Abused Wife?

I shifted focus to formatting shorter stories, only 6k words, as an alternative to tackling my longest raw drafts. This should let me play with more variety of characters and faster developing situations. Also, short stories create a vehicle in which readers don’t need to spend a lot of time with particular characters who have deep flaws. Recently, I formatted a draft with the working title ‘Abused Wife.’

The setup for the story is that Megan, and her two children, seek shelter in the home of their neighbor Andy. Megan reports to Andy that her husband hit her.

While this sets up a certain expectation for the direction of the story, I did not do that. Instead, Andy asks her pointed question like “What did you do?” and “Did you ignore his warnings?” Andy even goes so far as to assert that if Megan was a danger to herself or the children, then her husband could be justified in hitting her to protect her from herself. As Megan protests that Andy is victim blaming and tolerating abuse, the readers’ dislike of Andy should grow.

However, unlike the reader, Andy knows about Megan’s marital problems from conversations with her husband. Slowly, facts come out like that their common dispute is Megan’s demand that her husband spank the kids for not listening to Megan. Additionally, Andy had advised Megan’s husband to take the kids and leave her, but her husband loves her. Further, Megan is off her psych meds that day.

As she had been light on details, Andy became concerned about the well-being of Megan’s husband. It turned out the husband was unconscious and bleeding out from a flying pan blow to the head. After the revelation that she was a perpetrator, she expressed regret, begged not to involve the police, but made no effort to get her husband medical attention. The EMTs came to treat the unconscious husband, the police questioned Megan, but the big question purposely and explicitly left open in the end was who will take care of the kids.

Erin Pizzey (who founded the first DV shelter) has said based on her experience that women commit DV just like men, that DV is frequently mutual, and DV is rooted in intergenerational abuse. My draft story dramatized that reality in contradiction of popular one-sided troupes.