Countdown: The Top 20 Jack Ketchum Works of Short Fiction--#19

[For the previous entry on the Countdown, click here.]

#19. "Damned If You Do"

This 2004 tale (collected in Closing Time and Other Stories) might not feature the hard-core horror of a similarly-set Ketchum piece,
"If Memory Serves," but it does pack a nasty surprise.  Writhing on the horns of a relationship dilemma, John Brewer has been making weekly visits to a therapist's office for the past two months.  Brewer doesn't "know what to do with" his mate Jennie; she "just doesn't listen anymore."  Brewer can't decide between "holding onto" Jennie or "dumping [her] once and for all" (a drastic act that part of Brewer admittedly doesn't want to commit, leading him to bemoan
"damned if you and damned if you don't").  Dr. Sullivan does his best to help Brewer deal with his personal issues, but the story's climax reveals that the therapist and his patient were never really on the same page.  Brewer returns home to observe Jennie lying in their bedroom:

He could almost hear her breathing--that was how peaceful she looked.  How she could look so peaceful and be so bloated by now that it was impossible to see the length of baling wire around her neck was a mystery to him.

"Damned If You Do" is a terrific example of Ketchum's ability to author a finely crafted short story, with its twist ending set up by several strategic hints.  Sullivan notes instances of Brewer's
"sham" body language and evasive responses, early clues pointing to the fact that the man is keeping something secret from the doctor.  When Sullivan suggests that Jennie herself might need
professional help, Brewer laughingly but forcefully shoots down the idea: "She'll never be in therapy, believe me."  Next the doctor attempts to engage Brewer in a bit of dream analysis, not realizing how close he is getting to the truth: "Sullivan was a firm believer in dreams as metaphors for problems left untended to, each with its own symbolic language.  Anything from a reminder to pay that overdue gas bill to resolving the guilt over a loved one's death."  Even a seemingly innocuous detail like the passing mention that Brewer is a furniture maker by trade proves key to the conclusion, when Jennie's festering corpse is shown to be contained in a "knotty pine box" built by her slayer.  In retrospect, even the story's title is telling, as it omits the "don't" half of the maxim (and intimates the state of perdition someone like Brewer enters into by committing a mortal sin).

The story leaves off with Brewer still caught in internal debate ("Dump her? Or leave her be?"), and unsure whether he can wait until next week's session to come to a decision, because Jennie "was really beginning to stink."  The same certainly cannot be said for "Damned If You Do," a piece that only appreciates with each subsequent reading.