At 1 am, Jeremy heard his wife in the kitchen moaning again. He knew she was having another one of her spells that she refused to see a psychiatrist about. Because she was unpredictable and crazy when she was having one of those spells at night, Jeremy and his wife, Vita, began sleeping in separate bedrooms.
After Jeremy heard Vita rattle through the kitchen knife drawer in the kitchen and believed she had grabbed a knife, he locked his bedroom door being too tired to deal with her nonsense and a little scared that if she got in his room she would try to stab him.
He heard her moaning and shuffling down the hall toward his room and heard her trying to open his bedroom door. After she gave up and quieted down, he wondered what had made her like that and how he could convince her to see a psychiatrist. And he fell asleep planning on finding a way to get her some help by persuasion or by force the next day.
Jeremy woke up that morning, ambled to the kitchen, no wife. He tapped lightly on her bedroom door, no answer. He opened the bedroom door, and she was not there. Jeremy phoned her family and friends. No one knew where she was.
Two days later, Jeremy received bad news. Vita had drowned to death in the pond a thirty minute walk from their home. A suicide, the police said. Jeremy sobbed and sobbed and kept thinking if only … if only … I acted sooner and forced her to get help.
When he went to bed crying that night and fell asleep, he saw Vita in a dream drowning with her hands reaching for him. Then she began trying to pull him under the water with her. At 1 am, he woke up shaking for a moment until, relieved,he realized it had only been a bad dream. A moment later, he felt something slowly entering into him. He convulsed. His mind went blank. He began moaning and he shuffled out of his house heading toward the pond where he waded into the pond and vanished into the suffocating, dark waters.
Bob Boyd