Alibi

Author's notes: Based off of Dessa's Alibi. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frT4A_--7Fo

Warning for gun violence.

Basically, I'm looking for criticism about story structure, description, and character stuff. But feel free to basically rip this short story to pieces. Thanks!

-

Upon arriving home from the end of her 12 hour shift, Netta had expected to see her two children playing with their toys in the living room and ignoring curfew; instead, she found the TV running and her estranged best friend sitting on the couch sporting a sickly palette of bruises on her face.

“So you finally found my key?” Netta pressed her nails into the base of her palm and looked expectantly at Ruth. “If I was going to be honest, then I would have figured you forgot about me.” She let her purse slide off of her shoulder and onto the floor, standing in the doorway.

Ruth froze, her large brown eyes mimicking a deer caught in headlights. “I-I’m sorry, Netta. I just, I had nowhere to go and I remembered. I-I shouldn’t have come here, anyway. I deserved what he did and I-I know it, but the house was so suffocating.” Her words spilled out of her mouth and into the atmosphere of the room, filling the air with half-choked back sobs. It was fitting in accompaniment with NCIS in the background.

There was a time in Ruth’s life where she would have been considered conventionally beautiful, but the knots in her brown hair and the bruises on her face and neck covered that up. Netta had to bite the inside of her lip when an image of Ruth from a decade ago that came to mind, trying not to compare and contrast the two separate women.

The last time Netta had truly seen Ruth was about two years ago, when Ruth was dressed in her Sunday best and walking out of confession with an old notebook clenched in her hands. Neither truly acknowledged the other, instead letting the moment pass and letting sleeping dogs lie.

“I handed you a key, didn’t I? You don’t have to apologize. What did he do this time? Did he finally kill the dog? Wait,” she glanced Ruth up and down in concern, her eyes lingering near the stomach region. “Don’t tell me that you’re pregnant.”

Ruth started to wring her hands and rock back and forth in one place, “N-no, not anymore.”

-

“Ruth, he doesn’t seem like the right fit for you.” Netta watched as Chuck’s red Mercedes drove off at 80mph down the street, swerving as it turned around the block. “You deserve a lot better than him. I’d shoot a guy if he treated me like he’s treating you.”

The sun made its slow descent in Ruth’s childhood neighborhood, painting the sky in its fantastic pinks and oranges. A perfect night for confrontation if there ever was one. Netta gripped onto her clutch purse and tried to ignore the buzzing of her blackberry phone.

Ruth let out a melodic laugh, brushing her wavy brown hair out of her eyes. She then composed herself while wobbling and straightened the strap on her little black dress. “Don’t worry about him! He’s perfect for me. I want kids, he wants kids. He owns the sweetest dog in the world. His friends all seem to like me too.” She listed all of those qualities on her manicured hands. “Sure, he’s a dick sometimes, but aren’t we all?”

“No one should get that pissed off when their date has other plans, Ru. If we want to go drinking, then we should be able to go drinking. He can’t just speed up and expect you to get in the car.”

Ruth flashed a pure white smile and put a hand on Netta’s shoulder. “Relax, girlfriend. I’ll be sure to bail if he does anything bad. Besides, you’re really one to talk. Didn’t you say Karl called you for another one-night stand?”

“That’s differen—“ Netta didn’t have much time to protest, because the yellow taxicab pulled up.

-

“Oh my God. I’m so sorry.” Netta grasped at her own stomach in muted horror, letting her thoughts trail off to her two sleeping children who lay quiet in the other room. “I shouldn’t have said that. Was that what caused you to come see me?”

Ruth wrapped her arms around herself and leaned forward, allowing her cross necklace to dangle. “I-I caught him in bed w-with a teenager and I lost it. Netta, I swear I’m not normally like that. I just. I started screaming and crying and. He was right. I was acting irrationally, so he threw me up against the wall and…” Ruth stared directly at the carpeted floor. “It sounds like he’s the bad guy when I say it out loud, doesn’t it?”

Netta lost all sense of restriction, swooping down next to Ruth and enveloping the battered woman in a large hug. The chemical scent of perfume and cigarette smoke filled her nostrils and she had to withhold herself from gagging. Instead, she just rocked with her friend back and forth, soothing Ruth with gentle movements. The TV played softly in the background.

“I can’t be your mother, you know.” Netta said, rubbing her hand on Ruth’s bloody flannel. “I have two kids now.”

Ruth laughed, but this time it was different from the normal laugh that Netta had known; it was now low and harsh like a flurry of snow. “I-I met one of them— Laurie, was it? I told her I was Mommy’s friend and she nodded and went straight into her room. That was okay, right?”

“Mmhmm.” Cogs and gears turned inside Netta’s head. “You caught Chuck in bed with a teenager? Is this his first instance…?”

There was a pregnant pause.

“N-no.”

-

“I’ll attend the wedding; I’ll hold my peace; I’ll do whatever the hell I have to do to keep you my friend, but for the love of God please don’t marry him.” Netta pleaded with Ruth over the kitchen counter, staring up at her best friend with tears threatening to overflow. A giant knot of dread had cinched itself in the center of her chest; she could hardly breathe with the bright lights from the kitchen beating down on her and Ruth’s apparent ambivalence just flaunting about the kitchen.

“I love Chuck, Netta. I don’t know how you can’t see that.” Ruth bent over and pulled a cake out of the oven, then deposited the glass pan on the granite countertop. “He’s perfect for me. He has a good job, his family is fantastic…” Wisps of her hair fell in front of her face, despite the tight ponytail she kept it in.

The absence of pitter-pattering little feet haunted Netta. Something wasn’t right about the vanishing cats. Something wasn’t right and it probably involved Chuck. Instead of watching Maine Coons fight over toy mice, she was able to look around the apartment and see large half-packed moving boxes. Moving boxes that Mr. Whiskers and Ms. Floof would have loved.

“You’re changing, Ru. It hurts me that you’re not seeing that.” Netta started to chew down on her lip, ignoring the pain and trying to ignore how fast her friend was changing.

“You know what, Netta? You can’t stay here anymore. Get out of my apartment. If you can’t accept the fact that I want to stay with Chuck, then I’ll find a new maid of honor.”

All Netta could remember was the fact that Chuck called Ruth a ‘bitch’ behind her back. Chuck would leer over Netta with his smoke-infested clothes and hit on her, promising that Ruth would never know about their escapades. His recounting of his numerous ex-girlfriends and never shutting up about them started as sympathetic backstory and turned into red flags. Netta couldn’t imagine letting Chuck into the rest of her life as a quasi-brother-in-law.

Netta pushed the stool back and jumped down, picking up her purse that was on the floor. “I never agreed to be your maid of honor anyway. But, hell, I don’t know how you keep on defending him, Ru.”

“Don’t you dare call me Ru.” Ruth flung her oven mitts off of her hands and onto the counter. “Get out of my apartment. Don’t talk to me. Don’t call. Stop making up lies about my fiancé and go away.”

-

Netta didn’t ask for any elaboration, because Ruth just dissolved into even more sobs. “I hate him. I hate this. I hate my life now. I can’t. I can’t even go to church anymore. I’m just locked within my own house day in and day out. Not even a good trophy-wife anymore.”

They sat on the couch together, rocking back and forth for a good ten minutes while Ruth sobbed and recounted her perceived sins and while Netta plotted something awful. At a certain point, she turned off the TV just so the crime scene investigators wouldn’t be able to stare into her soul.

The night was no longer young, but that never stopped Netta before.

“Let’s get you in a bath, put on some new clothes, and then we’ll see about covering up your bruises with makeup. Okay? I think you deserve a night on the town. My treat.”

Ruth hiccuped. “God, Chuck would kill me if he knew I was here.”

“You don’t have to worry about Chuck anymore.”

After Netta had checked on the kids and made sure that they were both sleeping snug in their beds, she started to make preparations. She pulled out her semi-automatic pistol from the locked chest in her bedroom, changed out of her scrubs, and then dressed herself in flexible jeans and a black leather jacket. She found her holster and placed her gun inside. After rummaging through her closet, she found the perfect dress and her old makeup kit for Ruth. She set both of those on her bed along with a note.

-

Netta hadn’t attended church in awhile, so the long gazes she got from old church ladies were something she could mostly brush off. She walked through the entrance with her heels clicking against the floor and a weighted envelop clutched in her hands. Still, the stares bore into her back as she navigated through the pews, sliding in next to Ruth as the preacher gave a long sermon about forgiveness and moving on.

“Fancy seeing you here,” she whispered. They were like children at Sunday school again.

Netta waited for Ruth to respond, trying to ignore how her old Sunday outfit restricted her midriff and chafed against her legs.

When Ruth didn’t respond, Netta set the envelope down next to her. “There’s a key to my place in that. If you ever need somewhere to sleep or someone to vent to, then I’m still here. You know that, right?”

Ruth stared forward at the preacher, her face expressionless and her body unmoving. She still wore the same blue sunflower dress, regardless of the faded print and the small stains on the fabric. Her hair was pinned up into a tight bun.

“You haven’t been answering my texts, so I assumed your number changed…” Netta trailed off on the realization that Ruth wouldn’t acknowledge her.

-

The house was new to Netta but probably an old place of Hell for Ruth. Netta could only remember this place from helping Ruth move boxes in before the big fallout. It was a cookie cutter house in a cookie cooker neighborhood with a cookie cutter couple living inside.

She took a deep breath, letting the summer air fill her lungs and strengthen her resolve. She walked forward with a purpose, still wearing her cushioned nurse shoes. Netta walked past the street lights, trying to ignore the judgey orange lights as she set along with her task.

She walked up the cobblestone path that she remembered Ruth raving about, certain she was at the right house because of the bright red Mercedes in the driveway.

Netta knocked on the door.

She heard stomping and watched as the door flew open, greeted with a man in a frothing rage. “You can’t run away like that, Ru—“ He stopped as he glanced her over, realizing that she wasn’t his battered wife but a woman not to be messed with. “Ah, it’s you.”

Chuck wore a blue polo-shirt with tennis shoes and jeans. He wore a fancy watch on the wrist that he had raised up to smack Netta with. He looked like a normal man.

“Did she send you here?” He asked, holding his shoulders stiffly.

Netta stepped past his imposing figure to enter the house; the door shut behind her.

“No.”

“Where is she?”

“I’m not telling you.”

The rage on his face — red and hot — contorted into a weird smirk. “So you’re finally taking me up on the offer? Sorry… Netta, was it? You’re not really my type anymore.” Chuck waved his hand noncommittally and turned his back on her. “Feel free to make yourself at home, I guess. If you’re looking for Ruth, then I have no idea where that woman went off to. I swear, she’s always making trouble for herself.”

He started his ascent up the stairs.

Chuck barely had time to react when Netta cocked her gun, aimed it at the back of his head, and shot him.

-

I swear to you, you’ll never have to deal with him again. I should have stopped this a long time ago.

Cover up those bruises, put on my dress, and head out to O’Conner’s for the night. Work on an alibi. I’ll meet up with you soon.