AllFreeNovel
Share Us
These thoughts taunt me constantly. When I’m standing on a ladder cleaning the gutters—why not just let myself fall backward onto the driveway and hope I smash my skull open? When I’m taking sleeping pills at night—why not take the whole bottle? Two bottles? When I walk through the woods and spy a vine swinging in the wind—why not hang myself with it?
There’s always a grim, destructive voice in my head whispering, End it. Just end it. You’ve got nothing. Do it. End it.
What always stops me is the fear that I won’t find Brianna in death. At least here, living in this delusion I’ve been wading around in, Brianna is with me.
It’s all I have left.
The smell of fresh coffee, bacon, and eggs hits me like a wall the second I step out of the bathroom. My stomach growls like a bear in response.
“Where’d you find bacon and eggs?” I ask Kelley when I enter the kitchen. “Anything here resembling food probably expired five years ago.”
“I went to the store on the corner while you were in the shower. You should try it sometime. You can’t live on alcohol and saltines.”
I smirk from behind my Please Fuck Off mug. “Actually, I can. Been doin’ it for years.”
“Sit down and eat,” he says, putting two plates piled with food on the table, which once was a beautiful, polished bird’s-eye maple. It’s one of my favorite projects from when I was going through a woodworking phase. Now, the top is marred with long scratches from Cherry’s nails. When Brianna never came home, the dog got into the habit of lying on it to look out the window to watch for her.
I never stopped her. How could I tell the dog to get off the table when I was sleeping on the floor or out in the barn?
Sinking into one of the chairs across from Kelley and picking up a fork feels foreign to me. Not just because the table has become the dog’s perch but also because it’s like I’ve walked into someone else’s house and started chowing down on their food. Me and Bri used to eat at this table twice a day, every day. We had sex on this table. Also, sometimes twice a day. But when she died, meals at tables and spontaneous sex went with her. For years, I’ve been eating standing up near the sink, and it’s usually something that doesn’t require a fork—like pizza or a sandwich.
Kelley’s raspy voice drags me out of my thoughts. “I fed your dog and put some groceries in your fridge.”
“Thanks. You don’t have to take care of me, Kel.”
“You’re right. Because you’re going to start taking care of yourself. I can’t sit back and let you live like this anymore. I know people have to grieve in their own time and all that, but this has gone way beyond…” He waves a forkful of pancake in the air between us before shoving it in his mouth.
What’s normal is what Kelley doesn’t say.
There’s no expiration date for grief. For me, there’s no getting over it. There’s no moving on. Death snuck into my life like a masked thief and stole everything from me, leaving me with a terminal disease that festers in my soul, slowly depleting the life from me, hindering the remotest chance of happiness, security, or peace of mind.
All I can do is muddle through each day, waiting for something—anything—that will either cure me or kill me.
“I was surprised to see you started a new project.”
“Me too.”
“It’s about time. What’d you say it was? An elephant?”
I nod. “Found some intriguing stuff at the dump. Of course, as soon as I got home with it, all my creativity went to hell.”
“Back in the barn, you said Brianna was with you.”
I swallow my last bite of food and slowly push the plate away. Kelley is filed in my mind as a post-Brianna friend. A year after Bri died, I was at a small bar in town, trying to drink myself into oblivion and mostly succeeding. Kelley was up on the stage singing cover songs with a local band. I hurled a beer bottle at his head when he started to sing one of Bri’s favorites. He ducked and switched songs, which was kind of a shame because he’s got a killer voice that sounded better than the original. The bartender removed me from the premises. It wasn’t the first time. As I was stumbling home an hour later, a car pulled over in the pitch darkness and the driver offered me a ride. There was no mistaking his voice.
He asked me why I hated the song.
I told him I loved the song and hated myself.
He didn’t ask why. He wordlessly took me home and dragged my ass to the couch. While I was passed out, he straightened up my house. He brushed my dog. He saw the pictures of Bri everywhere. He saw the hole I punched in the wall. He saw the stack of unopened condolence cards. He saw the untouched nursery. He saw the scars down the side of my face.
