touching gently against its post. His eyes could see it tapping and tapping again! The discovery made him laugh because he knew he wasn't insane after all! What was it that she used to say? Oh, yes, that she would reach up out of her grave and grab him. He laughed harder and turned to go but as he did suddenly something grabbed his ankle. Fear shot through his body as he imagined his dead wife's hand on his ankle pulling him down into the grave! He had to escape but the more he pulled at his ankle the tighter the grab and suddenly flashes in his eyes and pain erupted in his heart and he dropped dead from a heart attack induced from fear.
The next morning after neighbors called reporting him in his backyard, the police arrived finding him dead. The police examiner was positive he died of a heart attack. The question was the sheer fear lodged in his face what caused it? After a little more examination of the hole he dug they found the remains of his wife. The detective was baffled by one other thing the berry bush wrapped tight around the dead man's ankle had tangled around it but the man hadn't tied to remove it. It was as if the bush reached up and grabbed him!