Trust - Short story

A man sat at the kitchen table, while his wife prepared dinner. She wore a plain white long dress with no sleeves. The smell of fried chicken filled the kitchen air. His shaking hands rattled the table. The bags under his eyes were clearly visible. His breathing was heavy and erratic, as if he desperately needed oxygen.

“Stupid anxiety… “ he thought. “Stupid, useless anxiety. Make it go away… Make the pain go away right now!” The man pulled his hair. He looked over to his wife to make sure she wasn’t paying attention to him. She hummed as she put in the last pieces of chicken to fry. The man searched the inside of his trench coat, and pulled out a pistol. Trembling, he put it directly to the side of his head. “J-Just pull the trigger… I-It’ll be over, just like that! S-Simple.” He quickly put the gun back on the table. “No, no, no! Too selfish of me. I can’t just leave my wife alone…”

“Why would you say that?” asked his wife. “Did I do something wrong?”


“Oh, did I say that one out loud? No, you didn’t do anything. I-It’s just… just-”


“It’s okay, Honey. You don’t need to tell me.”


That soothing voice of hers, it always made him relax.


The man sighed, relieved. “Thanks for understanding.”


“Because I already know what you’re trying to do.”


His smile faded. “You found out?”


“You left your coat on the bed when you went to take a shower. The gun was in there.”


“Oh, I see…” The man shook his head slowly.


She stared at the ground and put her hands behind her back. After a long period of silence, she spoke again. “I-I wanted to test something out real quick.”


He turned to face his wife. “A test?”


“Yes. I… I want you to put the gun to the side of your head and… pull the trigger. You know, to see if you trust me.”


The man almost fell out of his chair. He stared at his wife, perplexed. “Why?”

“Well... because when I saw the gun, I thought about hiding it from you; I didn’t want you shooting yourself. But instead, I just took out the bullets. I thought it would be the perfect opportunity.”


He stared at his gun. “What if she’s lying?” he thought. He shook his head. “Don’t be ridiculous! How could she ever lie to you? You’ve been married to her for eight years. She hasn’t cheated on you, not once. She hasn’t asked you for anything. And she loves you… for you.”


“You do trust me, right? I don’t think you should have anything to worry about…”


“Do it!”


“What are you waiting for?”


The man looked around the kitchen. “Who’s saying that?” he said under his breath.


“What kind of husband are you? Grab the gun!”


“Don’t make her wait.”


“The gun doesn’t have any bullets, so why worry?”


The man went for the gun, but then, he hesitated.


“Hurry up!”


“You’re wasting time!”


“I… I…” thought the man as he picked up the gun. He put the gun to the side of his head. “I can trust her. I can trust her! She wouldn’t have me killed.”


“Honey?” said his wife with a shaky voice. “Why are you taking so long?” She tried her best to hold back tears.


“You fool!”


“Oh, it’s hopeless. He won’t do it.”


“He doesn’t trust her.”


“How pathetic…”


The voices were very deep. The man couldn’t hide his trembling from his wife.


“Why are you still waiting? Stop shaking like that!” His wife covered her face and wept.


“Look at him! He’s too afraid to do it!”


“He doesn’t deserve her.”


He placed the gun to his chest, where his heart was. It was beating faster and faster. The pounding was hard. “R-Right here. My love for her can’t be ruined, right?” His whole body was trembling, and he couldn’t control it. “Pull it! Just pull the trigger!” He gripped the gun tighter and closed his eyes.


“If you keep waiting, then you’ll just keep making it worse and worse for yourself.”


“How difficult can it be to pull the trigger?”


“Shut up!” The man tried to cover his ears, but he could still hear the voices. His breathing was much heavier than before. He placed the gun back to his chest.


The voices became louder—their numbers increased.


“Finish the job!”


His finger was slow in pulling the trigger.


“You’re just a coward.”


“Stop it!” the man thought.


“What a useless waste of space.”


The voices were deafening.


“It hurts! Get out of my head!” shouted the man.


“Even if you pull the trigger, your wife will hate you, because you took too long to do a simple task.”


“Leave me alone!” The man screamed.


His eyes widened. A loud gunshot rang in his ears.


He gasped and clenched the wound. He grimaced—the excruciating pain was something that he never felt before in his life. It felt like thousands of needles piercing through his heart. He went on his knees. The world around him was fading away, and his wife disappeared before his eyes. The scent of chicken escaped his nostrils. The whispering finally subdued.


The last thing he saw was his wife, but she wasn't wearing a white dress. She was wearing a pink t-shirt and skinny jeans. And she wasn't in the kitchen; she was in the living room, running towards him. She screamed when she saw blood pouring out of his mouth.


“Honey! Why? Why did you do this to yourself!?” She hugged him. The man felt her warm tears trickle down his cheek. “You look so cute when you’re worried,” he thought. He managed one final chuckle. “I’ll never be able to enjoy fried chicken ever again.”

I really enjoyed this, sdkfreak. But I have to say I enjoyed the original version much better. You set that version up expertly; having his wife in the kitchen daring him to pull the trigger as a show of trust is what gave the original version the Hitchcock tension and made the story memorable. Putting this all in his imagination just seemed like the mundane, easy way out.

Even in your first version, you had his “real” wife come out of the living room at the end, and I suspect you made the changes in your edited version to give hints that the voice he heard in the kitchen was actually in his imagination so that the ending wouldn’t seem to come so much “out of the blue.”

But I would urge you to consider a different ending altogether - one that leaves his real wife in the kitchen. There are any number of ways you could end the story; I would advise you to come up with something that somehow relates back to the rest of the story

A couple of other ideas to consider:

1) It might be interesting to include some sort of back story, possibly in the form of flashbacks, that relate the couple's relationship to the idea of trust. I found myself thinking, why would she test his trust in this way unless something had happened in the past to make her doubt his trust? So a flashback answering this question might be useful (although not necessary).

2) There is an opportunity for "Hitchcock-esque" humor here. You hinted at it, but you could do more. In the first paragraph, you say, "The smell of fried chicken filled the kitchen air," and towards the end, "The scent of chicken escaped his nostrils." You might want to consider using the smell of fried chicken as a running gag throughout the story - you might mention how much he loves her fried chicken or how much he hates it or something else that plays on the idea of fried chicken. For example, you could do the following: “What are you waiting for?” The man looked around the kitchen. "Mmm! that chicken smells good," he said under his breath.

Then, I would delete the sentence "The whispering finally subdued," so that then you end this important paragraph with "The scent of chicken escaped his nostrils," further emphasizing the chicken. In fact, you could just end the story there, without any further explanation, leaving the reader wondering why his wife lied to him with only the somewhat bizarre "scent of chicken" as a hint.

I'll be posting more short stories in the near future.