Karma

"What is it honey?" he asked. He thought he'd heard his wife call out to him.

When no reply came, he thought it was nothing. Then it all crashed down on him. His house, his life, all engulfed by the flames inside his mind. Another migraine.

He fell down on the carpet and writhed in pain. The TV show host laughed at one of the gags and the recorded audiences giggled as well. 

Clutching his hair, almost ripping it off he rolled trying to understand why the pain felt different. That is when the crimson dripped down his cheek. He noticed the pool of red forming below his head. There had to be something wrong. How was this possible.

He looked up, and a silhouette stared back at him.

As she bent down, he saw the bruised face of his wife, eyes bloodshot. In her hands, she gripped a spade from their garden.

"HOW DARE YOU?" he screamed. If the neighbours ever found out, his name would be cast down. Their family would be in shame.

In reply, she kept staring at him. He had never seen her enraged. Every time she did something wrong, she would clam up and accept his beatings. That was the way society had raised them. Their parents did it, and their grandparents. But was it true? Or was it a delusion that only he lived in?

"I'm done!" she whispered, barely enough for him to understand.

A divorce was shunned upon in their society. His migraine worsened. And the moment he realised that the migraine was actually the hurt from the wound he had tried to ignore, the spade came crashing down on him.

One hit, his vision was hazy. Second and the pain worsened. Third, and his life flashed before him, numbing his senses. A Fourth and unable to bear the excruciating pain, he fell unconscious.

As life left his body, from the passage between life and death, he heard the faint laughter of victory.

His societal prisoner was finally free.