Resurrection

by Evelyn Montgomery

  My brain is too soaked in alcohol to care as I make my way into the kitchen and look around me. Food. That’s right. I haven’t eaten. Maybe that’s the reason why the 4 to six, maybe eight, beers are weighing on me heavier than usual.

  “Charlette!” I shout louder, as my stumbled steps take me further into the house and an eerie feeling begins to fill me inside. Stopping at the fridge across the kitchen, I take the magnetic can opener off the side and pop the top of my bottle. Lifting it to my lips, a cool shiver runs up my spine as some sort of truth, something my conscious already knows, tries to break through the fog in my head and tell me. It’s too quiet.

  After taking a long sip, I set the bottle down on the counter next to me and try and make sense of the feeling in my gut that won’t let go. The one that is twisting, turning, torturing my subconscious and making me wish I hadn’t drunk as much as I did.

  Turning the corner down our small hallway, I see the light on in Emma’s room. A calmness settles over me as I make my way down the hall, although I am still not sure if I can force myself to walk into that room, no matter if Charlette demands me to or not. My feet feel heavy as I stride slowly down the carpet. A burden I will carry for the rest of my life weighs me down as I stop a few steps away from the door frame and hold out to the wall to steady myself.

  My princess. My baby. My beautiful daughter. Gone! And there is nothing I can do to bring her back.

  I choke back the tears that still refuse to fall and shake my head. I can’t think about that now. And fuck, hell if I don’t want to think about it ever! But it’s my new fucked up reality that no matter how hard I try I can’t change. The one truth that makes everything that happened that much more unbearable.

  Forcing myself to keep walking, I call out to my wife one last time. “Charlette, for fuck sake, where the hell are you!”

  I hate these games she plays. The ones where she forces me to talk first. Waits me out until I swear there is nothing left between us and I come groveling back to her like some stupid pathetic pussy whipped little boy. She’s been pulling this crap since the second we started dating and I always give in. Always come back. Well not this time! Not when there is so much more that is important other than her stupid fucking games.

  I trip over my feet as I stumble towards our daughter’s room. Before I hit the floor completely, I reach out and grab ahold of the door frame to steady myself.

  “Fuck!” I grit out, as my knuckles punch against the edge of the wood. A stinging sensation fills my fist as I look to my right and see blood trickling down a few of my fingers. I can’t help the laugh that escapes my lungs at the pathetic, sorry way I am handling all of this.

  No parent should ever have to bury their child! Ever!

  Looking up, I stare into the mostly darkened room and wait a moment for my eyes to adjust to the little light that is coming from a pink frilly lamp in the far corner. Picture frames are askew, half hanging in their former positions. Drawers are opened. Tiny clothes are thrown all over the place. The crib is turned on its side and my throat tightens at the memory of what I saw the last time I looked inside it.

  But my eyes fall to a figure behind it as they finally adjust further. Cocking my head to the side, I cautiously step into a room I never intended to enter ever again and take a few steps towards a nightmare I never expected. Blood stains the carpet at my feet. A shiver runs up the whole damn length of my body. A sharp shard of glass lays inches away from my wife’s tiny hand. My eyes widen as my feet pick up their pace and I hurry across the room, throw the crib back up right, and drop to my knees at the side of my wife’s lifeless body.

  “Charlette!” I yell as I pick her up off the blood stained carpet, but her head only bobs in my arms, lifeless, unconscious, as adrenaline rushes through me and I look for signs of where she is hurt.

  Her head? No. Her neck? Fuck, wrong again! My eyes trail her torso as I take her hand in mine and finally see it. Her fucking wrists! Deep cuts line both her small inner arms and I swallow over a lump in my throat as my thumb traces the marks.

  A tear falls finally as I clutch her tiny hand in mine and my head wars with itself on what the fuck I am supposed to do to save her. Looking back at my listless wife in my arms, I grab a small piece of fabric, pink with white hearts on it, and tie it around her wrist. My eyes betray me finally as tears fall harder and my hands begin to shake.

  “It’s OK,” I whisper, as I find another piece of fabric and tie it tight around her other wrist. Shit, I don’t know if it’ll help at all, but I have to at least fucking try. “I got you, Charlette.” I say, my voice cracking with emotion as I attempt to settle my shaking hands. “And I won’t let go!”

  I pull her close to my chest and make out a faint heartbeat. If I can save her I can right at least one fucking wrong. Keeping her held tight to my side, I pull my phone from my pocket and dial.

  “911 what seems to be your emergency?”

  “My wife,” I whisper, as my throat tightens and I can’t force enough breath out of my lungs. “Please,” I shout, cutting the dispatcher off just as they were about to speak as fear, anxiety, fucking terror settles in and I ultimately feel every last piece of hope falling away. “The blood, her wrists, my daughter…” I look around the room as a sob thunders out of my chest taking every last piece of my restraint with it.

  “Sir, I’ve found your location, please stay on the line while…”

  “You don’t get it!” I yell as the tears fall harder and my breath catches in my chest. “It’s my fault! All of it! It’s my fucking fault!”

  “Sir the ambulance is on its way, I’m going to need you to..”

  But I don’t hear a damn word the person is saying. The phone drops to the floor as I cradle my wife in my arms. The gut wrenching truth of everything tearing me apart as my cries grow stronger.

  “Stay with me, Charlette!” I yell. “Please, fucking stay with me. I can’t lose you too. I am so sorry. I am so fucking sorry. It was my fault, baby. Not yours. I don’t remember, damn it I don’t remember. I swear I laid her down on her back. But please, just please, stay with me! Charlette!!”

  Two weeks later

  Raindrops fall against my shoulders as I watch the casket being lowered into the earth. Numb. Frozen. Dead to the world. My eyes read the tombstone in front of me before dashing to the left and reading my daughter’s name on the one beside it.

  One month. One fucking month is all it took to destroy my world and everyone in it. People start to back away, to turn and go back to their lives as my wife is laid to rest next to our daughter. They shield their faces from me and I watch as they look at me shamefully while I begin to feel my heart harden inside.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” my brother says as he takes a step forward and stands beside me. My jaw tightens. My fist clench at my side. I know his words are meant to help, heal, fuck somehow fix the nightmare before me. But they don’t! They eat away at every last piece of my soul because I know the damn truth. It was my fault. All of it. And I’ll live the rest of my damn life knowing I was the one who failed them.

  My eyes raise from the ground and catch my fathers across the field. His merciless look is filled with disappointment, pity, as he takes a few steps in my direction. The last thing I need right now is to hear how much of a failure I am. How much I fucked this up. Always fuck everything up. And how much he only wished I was more like my brother.

  “Don’t take his shit,” Brett, my older brother whispers under his breath. “You don’t need to prove anything to him. Not ever, and especially not today.”

  But he’s wrong. All this does is prove how right my father has been my whole damn life. How much of a fuck up I always was. Starting with the moment I crashed my parent’s car when I was 16. My mother was teaching me how to drive before I took my test the next morning. It was late, and the fog swept through the Tennessee backroads thicker and quicker than I had ever seen. She always fucking wore a seat belt. Always. Except that one damn time. Why didn’t
she wear a fucking seatbelt?

  I close my eyes as the horror of that night comes rushing back. The sound of my mother’s screams. The way her face looked when I finally came to and she made me promise to survive. The sounds of her last breaths as we laid wedged between a tree and a fucking bolder on a back road I never should have told her I could handle. What the fuck was I thinking! I was only 16 for heaven’s sake! I killed her. Just like I murdered my own daughter, my wife, all because I ruin every damn thing I fucking touch.

  “You’re wrong, Brett,” I exhale as a tear falls down my face and I open my eyes. “I do need to prove myself, but even then, even if I succeed, it won’t ever fucking matter!” My father has stopped walking our way and is now busy talking to the reverend that spoke at the service. He glances in my direction and gives me a look intended to make me stay put, that he has something he needs to say to me, but whatever he has to say, whatever I feel like I have to prove, nothing can bring them back. My daughter. My wife. My mother. Not ever.

  Every pure and beautiful thing I have ever experienced in this world I have lost, all because of a curse I can’t seem to outrun no matter how fucking hard I try. Something my father let me know daily as he took the pain of losing my mother out on me. His fist my fucking reminder of just how much I screwed up and took something from him I could never give back. I turn and look at my brother in his fatigues and sigh. “I need a little space,” I choke out, as emotions run through me and I push him aside.

  Stumbling down the hill, I try and push the pain I’m feeling away as I look up to the sky. The clouds have blown away slightly and the sun peeks through them bringing warmth to one of the coldest days I have ever known. The day when I realized the truth everyone else has always believed. Everything I love, everyone that I let close, ends up destroyed and there is nothing I can do to stop it. With my head held low I finally accept the fact that I can’t live with the guilt of letting anything happen to anyone else ever again. I silently promise myself that my past, and the disgrace that lies in it will forever serve as a reminder to never, ever, let down my guard for anyone as long as I live.

  As my feet land on the pavement below the gravesite I look up and lock eyes with Charlette’s parents. Her mother’s tearful face catches mine first before her father’s eyes fill with rage and he begins barreling towards me.

  “You son-of-a-bitch!” He yells as I suddenly stop walking and welcome his rath. I need it. Want it. To kill me. Take me with them. Not leave me alone in the world forced to carry the truth that I don’t fucking deserve to go on living. I close my eyes as he takes two final steps towards me, but his anger is deflected as I feel a presence step in front of me to block his fury.

  “Robert,” my father’s voice sternly greets the man in front of us. A man who deserves every last bit of satisfaction in unleashing the rage on me he wanted to just now. “We’re all grieving, but this is hardly the time or place.”

  I open my eyes as a few more raindrops fall. The clouds have gathered up above again and it is only a matter of time before they unleash their hell on us. “You can’t protect him forever, Don,” Robert yells. “I knew it was a mistake to let your son take out my daughter. After all, what more could I expect from a kid who killed his own mother!”

  My insides turn because he’s fucking right. They all are. The whole damn town is, something I tried to escape when I left for college. They’ve always known the truth, I was just too naïve to believe it myself.

  My father takes a step forward just as Brett reaches my side. “Trust me, no one knows grief like I do, but I’ll warn you again. This isn’t the time or the fucking place!”

  Charlette’s mother, Margaret, reaches for her husband’s side and pulls him back towards their car. But Robert’s eyes, they stay locked on mine until he has to drag them away to get in the vehicle. It is only after the car pulls away from the curb that my father turns and looks at me.

  I square my shoulders and ready myself for the blow that is coming. Either his fist or his words, I don’t fucking care, as long as it puts me out of my damn misery. I puff my chest out as I take a big fucking breath and prepare myself to take it. Whatever he’s about to dish out. But nothing could brace me for his next few words.

  “Enlist!” My forehead furrows as I try and wrap my brain around what he just said. “Join your brother! Make a decision that doesn’t involve fucking up and go serve your country!” He’s always been after me to follow in Brett’s footsteps, in his own footsteps, but I never have. “Get the hell out of this town, the hell away from them,” he says as he gestures over his shoulder at where Robert and Margaret were just standing. My mind tries to understand the compassion, the sympathy I am hearing from him for maybe the first time ever before his words eat through every last bit of hope I had left. “And get the fuck out of my damn face once and for all. Hell, Justin, every last thing you touch fucking dies. Get your ass overseas where at least the damn disaster that has always been you can do some fucking good in this world. Not here, where you are destroying innocent lives of women, mothers, hell fucking children.”

  He pushes past me and makes his way to the parking lot. The honest truth he just unleashed paralyzing me from being able to even breathe. When I see him climb into his truck and exit the damn cemetery I know he’s right. I can’t continue to stay here. Not after all of this. And especially not with the memory of everyone I’ve lost.

  In an instant I make a decision to never fucking return. To Knoxville, to Tennessee, hell even the whole damn nation as it holds too many fucking memories in it. Too much damn darkness.

  “You don’t have to…” I hear Brett say, but I shake my head before turning and meeting his stare.

  “No,” I say, feeling right for the first time since everything happened. “I do. He’s right. It’s time I made a fucking difference other than always screwing up everyone else’s life.”

  I take a few steps towards where I parked and pull my keys out of my pocket. Fuck it, I know I don’t even have it in me to attend the wake. Looking up at my brother walking beside me, I feel my heart begin to heal as I sense for the first time that I can turn this around. I can change this. “Where is the closest recruiter?” I blurt out catching us both off guard.

  He looks at me stunned and shakes his head. “J, your wife was just laid to rest next to your daughter, I don’t think…”

  “Brett!” I shout out as we reach my car and I turn angrily to face him. “Don’t be like him! Don’t tell me what I should do. What I shouldn’t fucking do. I have to do what I damn well need to if I am ever going to fucking live through this. Now where the hell is the closest recruiter?”

  It being Thursday at 2:30 in the afternoon, the only time we could get a service for, I know wherever the hell I need to go to change all this will fucking be open. And I am going there, changing this, doing what I damn well need to with or without my brother’s help.

  “You’re a pain in the fucking ass, you know that,” my brother says, as he grabs my keys from my hand and starts to walk towards my car.

  A smile spreads across my face for the first time in weeks because if there is anyone who knows me better than I know myself, it is him. My older brother. My fucking rock when I was younger and couldn’t face what I had done. And the one person I know I can count on now to help me turn it all around, no matter what it fucking costs.

  The smell of coffee wakes me as my head pounds and my mouth feels dryer than Georgia cotton. I roll to my side and groan. The throbbing in my hand causes the memories from last night to come flooding back whether I want them to or not. Except for one. Sitting up straight, and now with a slightly less cloudy frame of mind, I remember the end of the night vaguely and a pang of guilt, shame, heartache fills me as I take my head in my hands and let out a deep sigh.

  “It is better this way.”

  The words I said ring through my head like a fucking wrecking ball as I can’t help but wonder if it really is better this way. That is if I’m not just being a
fucking idiot and letting the best thing that has ever happened to me walk right out of my damn life. But then I remember her plea to stop. Her reluctance to let me love her, please her, give myself to her in a way that I have been wanting to for fucking months.

  I try to remember the end of the night. Everything that was said. But only pieces come back to me making me only more irritable as I sit and try and make sense of it all.

  But she told me she wanted it. Didn’t she? She said she needed it as she moaned in the sexiest of ways underneath me. So what went wrong? How the hell did we get from me positioned between her fucking beautiful thighs about to experience heaven on earth to, “it’s better this way?”

  I push up off the bed in frustration as I attempt to sift through the fog but it is no use. The mind has a notorious trick it uses often to block anything and everything out if it means saving your heart just a little bit of trouble. Whatever it is, I don’t know if it was something I said, or something I did. But all I know is, it is pointless to attempt to understand it now when all I can hear is the beating of my heart hammering between my temples.

  Taking a few steps towards the door, I open it, walk out into the hallway and begin to make my way into the kitchen. The sunlight catches my eyes the second I round the corner making me have to stop and hold onto the wall to let my eyes adjust to the piercing light.

  “Hey, morning Sunshine!”

  Sunshine! That fucking name I gave her worms its way through my thoughts and attempts to revive just what the hell happened at the end of the night. But just when it almost comes into remembrance, it vanishes like a fucking ghost. Shaking my head, I walk a few more steps over to the sink, turn on the faucet and stick my pulsing head under it.

  I hear Troy laugh as the cool water splashes over my skull before I tilt my neck and drink it in like a man that has been dying of thirst in the dessert for 40 days and 40 fucking nights. When I’ve had enough to at least make me right for a little while, I turn off the water and shake the excess off my head. Turning, I look at my friend and gladly take the coffee mug he is holding out.