Liberation Day: A Friday Flash by Susan Helene Gottfried

Priscilla didn’t know why that detail stayed with her. One detail, one small moment that had started a revolution she had nothing to do with. Not her. White, relatively privileged. It wasn’t her battle. Why had that struck her so deeply?

Rosa Parks had started the entire Civil Rights movement because, quite simply, she’d been too tired to stand.

Priscilla had tried sitting down. She’d spent a day sitting down. It had been the most boring day she could remember, and no one had noticed. Paige had been too young. Okay, Gregg had noticed. He’d come home to find the breakfast dishes still on the table, the newspaper not in the recycling, and the skillet still dirty.

He’d taken notice, all right. With a backhand across the face.

It hadn’t been hard enough to send her spinning into the island, where he would push her cheek down to the cool granite, kick her feet apart, and show her who was boss. But it had left a bruise.

More than anything, Gregg loved to leave visible bruises. He knew Priscilla wouldn’t leave the house wearing the proof, and keeping Priscilla hidden away had been his main goal. Kept, caged. When someone like Priscilla was too tired to keep standing, no one was around to care. No one ever saw her. Not the way they’d seen Rosa Parks.

Priscilla wouldn’t be responsible for starting a revolution. Not of the kind that probably needed to be started, where men like Gregg would get theirs.

No, Gregg would wind up being an isolated case of getting his.

Priscilla let out a deep breath. She had to be okay with that. There wasn’t any other choice.

So, after taking a shower and wiping it down, just like Gregg’s good wife always did, she got dressed. Into jeans, not the slovenly clothes she wore to clean the house, or the tailored suits she wore when she had to be the unblemished, proper wife.

She put on the pair of jeans she’d kept hidden in her closet. The pair she’d paid cash for. The pair Gregg didn’t know about. Ditto for the plain black t-shirt. Her favorite black pumps, those she could wear. Those could be missing, if anyone even knew enough to look for them.

Her next stop would be the bank. Then to pick Paige up after school. The car was loaded with Paige’s things.

But first, she had to stop. To pause. To take the collection of pictures she’d been making, the pictures that showed every single bruise, each one taken with Gregg’s newspaper right there, along the purple, so there could be no doubt of the dates of when she’d received each loving gift.

The plan was to leave them scattered on the floor. To make it look like she’d dropped them and let them flutter where they would – except, if anyone knew to look, they’d realize they were all right side up. They’d been put there, deliberately. Which might not surprise anyone who thought they knew Priscilla. She seemed deliberate, restrained, never able to be spontaneous or fun.

Even this. This wasn’t spontaneous. She’d been planning it for months. The bank accounts, the cars, the way to obliterate her paper trail and just … disappear. There was enough cash in that one account alone to keep her going for a number of years if she was careful.

Priscilla had learned to be careful.

Or so she thought. She paused in the entrance to the kitchen. The bastard had bled more than she’d expected. She’d thought if she left the knife in him, it would stop the blood flow. And she’d be damned if she was going to clean up one more of his messes. Those days were over.

She’d miss that meat cleaver. It had inspired many fantasies, each one easier than the reality had been. She doubted she’d be able to leave the memory of what she’d done so easily, but what was done was done. Sometimes, there was a price to pay. Rosa Park’s price had been fame. A place in history and a world that looked on her with pride and admiration.

It seemed excessive. Silly, even. Rosa Parks had been tired. That was all.

Priscilla understood that. Understood how the tired could seep into your bones.

She opened the front door and left the first of the pictures in the front hall. If she left them around his body like she’d planned, they’d be blood-soaked, and no one would have been able to see them. No one would know, and she doubted anyone would be smart enough to check the memory card on the camera she was leaving behind. Gregg, who thought of everything, who was careful that way, hadn’t thought to. Why would anyone else?

She left the pictures in a trail leading to his body. Then, without stopping to admire her art, Priscilla put her purse on her shoulder, grabbed her keys, and walked out, her heels clicking on Gregg’s precious marble floors.

He’d once told her he wanted to spend eternity laid out on a marble slab.

Now, he could.


Susan Helene Gottfried is the author of the five-book (and counting!) Trevolution series of Rock Fiction. An editor and professional book reviewer as well, you can find her empire at West of Mars.