User:The Koromo/take2

That night it seemed like every house in the Adirondacks was silent except for the one on 318 Deerfield Road. Actually, every night it felt like this, but Al Gleason knew as soon as his wife walked through the door that tonight was going to be particularly interesting. This was primarily due to his surprise when she actually did step into their bedroom.

His spirits dampened when he saw her in the same clothes she'd been wearing all day prior, and none of that lingerie or skimpy nightgown or even simple thighhighs. What more could a man ask for than a pair of socks? Instead she was adorned in dull black stretch pants and a night sweater, with cozy-looking patterns and designs knitted onto them – Christmas trees and ornaments, sleds and snowflakes. Didn't bother her that it was the end of summer – she'd always had some weird fixation with staying warm no matter how hot it had been. Al's disappointment turned into dread when he saw her eyes.

He knew Sharon's stare. For her a look of hate wasn't a glower, it was a cold, narrow gaze. A glare was anger, annoyance, disgust. This was hate. He'd come to know what it looked like after a twenty-three year marriage.

She knows, he thought in utter defeat. She knows.

From behind her back where she held an unseen hand, she wordlessly revealed it and dropped the bottle of whiskey on the rug at the edge of the bed where he sat. What very little remained of it trickled out lazily onto the rug in drops. As she lowered her head, he lifted his, and when their eyes met in the dimness her hate turned to rage.

“I don't know who the fuck you think you are, Albert-”

“Sharon, just listen, my boys and I were at the pub and Paul ordered us some surprise drinks, I didn't mean anything by it, please god Sharon I'm sorry-”

“You meant everything by it you sorry fuck.”

And he did – why else would he have gone out to the liquor store after that one drink had left his throat itching?

“So anything else? Bet you're going to shoot heroin now?” Sharon was both crying and yelling now, and Kayla and Rodrick had woken up screaming in the other room as soon as she'd raised her voice above a sliver.

“I'm sorry, Sharon. I'm a shitty husba-”

The moment that cut him short seemed to happen in a blur. She raised her fist with the speed of a snake and before either of them even seemed conscious of it her fist had collided with his nose.

“Fuck!” He screamed, warm liquid running down his nose and into the palms of his hands when he instinctively grabbed on to it. “Goddammit, Sharon!” He'd collapsed onto the bedsheets and even then he didn't noticed she seemed just as surprised by her sudden jab as he was.

“Oh, Al...”

He diverted his attention back up toward her.

“It's...it's not broken, is it?”

He shook his head. He didn't know his wife could hit that hard. Usually she'd just struck with words. Where she pulled punches physically she let them loose through her voice. And still it seemed like the venom that oozed from those perfect white teeth and red lips cut into him twice as deep. “N-no. Baby, it's not broken.”

A short pause. “G-good. Because I don't regret anything of what I just did.” She held back more tears, turned away facing the door, almost exited before turning her head once again. Her voice remained low now, and only the children wailed down the dark corridor outside. “You know better than this, Al. Or maybe you don't. From what you just did I have a damn good right to assume you don't. And if this ever happens again” - her voice began shattering on the words happens again - “it's over.”

She left the room, sobbing, heading for the kids' bedroom.

He plugged his nose up with a tissue and soon the bleeding stopped. Only seconds later the kids stopped crying. And only seconds after that he found himself staring up at the empty ceiling for what seemed like all night until he was snoring.

The next day, he found himself sitting on the front porch after his afternoon shower. He'd poured himself some coffee. In the early September air a small breeze flew in from down the street. The breeze was nice but the chill reminded him that summer would be over soon, so he might as well enjoy the rest of it while it lasted before the cold set in. Right now Al just gently rocked the glass of coffee in his hand to and fro, trying and failing not to think about last night.

Rarely did he ever think about how it had all been his fault. He knew it was, but he never really looked long and hard into it. He'd stopped doing that after the first three years. But from time to time, on the bleakest of those autumn and winter nights, he did nothing but lay in his bed and let his mind play it over and over like a ruined record, on an infinite loop until he fell into dreams. On these nights his wife slept soundly beside him, unaware of what twirled around in his mind. The sweet eyes and peaceful frown on her lips as she breathed in her dreams only tightened the knot that was in his stomach those nights.

Fourteen years ago. Just like almost all crises, it started out simply and innocuously enough. They'd met further up north, but now the two of them had been living in Rochester at the time, in a neighborhood not unlike the one they lived in now, only Rochester obviously had that urban atmosphere that Al wished he could revisit. Al had been working and the two of them wanted a child soon, so best to raise enough money to support the family they'd create. On a particularly horrendous night, in which he'd been laid off from his job, he came home and grieved about it to Sharon, who being as kind as she'd been before everything came down suggested that he spend the evening with his friends. He told her he'd go see a movie or go see a ballgame or something along those lines.

Probably unlike most men looking to do some things behind a loved one's back, he hadn't initially planned for it to be a lie. He'd have done what she'd suggested. Instead one of his best friends at the time had phoned him and told him to come to his apartment with a bunch of other friends. He reluctantly obliged, and shortly afterward the two of them plus the three others they'd invited hit the bar and got smashed more than they'd expected at first. They'd all had plenty of money, they'd all drunk more than their stomachs could hold, and there was a (now-defunct) brothel just down the block and the rest was history.

Sharon learned of the incident about two and a half weeks after it happened, just after Al had figured he was safe from exposure. The friend who invited him, Henry, had left a message on the Gleasons' home phone that revealed some details about that night, which Sharon happened to hear. It did more than just postpone any thought of the two of them having kids – it shattered them both and would shatter the kids well after they were born. She couldn't go anywhere else - her parents claimed that she never existed and she didn't have enough money to keep a house of her own. Neither did he, but working together they fixed that problem. So in that respect they could not leave each other at all.

He thought about something he'd said last night and the laugh he choked out was humorless. I'm sorry, Sharon. I'm a shitty husband. Self-victimization, what sort of mentality. He knew who the hurt one was here. He guessed he could only be grateful that there were things far worse than whiskey he did and that she didn't know about them. Both gratefulness and shame overlapped more than he thought was possible.

His nose still ached a bit. Dammit that punch hurt. He knew she could be verbally aggressive but not physically. She was out in town now, at a meeting with her psychiatrist down by the lake. Afterward she would drop Rodrick off at daycare, then go to work. Kayla was at school, so he was fine. He was alone and undisturbed for now, so he could get out, drop by the downtown mall and search between that alley for some buddies of his, and-

"Daddy?"

He'd forgotten he was holding his coffee and almost spilled the entire contents of it onto his lap. Instead after he jumped it spewed some onto the porch. It slipped and he dropped it, and it then rolled along the wood until it got stuck in between the guardrail and jammed there. He turned to see his six year old daughter, Kayla, standing in the doorway, her teddy bear wedged between her armpit and her arm reached up to rub her eyes, which were curious and warm. Sheer innocence. Al said, "Ugh, Kayla, don't do that. You scared me senseless baby."

She made a puppy dog face. "Sowwy daddy." That face elevated into the tiny, gorgeous little smile he'd come to adore so much despite everything else.

"It's okay, honey. Just...aren't you supposed to be in school?" He noticed some coffee that had dabbled onto his pants a little and he swiped it off with a thumb.

"Daddy, it's Saturday."

"Oh." He blinked. "Right." What a fucking idiot; I'm seriously out of it today. "Do you want breakfast, honey? There's some waffles in the fridge. I can make them for you. Just give me a bit, honey, I'm-"

She plopped down on his lap, those eyes suddenly sad, with a yearning he felt only she could understand. Their bright blue mixed with the dark brown of her hair shot a serene warmth through him and at the moment it seemed nothing else could possibly have done that. "I miss mommy, daddy."

He blinked, then finally smiled without having to force it. "Oh, baby, mommy? That's why you were upset? Look, I know mommy has a lot of work to do. She's a busy lady. But it's good that you're mommy's a busy lady. Do you know why?"

She slowly shook her head.

“Because she’s making money. And if she didn’t make money then she wouldn’t have been able to raise you.”

“But why can’t you?”

He’d stopped even trying after being canned from his job a second time due to incompetence a few years ago so the question shook him a bit. He gripped his daughter’s hand gently and caressed his fingers around it, the gentlest he had ever handled a person. Somehow she and she only brought that out in him. On the spot, he said: “I do, baby. I stay home with you.” Nothing more than a failure. The only job I have is taking care of this house.

Her lips began quivering and she started to tremble. He knew what was coming next and had no way to stop it. “B-b-but I want to see you and mommy...together! Mommy never...comes home…”

Her cries pierced the quietness of the mid-September air, but the town continued standing still and lifeless. He tried to calm her down as best as he could. “Kayla...Kayla! Oh sweetie, it’s okay.” He attempted his warmest smile, he pulled her closer to his chest and she wept in his chest. He could say nothing more; there was nothing more to say because the kid was right and knowing that deep down was probably the most agonizing.

“Nuh-uh. It’s not.” She dried her face with her sleeve, which was oversized and probably belonged to her mother. “All I want is you and mommy to be happy.”

A shattering realization hammered against him, while at the same time he just wanted to grab her, squeeze her, take her and love her and never let go. If he’d been any more fortunate in his situation he’d have just thought about how grateful he was to have a child as beautiful and kind as her. But the looming dread overshadowed any comfort he may have felt. All I want is you and mommy to be happy. With just that sentence he realized it was all more obvious than he’d like to think.

“Oh. Oh sweetie. Me and mommy are happy!” He twitched like he’d gnawed into a bitter pill. Another grimace burned through him. A kid couldn’t see through a lie even that obvious, could she?

“I just wish we could all be together daddy.”

With that, she trudged back off into the house, still whimpering under her breath and leaving him speechless in the summer dimness, still except for the chirp of a cicada out somewhere. He stared down past his feet and at the coffee. What was left of it at least. The foam cup would have toppled off of the porch if the lanky beams supporting it didn’t jam it between them. The last droplets dribbled out. The rest of it was spewed across the wood, like the same bloodied mess he’d pictured himself as after he was dead. It wasn’t like anyone would be sad about it; just burdened with sweeping up his bones and scattered remnants, more likely just appalled than anything else.

He uttered another humorless laugh. Too much of this thinking intensified the craving. There wasn’t much to think about either way.

He decided to take a stroll. Not enough to get himself lost, as he couldn’t leave the kid behind, but just enough to get himself some air. Down the block, the road continued a mile down into the town proper, where the lake of the town’s namesake glimmered beautifully and greeted whoever crossed it with a dense northeastern wilderness. Before this road continued, the block ended at the curb where a town park was located adjacent to another string of houses that comprised the neighborhood, and even further down this road one of the many rivers left behind by Algonquin times wound off east through the state, before eventually ending up in Vermont. He’d stopped at that corner and turned back around, headed home. Walking on that pavement, underneath that sun and that blue sky, brought back more than he’d imagined it would.

He thought about it for awhile, or what seemed like awhile. It seemed so alien to him now. It couldn't have been that long ago, he thought, but deep down he knew it was. He remembered those days spent on the Sound, still less than twelve, somehow despite all these years gone by, unable to forget the feel of that sand hot against his feet in the summers cooled by the breeze that swept in from the ocean. To a child not yet a teenager, seeing those two great blues come together at the horizon represented nothing but immortality and freedom, which were concepts smashed apart with ridicule when a child grows up and loses their innocence. He remembered the taste and smell of his mother's cookies, his older sister's distinct laugh that he'd come to know and love, and most especially the shadowy evening sands of the North Shore and the cool of the sea on his feet.

God, where and when did he lose it all? His mind utterly failed him. He knew that when he'd taken that first hit he'd been altered in ways he couldn't ever change. Theoretically he could, but something just kept pushing him farther away. He knew what it was and he kept his lips shut on his own accord. Concealed underneath his own fakery, the reason hid and he did not dare say it.

As though he'd lost time, his mind had overcome him and he'd found himself sitting down awkwardly on the sidewalk across from his house, his train of thought leading him there. It seemed he'd spent more time than he thought - evening was approaching fast, puffy cumulus clouds turning orange from the light of the sun. He'd guessed he was out here for about half an hour. He checked his watch: 6:30. With a deep sigh, he stood up, rubbing some mist out of his eyes, prepared to somehow cope with his cravings whether it was for women or a beer. Last night it was just a fuck-up, dragged into it by some of his friends, friends he knew were worthless to him when he really thought about it.

Evening continued its approach. The sun stood dormant in the sky, beginning its descent below the suburbs. The dying sun reminded him that it had just been another day wasted.

Later on, he lay on his back in their bedroom, one hand resting on his stomach while the other fell free off the bed. He gazed upward toward the countless cracks on the ceiling. Their bedroom was windowless - there was only one in the bathroom which connected to it. On the most crushing of days he went in there and opened the window just to feel sweet air on his face. It helped with heightening the sense of comfort, if only minuscule.

Some birds still chirped outside - he could hear it from the crack that opened the bathroom window - so he knew it wasn't quite nighttime yet. Approaching eight, he figured. He needed to take his sleeping pills. So, his legs heavy, he forced himself up and shuffled over to the bathroom door, opening it to be greeted with the approaching darkness outside of the window, its sill caked with grime. The bathroom was tiny and claustrophobic and he’d always showered in here as quickly as he could.

The medicine cabinet lay at the other end, and in it was a variety of meds and lotions and bactines. He’d gotten a whole bunch of stuff the other night from a friend of his down at the waterfront, where he’d fished sometimes. He’d hoped to take Rodrick down there one day too. The rest of the meds were prescribed or his wife’s advil.

He hadn’t realized how tired he’d been until after the fact. And even further after that, there wasn’t any turning back.

His tiredness disoriented him and his leg hooked on to the kids’ stool, which they stood up on when needing to brush their teeth. He barely had time to shout before he was sent sprawling over, the stool propelled backwards which resulted in it rolling away, before his face met the cold hard tile of the bathroom.

It was a crack that only echoed throughout the bathroom, but to him it might as well have been the sound of glass shattering heard for a mile radius. His nose instantly broke, snapped in two, and he felt the gushing stream down his nasal passage before he heard the crack.

Blaring agony was all he felt. Nothing else. He remembered Sharon punching his nose last night, and maybe this was some sort of karmic retribution. He scrambled to his feet, blood spattering the floor and dribbling down the side of the sink, before some splattered into the sinkhole. Frantically, he reached up to the medicine cabinet and pulled out the nearest pill he could find.

In his pained daze, he grabbed several pills, popped them - and swallowed.

He hadn't realized he'd left some of the stuff he'd bought downtown in there. His wife never looked because she refused to use that bathroom (with her claustrophobia), so he'd thought he was safe. Didn't you always think you were safe?

He didn't mean to take so many. Thinking they were painkillers he popped the remaining ones, one by one till they were down in his stomach. He didn't know what they were. He'd bought them, and that was that. It was part of his thirst.

Part of his sickness.

Something overcame him, rippling through him with a fierce intensity, like that of a blade cutting skin. His vision distorted; his ears burned; his eyes stung. Soon, the burning sensations caused him to scramble from the bathroom, mouth agape in a throaty shout, tripping over his own feet upon reaching the bed. When he did, the trip caused him to thump into the side of the bed's beams and tumble backward.

The room transformed. It was no longer the room where he and Sharon shared a bed: it was now inhuman, an alien planet plunged into a no-named addict's bedroom in some backwoods mountain town in upstate New York. His vision jumped, eyes flying rapidly across the room, which was divided into multiple subsections shaded in black and white that were asymmetrical in all aspects of the word. The bed was divided as though it had been sliced into pieces, each of its sections hovering a considerable distance from each other, and as the room spun his mind broke.

He did the only thing his conscious mind could do. Scream. For the nearest person he knew was there.

"Honey! Kayla! KAYLA!"

Her room was located on the complete opposite end of their home, but she didn't need to be any closer. Her ears perked up and her face of indifference as she played around on her GBA distorted into shock, and her little heart froze. Like her father she only had one conscious thought: but here she knew daddy was in trouble.

The Gameboy was tossed across the room carelessly, landing in a basket to ensure its safety, though she didn't care. Daddy was her priority. She flew out of her room and tripped on the doorstopper, hitting her knee. It hurt but she didn't care. "Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!"

Her little legs carried her quickly, and within seconds she was standing in the hallway across from her daddy, who stood in the door, hand on the side, eyes directed at her in a blank stare.

"Kayla..."

For a second he saw through those angel eyes every little girl had. He wanted to fall into that bright blue oasis he gazed into, but that face quickly morphed past recognition, and now his sense of reality, of even his own child's beauty, was gone.

The thing grinned up at him, bony teeth sickening in his field of vision.

He screamed again.

Sharon dipped her cigarette in the ashtray, smushing it against the glass bottom, rubbing it almost out of existence in a nervous haze. Every few seconds she lifted it back up to her lips and huffed, before she felt it sting her after failing to realize that the stub had almost fully diminished. She yelped and let it drop.

The twilight was cool, the coolest it had been all summer. But still, she felt herself sweating harder than she had all season. She rubbed her fingers together, supposedly forgetting the cigarette had been discarded. Above her, the sun disappeared below the trees. Stars twinkled, though clouds still remained, obscuring many of them.

She hadn't realized it consciously, but now she did. The laugh she choked out was humorous at the conclusion she'd come to that she'd wanted to do this not just now, but for years. Strangle him, squeeze the air out of his neck until he was as purple as a kalamata, then drive him out to the lake and bash his head against the jagged rocks of the shore until it was nothing but a mass of mashed brain matter caking the sand. He was a foot taller than her, but she was strong. She could probably do it. Try as she might, however, she could think of no ways to shatter him emotionally. He'd done that enough to her. In return, the only retaliation she could think of was violence. Pure, unrestrained violence.

She realized too, though, that as much as she'd wanted to do it she could never find the willpower. It would likely remain that way, so she kept on, in forced tolerance of his neglect. Sometimes, the most gratifying thought was that he would break himself, and she would never even have to lift a finger. The image she'd gotten, one of her walking in on him lying on the couch with a needle jammed in his arm with a thick sludge-like foam dribbling from his sewer hole of a mouth, gave her a sick, almost sensual joy. In the heat of that moment, when it hopefully came, she'd scream at first, mortified and breaking down into a sobbing fit at the loss of her spouse. But after that deep joy would overcome her, and a laugh would rise out of the pits of her stomach, a laugh that would shake her to the core. And her dominant thought would be: Haha, he did it. He's gone. Finally fucking gone. He snapped, didn't he? Good god.

Tears had begun to fall, streamlining down her face. And before she could even realize that, the door to her therapist's office swung open behind her and out bounded Rodrick, smile on his face seemingly bigger than his four year old head could hold. She made a half-conscious mental note to thank him for interrupting her train of thought.

In return, she smiled herself. The darkness did a good job of keeping her tears concealed. She had been waiting for him to finish using the bathroom. And before she could say anything, he asked her: "Are you okay, momma?"

"What? Oh, yes, I'm fine." She turned her face away but grabbed him by the hand. "Into the car, honey. It's cold out here."

The kid was tired. Nothing more she could expect from a lively preschooler. As soon as she'd buckled him in, she noticed his eyes dropping, mouth agape in a silent yawn, replaced by a comforted smile. She collapsed in the driver's seat and closed her eyes too, exhaustion taking over. Her skull rang a bit, buzzing in an emptiness that was probably, she thought, more emotional than physical. She lifted her hand about on the dashboard, searching for painkillers, but found none. She groaned, and it echoed throughout the car. Getting no response, she turned and saw her son was asleep.

There was a convenience store across the road. It sat idle in the night, inside lights glowing in the dead summer emptiness. The only sound was a screeching cicada, but it stopped almost as soon as she'd acknowledged it. One minute walk over there give or take. She stepped out of the car - she was sure they'd have Advil or whatever.

Before she set off, something pulled her back. She got about a foot or so into the street, before retracing the step and plopping down on the concrete, leaning up against the side of the car. Repressing another onslaught of tears, she let the night mosquitoes pick away at her flesh while she thought about where it all went down the drain.

As the sun descended over the Manhattan skyline, the city came alive. In some ways, you could say it was immortal. Like many huge cities, the day never seemed to have a beginning and never seemed to have an end. When the sun went down, everything brightened.

A young Sharon O'Brien sat in her fourth floor apartment, unlit cigarette in hand that she rolled around between two fingers in a nervous daze. Her heart thudded in her chest - she thought she could feel it. Only thing she needed was for that doorbell to ring, then as soon as that happened here he would be and then to Little Italy, then the whole thing would be over with. Three hours, tops.

It rang. She didn’t want to get up, but she would sound dismissive if she shouted a simple “Come in!” With a heavy heart, she trudged over and forced her hand upon the doorknob.

When she saw him her discomfort seemed to clear up. There he was, the Albert Gleason she’d known only for some months now, the two of them young and ripe with opportunity. Comfort sometimes seemed to be the only thing she felt with him after they’d been good friends for these months, before feelings had developed. She didn’t know if the exclusive feeling was a good thing or not. She wanted more, wanted everything that came with a relationship, not only the comfort but the happiness and sentimentality and even the negative. There was no companionship without negatives. But right now it didn’t matter - right now when the nervousness faded, she felt like she could fall straight into his arms and live in them forever.

“S-Sharon? You okay?”

She blinked. Once then twice. Stupid, stupid, so stupid, she thought critically. A smile. “Yeah, I’m okay. Just...a bit nervous y’know?” He nodded. The smile he gave was warm, but it was never happy in the slightest. Only warm and sad and lonely. That was the word, lonely. If one word could encompass how a single human being seemed, then for him it would be that one.

And for me it would be “miserable”, she thought involuntarily.

“I know,” he responded. His smile never dimmed, as much as he looked like he’d wanted it to. “I get nervous a lot too. Come on, let’s head out. Our reservation is for nine-thirty.”

And so they went. Little Italy wasn’t far from her Eighth Avenue apartment, and within minutes they’d found themselves seated outside in the back of a fine Italian restaurant, in a formerly empty square lot now compromised by this restaurant and decorated. There table was one of the ones by the back of the small square, near the apartment building that blocked their view of the city street beyond. Ahead of them night had fallen, stars glimmering in the great above.

Before he’d changed, Al seemed so alone. She noticed it mostly then, because now the only thing she felt around him was his pain and his ugliness. This first date was no different - his smile seemed as though it was forced through a grimace, and she’d almost blamed herself, though deep down she knew it was not. And still they spoke, and her nervousness was gone, replaced by the feeling of her young, naive heart was bursting with...love, or something that seemed like it, and she had hoped he felt the same.

She noticed a change in his mood early in those hours when her wine arrived at the table. All he’d ordered was a glass of water. When he saw her drinking wine he’d seem to go numb, eyes fixated on it with intensity, his hands uncurling and balling back into fists sporadically. She’d noticed it and was unnerved by it, but she kept her mouth shut. He seemed to be attempting to hide it but it was clear to her that he was failing. Everything was back to normal when the meals came - they chatted away merrily and ate under the moon and stars with no problems. There was the loneliness and the pain that she saw him, but she was able to forget about it. And then it was beyond a shadow of a doubt - what she felt right now was love, romantic love, even in the smallest of ways.

Now she knew what that loneliness and that pain meant. It was on her now,the both of them, and soon their children would be affected too. She already noticed changes happening. Rodrick had become more distant when mommy and daddy were close by each other, but separated he was excitable and energetic as any four year old boy should be, especially around her. Kayla seemed to be becoming a different person, but not in any way a child naturally grew. Her eyes began to seem sad, her smile was filled with that same loneliness as Al’s had been all those years ago (and that was perhaps what disturbed Sharon the most), and she began talking less and less. There wasn’t a doubt about it that this was related to the two of them. It would have made little sense otherwise.

And in the present Sharon realized she was sobbing, sobbing too loudly, for a few supposedly concerned glances from passersby in the dark were directed at her, and then the night returned to pure silence when the street emptied again.

She’d almost wished someone passing by had took enough pity to come and help her, just so she wouldn’t feel lonely anymore, if even for a few seconds. But pity was awful and everyone could have done better without it. Grimly, she pushed herself up to her feet before the ring of her phone blasted through her coat pocket.

She jumped a bit, snapping her cheap cell open and staring down at the caller ID. Her eyes stung a bit from looking into the phone’s glare in the darkness, but she managed to make out their home number.

Any rage she’d previously felt for Al still remained, but she choked it back into her as she held the cell up to her ear. “What is it, Al? I’m heading home now.”

The voice on the other end made her blood run cold.

The voice she recognized was the distraught squeak of her daughter, a nasally tone only heard from her in the rarest times of pure dread. Sharon’s mind made her imagine, vividly, the feel of those tears she knew were running down her child’s cheeks right then and the feeling itself almost broke her.

“Momma....daddy’s mad.”

Even as she was speeding well past the suburban limits, she never knew what Kayla’s tiny utter of mad meant. It didn’t matter what it meant.