There is no means to an end.
(a self-para for Malachi Howahkan. TW blood, gore, murder)
It's the endless drone of old fluorescent lights and the maniacal beeping of the fire alarm, low-battery. Everything ends, but it doesn't mean you know when.
And the annoyance will continue, and continue, and melt your mind away, until you put a stop to it.
It's with this thinking that Malachi Howahkan murders his wife with an axe in the back of their small Prairie-style Craftsman in mid-January.
His life has not been his own.
It has been Alice's, turned to dinner parties and board game nights. Stockings hung with care, two tiny tots, soccer practice, and the backyard grill. The ole ball and chain. "Can't live with him, can't live without him!" The baby showers, the anniversaries. A mini-van and a house with a foyer.
He works as an insurance agent. 9-5, casual Fridays, water cooler chatter and group synergy. "Workin' hard or hardly workin'?"
One day it's easy to just take the axe and swing it.
Easier than the time it takes to type in his client's yearly salary and figure out the percentage still owed.
Easier than picking up Bobby from violin.
Prison is not easy. It's threats and shouting and shoving. Too much time alone to think about every aspect of his wife's dead body, the blood coming from the chunks he cut out of her. Officers with too much power, men with too much anger. And boredom.
When he gets a letter, he assumes it's one of his kids. But it reads of a man infatuated. Questions about his life and how it fell apart, and more importantly, how he can piece it back together for Malachi.
This meager connection is a life raft in a tsunami. Mal holds to it like a man possessed. Until his fingers go raw and bloodied, he'll cling to every letter sent.
Polaroids on sun-bleached film, chopped brown hair tied with an old rubber band. Tales from the outside.
It's back and forth for years.
One day, the folded letter Malachi sends has a piece of twine tied into a little loop perfect for a finger enclosed inside. He asks him to marry him, and promises a better ring when he's out.
It's years later that Malachi Howahkan walks out of the New York State Penitentiary in the dirty clothes he walked in with over 20 years ago. Released early on good behavior. Cash that Mik had sent for snacks from the commissary buys a bus ticket straight to his husband's apartment.
Once he's there, he never leaves.