Bentley didn't much like his wife. Frigid and stern, Agnes had become a total stranger.  But it was her pious, holier-than-thou, I've-got-Jesus-and-Salvation- in-my-hip-pocket attitude he found especially galling.
     “Bentley, if you went to church with me more often and spent less time guzzling beer in front of the TV, you would be a lot better off.  Maybe then you would get that promotion.”
     He lay on his bed, watching "Baywatch" as Agnes stood surrounded by an aura of heavenly  discontent.  Lifting a can of Bud, he took a deep drink, not even glancing at her.
     “And another thing,” she said, “why do you always insist on watching those  shows with nude women?”
     This time he did glance at her, noting her joyless image with its tight lips and eternal frown.  Her once vibrant auburn hair had turned a dull, mousy color and her body sagged in all the wrong places.
     “Maybe I wish I had one,” he said.
     “What?”
     “Nothing.”  His favorite on the show, a breathtaking blonde, smiled brightly at him.  He took another sip, wondering what it would be like to hold her hand, walking barefoot on the beach with his whole life before him.  To be young, lean, attractive again, and bask in a beautiful woman’s desire.
     “Bentley,” Agnes said, “you know my program comes on now.”
     Her program.  In their one-television love nest, that meant endless blather from Pat Robertson and his clones, Faith Healing up the spiritual wazoo while Agnes went into raptures she never did with him.  And always, behind or under it all, burned the sanctimonious subtext that if he only Repented and Abandoned his Sinful, Slothful Ways, he could be Saved.
     Bentley sighed.  If only it were that simple.  If only he could be saved from his dead-end, joyless existence.  He looked about the bedroom with its neat, obsessive order.  As always, her yarn and knitting needles were on the dresser, her crossword puzzles on the night table.  On the wall, a picture of Jesus hung where their wedding photo used to be.
    As for the two beds, they were so wide apart, he knew he could never bridge the distance between them.  Not that he wanted to.  Too many years divided them, too many failed dreams and unfulfilled promises.  And every night, standing in this same wallpapered tomb, Agnes faithfully reminded him of his many failures.  For years she had endlessly belittled him, not once praising him for anything, no matter how small.  Night after night, he had been forced to see his own pathetic shortcomings through her contemptuous eyes.
    Damn it, why couldn’t she show some faith in him for a change?  What did she know of the pressures he faced at work every day, of the young, ambitious,
fresh-out-of-college sharks he had to compete with?
     Salvation.  Never before had it seemed so remote and unobtainable.
     He groaned, feeling his long suppressed anger gather into a hard knot inside him.  All these years of her cruel insults and contempt!  All her endless, heartless criticism!
    Choking with rage, pushed finally to some ultimate limit, he rose on trembling legs.  Moving past Agnes’s bed, he went downstairs without turning on the light.
    In the kitchen, shadows reached for him with graveyard wings.  Stopping, he listened to his heart beat, tolling out the futile, sterile seconds of his life.  Tears rose to his eyes.  He swallowed and went to the counter, where he found his reason for coming downstairs.
    When he climbed up to the bedroom again, his knees seared with pain.  Agnes was sitting on her bed watching one of her religious shows.  On the screen, a photogenic televangelist dressed in a pure-white suit worked the faithful up into a spiritual froth, promising salvation.
     Holding his hand behind his back, he went and turned the TV off.
     “Bentley!  Turn it back on!”
    “You know, Agnes,” he said facing her, “maybe I’d be more like you want me to be, if you met me halfway.”  He stared meaningfully at the gap between their beds.
     She frowned.  “I’m missing my program, Bentley.”
     He wanted to scream.  “You don’t know what I mean, do you?  In fact, you don’t even want to know.”
     She turned away.
    “Did it ever occur to you for one millisecond that if you stopped criticising me all the time and found something to praise, I might be different?  That if you made love to me once in a while, I might become a little more like the man you want?”
    She finally looked at him.  “Love has to come from inside, Bentley.  No one else can do it for you.”
    “Right.  That’s exactly what I’m saying to you.”
    Her face twisted in disgust and she waggled her fingers.  “Please turn my program back on.”
    Very well, he thought.  I gave you a chance.
    He brought his hand out from behind his back and started toward her.
    “Bentley, what are – my God!”
    Her last two words were prompted by the sight of the 12-inch carving knife, which he had raised overhead.  He stood beside her, grinning down.
    “Ready, my love?”
    “Bent . . . what is this?  S-Some kind of joke?”
    “Yes, and here is the punch line.”
    He had hoped to be calm, controlled, to dispatch her with minimal emotion.  But as he brought the knife down for the first time, an image lit up his skull with incandescent clarity.  It was of the two of them in college, holding each other tightly, never wanting to part.  God, what had happened?  In those days they’d had such hopes, such love.  They could never get enough of each other, and he had been her hero, incapable of doing any wrong.
     The knife came down, striking her sternum and glancing off.
     “Bentley!” she screamed, her arm raised in defense.  Her mouth was opened so wide he could see clear down into the dark depths of her soul.  This time he aimed for it.
     The knife penetrated to the back of her throat and he saw her lips close
about the blade.  A tooth split off and washed away on a river of blood.
    He pulled out the knife and struck again.  Her chest, her stomach, her flailing arms.  Shrill screams echoed off the walls, subsiding at last to a throaty gurgle.
     When she lay still, he hesitated briefly, then resumed his labors.  He slit her open from her throat to her navel, then commenced to slice away at her face until it was a gruesome mess not even remotely human.
     When it was over, he dropped the knife on the dresser and contemplated
the carnage.
     “What’s the matter, Agnes?” he asked.  “No complaints or criticisms?  My, what a refreshing twist.”
    He basked in the glow of accomplishment for a moment, pleased that he had finally done something to take charge of his life.  Then a thick veil seemed to fall from his eyes.  Oh God, look what he’d done!  He had murdered Agnes, ripped her to shreds in a fit of madness!  He sagged to his knees in horror.  Twenty-three years of marriage and now this insane bloodbath!
    He shut his eyes but the nightmare followed him into the darkness.  Agnes was dead.  His life was over!  Even worse, he saw that he was largely to blame for what she’d become.  He was a stupid, whining loser who had helped make her what she was!
    Trembling in grief, he realized that he would never again have a chance to make things up to her, never be able to heal what was wrong, to save their marriage.  All the love, hope, and promise they had started with twenty-three years before had ended forever!  His stupid, senseless act was irrevocable!
     Maybe it’s not too late, he thought wildly.  Maybe I can still save things, atone for what I’ve done!
     Moving to the bed, he gathered the organs and entrails that had spilled from Agnes’s body and pushed them frantically back inside her.  “I love you, Aggie,” he cried, using his old nickname for her.  His fingers prodded her face, seeking to restore the features he had once loved.  They pressed gaping wounds and severed bones together, strove to reconnect the arm that hung by a single fiber.  “Please, God,” he prayed, his hands smeared with gore, “don’t let it be too late.  Please let us have another chance.”
     He must have faith.  He had to believe.  Believe as Agnes did when she went to church, when she watched all those programs.  Didn’t the Bible say that faith had the power to move mountains?  Sure, it did!
     But all his labors and prayer were useless.  Agnes remained the bloody, hideous corpse he had disemboweled and carved to pieces.  Weeping, he closed his eyes and laid his head on what had once been her stomach.
     A little later, someone began stroking his hair.  At first he told himself it was only his imagination.  But the hand persisted, its fingers gently molding and shaping.
     Slowly, he raised his head.
     “Hello, Bentley,” Agnes said.
     His blood turned to ice.  Had his prayers worked, or was he losing his mind?  Could Agnes still be alive?
    He staggered up and scanned her body.  Incredibly, all her wounds had healed and she was whole again, lying on a bed which was no longer a pool of  blood but completely dry and spotless.  Looking at his own body, he saw that it was clean too!
     He gulped air, rubbed his eyes, looked at her again.  She remained whole and unblemished, and she was smiling at him.
     “Agnes,” he asked, “are you all right?”
     “Yes, Bentley,” she said, her eyes shining with tears.  “Because you had faith.”
    “Faith?”  His heart overflowed with love and gratitude.  He felt reborn.  How blessed he was, how blessed they both were in being given a second chance!
     He sat beside her on the bed and stroked her cheek.  “Aggie, I’m sorry.  If you still want to see your program. . . .”
     “Oh no, darling,” she said, reaching up for him.  “I have something entirely different in mind.”

     It was just like their honeymoon, only better.
     She caressed him, clutched him, made him feel alive again with her own passion.  Gone were all the years of his failures and her criticisms, years which had drained the sap and vitality from their marriage.
    Afterward they lay on tangled sheets moist with their lovemaking.  He held her close.
     “I love you,” he said for the dozenth time.
     “I love you.”
     “I know.”
     He sighed in deep contentment.  How beautiful to tell her that and not receive a disgusted look or a scornful remark in return.  Yes, somehow, miraculously, he had changed Aggie back to what she had once been.  In a way, they both had been reborn.
     He squeezed her tightly.  “I love you,” he said.  “But you know something?”
     She snuggled against him.  “What?”
     “I – I can’t believe you could forgive me so easily.  You don’t mind?”
     “No.”
     But her voice sounded different, and his uncertainty deepened.  “Agnes – Aggie – I’m going to change.  I promise.”
     “Yes.”
     He hesitated.  “Is something wrong?  Look, I promise that this time, I’m really going to turn over a new leaf.  Just watch me at work.  I’ll have that promotion in no time.”
    He waited but she didn’t answer.  “Agnes?”
    “You sound just like you always do.”
    “What do you mean?”
    She sighed.  “You keep repeating things, like you don’t even have faith in yourself and are trying to convince me of something even you don’t believe.  And it’s always the same thing.  You promise you’re going to change and get a promotion at work.  But you never do!”
     “Agnes . . .”
     She rose and went to the dresser, where she stood naked in the dim light, smiling at him.  At least he thought she was smiling.  It was probably the shadows, but she looked oddly different, not the pious Agnes of a failed marriage, or even the sweet Aggie he had known so long ago.  Instead, it was a different Agnes, one he had perhaps created.
    “Sweetheart,” he began.
     “Yes, I know.  Now you’re going to tell me again that you’re going to get a promotion.”  She shook her head.  “If you only weren’t such a damned loser!  For a while I thought you had changed, but now I see you never can.”
     Agnes turned and picked up something from the dresser, the long sharp carving knife he had brought up.  “Bentley?”
     He swallowed, suddenly finding it hard to breathe.  “Yes?”
    Agnes took a step toward him, and this time he could see her smile clearly.
    She raised the knife and tested its blade with her finger. “Now,” she said softly, “it’s my turn.”