Bingo!

Death claimed every sense of my existence, my mind drifted back to the beginning. It was the only part of me still working besides my eyes, and they were limited. I could only see what was already in my field of vision. I could not move them up, down, left or right, I couldn’t blink. Terror filled my chest, which was empty of air and void of any outward sign of life. What was happening to me? Just last week I was a normal, healthy man in his mid forties. Married to a beautiful woman, our children just moved off to college. Life was perfect, or so I thought.
“Tom!” I heard a faint voice cry and my wife poked her head out the back door. “It’s the hall.”
I looked up from my newspaper and sighed. “I’ll be right there,” I called back and swung out of the hammock to head for the house. The headlines would have to wait a bit more. Bingo was calling me. Or should I say I was calling it. I called bingo at the VFW hall every Sunday night. Only I was supposed to be on vacation this week. I had just finished moving my son into his college dorm and gotten back to the house to lay in my hammock and relax. Why did they have to pick now to disturb me? I grumbled to myself all the way across my bright green lawn that I had just managed to get free of the eternal threat of crabgrass. Even with my grumbling I took the time to check around for any missed patches. As I opened the door, I slipped my deck shoes off and slid into the slippers waiting just inside the door.
“Shoes,” Carol ordered without even looking at me.
“I’m on it,” I said, rolling my eyes and heading for the phone. “Hello?”
“Tom, Gary is out sick and we know you are on vacation, but would you mind calling tomorrow afternoon?” Randy asked me.
I paused. Carol was getting angry with me for spending so much time at the bingo hall. It was only one day a week, but with her job it was one of two days that we had time together and now that the kids were gone she was wanting to spend that time with me. “Randy, I can’t,” I said, turning to look at Carol.
She looked up at me from her newspaper, her eyes speaking volumes. “We have plans,” she said firmly.
“We have plans,” I repeated dutifully into the phone.
“We don’t have anyone else,” Randy said. “I know you don’t want to. I can’t do it, I’m running the window. You know the rules.”
“Let me call you back,” I said and clicked the receiver. Carol continued to stare at me. “Gary is sick and they don’t have anyone else.”
“We have plans. You are taking me to dinner, remember? Tom, this is our first weekend alone in eighteen years,” she said.
I honestly expected tears from her at this point, but she instead had a stony expression. “We can move the reservation back two hours,” I said. “Come on, Carol, they need me.”
“I need you,” she said and set the newspaper down. “I’ve needed you every weekend for the past five years. It’s one of my two days to be with you. But that’s fine, just go and call. Forget our reservations.” She stood up, threw her hands in the air and hurried from the room. I could hear her climbing the stairs and then our bedroom door slammed shut.
I had no idea what I had just done. I had inadvertently set her mind in motion and she’d always been one who wanted vengeance. She picked up the phone and dialed. I only know this because I was doing the same and heard the dialing. I put my hand over the receiver so she and the other person wouldn’t hear me and listened to the conversation she had.
“David,” she said when the male voice on the other end answered. “He’s doing it again. I told him to just go ahead and go.”
“Jerk,” David said. “Why don’t you come over here instead? When are you going to give up on him? Obviously he doesn’t care for you like I do.”
My eyes narrowed as I stared at the wall wondering what this David person looked like and how long this had been going on.
“My children,” she answered. “I can’t do that to them.”
“They don’t have to know, they are both gone now. What they don’t know won’t hurt them. Carol,” he said and I could feel my face turning red with anger. I quietly set my finger on the button and then laid the phone on the cradle.
I never heard the rest of the phone call. I should have stayed on and listened. Perhaps then I would’ve known how far my wife’s sense of vengeance went. I don’t know exactly what she and David planned. I know it was her though. It happened the Sunday night when I was supposed to be eating out with her. I sat down at the bingo machine and after checking that all the balls were there and having one of the players verify them I dropped them into the slot then hit the switch that turned on the air spinning them around. I made it to the middle of the second game before I couldn’t take it anymore. I was going to get up and get some water, but found that I was unable to feel my legs. “Randy to the booth,” I said into the microphone. The players all looked up at me in surprise at the interruption. Randy walked up to the booth and put his hand over the microphone. He opened his mouth to ask me what was wrong. I fell sideways from the chair unable to move or speak, hitting my head against the floor hard enough to split the skin open. Blood sprayed onto his pants and I could hear the screams of the nearby players.
“Tom!” he cried kneeling next to me and turning me onto my back. He straightened out my limbs which were still in the form of me sitting in the chair. “Someone call 911!” he yelled. I could hear players scrambling to pull out their cell phones and turn them on. We had trained them to turn them off during games sessions.
“I’ll call Carol,” one lady said. She’d been going there for years and knew us like family.
“You do that, Helen,” Randy said. “Tell her to hurry.”
Helen dialed Carol’s number but got no answer.
Randy leaned his ear down and put it against my chest. “I think he’s gone,” he said. Some of the players gathered round me in a circle looking down almost all of them crying. Things were starting to grow dark. Helen reached over and switched the air off in the bingo machine and the poison stopped flowing dispersing harmlessly into the caller free area that was enclosed in the booth.
The ambulance came and the paramedics rushed inside with the gurney. They loaded me onto it and soon rushed out the door. I spotted their worried faces but I could not tell them that I was alive. “Flatline,” one said to the other and the second nodded. They covered my face with a sheet and turned the siren off.
Carol smiled as she finally turned her phone on. She and David had just had the most glorious evening out, “As friends”. They used our reservations and had dinner then went home to his house and made passionate love. Carol finally had given in to his advances. She listened to the message and got the properly shocked look on her face then went rushing to her car and drove to the hospital. Once there, she was taken to the morgue. They pulled me out of the dark drawer and unzipped the bag. I smiled inwardly. She had come to rescue me. She began to sob and they left her alone with me. She looked around and leaned down to whisper to me. “You should have stayed home. You would have had the time of your life.” Composing herself, she stood and walked to the door. They came in and zipped the bag shut and pushed me back into the drawer. I heard the lock shut with a resounding click and then knew no more.