Free Ravenous by Ray Garton

breakfast. He seldom ate much for lunch, so he was hungry when he got home at the end of the day, and Andrea always had a hot dinner waiting for him when he arrived, which was as it should be as far as Jimmy was concerned. She knew what would happen if she didn’t, or was late.
    When Jimmy and Andrea had married, she’d wanted to remove the words “to honor and obey” from the vows. Jimmy’s father had predicted this would happen back when Jimmy was thirteen. His father had given him a long lecture about how to “handle” women as he got older, and he’d said that when Jimmy married, his bride probably would want to remove those words, and he’d told Jimmy to resist it. That, Dad had said, was how it was supposed to be—the wife was supposed to “honor and obey” her husband.
    Jimmy remembered how his mother had obeyed his father, and how, on the rare times that she had not, Dad had punished her with a beating, sometimes with the belt. He’d punished Jimmy and his brother Neil the same way, of course. Punishment had been a big part of life when Jimmy was growing up.
    Jimmy and Andrea had been married four years, and there were times when he could not stand the sight of her, days when he wanted to pick up that baby—a baby he sometimes suspected was not his—and beat Andrea to death with it. Times when he wanted to go through the house and just lay waste to the place, devastate it. When that happened, he had to get out of the house. He would come home from work, have his dinner, then go out and get into the truck and just drive and look around. Sometimes he would come across a woman who appealed to him. He would watch her house, or follow her around town, sometimes for a few nights in a row. Then, he would introduce himself to her in his own special way, show her what a real man was like.
    After that, he always felt better.
    Those times came more often these days—the feeling he was about to explode with tension, anger, that desire to destroy his own house, his own family. He’d had to go out at night more often and give himself air to breathe. And more often, he had to find a woman. So he could introduce himself to her ... in his own special way.
    As he waited for his breakfast, Jimmy watched the waitress pass back and forth before him. She was just a little plump—not fat, he could not tolerate fat people—nicely voluptuous, with honey-blonde hair, big pouty lips. She caught him watching her, but he did not stop, did not avert his eyes. Instead, he smiled. She looked at him briefly and returned the smile. As she smiled, Jimmy winked at her. Her smile grew and she ducked her head bashfully as she turned away from him to take a plate from the order window. He watched as she took the plate to a table.
    Andrea was skinny. Her breasts were small and flattish, her knees knobby. She had a nice ass, he gave her that much. But Jimmy was more of a breast man. The fact was, he never would’ve married her if she hadn’t been pregnant with Jenny. Hell, he hadn’t wanted to marry her even then, but after beating the crap out of Jimmy in his bedroom, his dad gave him a lecture on how stupid you had to be to get a woman pregnant these days, and about doing the right thing. Then he’d kicked Jimmy around some more. He’d been drunk at the time, of course. So they’d married, and Jimmy found himself where he was today—restless, trapped, with a growing rage inside him.
    The curvaceous waitress placed his breakfast before him, gave him a smirk and a silent wink, then walked away.
    Jimmy chuckled a little as he began to eat.
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    Jason
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    The Northgate Mall opened at nine, and early shoppers came in as soon as the doors were unlocked. The Donut Hole was the only vendor in the food court that opened that early, and a short line formed right away. Most of the stores opened at nine, though the higher end boutiques