And to add to everything else, there was Beth to support as well.   “But how?” he thought.   Without work, or the dole, he had been forced to beg, skulking around wherever he went, waiting for a chance to put the bite on Jack or Kevin or Jon Mayron.   But Jack and Kevin were on the dole themselves, and were only just making ends meet as it was, without having anything they could afford to lend to Bob.   And Mandy and Jon were living out of their means in a middle class area, when Jon was only really on a working class wage.   And with three children to put through university as well.   “At least I’ve been spared that expense,” thought Bob, then he felt guilty about feeling relief at the way Colleen and Rosemary were throwing away their futures.

Even with the occasional ninety-nine-year-loan from Kevin, Jack, or Jon, the Bennetts only managed to stay alive at all due to the money Beth brought in, working three days a week, doing housework for rich bitches who were too liberated to lower themselves to doing any sort of housework.   Instead they struck a blow for the equality of the sexes, by paying other women a very meagre salary to do their cleaning for them.   Bob had been very reluctant to allow Beth to work a third day a week.   It was bad enough for a proud woman like Beth to have to do housework for other women at any time, although she liked to boast about being an independent woman.   But it was so much worse now that Beth was forced to be the sole wage earner in their family.   Although she had been nagging Bob to allow her to work a five-day week, he knew the work was hell for her.

Bob supposed she did not mean to make it harder for him, did not mean to nag.   “Beth is basically a good woman,” he said aloud.   But he knew it was very hard for her, and, through no fault of his own, Bob was only making it all the harder for her.

“No, it’s better like this,” thought Bob, placing the chair beneath the light bulb.   At first he had considered removing the bulb and then putting a finger into the live socket, but that was likely to blow out the wiring throughout the entire house.   “As if Beth didn’t have enough troubles,” he thought.   Besides, it was not a very reliable method.   Bob was just as likely as not to be thrown across the room by the electrical charge, and so end up badly injured, but not dead.

Then there would be all of the medical bills, which Beth could not afford to pay.

No!   That was what all of this was supposed to be about: saving Beth any more aggravation.   And so, Bob had settled for the tried and true method of hanging himself!

The house the Bennetts rented was very old, with old-fashioned high ceilings.   A naked bulb attached to a cord hanging a metre-and-a-half down from the ceiling lighted the main bedroom.

Stepping up onto the high-back wooden chair, Bob reached for the light cord, which he twisted into a loop, having already removed the bulb.   He placed his head through the loop to test it for size.   Beneath him, the wooden chair rocked and rolled about in protest, as though the weight of a man standing was somehow magically greater than the weight of the same man sitting, which it had often managed without protest.

As the chair shifted slightly, the cord tightened against Bob’s neck, his skin was pinched badly by the cord, which he reached up to loosen.   Then realising that the minor discomfort would soon pass, he released the cord and lowered his hands.

Bob paused for a moment, as though to take in the last moments of his life, then moved to step off the chair.   At that moment, though, a leg broke off the chair, and Bob was hurtled into space.   For a moment he swung like a pendulum then the weight of his body was pulled down toward the centre of the Earth by the attraction of gravity, and his vision began to swim.   Bob was filled with an overwhelming agony, a sense of loss at giving up at life, a sense of regret that his whole life did not flash before his eyes for one last revue, as always happened in the soap opera novels.

Bob hung from the light cord for a few minutes, in increasing pain, and yet without the approach of death.   Finally he reached up to untie the cord around his neck, however, he soon realised it had tightened too much to be untied.   He tried to call for help, only to discover that he could not raise his voice above a whimper, too quiet to be heard by anyone in the next room, let alone by any would-be rescuers walking past out in the street.

Finally Bob decided to try to buck his body in the hope of finishing the job that he had set out to do.   If his neck had been too strong to snap at the initial jolt, he thought, perhaps repeated jolts would do the trick.   He managed to jolt his body up and down, forcing the cord to contract, but all that did was send bolts of pain racing through his spine.

Bob had almost resigned himself to hanging from the light cord for the rest of the week, until Beth returned, when the screws connecting the electric light cord to the ceiling gave way beneath Bob’s weight.   The ancient light cord snapped clean through, and Bob was hurtled downward.

He rebounded off the now three-legged chair, to land knees-first upon the double bed, which responded like a trampoline to hurl him headfirst against the old-fashioned glass-fronted bric-a-brac cabinet, which stood at the end of the bed.

Bob’s head went through the glass doors of the cabinet like a rock, shattering the doors and the fancy crystal vases and cups within the cabinet.

For the last instant of his life, Bob’s awareness had been localised within his head, the rest of his body seemed not to exist, as a hundred million tiny shards of glass exploded into his eyes and skin.   In a split second, his eyes were gouged out, his nose and one ear were sliced off, large shards tore through both of his cheeks, and glass poured into his nostrils and mouth, ripping apart his throat and nasal passages, causing an experience of pain beyond any sensation which could be lived through.

In only seconds it was over.   Blood and brains were splashed across the disintegrated glass and crystal.

Bob Bennett was dead!

THE END
© Copyright 2011
Philip Roberts, Melbourne, Australia