Stained Glass Souls (Wattys 2014, Collector's Dream Award Winner)

Price: Sin-Stained Scars

Annoyed by his turbulent emotions, he pulled himself out and to his feet. The cold hit him like a visceral force, a vacuum, sweeping the air right out of his lungs. “This is you?”

It wasn’t exactly a house. It looked like an office, flat and long. White shingles, surrounded by a parking lot full of peeling yellow lines. It was empty, only an occasional car inching down the road alongside them.

“No.” Ariel turned to point over the curb. There was a long strip of snow, probably supposed to be some kind of lawn in the summer. A path cut through the middle of the white, leading to a sidewalk that flanked a row of apartments. “It’s over there. First one on the left.”

A boxer greeted them as they entered. It was a thick, ugly brown dog with a mashed in face. He nearly knocked Price over with his exuberant jump, paws scratching his thighs. 

Ariel bent down and grabbed his collar, hauling him back. “Gentlemen,” she scolded mildly, “don’t attack Price. Okay?” With one hand still firmly restraining the dog, she shot Price an apologetic smile that looked more like a grimace. “Sorry about that.”

“It’s fine. He’s just hyper.” Smiling faintly, Price watched Gentleman squirm in Ariel’s slight hold. The fat on his neck bunched against the tight metal collar, every muscle in his stocky body rigid with frustration as he began to bark.   

The dog spurred memories of his own childhood pet – a basset hound with red, runny eyes and a perpetual trail of slobber. He had been a typical children’s mutt, submitting himself faithfully to adventure treks and playground prisons, to wandering days and ice cream nights.

It had been the days of innocence – of when two parents cooked each other supper and kissed when they thought no one was watching. Of a subtle, striking change – and like a sweater unraveling, he couldn’t pinpoint the beginning, but he could clearly define the end. Maybe it had begun when he was a child. While he taught Jewel to make mud pies, Earnest and Lily had been fighting over kitchen counters, faces red and angry.

His tenth birthday, he had seen them. Yelling. He had been on the run inside, desperate to find his cowboy boots, feet splashed in mud and sand from the shoreline. Shouting rang in his ears as he rounded the corner of the kitchen. Had it been the first fight? He couldn’t remember. It had been that time in his life, so preoccupied with school, with cowboys, grainy television programs and construction paper hearts.

So maybe that had been the beginning.

Earnest had his wife backed against a wall, and he was screaming in her face, brow mottled with anger. He had been punching the wall, plaster creating a lazy white cloud around them.

It had been something he couldn’t run from. Price had watched, transfixed, as he began to understand what marriage was. More than broken plaster; it was full of walls that needed to be bridged before they were broken.

Loud, incessant barking startled the images flashing behind his eyes, sending them shuffling back into the dark, empty corners of his mind. He shifted uneasily on his feet. “Ariel?”

Oblivious to his trance, she was still standing bent over Gentleman, rubbing behind his bristly ears. She glanced at him, light from the windows divvying her face into thin white bars. Her eyes narrowed for a split second, taking into the red still leaking from his lip. His shirt and jeans, stained beyond repair. “You’re still bleeding?”

He nodded.

She released Gentleman and dropped her messenger bag onto the floor. “Here I am, standing. Sorry. You probably want to wash all that off.”  

The bathroom was small, barely able to house the two of them. Price sat on the edge of the bathtub, watching as Ariel retrieved a washcloth, rubbing alcohol, and Band-Aids. She ran water over the cloth and handed it to him. “My dad might have left some clothes here. I’ll go see what I can find.” One slim, white hand gestured to the mirror. “There’s a cabinet back there. Just rummage if you need anything else.”