gathering them into her arms. She was relating the car dealership incident to them and reveling in their raucous laughter when she finally succumbed to sleep.
Elsie awoke to the rebounding bedsprings, bouncing millimeters from her face. Fighting the urge to erupt from beneath the bed with her weapon, she waited. Even the dust bunnies were silent as the woman's subdued crying filled the room.
The bedsprings eventually ceased their bouncing and as the whimpers descended into snores, Elsie extracted herself from The Land of the Under-bed. She waved off the dust bunnies eager to help her, explaining to them that what she would do was a guarantee to their future proliferation. It was something that she had to do.
So, it was, ignoring their thrill-kill cries, that she disengaged herself from the darkness.
Gripping the board, Elsie stepped silently to the head of the stairs. Below, halfway in her vision was the husband, Mr. Wilson. She imagined him sitting as the perfect stereotype with a beer in one hand and a remote control in the other, dictating and controlling.
Yet, it wasn't that way.
He was sitting upon the couch...and crying.
Elsie padded down two steps for a closer view.
He was staring at his hands — at knuckles still red and patterned. The television was muted and all she could hear was his occasional question: "Why?"
Thirty seconds was all it took for Elsie to decide.
For all the world the man was in pain.
Elsie knew that pain. She had spent fifteen years with it—on the other side of it. It was the forever pain of guilt and she had no patience for the man's cries. She hefted the board, anticipating the screams and the thwack of wood meeting flesh.
Elsie smiled.
This was going to be a good one.
She reentered the master bedroom and stood above the sleeping woman. There were new bruises. Not on her face, no, those were too easily noticed. The way the woman's nightgown hung, however, provided all the evidence she needed. The rib cage was a mosaic of blues and yellow and greens. Hidden enough so that nobody on the outside would notice.
Out of sight, out of mind.
It was the mantra of all those who loved to clean.
It was why the dust bunnies survived. Nobody in their right mind looked under beds more than once a year.
It was the reason that Elsie had a place to sleep.
Nobody looked under their beds at night. There were too many things that could be under there—things promoted by fairy tales, movies and nightmares. Elsie smiled with the knowledge that nobody would ever believe that she spent her nights within The Land of the Under-bed. Nobody would ever know that as they drifted off to sleep, there were Dust Bunnies who listened beneath.
Waiting…
Elsie stared at the bruises again, imagining how the woman's chest must look—candy apple red, a color that worked on BMWs, but had never seen life in reality.
She glanced toward the door. The husband was downstairs, sitting and feeling sorry for himself.
Elsie sighed.
She raised the four-foot piece of two-by-four above her head and brought it down upon the woman's face.
…once
Tracy had lived too long with the secret.
…twice
No one would ever believe her.
…thrice
The right cheekbone shattered and blood sprayed from the wound.
As Tracy awoke screaming, Elsie moved to the bathroom, dropping the board in the hallway.
The husband's footsteps thundered up the stairs in response to his wife's screams. As he crested, he saw the bloody board and picked it up. Staring at it in confusion he advanced into the room, like a batter, ready for whatever.
Finding nothing, the husband rushed to his wife's side, alternately consoling and denying. Elsie padded down the stairs and slipped out the doggy door.
It wasn't until she was two houses down that she found another doggy door and slipped inside. She called 911 and reported screams.
As she fell asleep in The Land of the Under-bed of a child's room in the house she had made the call from, Elsie listened to the wails of the police siren. They would enter the house and see. They would pay attention to the bruises and the blood. They would fingerprint the wood and find his. They would notice old and new bruising.
Truly, it was a good day.
Dust Bunny Logic had been promoted.
If the justice system was any good, the husband would be in prison for a long, long time. At the very least, away from his wife.
And the dust bunnies would multiply.
All this, Elsie thought about as she fell into a satisfied sleep, wrapped in