Thou Shalt Not | Thou Shall
“And there’s a storm you’re starting now…"
“Overhead, the wild huntsman of the storm passed in one blare of mingled noises; screaming wind, straining timber, lashing rope’s end, pounding block, and bursting sea contributed, and I could have thought there was another, a more piercing, a more human note, dominated all, like the wailing of an angel; I could have thought I knew the angel’s name and her wings were black.” –Robert Louis Stevenson, The Wrecker
Daniela watched Ian pour himself another glass of 30-year-old Macallan Double Cask… expensive whiskey they could no longer afford. His unsteady hands contrasted with the resolute expression on his face. There was a time when she had admired his apparent determination, seeing it as passion rather than what it was… self-delusion. Now, all she could see were the emptied bottles, manuscripts that never materialized, and a man who had lost himself somewhere between ambition and addiction… limited by the insecurities and inabilities he’d never overcome.
She remembered the first time he hit her, the shock of it more painful than the blow itself. She had convinced herself it was a mistake, an aberration, that would never happen again.
It did.
And each time, Ian—the part of him she once loved—faded even more. Replaced by this dissolute stranger who stood before her, staring out the window as if searching for something—perhaps the man he wished to be but never could. And that angered him.
Ian watched the squall, not flinching as the fat raindrops splattered an inch from his bloated face. “Doesn’t it scare you?” He slurred the words.
Daniela shook her head, knowing he didn’t care how or what she felt. The storm didn’t terrify her. The thought of living through it, of surviving only to return to the life she’d lived with him, did. The fear, constant uncertainty, and walking on eggshells around a man who had once been her whole world. The piercing taunts, the relentless shaming, the escalating abuse that forced her into reclusion. “What’s that line from Islands in the Stream?” She knew he’d not mistake the book for the song.
“What line?” he replied, not turning from the window. The beach cottage creaked and moaned around them.
“What Hemingway wrote about hurricanes.” Daniela quoted: “He knew too what it was to live through a hurricane with the other people of the island and the bond the hurricane made between all people who had been through it.”
“Your meaning?”
“You wanted to move here. Here’s our hurricane.”
Ian aspired to be a writer of Hemingway’s stature and had insisted on moving to Key West. Hoping the vibe would revitalize his stalled career. It hadn’t yet, and nothing had changed. When he sobered, he defended his actions. Alcohol had been a crucial existential salve for Hemingway. Ian believed it was a much-needed release that fueled his idol’s writing. He had chosen the same path: a bargain with the devil that proved one-sided. And not in his favor. Five years after his bestseller, without a repeat of its success, cruelty replaced Ian’s creativity.
Daniela stepped closer to him as he looked at the wind-lashed palm trees through rainwater coursing down the glass. “Maybe going through this—the storm—will inspire your writing… make things better for us,” she lied as the hurricane’s shriek grew and the walls shook.
A different tempest brewed inside her as the storm bore down on them. Of despair and something darker she couldn’t suppress. Ian didn’t move from the window as she shifted to stand beside him. The reek of his day-long drinking clung to him. “Ian,” she called, her voice steady despite the fear she couldn’t do it that gripped her. “Ian, look at me.”
When he didn’t turn, the agony of his cruelty crashed over her like the hurricane outside; the dam Daniela had constructed around her emotions broke, unleashing a flood of pent-up fury she could no longer contain.
Aftermath…
Daniela stood at the remaining intact window. The remnants of the storm and the night faded as the sunrise bleached the sky. The walls that had quaked now stood still, but her tremor of realization, accepting what she had done, had just begun. She looked down at her hands, the faintest quiver from the lingering jolt of nerves still tingling in them. The wind outside became a mutter, and in that stillness, near her, were the fragments of a past life shattered and silenced.
She stepped outside to a landscape of chaos—the rain-laden air, thick with its salt tang heavy on her chest. Broken palm fronds, limbs, and downed trees littered the ground like fallen soldiers. Tattered clouds, low blotted patches in the sky—gray-red-streaked and dawn-edged—gathered above. Daniela walked to the debris-strewn beach, each step carrying her farther from the past.
“When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what the storm’s all about.” --Haruki Murakami, Kafka On the Shore
* * *
First responders worked through streets full of wreckage, a giant’s tumble of broken jackstraw. Former storefronts and homes… few remaining standing and whole. The detritus of a devastated community that would take a long time to recover. There were bodies of those who foolishly stayed and others dragged out to sea and washed ashore miles away.
“Ian wouldn’t go... he thought to ride out a hurricane was just another experience... something to help his writing,” Daniela looked at the police officer as two paramedics zipped the body bag around Ian, “and I couldn’t leave him.”
Two Years Later
The Santa Fe New Mexican reporter closed the notebook and reached for his phone, which recorded the interview. “After the storm and your husband’s death, director Ridley Scott’s company optioned your husband’s first novel for a major production with Liam Neeson and Samuel L. Jackson. That movie became a tremendous hit and grossed $478 million domestically. I’m sure you wish your husband were alive to share the joy and financial success with you.”
Daniela nodded as if in agreement with the reporter’s last statement. “He always hoped to see some of his work in film and was a great Samuel L. Jackson fan.”
As Daniela had answered the reporter’s questions, the whir of a large set-to-high-speed ceiling fan reminded her of the storm’s last gasp as it passed. She could still hear it—faint but persistent—the ghost of the hurricane whispering in her ear.
The reporter’s voice drifted in and out, merging with her memories. She could see Ian’s ruined face again and hear the wind’s wail.
“Are you?”
“I’m sorry… what was that?” She blinked, forcing herself back to the present.
“Are you a Samuel L. Jackson fan?” the reporter asked again, but his voice remained distant, filtered by the ghost wind.
She forced herself to smile, relaxing the muscles in her face. “I’m a Liam Neeson type,” she said haltingly; the specter of the past still had a hold. “Those ‘Taken’ movies,” she smiled thinly. Her thoughts returned to what happened—what had to happen—that night at the height of the storm.
Ian’s gaze had remained fixed on the maelstrom outside the window, unconcerned that only glass and wood protected them. He didn’t turn when she called him, hoping to look him in the eye. “Ian,” she called again, her voice diminished by the howling gusts. But he still didn’t turn as she tightened her grip around the neck of the empty bottle she’d taken from the side table.
Daniela released the wrath she could no longer contain, then raced outside, gripping one of the stout porch columns for support. She grabbed a three-foot section of 4 by 4 post from where Ian had been building a deck extension. She broke the window’s glass from the outside, went back inside, and stared down at him.
Shards of glass now covered Ian, his blond hair darkened with blood at his temple where she’d struck him with the bottle. He was moving, struggling to stand. She had straddled him and pushed him back down as she leaned to whisper in his ear. “Here’s the line I like best from that Hemingway story: ‘He also knew hurricanes could be so bad nothing could live through them.’”
Stormwater from her hair dripped on his face as she gripped the rain-slick post with both hands and, with a grunt, drove it down with all her strength, the crunch and cracking of facial bones barely audible over the storm’s roar. She leaned into it with all her weight until Ian’s choking, shuddering breaths and twitching had stopped.
The overlay of that memory peeled away, leaving the present; Daniela blinked and took a deep breath.
The reporter stopped recording and smiled at her. “A good wrap-up,” he said. He had met with her twice for the interview and to welcome a new—affluent—resident to Santa Fe. “Sensitive skin?” he gestured at her long-sleeved, high-necked shirt.
“A history of skin cancer in my family,” Daniela explained her odd summer wear and tugged the sleeves down. They and the high collars she always wore hid the scars left by Ian’s rages, though they were no longer thick ridges of puckered, seamed skin. The film rights sale of Ian’s single successful work had paid for her scar removal surgery with a discreet plastic surgeon in Los Angeles, reducing the mutilations to thin lines that now blended with unmarred flesh. But the improvement had not pleased her as much as the sensation of that wood post in her hands when she made Ian pay for what he had done to her.
“You must feel blessed.” The reporter stood and tucked his notebook under an arm.
Daniela lifted her head. “Blessed?”
“They say it was a miracle you survived that hurricane.” The reporter held his hand out.
Daniela shook it with a firm grasp that had surprised the reporter when they first met. “I’m hard to kill....”
“And there’s a storm you’re starting now… I’m the violence in the pouring rain… I'm a hurricane…” --Halsey
Note from Dennis
―THE ORIGIN STORY ―
I had a note in my story-idea book for some time about revenge at the height of a hurricane. It seemed like a perfect way to cover up a crime.
One hurricane-season morning, while enjoying my coffee and watching hurricane news (I live in Florida), I toyed with the thread of a few lines for that story as the caffeine kicked in. I scanned my images folder and came across one (a text image) that gave me an idea for the title and the arc of the story’s protagonist, which fleshed out my premise... you can push a person too far, and then the 6th commandment (or other laws) may not prevent them from doing what they must to survive.
And what better time to do something so drastic than when you stand a good chance of getting away with it?
❤️love it!