Thanks, @mariannwest, for Day 291: 5 Minute Freewrite: Monday - Prompt: helpless!

source

HELPLESS

was not a word Marge would apply to herself. She put her husband through med school while raising their children, working 3-day weekends in the bloody E.R., keeping house, and for what? The man turns 50 and dumps her for a young, dumb, tanning-booth blonde with a boob job. Buys a Nissan GT-R, starting price $99,000, in rose-gold, not a man’s color, but the bleached blonde bimbo would have him pay extra just for that color. He'd pay the cost of his starter home with Marge for the 600 hp engine.

---

(photo is my mine, taken Sunday on I-80 east, after giving the young Asian driver with the custom "Aznmade" plate a thumbs-up as we departed a hotel parking lot at the same time and followed the same route for 50 miles)

Marge still drove a Honda Accord with 200,000+ miles

on it. Nissans were overrated, just like Doctor Stupid, the OB doc that women fawned over. It was a thing: women, after months of intimate doctor visits and the emotional travails of labor, tend to become infatuated with the man who delivered the baby. Idiots. Marge delivered their second child at home, in an ice storm, without Doctor Stupid’s help. A neighbor woman, who’d long since died, came to her assistance.

Helpless? Not Marge.

She had a can of matte black spray paint and visions of giving that Nissan GT-R a makeover. Something to represent the flat black heart of Doctor Stupid.

Watching, waiting for the chance to make her move, following that car to the restaurants and bars he'd never had time for when they were young and her figure drew admiring stares, but that car was always in well-lit public places, or locked tight in his McMansion, so Marge's integrity was never put to the test. He guarded that car and cared more for it than he did for his wife--first wife, that is. The one who put him through med school.

Would she have done it, given the chance?

She couldn't harm the car, that exorbitantly expensive, well-made work of art. Him, she would annihilate, or at least inflict a thousand pyschological torments upon him and his trophy bride.

Now she understood those evil people on Forensics Files, that TV show about horrible humans who’d kill their spouse for an insurance policy or to save time and money not having to go through divorce court. She understood that jilted wife who spent five years in jail for “accidentally” stabbing her husband with a kitchen knife, in self defense, after following him to his mistress’s apartment.

But murder was for people who felt helpless.

Marge had her ways. Maybe revenge wasn't so sweet anyway. The courts were on her side, and his alimony payments would be coming on time every month, or his practice would be in jeopardy.

Jeopardy. A word that felt good in her head, much better than helpless.

Ok, the old Honda would never look like this, but it still ran like a bat out of hell.

source

Jeopardizing him meant jeopardizing her own freedom, and after plotting a thousand and one ways to avenge her dignity, Marge decided on the path of least resistance.

Her Honda was forever rusting out even though the engine was going strong. Kinda like her own half-century-old body, with the gray hair and effects of gravity, but inside, Marge still felt like 25. To hell with that tanning-booth blonde anorexic with her boob job. Her spark plugs were misfiring and she would need a new transmission long before that Pilates body went south with the good years.

Matte black might look awesome on her trusty but rusty Honda. She wasn't going to let that paint go to waste.

Or that gun safety class, or that concealed weapon which, she hoped, would never be needed, but at least she didn't feel helpless. Carrying was another word that felt good. Carry babies, face a miscarriage of justice, and carry on with a conceal-and-carry.

"Dark Horse" was another feel-good phrase. The Honda Accord is something of a dark horse among sporty, comfortable, and relatively affordable coupes, car reviewers said. From zero to sixty "and 14-flat through the quarter-mile," according to Motor Trend.

If you see a middle-aged woman in a matte-black Accord pull up next to you in your hot-shot hundred-thousand-dollar Ego X-500,

better roll up your windows. Marge won't hesitate to inflict her V-6 growl on you as she shoots by.

Dr. Stupid's alimony checks would keep gas in her Honda and books in her Kindle and new vistas on her broad horizon. Ok, her horizon wasn’t even all that broad; unlike that boob-jobbed bimbo, Marge was well proportioned, and voluptuous. And capable, and competent. How many women knew how to repair rust and repaint a car? That was only the tip of the iceberg of wonders in the arsenal of Marge at Large.

Armed with yoga mat and sleeping bag, a laptop, free weights, hiking shoes, and sheer grit, Marge set the GPS to Sedona. With a wide-rimmed red hat, a few suitcases and a fair share of Doctor Stupid’s money, Marge packed the now-matte-black Honda and hit the road.

Look out, Arizona!

source

DONE for now. Total writing time, 20 minutes. Total rewriting time.... hours. I always clean up typos first. And rewrite. Hit publish. Hit the edit button. Revise some more.

Thank you @mariannewest for another Daily Freewrite!

NOTE: this is the news item that inspired some backstory for Marge at Large

Wife says cheating husband walked into knife - Dateline NBC - Crime

Aug 22, 2007 - An Iowa woman on trial for murder told a court she had grabbed a knife to ...
Phyllis Nelson, convicted in husband's 2001 death, leaves prison ...
https://wcfcourier.com/...husband...death.../article_2f0f950f-57ad-5c52-b613-4164d6...

....The doctor stabbed in the chest was Richard Nelson, the 54-year-old executive dean of the University of Iowa College of Medicine, a nationally regarded pediatrics specialist.
The woman who'd admitted stabbing him -- both to 911 and to the arriving officers -- was his wife of 33 years, Phyllis Nelson, mother of their two grown daughters. She was also 54.
Somehow the couple -- she was a music teacher and a member of the choir at their Lutheran church -- had come to this bloody encounter in a sparsely furnished two-bedroom apartment.
What had imploded in the marriage of two of eastern Iowa's best and brightest?
Newspaper reporter Elizabeth Kutter would spend many months looking for the answer.

See also [Phyllis Nelson, convicted in husband's 2001 death, leaves prison ](https://wcfcourier.com/news/breaking_news/phyllis-nelson-convicted-in-husband-s-death-leaves-prison/article_2f0f950f-57ad-5c52-b613-4164d6bcbdfb.html

MITCHELLVILLE (AP) - An Iowa City woman, convicted in the 2001 stabbing death of her husband, walked out of prison Monday after serving 3.5 years of a 10-year sentence.
Phyllis Nelson, who was the wife of Richard Nelson, 54, executive dean of the Carver College of Medicine at the University of Iowa, was convicted of voluntary manslaughter.
The parole board announced in July that she would be paroled to Illinois. She plans to live in the Chicago area with her sister-in-law and to work as a secretary in a geologist's office.
Nelson, 59, shook hands with prison staffers and walked out the gates of the Iowa Correctional Institution for Women at 8:35 a.m. Her hair was neatly combed and she was wearing street clothes as she walked briskly to a waiting Audi sedan with Minnesota license plates.

She declined comment and a prison official said she "adamantly" did not want to talk with media.
A friend threw a coat over her head before she got into the car, to prevent news photographers from taking more pictures of her face.
Nelson and her husband were in the middle of a divorce when she drove... to her husband's apartment and stabbed him in the chest with a paring knife. He died later at St. Luke's Hospital ....

---

Until next time,

Keangaroo

because Kean sounds like Kane (not keen, hint, hint)

Find me at Twitter:
@tea_in_carolina
novelist, reviewer, editor, book critic
fan of indie authors & underdogs
Follow My Reviews at Goodreads and
Amazon Vine
Rants, Raves, Reviews, History, Current Events My Wordpress Blog
Perihelion Science Fiction
Let's Fry Chicken Little nominated for 2015 Pushcart Award
NetGalley

art and flair courtesy of @PegasusPhysics