The Animal Inside

He dropped the knife with horror.  The reality of the atrocity he'd just committed setting in.  Amazing how one rash, passion fueled decision can change a man's life forever. In a split second he'd gone from just another small business owner to a headline in the papers.  He had just killed.

He turned and ran. The screams of his cheating wife echoing down the hallway as he did.  He could feel drops of sweat and blood falling from his skin.  He could hear them hit the hard wood flooring along with his pounding footsteps and the blood throbbing in his skull.  With a spinning head he thought desperately about a possible course of action.  Ideas floated past his mind's eye with lightening speed.  He saw hiding.  He saw giving himself up.  He tried desperately to think, but the visions of solutions sped from his grasp as soon as he became aware of them. 

The moment replayed over and over in his head.  Opening the door to find his wife in bed with that... that... He couldn't even call it a man. To call it a man would be to acknowledge the full scope of what he had done.  He clung to the only excuse he had.  That... thing, had deserved it.  It couldn't possibly be his fault.  He opened the door with a shaking hand, missing the handle completely on his first attempt. With a quick glance from one direction to the other he sprinted towards the only place he thought he'd have the safety to think, his shop.  The shop he had given everything for.  The shop he'd neglected his wife for, his entire life for.

As he locked the door and flipped the sign to 'closed,' he heard it.  The sound of distant sirens.  He wandered to the back of his shop in a daze.  Passing the assorted screws and nails and hammers as he did so.  Compulsively dragging his callused hands over his face.  He sat down at his desk and attempted to slowly sort out the reality of the situation.  Mulling it over as best he could.  The overwhelming feeling of utter rage and betrayal that had swept his body. The uncontrollable urge to destroy the world with his fury. Yet, he didn't want the world.  He wanted that thing. That thing that had just shattered his perfect reality. He sobbed.  He sobbed in the most pathetic, self loathing way he had ever heard himself sob.  It was the cry of an injured animal, caught in a trap, completely helpless.

A sound dragged his consciousness back to the present.  It was the distant sirens.  They were no so longer distant.  A temporary glint of hatred and defiance lit of up his psyche.  Who were they to judge his actions?  Who were they to call him the animal?  

As knocks sounded on his shop's locked door he realized they hadn't judged him as anything as of yet.  He had called himself the animal.  With a sudden rush like a punch to the gut he realized that's because in less than an hour, that's what he had become.  A helpless, emotion driven beast caught in a hunter's trap. As he heard the lock break and the door slam open another sudden realization came over him. 

He always was.

Author's Note

I've never been one for writing stories but i figured what the hell. As always advice and criticisms are always appreciated and welcomed.

Reviews

[Jack Wolfe]

In a split second (omit this, this is the equivalent of, all of a sudden, in a moment, instantly, all avoid these pitfalls, they add nothing to the story, and in novels and fiction nothing happens in an instant, the tone and story carry the momentum.

Your opening paragraph is good, you've led with questions, which in turn give the reason to want the answers: Who is this man? Who did he kill? Why?

(With a spinning head) he thought (desperately) about a possible course of action.

(The spinning head) I know what you're meaning, but it implies a comical image.

(Desperately) avoid adverbs especial(ly) ones.

You have an interesting scene here; however that what it is a scene, if you showed his action rather than tell his action, you would enrich this and give it a more dramatic appeal.

I hope this helps some.

[David Scott]

We have free will. Yet the condition if the mind presupposes us to react rather than act. It is this conditioning where we find our hope of being more than animals.
Interesting story. I enjoyed your writing.