The house creaked, and a sound like a child screaming rose and then faded as the wind swept around the roof.

I'd been living with that sound for years and it no longer phased me. It was just another facet of living

on the wind-swept West Texas Plains. But today, the wind was worse than it had been in nearly a year.

The news said to expect 50 mile an hour gusts, and I had no reason to doubt them.

Not that I was giving much thought to the wind. I wasn't giving much

thought to anything but fantasies of murder. I sat in my home office where I did all the

accounting for the firm that had been in my family for

generations. Today the computer remained dark. The invoices and receipts and scrawled notes remained untouched.

The light was off and the lack of illumination in the room perfectly suited my mood.

And although Nightfall was still an hour or more away, all the dust kicked up by the wind blocked

much of the sunlight, making it seem like dusk outside. I'd been staring at a bear of scissors and a small

forest of pens on my desk. But now I switched my gaze and my murderous daydream

from the scissors to the 30 aught six hunting rifle propped

against the wall next to my office door.

I pictured bursting into a motel room with the rifle in my hands, finding them in bed together.

I pictured them pleading for mercy, gripping each other's naked sweaty bodies.

I raised the rifle, pointing it at his head first. I wanted her to see him die before she left the world forever.

But that was where my fantasy stopped.

Even in my imagination, I couldn't conjure up the courage to pull the trigger.

It had been the same with the scissors.

When it came time to plunge them into sweaty sex-smelling flesh, some sort of mental block stopped me.

It only increased my anger and frustration.

...