Strings

Chapter 4

 There were no pit-stops to the deli, or any other convenience stores for Jack as he rode back home in all his misery and wretchedness. He'd have enough to drink from the party, and he didn't want to add up to his already drunk-xxx condition to make him look worse than he already was. He just kept on going and going, only stopping when he had come upon the curb of the driveway of his lesser of a house. It was one hell of a miracle that he had actually managed to drive in his intoxicated condition, but drive the way he did, and he wasn't even aware of it, when he had stopped the car, but still felt like moving.

 When he started the car and left that cursed party on his ex-wife's xxxxxxxx behalf, Jack had unconsciously held his breath during the whole drive, and only now released it with a vengeful exhale. His breath came in faint, misty white puffs, instantly clouding the windshield in front of him. "Get the xxxx outta here, Jack!!" Came Kellie's words ringing deafeningly back in his ears. The sudden adrenaline, his ex-wife's maddening voice, the intoxication, felt like they were all swirling together into a whirlpool of mental turmoil. And Jack was at the center of it all.

 Very shakily, Jack drew a hand to touch his forehead, in almost the same manner that Kellie had done in front of him. Realizing this, snaps Jack into another one of his drunken black-outs. When, everything just suddenly disappears from sight and he starts to howl in a mournful cry that no letters can piece to read. Jack roughly swiped  his hand over his face, and then mindlessly punched the dashboard. (He made sure to avoid the car horn, since some part of his mind that was still stable, didn't want a honking sound to be added to the mix of his developing migraine). He felt no pain when his knuckles violently rapped against the board, and so with this knowledge, Jack kept on punching it, until his knuckles had gone from white to drippy red.

 Jack stayed out there in the curb, wailing hopelessly in his car for what seemed like an eternity. No neighbors had been aroused by the ruckus he made, so he was thankful that there weren't any xxxxxx on-lookers standing around just to gawk at him when he finally got out of the car, breathless and completely drained. He hurried up to the front porch, reminders of his still-xxxxxx day, repeatedly returning to him, making him just want to lock himself inside
his house and die. Slamming the door behind him, Jack trudged heavily across the rooms, weighing though as if he were a thousand pounds.

 Making his way to the kitchen, Jack quickly went for the fridge, where there was a bottle of unopened gin that he knows he still has. He jerked the fridge open, and almost gave a small laugh when he saw his most-cherished friend, slightly shaking inside next to a tupper ware of some cold left-overs and a jar of pickles. His arm, with the bleeding hand, stretches out to take it, but he suddenly stops mid-way, when he hears Kellie's voice again.

"You've been drinking ever since we lost her and that's all you've ever been doing with your xxxxxx life!!"

 And Jack's face hardened so much to keep it from contorting in an emotion he didn't want to show physically. For a few seconds, his arm hangs there, mid-stretch, fresh blood, dripping onto the linoleum floor. "xxxx!" Jack groaned under his breath, slamming the fridge close and turning around to go up his room. This proves to be another disconcerting matter, however, when he realizes what the guiltless-looking mattress held memory of. Jack had lived on his own for the last 12 years, and on almost every night, he had slept on the bed, in the master's
bedroom.

 Jack knows that Kellie used to lie there with him. During long nights of intimate conversation; when their limbs and arms would get tangled in on each other when they did 'that' activity; times, when they simply just lay there, holding each other, simply for the warmth and comfort of one another. Now, he wondered how he was able to endure lying there, at the spot next to where she should have been, after all those years, and not feel anything. It had to take him 12 years later, and an act of complete humiliation to realize it.

 Breaking completely from the overwhelming memories and conflicted feelings, Jack broke down the floor weakly,bracing himself against the door-frame. He wept there silently, frustrated and exasperated with Kellie, Chris, their ruined marriage, and mostly himself. Mostly himself.  And he becomes more frustrated, when he finds that he couldn't even leak tears for the swelling feeling he had in his gut. He hated it. The feeling Kellie made him feel.

 Ever after their separation, she still held a power over him. One that trapped Jack, whether she was with him or not. It was like she had total control over him, his mind, his body, and most crucially his heart. He hated how, even after all this time, after everything that she's done to him and was still doing, he still xxxxxxx cared about the xxxxx. And he hated himself for it. He hated him, he hated her. He hated everything. Jack hated everything.

 He thought all these, but Jack still managed to be apathetic enough, to crawl the few feet, and get onto the bed. The realization of the bed's meaning, and what it would mean if he were still to lie on it was still there in his mind, but Jack barely cared. He thinks then, that that may be the reason why he had managed to lie there on his own all those years. Was that he not cared, and somehow did at the same time. "You're a xxxxxxx mess." He scolded himself, but he didn't care for that either.

 The sheets and mattress itself was washed and hosed down every month, and yet, if Jack closed his eyes, he could still smell the warmth and scent that Kellie's flesh had stained on it. Curling himself up in a fetal position, Jack edged a bit closer to Kellie's side of the bed. He took out his bleeding hand from where he was pressing it against his chest, and gripped the rough, but woolly cloth of the sheet underneath him. Jack's eyes were far-off, twinkling in a shimmer of indescribable melancholy, as he remembers the sound of these very same sheets moving softly against the mattress, and the wondrous smell of the woman he still loved, lingering in his nose, higher than any drug Jack knew in the world.