[WARNING: THIS STORY CONTAINS THEMES RELATING TO DOMESTIC VIOLENCE]

Lloyd set the urn down on the end of the dock and took a seat next to it.

“Well, here you go, Ellie Mae: your final resting place.  I know it’s not what you asked for – traveling down the Mississippi from the headwaters in Itasca to the gulf in Louisiana – but shit, why would I waste my time driving a bitch like you all the way up there?”

Lloyd hocked a wad of snot into his mouth and spat it all over the urn.  A sickly green-brown glob slid down its unadorned surface.

“Nope, you’re getting poured into this nasty excuse for a pond right here, where the bullheads and catfish can swim through your ashes, maybe swallow bits of you and shit you back out, which is more than you deserve.

“I know what you’d say if you were here right now.  You’d start in about my drinking and how abusive I was throughout the course of our marriage.  But I figure I never would have started drinking in the first place if you’d have just shut your damned mouth once in a while.  Always wanting to talk to me, always wanting to share your feelings, always dreaming big about moving away from the farm and seeing the world.  Like anything out there could be better than here.

“Or maybe you’d yammer on about me steppin’ out on you, as if I had any choice in the matter.  All you had was one kid, one goddamned kid, and you went all to shit.  Bags under your eyes, tits all deflated from the breastfeeding, scar on your belly from the surgery.  How was I supposed to fuck you when you looked like that?  Ain’t enough blue pills at the pharmacy to make me get it up for you.

“And then, for the coop de gracie, you poisoned my boy.  Put all those thoughts in his head about going off to college, leaving the farm, getting away from his roots.  Honest to God, my boy is a dentist, walking around in a pretty white smock, thinking he’s too good for the farm.  Too good for me!  I should have smacked the shit out of him like I used to do to you.  Boy could have used some discipline.”

Lloyd stood, unzipped, and started urinating on the urn.  “So yeah, no trip down the Mississippi for you, Ellie Mae.”  Finished, he shook off the last few drops and put himself away.  “Instead, you got a nudge down the stairs when you wasn’t lookin’, courtesy of yours truly.  Not sure how you felt about it, but that was the best damn trip I ever been a part of.”

Chuckling, Lloyd stooped to grab the urn, lifting it above his head with both hands.  “Rest in pieces, you worthless cun–.”

A bolt of lightning zigzagged out of the clouds, striking the upraised urn.  Ellie Mae’s ashes exploded into the air, carried away by the wind that had kicked up; Lloyd did a little dance as electricity shot through his body, then pitched forward into the muddy water.

The ensuing roll of thunder sounded like laughter.

Bio

Andrew Monge (Twitter: @MuchAdoAboutNil) lives in Minnesota with his wife and kids.  A computer programmer by day and a voracious reader by night, he is a lifelong introvert who only finds his voice while writing.  His work has appeared in Punk Noir Magazine, Trash Cat Lit, and Shotgun Honey.

Photo by Bas van der Horst on Unsplash