Guilty as Charged

In prison twenty years, I got out today. No one would have said it was a sentence too lenient or an amnesty too early.

My mama always said, a mother would kill for her kids. Should kill for her kids.

One chilly morning, just as I was entering from work, my anorexic, pathologically thin, model-beautiful preteen daughter rushed to me naked, crying. What she’d been telling me all along and what I had been ignoring – because I trusted too much, leaving no room for doubt – came hurtling back on me. My self-proclaimed pathological liar-cum-womanizer morphed sexual predator husband had raped her – for the umpteenth time.

I checked my daughter’s insides – she was wet.

My beloved husband of thirteen years, whom I too had neglected due to my job demands, emerged from our daughter’s room in a post-coital trance not even caring to spare me the sight of his rumpled pajamas. What father preys of his daughter despite how immodest she appears?

All my sensei-inculcated tactics and many police-paid-hours in a Japanese dojo came instinctively. A round-house pirouette got him by surprise. Before he hit the ground I’d already put two bullets in his heart with my service revolver.

It was a high profile case with high-octane media frenzy. I was now part of statistics of rising cases of police officers killing their spouses. The only twist was that I did not end my life in the process of giving crime reporters a field day.

‘Guilty as Charged’ was my plea.

Twenty years I have lived with hard, die-hard incorrigible criminals caged like an animal at the Kamiti Maximum Security prison, people I had sworn to hunt.

That love for my Sweet Tracy has kept me alive in prison, but now I am out.

I would be glad to go back there if someone ever laid a finger on my daughter.

Copyright ©2012.