This week's task was to write a two character opening scene - with a conflict between the 2 characters and end it unresolved.
They had barely spoken all week. After Thursday's showdown, she felt certain it was over; she didn't plan to stick around for the final rites.
First Mac had told her that he wouldn't allow her to take the excellent job she'd been offered. He was honest about it: "You'd earn a lot more than I do. That would really hurt my self-image." Then he'd tried to get her to withdraw from her community theatre activities: he confessed that he was jealous of the attention she got. There was only room for one star in the house, and it wasn't going to be her!
When she thought she was pregnant, he threatened to leave if she didn't get an abortion. She offered to help him pack, but it was a false alarm and they never had to deal with it, not directly anyhow. But she'd been dealing with it constantly, having finally realized that the little shit she'd married was immature, self-centered, and just plain stupid!
"Damn! Where'd I put Marlene's new phone number?" she asked herself.
Searching her purse had not been fruitful. She hadn't cleaned it out last weekend and it was stuffed full of lunch receipts, notes, tissues, business cards, two shades of lipstick and a lip liner, blush, mirror, anti-static spray... all the essentials.
Then she remembered that she'd stuck the number in the lap drawer of her desk. It was the only safe place on the desk, the top of which made her purse look tidy by comparison. She switched on the overhead light, then stopped dead in her tracks.
Except for the stapler, tape dispenser, and stacked paper trays, the desktop was completely empty and shiny clean!
"What the hell... Mac!" she screamed, as she charged into the living room.
"Be right back. I'm going out for a pack of smokes. You want anything?"
"You leave the house now, you better come back with an armed escort, because otherwise I will kill your ass the second you walk through that door! You tell me NOW what the hell happened to my desk."
"I cleaned it for you. Most of it looked like junk so I threw it out."
This was payback, she knew. Last Thursday, she'd found the picture in his desk, the one of the bimbo who showed up at the last cast party with nothing on but navy blue bikini panties and a fishnet cover-up. Period. At first, he had denied that she was anything more than a friend... Then he proved he was too dumb to even come up with a good lie.
"We just messed around in the car a few times. Nothing happened. But it's your fault: you weren't much fun anymore." He was referring to what he considered an overly long recovery after surgery, during which the doctor snipped out every single part of her that was even remotely connected to her reproductive system, and as a bonus, snipped out her appendix at the same time. Mac felt that a recovery period of a week or so should be adequate before she was 'fun' again.
She should have left after the true confessions session... should have grabbed her toothbrush and a change of underwear, and just left. But she hadn't, and now he'd thrown out two years worth of business receipts, customer names, script notes from the theatre... everything...
He figured out that he had gone too far when he saw the paperweight flying toward his head. He ducked in time, charged at her, and grabbed her hands. She was amazingly strong when she was this... nearly insane, really... and he couldn't entirely stop the fists that were aiming for and occasionally connecting with his face and shoulders.
"Get out, you bastard!" She was sobbing and pounding on him. "Get out now and don't ever come back when I'm here or I promise you, I WILL kill you." She broke free, lunged for her purse and pulled out her latest purchase... a rather lady-like .22 caliber pistol, which she pointed directly at his head...