Watch Your Step

T̸w̸i̸t̸c̸h̸ [ep. 3]

It has only been three months since the court acquitted Celia of murdering his husband. In an excerpt of Hayward Daily, the trial offered two narratives:

"In one version, she and her sister testified that Mr. Fletcher smashed her head against a cinder-block wall during a family gathering in Switzerland in 2008. One night, he threw a boiling pasta sauce at her and punched her in the face the evening before the accident took place in their Hayward family house on June 12. 'There are nights I wake up and I can feel him breathing on me. I feel his hands around my neck.' Celia drifts from one place to another as she recounts the horror of the years with her husband Roderick Fletcher Sr. The verbal and physical abuse, the mental torment, all play out across her face. But prosecutors characterized Mrs. Fletcher as a pathological liar who executed her husband because she despised him after years of sexless, dysfunctional marriage, and then cloaked herself in a false story of chronic abuse to escape justice."

Here she is now, Celia Fletcher, puffing a cigarette on the porch of their new house when she hears a distinct pounding after a scream. There are no stars in the sky and no sound can be heard outside except the barking of a dog in the distance and that continuous noise. Tug-tug-tug-tug. She ought to think it's just hammering from their neighbors. But who would be tinkering at this time of day? When she extinguishes her cig and goes inside, she must have uttered the vilest curse she could ever say.

"Rod!" She yells rushing to stop him, "Baby, no stop!"

"GAAAAAHHHH!!" Rod screams again as he bangs his head more violently.

Celia holds him back in an embrace, careful of hurting him with his injured arm, "Stop please!"

The hole on his forehead has might as well been real for his head is now gushing streaks of blood. Then Rod's screams turn into sobs as he tries to tear free from his mother's arms.

"Don't do this baby," Celia starts crying herself. "What is it? Talk to me."

"Don't touch me!" He bellows, "Get away from me!" as he frees himself. "I don't need you!"

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Celia cries kneeling on the floor.

It's his first time speaking to his mother since the accident but he did not know that he would be shouting.

"I-I know it's tough," Celia stammers as she wipes her tears, "it's just the t-two of us now."

Rod diverts his hostile glare and revokes the rage contorted on his face. He ignores the wound on his forehead even when the blood is seeping into his eyes.

"Was it another episode?" Mrs. Fletcher snivels, "Say something to me, please."

He didn't. Before he could explode, he paces rapidly across the room and slams his door to his mother.

Celia breaks into tears once more. She knows more than anyone that if there's someone to blame, it's her. After she collects herself, she walks around the dining table, fishes the lighter in her pocket, and lights herself another cigarette.

That evening the wind wafts through the trees, and then the heavens pour hard. The same weather on the night of the accident. Rod's forehead hurts now, it swelled into an ugly lump, and the injury of his arm still throbs when he lays on it. But like every night since then, he already expects that he won't sleep too well.