Evilution

Chapter 2

Sheets soiled by muddy boots and cargo pants from the day before wrapped around his waist as he reached above for the bottle of Four Roses on the nightstand, its contents dwindling as the soundless night exploded into a fiery dawn. Naked and chilled on the floor, he had at some point in the night pulled the blankets and pillows off the bed. He hoisted his achy body to a sitting position and felt the sting of dried blood crusted over split knuckles. When he rushed to the bathroom he found more vomit around the toilette rather than in. Once finished urinating into the putrid bile, angry pain hammered into his brain like a railroad spike cured by a gargle of water and two Scotch backs.

When he returned a line of daylight cut between the curtains and sliced through the dark haze of his bedroom, down the center of his face and chest. He shielded his eyes with his hand and stared into the hostile dawn before leaning back into the mattress. Through the empty liquor bottle on the nightstand, Rebecca smiled at him from the photograph. These days her smile looked sad. Travis shut his eyes and waited for the pain to subside, but it never did. It never will.

It is a universal truth widely acknowledged that a man suffering the loss of his departed wife should wish above all else to have her safely returned. The world is different now than it used to be. People were still hit by cars, struck by lightning, dying of cancer and though the life was gone, the soul continues to suffer.

Rebecca was a slender and simple beauty, and genuinely kind with a passion for the wild outdoor as a country girl should. She possessed the skill of a talented abstract painter that he only came to appreciate when it was too late—after he had found the red crayon that had once saved them from the bitter cold of a last winter's night. It had somehow made its way from her desk onto the cement floor. She had many red crayons but he knew this one in particular for it had been melted to a small numb, the paper burnt to black.

It was neither a bus nor lightning that killed Rebecca Pates, but a black 2000 Chevrolet Suburban driven by a college sophomore girl who had been looking at her phone instead of the road.

Janice Stanford, a self-infatuated twat 23 years of age from Shoreline College near Seattle was trying to get directions to her friend Margo's place where they planned to spend the week on a group project. Janice repeated to the courtroom that she had 'only looked at her phone for a second.' Travis was baffled and offended by the stupid girl's comprehension that only a second was still only a second too long. Travis wondered how such a likable, pretty and intelligent girl could still be so dumb and irresponsible without any regard to her actions. A mere slap on the wrist and Janice Stanford was sentenced to community service on the weekends to avoid disrupting her class schedule. Travis doubted she ever thought about the suffering and pain she'd caused him or Rebecca's family. It's in the past, it's over and done with, can't change it so no use worrying about it anymore. Janice Stanford never apologized, and she never took responsibility for what she did. He knew she didn't really deep down believe it was her fault Rebecca was dead and would complain to her friends that the sentence was unfair. Kids today never accepted responsibility. Never knew when to accept they did something wrong, never knew how to apologize unless it was court-ordered. Travis never received closure. To Janice it was an accident, to Travis, it was negligence. The only woman he ever truly loved, the woman who made him whole, was murdered by a girl who still didn't think she ever did anything wrong, and her lenient sentence was the salt in the wound. It made him feel as if neither the courts or Janice felt the grave weight of the many lives that were ruined, that her being on the cell phone as she drove over the broken body of his wife was no big deal.

It took days for the soreness in his back and neck to subside once he was released from the hospital, and a couple more weeks for the scrapes and bruises and broken bones to heal. He'd fractured a rib and collar bone which still caused him a fair amount of discomfort two months later, and he could still feel the line where his nose had broken across the bridge, but the worst wounds were the ones in his heart that would never heal. He'd live with that pain until the day he'd die, which he begged would come every day.