by Mark Tufo
Mike felt tugging on the cuff of his pants as Mrs. Hollow pulled her now blood soaked self up using him as her crutch.
“I should have killed you when I had the opportunity!” she yelled as she was halfway up.
“What?” Mike asked trying to wrap his thoughts around her words. “When did you have an opportunity?”
“I own a gun, I could have done it at any time and don’t think I didn’t fantasize about it!” she was still yelling.
Mr. Hollow was grappling with his wife who was swiping at Mike with her hands shaped into claws. Mike didn’t move as she opened up wounds on his forehead and cheeks. She dug her fingers into his top lip and would have succeeded in ripping it off if Drew hadn’t manhandled her out of the room.
Nurses had come running when they heard the commotion. Mike and Jandilyn’s primary care doctor had a syringe of sedative and plunged it into Mrs. Hollow’s left arm.
“I hope you die!” she yelled one last time before the drug took effect.
“Too late,” Mike answered her. “I already did.”
After the hospital had Gina admitted and secure in her room, Drew came and stood next to Mike. They stood there for hours both lost in their grief, immersed too deeply to even look to each other for support.
“My little princess is gone
,” Drew finally said. He brushed a lock of hair away from her face. Gave her a kiss on the forehead and went back to his wife’s room.
CHAPTER TWELVE - The Aftermath Part Two
Mike stayed long after the cleanup crew swabbed up the remains of a life bled dry and would have stayed longer if the people from the hospital mortuary hadn’t come to collect their pound of flesh. He wandered the hospital hallways aimlessly, not knowing what he should do or where he should go, he was numb. No, that wasn’t quite right, numb would have been welcome. Numb would have meant he wasn’t feeling anything. He was feeling everything. Every part of his being ached from the loss, he would have felt more whole if he had just lost a leg.
Mike eventually found himself at the doors to the hospital morgue. The attendant felt for Mike, but hospital rules were hospital rules, he was not allowed in, and that maybe he should go home and get some rest.
Mike could not reconcile the fact that Jandilyn was dead, he did not want to leave her alone in that cold, clinical room, she would get scared. Mike tried to plead his case to the young intern, even telling him his wife always slept with dozens of pillows and if she didn’t have them she would have a hard time falling asleep.
“This will get better,” the young man told Mike.
Mike looked deeply at the man, his eyes completely red rimmed from crying. “The world without Jandilyn Talbot is a much colder place.”
The intern shivered as Mike turned and went back down the hallway from where he had come. Something about the stranger’s eyes had unnerved him and he worked with the dead so that was not an easy feat.
Mike walked out into the night, a light mist coated his face as he walked toward the parking garage. Mike had never driven at night, he more than hoped his lack of experience and depth perception would have him plow head-on into a tree and erase the stain of the day upon the folds of his brain. He weaved all over the road until a patrolman spotted him and thinking he was drunk, pulled him over.
“License, registration… you alright, partner?” the cop asked him when Mike turned to face him.
“My wife and child died today,” Mike said, never letting go of the steering wheel.
Corporal Gibson had been on the force long enough and had heard just about every excuse. This was not one of them. “Should you be driving?”
“No, I have a restricted permit, only supposed to drive during day time. I should be at the hospital right now cradling my baby daughter while my beautiful wife smiles at me. They’re both dead and the man at the hospital wouldn’t let me sleep with them in the morgue. They’re going to be so scared there in the dark, and they’ll be so cold without their blankets and pillows.”
“How far away is your home?”
“I have no home anymore,” Mike said as he rested his head on the steering wheel.
Officer Gibson had compassion, he hadn’t had that emotion completely burned out of him yet. Even still he wished he had not pulled this car over. He was not equipped to deal with this type of encounter.
“You married, officer?” Mike asked, now looking at the cop.
Officer Gibson stepped back as he gazed into Mike’s white eye.
“I am.”
“You should get your head checked.”
The cop had thought the distressed guy he had pulled over was telling him he was crazy for tying the knot, something he’d thought on more than one occasion. It was two months later when he had his first seizure that he put two and two together. The crazy driver with the white eye had given him a warning. Of course then it was too late, the aggressive tumor had spread tendrils throughout the majority of his brain and was choking the life out of him.
“I’m not going to give you a warning, just get yourself home, maybe pour yourself a stiff two or three drinks. I’m sorry, I truly am.”
Mike pulled away without saying another word. His right tires squealed as he rode the curb for fifteen feet before getting out onto the roadway.
Officer Gibson stood there long after the Jeep’s taillights vanished over a rise in the road. When he got back into his cruiser he made sure to make a U-turn and see what was happening on the other side of town. It had to b better than what he had just been party to. He made sure to stop and call his wife first.
Mike opened up the door to his apartment, the kitchen light was on and he noticed a piece of paper on the table. A hastily scrawled note lay there as if the person who had penned it wanted to make sure they were long gone before he came home.
Mike, They let Gina leave after an hour. I got Jandilyn’s key from her personal belongings and we took a cab here. Gina was still ranting so I thought it would be better if we got a hotel room, I will call tomorrow with funeral arrangements. Drew.
P.S. Gina grabbed the cat and I could not convince her to leave it, she said it was the only thing living in the apartment now and she couldn't bear to leave it alone. I will return it once she calms down.
The paper was littered with crinkled spots where Drew’s tears had struck and dried, a fair portion of the letters had smeared but the message was clear. Gina still blamed him for her daughter’s death. Everything in the apartment was a testament to the life of Jandilyn. Her smiling picture as they stood at the lip of the Grand Canyon adorned the refrigerator. Her bonsai tree she had named Mimoto was on the window sill. Her obsession with throw pillows.
“Where are you now, you thin fuck!” Michael screamed. “I’ll fucking kill you!”
Mike thought he heard a rustling down the hallway in the bedroom. He sprinted, hoping to catch the intruder and make them pay. The bedroom window was open, the billowing sheer curtain was rubbing up against Jandilyn’s nightstand.
“Are you here, Jandilyn?” Mike asked as the atmosphere in the room seemed to shift. The curtain which had almost been horizontal to the floor stilled suddenly, the air got heavy, Mike had difficulty catching his breath. As soon as it happened it passed, the curtain began to billow again and the cloistered feeling left. It wasn’t his Jandilyn, what he felt had been malevolent.
Mike grabbed every article that belonged to Jandilyn and placed them on the bed, he pushed out just enough room so that he could fit himself on the mattress with her possessions. As much as he had hoped for solace, perhaps hoping for a shred of her being infused with the article, he was dismayed to discover that when she had died the inanimate objects she had loved reverted to their original forms of cold metal, plastic, or wood. Any life she had breathed in them had died when she had.
Mike slept until Drew called the following morning.
“The service is Tuesday, Our Lady of Christ, nine-thirty.” Then he hung up.
Mike held the phone to his e
ar a while longer, when he realized that it wasn’t a practical joke, he placed it back down on the receiver.
Occasionally, Mike would venture forth from his chair and rummage in the fridge to eat something but only when crippling hunger cramps threatened to overtake the pain he felt for Jandilyn. His heart nearly broke as he looked for sustenance and ended up shattering the jar of jalapeños on the floor. He dropped to the floor, his knees becoming imbedded with glass as he scooped up the pickled peppers and began to place them in the bowl he had been holding. He wept as his fingers bled, he was certain if he could save even some of them Jandilyn would have to come back and claim them. And how mad would she be if there were none left?
Two days later Mike sat under a shower of cold water, hoping he would start to feel something besides bitter misery. The stinging bite of the water droplets only reminded him he was still alive. He put on a suit Jandilyn had tailored for him for when he started on his book signing tour, something he had not yet done. The suit seemed to hang on him, he had diminished both physically and spiritually. He drove to the church where he had planned on having his child baptized, the parking lot was packed as he knew it would be. He walked into the church, most of the pews were occupied, as more and more people realized he had entered they turned to watch his progression up to the front. Some mouthed, ‘I’m sorry’, others just shook their heads, still others seemed to have that same scornful look of reproach on their faces as if it should be him lying in that casket and not her.
Mike’s steps faltered when he saw the second much smaller casket, he had not been expecting that and had nearly pitched over. A hand reached out to help him, Mike couldn’t remember the guy’s name but thought it might be Brian—one of Jandilyn’s coworkers.
“I hate you, you killed her,” Brian had said as he steadied Mike.
Mike looked into the man’s eyes, trying to figure out what he had heard and if quite possibly he had misunderstood the words. Even if that had been the case, though, Brian’s eyes told the whole story, they burned with the hatred. Mike pulled back quickly and staggered his way up the center aisle. Gina Hollow sat at the very edge of the pew on the front right, she never turned to look at Mike and made it clear she would not move even if he had wanted her to. Mike quickly sat at the pew on the front left which was completely devoid of any others.
Mike sat quietly with his head bowed as the priest delivered his service, a few of Jandilyn’s friends went up and gave tearful eulogies. Mike never even realized when the mass was over until Drew came and put his hand on his shoulder.
“My promise still holds.” Drew told him. “I’ll be here for you.”
Mike couldn’t bring himself to look up. The weight of his crashing world seemed to have him permanently bowed.
“It was good knowing you, Drew,” Mike said as he stared down at his clasped hands.
“I won’t see you again then?” It was asked as a question but sat on the fence as a statement also.
“Tell Gina, if she’ll listen, that I’m sorry.”
“Son.”
Mike winced at the word, he was no one’s son, he was driftwood in the sea of humanity.
“This wasn’t your fault.”
“I think maybe your wife was right, I’m poisonous. Everyone I have loved who lets me into their lives dies.”
“Mike, that’s crazy.”
“I’m moving, Drew, I’ve got everything I want in my Jeep. Go take whatever you want of Jandilyn’s that will give you some comfort in the cold nights to come.” Mike rose and walked out of the church. He passed Gina who had regained a smoking habit she had dropped twenty years previous when Jandilyn was a toddler. She said nothing as he passed.
Mike walked through the billow of her exhaust and strode purposefully to his car, throwing his tie and jacket to the side of the road.
Mike drove up the coast for a few miles, wondering where he might like to finish off the remainder of his life. He toyed briefly with the thought of going east, back to his childhood home, but he hadn’t been welcome there in over half a decade. He didn’t even know if his parents still lived in the same house or had moved and failed to send him a forwarding address. He really didn’t care.
Alaska seemed as good an idea as any and he most likely would have made it if not for a torrential downpour in Seattle that exactly matched his mood.
“This'll work,” he told himself as he took shelter within the Cleverly named Baits (and Lures) Motel. ‘Rooms with a view and no crazy relatives’ the in-house brochure proclaimed. It seemed like a welcome promise to Mike.
Mike spent two days lying on top of sheets that felt like burlap bags. If not for the infrequent need to purge himself he would not have moved. His thoughts swirled around his disbelief that Jandilyn was gone and the gut-punching reality of that fact.
Mike knew Jandilyn would be pissed if she saw him in the state he was in.
“Feeling sorry for yourself, are you?” she asked.
“I am, Jandilyn. I miss you so much.”
“You know I’m still here. Now I’m just inside of you. That doesn’t mean you can just crawl inside of yourself and exclude the rest of the world, though.”
“How did you know I was thinking that?” Mike exclaimed.
“Mike, sometimes I didn’t know where I ended and you began. This is just an extension of that.”
“I liked it better when we could touch.”
“We can again.”
Mike sat up fast. “How
, Jandilyn?” he begged.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN - 7 Cefalo Road
Two hours later, Mike was sitting in Real Estate Agent Kylie Milligan’s heated Toyota Camry as they wound their way through tree lined roads.
“This is really off the beaten trek,” the young woman said to Mike. Her stomach was telling her that something was just not quite right about her new client. Just last month she had attended a seminar on realtor safety, stressing that realtors and brokers should get all the pertinent information regarding their client’s personal and financial lives before taking them out to show houses. Foremost was for safety, last year one of Seattle’s most prominent realtors had been beaten, raped, and killed in a foreclosed home and the police still had no leads. Secondly, was for valuable time, on more occasions than Kylie would like to remember she had shown couples multitudes of homes to only discover they were merely window shopping. She wondered how many lost weekends she could never get back had she wasted that way. She would have told Mike no way, but her mortgage on her modest ranch home was already ten days overdue and he was the first potential buyer she had seen in a month.
Mike had not said more than two words to her since they had got in the car. The further they traveled from the city the more unsettled she became.
“We really should go back to my office and do some paperwork. I mean, check out how much financing you have. You know, so you can figure out what you can afford.”
Mike leaned forward. “Right here,” he said pointing to an opening in some brush along the road.
Oh, God, there’s nothing there, Kylie thought, he’s going to kill me here.
“You’re going to pass it,” Mike said, turning toward her.
The eye patch was something she could not get over, she’d read enough Dean Koontz’ novels to know that killers always had some sort of disfigurement.
“You’re scared?” Mike asked her. “Of me?”
Kylie merely nodded.
Mike reached into his pocket. Kylie flinched. He pulled out his wallet and showed her his license. Why that should calm her down, she didn’t know, dead women told no tales.
“I noticed you’re a reader,” Mike told her.
“Uh-huh.” She nodded.
“What do you think of that book you’ve got on your backseat?”
“I don’t really know what that has to do with anything?” she asked, her alert flags really flapping in the breeze.
“Please, humor me.”
“It was alright, the chara
cter development could have gone into a little more depth. The author seemed slightly sexist and some of the humor was on the lowbrow side, but all in all I’d say a three, maybe two-and-a-half out of five.”
“That’s harsh.” Mike smiled.
Kylie noticed the smile but it was strained as if there were some deep sadness keeping it from becoming a full-fledged grin.
Kylie looked down at the driver license that Mike held in front of her. The car had come to a complete stop on the deserted roadway right before the turn Kylie was reluctant to take.
She did a double take first on the driver license then the book in the back. She grabbed the book and then turned it over to match up the dust jacket picture. “It’s you, oh it’s you! I’m sorry!”
“Don’t be. You’re far from my first critic.”
“Do you mind if I ask what happened to your eye since this picture was taken?”
“I’m wearing a contact in the picture. This,” he said pointing to his eye patch covered eye. “Is courtesy of a car accident some years ago. Now if you don’t mind there is a house for sale up this drive that I am very interested in purchasing.”
“Have you seen it before?” Kylie asked as she took the turn.
“No.” He offered no further clarification.
The dirt path was not much wider than Kylie’s car and on occasion even less so as branches reached out and clawed against the glass. After a quarter mile, Kylie was about to ask him if he was sure about the location when a large clapboard sided wooden structure arose out of the shallow mist.
“That’s it!” Mike said excitedly, getting out before the car had even stopped.
Kylie opened her oversize workbag slash purse and grabbed the paperwork that went with the house and just for good measure a contract.
