Free At Last

Tigger, the thirty-five pound black and white monster, excuse me! cat was on the dining room table enjoying his early morning cup of coffee as he did each day.

"You really do have us all trained to be your humans don't you?" Mandy asked the old cat as he dipped his paw in the cup of milky sweet coffee one more time. Self-satisfaction smeared all over his face, Tigger purred and returned to his coffee.

Mandy's thoughts wandered back to her encounter last night with Vega.

The old car sitting in the parking lot of Sam's Steakhouse fooled no one. Vega had staked out the restaurant where Mandy worked more than a few times. Even the other employees had come to recognize the scowling Puerto Riccan face by now.

"Why does that asshole keep on following and watching you?" Valerie asked Mandy as they worked on refilling salt and pepper shakers for the tables.

"It's a control thing," Mandy replied.

"But you've been divorced two years! What is he accomplishing?"

"Vega thinks once he "owns" you, he is entitled to controlling your every move, thought, everything for forever. He doesn't want you, but nobody else can have you either. You are not allowed to think without his approval."

With the restaurant clean, tables readied for the next day's business, condiments all married, side work all completed, the lights were turned out and Mandy made her way across the dark parking lot toward her car.

"Puta. Whore. Who you screwing now?" Vega screamed out the window to Mandy.

"Not tonight, Vega. I have had a long day and I'm tired, too tired to try to argue with you, talk to you, have any contact whatsoever with you. Just give it up. Go home." she calmly, quietly said.

"Bitch!" Vega goaded her, wanting a fight.

"You know, there was a time I would have cried all night when you talked to me that way. Not now." she replied, not changing the tone of her voice.

Blotchy red color crept up his neck and his usual demeanor of pursing his lips in frustration and blowing like a mad bull in a bullfight was his reaction to Mandy's complacency.

Mandy's laughter pierced the darkness. "You know you are going to bust, or have a heart attack or something, if you don't calm down. Your anger doesn't bother me anymore. Can't you see that?"

"Fucking hillbilly!" he screamed the degrading name he always used when he wanted to push her over the edge.

"Look Vega, It's like this, the threats don't scare me anymore. You have hired ex-cons to scare me, assault me, even kill me. All the hell you put me through is over. I know I wasn't imagining things, my mind is just fine. Yours is the deranged one. Anyone that can do to me and the kids what you have has to be deranged."

"I ain't crazy!" he screamed at her huffing louder.

"Well, you must be. You just keep on." Knowing life could change in a heartbeat, she felt a twinge of the old fear return. At his hands and those of the one's he'd hired, she'd come so close to being dead. But I'm alive, really alive again, she thought. Turning toward Vega as he began the next approach, she simply shook her head.

"I've always loved you," Vega began. Pleading now, "You know you still love me, Mandy. Why you acting that way? I just want to be a family again," he was begging in earnest.

"In those famous last words, 'frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn'." Mandy whispered to him with a peace in her voice that had not been there for a very long time. Smiling, she turned and got in her car to go home knowing she really didn't care about Vega anymore.

True to form, a barrage of angry obscenities followed her.

Mandy arrived home to hear screeching tires turning the corner as Vega sped by the house. No matter she thought. I refuse to let him bother me tonight. She reached for the phone and called the police. Juan, was the officer taking the call.

Just as the police arrived, Vega rammed his car into the shed in the yard.

Mandy's thoughts came back to the present. "Tig, the look on Vega's face was priceless as Juan put the handcuffs on him."

"Meow," Tigger answered as if he'd understood every word she said.

She was over that bastard, really over him. Tranquility took over as they finished their morning cup of coffee.

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