Short Story / Jealous Rage pt.2

        The decision Victoria made was not an easy one but she made it quickly.  At dinner, she told David about a report she read that stated while under the influence of Nodoff, some patients take more than is necessary because they forgot they already took one.  She went on to tell him they advised a trustworthy family member should hold on to them.
“I don’t buy it.”  David said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I haven’t had any side effects so far.  I think this is the ticket.”
“Well, I’m glad you finally found a medication that works for you, I was just trying to be cautious.”  Disappointed her attempt to control David’s pills was not going as planned, Victoria listened as her husband unknowingly offered another idea.
“You know, I was thinking yesterday, maybe you should get a prescription.”
“I should?”  She questioned, “Why me?”
“I…well…you said the other day you’ve been feeling tired, that’s all.”
While she could have turned her husband’s poorly worded attempt to help in to an argument, she let it slide and simply agreed it might be a good idea.  The next morning she called her doctor and after loading and unloading the twins several different locations, she has her own prescription of Nodoff.
That night, Victoria smiled at her husband then turned the page of her book as she sat in bed next to David.  She was not smiling because he had successfully placed his empty glass on the nightstand next to him, she was smiling because he clearly had no idea his wife dosed him.
Before they went to bed, Victoria poured a glass of water for her husband to drink with his pill.  While he brushed his teeth in the bathroom upstairs, she poured the contents of a sealed container she had hidden in a kitchen cupboard, in to his water while she was downstairs.  Earlier in the day, she took two of the five milligram Nodoffs her doctor had prescribed and ground them into a fine powder.  A task made easier with her mortar and pestal.
“Ta dah!”  David said, pointing to the nightstand.
“Good job.”  She replied.  “You made it through another week without dropping a glass.”
“I think I’m going to turn in.”  He said as he kissed her goodnight.
“You don’t mind if I read my book do you?”
“That’s fine.”
“Are you sure my light wont keep you up?”
“Nothing can really keep me up once I take that pill.”
“You have a point there.”  She said after giving him another kiss.  “Thanks hon, I think it will be a real page turner.”
Over an hour later, Victoria realized she had not turned a single page since her husband finished drinking his water.  In fact, she didn’t even make it through the first sentence before her mind started reeling.  She just sat there, in the soft glow of her bedside light, thinking.  While she thought about many things, she never once thought about her husband.  Thoughts of concern like if she gave him too much or what effect it would have on him never entered her mind.  Jealousy had begun to take a hold of her heart.
As she blankly stared at the second page of her book, David sat straight up, threw the sheets covering him on to her lap and slowly started to walk towards the closet.
“David?  Honey?”  She called out
“Yeah?”  David stopped mid-step, his hand reaching for the closet door.
“What are you doing?
“I was just going to go to the bathroom.”
“Okay.”  She said, pausing for a moment.  “The bathroom is over there.”  She continued, pointing towards the glow of the night light on the other side of the room.
“That’s right.”  He said with a chuckle.  “Must be a little sleepy still.”
Victoria pondered if he was actually awake or is he was experiencing what they described in the reports.  When he came out of the bathroom, he confidently walked over to the closet door, opened it and flipped on light switch
“What are you doing now?”  Victoria asked as she shielded her eyes from the harsh light.
“I was going to make some breakfast.  Is that okay?”
“It’s fine but that’s the closet again.”
“Oh, sorry.”  He replied as he closed the door and began to walk towards the bedroom door with an embarrassed look on his face.  He stopped in the doorway and asked, “Are you going to get up now?”
“Sure, just give me a minute.”
David smiled and turned to walk down the hall as she sat in awe of what was happening.   It was two eighteen in the morning and he was going on like the sun was shining and it was nine in the morning.
Victoria walked into the kitchen, wrapped tightly in a terry cloth bathrobe and sat across the table from her husband.  David sat in a pair of boxer shorts before a tall glass of milk and the box of donuts Victoria picked up while at the grocery store earlier that day.  She sat and watched him inhale to chocolate ones before stopping to drink a quarter of the glass of milk.  He proceeded to eat another three before stopping again, this time to offer her one, which she politely declined.  She watched in disbelief as he ate the entire dozen, even the ones with sprinkles, which he does not care for, claiming the sprinkles are a waste.
When he was done licking his fingers, he drank the last of the milk and put the glass in the dishwasher before going back upstairs.  Victoria followed after she threw the empty box away and found him getting back in to bed.
“Before you fall asleep.”  She said from the doorway, “Could you close the window?”
David did what she asked him to do and was asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.  Victoria smiled and turned off her nightstand light.
-—---—---—---—-----
Victoria’s plan was a go but with only three weeks until the judging began, she would have to act fast.  The first strike, she decided, had to be serious but not obvious.  She scoped out Samantha’s backyard while the girls played in theirs and picked out possible targets as she drove past her front yard, both on her way to the store and back.  With so many options, she did not know where to begin until she parked the car and saw destruction hanging on the garage wall.
After a little coaxing, Victoria managed to convince David to put on the dark blue jeans and black hooded sweatshirt she laid out on the settee after he fell asleep.  He listened intently as they stood face to face in the garage.  Victoria explained that she needed him to complete a special task, one that he could not let anyone see him perform.
“So, it’s like a mission?”  David questioned as he donned a black knit stocking hat.
“Yes, like a secret mission.”  She replied as she handed him a limb lopper.
David held a red rubber tipped handle in each hand and pulled the loppers open.  The foot lone, razor sharp blades briefly glistened in the moonlight before he snipped them shut.  Victoria waited under the garage eave as her husband zigzagged his was across Mrs. Blunt’s backyard.  By hiding in hedges and behind bushes, David carried out his mission with ease, making it back in less than ten minutes.
“What’s next?”  David eagerly whispered.
“Next?”  Victoria was surprised by her husband’s willingness.  “How ‘bout the front yard?”
David smiled and headed out along his previous path.  Victoria could barely hold back her laughs when her middle-aged husband, dropped to his stomach and army crawled along the hedge between the two houses.  By the time she regained her composure, David leapt into view, hit the ground hard and rolled behind his shop.
“You didn’t even see me, did you?”  David proudly asked.
“No, I didn’t.”  Victoria replied as she pulled him into the garage.  “Where did you jump from?”
“Mrs. Blunt’s garage.”
“You were on her garage?”  Victoria asked as she hung the loppers on the wall.
Yeah, when I finished off Samantha’s front yard, I hopped from old lady Blunt’s central air unit, onto her roof and ran across it to the garage.”
“Impressive.”  She commented.
“I thought so.  No one can see you if you’re above the window line.”
“Okay secret agent, time for bed.”
-—---—---—---—---—-—
When Samantha Cooper was upset, she was a force to be reckoned with.  Fifteen minutes after she pt her contacts in, she was past upset, well on her way to furious. On that particular sunny morning, she stood in front of a twelve by eight foot section of her garden and cursed whatever evil had been unleashed on her precious flowers.  She cursed everything from the deer, rabbits and gophers to delinquent teens drugged out of their adolescent minds.  She even cursed the Association President, who explained that while they do live in a gated community, the fence stops when it merges with the hills where the beautiful firework displays are set off.  This comment made Samantha irate and the assumption that she could be pacified by the mention of fireworks appalled her.  She dismissed the Association President and attempted to salvage what she could.
-—---—---—---—---—--
The cheerful sound of little girls at play had been replaced with an eerie silence Victoria knew all to well.  As a mother of three girls, she learned that the trouble they cause triples when all of them are involved.  She grabbed her travel mug of coffee and headed outside.  As she made her way past abandoned bikes and over the chalk murals on the driveway, she heard Samantha ranting in the distance.  With a hastened step, she made her way to the backyard where she found the girls.
Only slightly relieved, she made her way across Mrs. Blunt’s yard to the patio set where the girls were sitting in the sun eating donuts.  Mrs. Blunt told Victoria that when she walked out to get her paper earlier that morning, she heard Samantha going on about a beats that terrorized her front yard, screaming about how she’ll kill it.  Ever since then she had sat outside enjoying her morning tea, listening to the drama over the hedge.
“I hope the girls weren’t bothering you Lynn.”  Victoria asked.
“Nonsense my dear.”  Mrs. Blunt replied.  To Victoria’s knowledge, she was the only neighbor whom Mrs. Blunt let address her by her first name.  Lynn wasn’t a proper woman but she was an older woman who clung to many old world traditions.  Letting only close friends address her casually was on of them.  “We ladies were just enjoying a small brunch.”  Lynn continued and smiled at the girls.
“Well thank you for indulging the girls.”
“Nothing at all.  Besides, what’s this I hear that you wont let the girls eat donuts?”
        Victoria shot a glance at the girls before she explained how David snacks on them all night and takes the rest with him to work.  “So I told him, if he cant learn to share with the rest of us then I wont buy them.”  Victoria finished as he girls giggled.
        “Well I hope you don’t mind, I let the girls have some.”  Lynn said.  “I have some tea on also if you care for some.”
        “No thanks, I have some coffee.”  Victoria replied as she hoisted her mug.  “So, what exactly happened over there?”  She innocently asked with a nod towards the hedge her husband recently belly crawled under.
        “She claims.”  Lynn began.  “In the middle of the night, some animal tore up her front and back gardens, shredded rare plants and ate a bunch of her flowers.”
        “What do you think happened?”
        “It’s tough to say but whatever it was, I’m positive the animal wasn’t a little rabbit or deer.”
        “Why not?”  The twins asked.
        “Well, if it was an animal,” Lynn explained to the girls.  “They would have left little bunny footprints.”
        “Oh.”  The girls comment.
        “Also, if it was an animal, they would have eaten the whole plant.”  Lynn told them a story about a plot of prize-winning hostas she has before she moved to the gated community.  Each spring, they doubled in size and had grown for years with minimum care.  She came home late after a dinner party and spotted the deer mid-bite.  That single deer had eaten six prize-winning plants, flower and all, leaving only three-inch high stalks sticking out of the ground.  “I snuck over myself and looked at Samantha’s mess.”  Lynn continued.  “Her plants were cut clean through.  Whoever snipped them used something sharp but didn’t do a good job making it look like an animal did it.”
        “So, you think someone did it on purpose?”  Victoria asked as they all watched Samantha throw the last handful of decapitated flowers into a wheelbarrow.
        “Well, they weren’t accidentally cut in the middle of the night dear.  All I know is something stumbled across my roof around three this morning and it wasn’t a deer.”
        After her morning chat with the Girls, Victoria realized she needed to rethink her plans.  Lynn was clearly suspicious and confident foul play was involved.  David, while efficient, was unpredictable and she feared the delusion he had about the secret missions mixed with his altered thought pattern could get them caught.
        She put the girls down for their nap and sat out on her back porch.  In the afternoon sun, she created a detailed list of new attacks and a separate one for the items she needed to get ready before hand.  She also decided something needed to be done with David, to make him more obedient.  After she made the girls a snack and sent them out to play, she searched the Internet and found an abundance of ideas.