Subliminal's blog: "Subliminal Lies"

Happily Ever After
A story of true love

The room felt tiny, constricted, like the walls were closing in as his face flushed and perspiration beaded across his brow – Edward, Eddie to his wife, rose from the table with a pack of miniature brownies in his hand, sealed in thick white plastic, a simple snack for work. He was packing his lunch the night before as he always did, and from the front room he heard the choked sobs of his wife. They had gotten into an argument only a few moments ago about kids; she wanted them and he did not. He had voiced his opinion time and again, it wasn't that he didn't want kids, it was that he didn't feel right bringing a child into the world as it was today.

When they were younger, before they had married, they had agreed. The world, as they saw it from their windows and the world news (BBC America), from what they read on the interweb, and felt in their hearts, they saw that the world was becoming the sort of place an innocent child would not, could not survive without becoming an asshole. He spoke calmly and clearly, and reminded her of the point, of the politics of the situation, of the overpopulation being perpetrated – they were amidst a baby boom that had long since surpassed that of the 40's, and there wasn't a Great War to accommodate the space. Essentially, all the math pointed time and again, that having children was a bad idea. Well, maybe not a bad idea, but not a good idea.

He inherently loved children and understood their ploy, they were cute and small and fragile and didn't always smell of sour milk and shit. Sometimes, they were actually pretty awesome and they made him smile, and he enjoyed playing with them. There was an innocence there he had missed in his childhood, and his wife Alison felt the same. He saw it in her eyes every time she picked one up (there friends were coming to that age of 'responsible' breeding, and it was everywhere across their internet feeds, of someone being pregnant or having a child, baby pictures galore, and whenever they went over to a friends – well, you get the picture), and he saw it in her eyes tonight. The longing of a child, of that innocence and beauty, and he felt it too, but he would not allow want to get in the way of logic.

Sure, there was a chance that their child (both parents being fairly intelligent and well-versed, well-educated) would save the world, show the world both sides of the argument until they put down their arms and shared a joint in peace. It's possible, and he knew it, in fact the logic pointed to it, but would it make them any better than the parents popping out eight kids in one go just because they're cute? He didn't know and couldn't decide, and he wrestled with the idea on nights he couldn't sleep, tossing and turning as she lay there like a stone. It was the way they had always been, that. He had always been hard to sleep, and she was out as soon as the lights went dim. It worked, really. He often found time to sit and watch the movies she didn't enjoy, read, work in his den on his taxidermy – whatever, it was his time, in a way, and he was glad for it. He knew that otherwise, they may not still be married after ten years.
He wanted to smile as he crossed the threshold into the front room, but the tear stained face, blotchy and broken that looked up at him from the couch and sobered him up right quick. They had a happy marriage, and he loved her dearly, he just wanted her to understand... to understand and to be happy again. He missed her happiness. He sighed and bowed his head as he approached the chair, the plush recliner.

"Alison..."

"Don't, Eddie. It'll be okay."

"...I know you want kids, I do too, and for all the right reasons. But babe, I want you to be happy," he choked on the words and looked up at her, leaning toward her in the chair so that the foot of it dug into the carpet. The house had been his parents before they divorced and his father's after. He had inherited and with everything else, he was unable to sell it. Partially out of nostalgia, and partially that no one wanted it. The housing market had crashed and selling houses was a right pain in the ass. He often cursed the realtor for lying to his parents, but that's neither here nor there. It had become his, and with a little work, it had become a home.

A home his parents had never had, really. They had a slightly dysfunctional life, but it all worked out for the best in the end, really. He could fault neither of his parents for the way he was raised, as an adult, not a simpering frail thing unable to do a damn thing. His mind's eye smiled as he remembered his parents and looked into his wife's eyes.

Eddie tore open the miniature brownies and put one in his mouth.

"Babe, be happy."

"I am," she said, her voice soft and a little strangled.

"Want a brownie?"

"No, thank you," she said with a small, watery smile.

"Have a brownie," he said and stretched out his hand, flat as a board with a small round brownie in the centre.

"No, really. I don't want one."

Something snapped and he pushed a brownie into her mouth. He had no idea why, but he did it and cried out, "BE HAPPY!"

She sputtered on the dried up bits of brown sugar, and spat it out, laughing. She thought it was funny, she was happy, she told him. Quite and very happy, but he rounded on her and forced another brownie into her mouth. She choked for a second before spitting it out and the look in her eyes changed. A flicker of fear as she looked at him, and her vision around the edges went dark so that all she could see was his raging face. There was something wrong – as she was force fed another brownie, and this one lodged in her throat. She couldn't breathe enough to cough it out and she felt the world going completely dark as another whole brownie was shoved into her mouth, lodging the one before it deeper into her throat.

He screamed those two words over and over at ever increasing volume as she pleaded with nothing more than unintelligible mumbles that she was happy, happier than she could ever be, with him. That she loved him, that he was her everything, that there wasn't anything she wouldn't do for him. She pleaded as he screamed with nothing but unadulterated rage.

She felt the heat of tears stream down her face as she collapsed, and the warm puddle of urine spread from between her legs. The death throe. As the world went silent and impenetrably dark.

The odour filled the room and prickled Eddie's nostrils. The black fog that had consumed his brain faded as quickly as it had arrived. He collapsed onto the floor, sobbing and reaching a hand out to touch his wife's rapidly cooling face, petting her softly, the fingers of an angel, feather soft. Her face, mired though it was in brown goo and tears, had lost the blotchy complexion from earlier and was painfully beautiful... he stroked her face in silence and cleaned the flecks of spit and tears and brownie away.

He breathed a sigh and leaned down to kiss her face, her eyes, and lifted her into his arms. I love you, he repeated over and over in a hoarse whisper as he carried her into the den...

(The sun was just beginning to set when he closed the door, and had begun to slowly rise across the horizon, staining the land with its massacre of colours)

[Sweet lovely death, I am waiting for your breath. Oh sweet death, one last caress]

The door opened with a rattle and he stepped out into the hall, facing the bathroom and realised his dire need to have a piss. It exploded from his body, and the ache in his bones and muscles subsided for a moment. It was early, just this side of 5 AM, and he searched through his pockets for his cellphone. A sick day would be required – he would tell them his wife had left him, that they had been up all night raging about her boyfriend, that he needed the day to recover. He would tell them with the choked sobs in his voice, the knots of pain and torment that were, indeed, there. He would tell them and they would be shocked, surprised. The manager would feign a surprised "Oh! My god, I'm sorry," or this early in the morning, maybe he would go with the silent approach. Eddie cared not, there was still work to be done, and it was early enough to get it done.

He choked on a tear and called his manager's house.

His manager was one of those pricks who was the first one in the office and the last one to leave. People said it was dedication, but silently Edward wondered if it was paranoia that he was being thieved from in one way or another. He wanted to keep an eye on his employee's at all times, and he did. His co-workers were too terrified of his beaklike nose poking around at the inopportune moment to do anything but work, or at least – pretend to work. Edward did not like his boss, but the paycheck was needed. Doubly so, now. The phone rang, and the alert voice that answered the phone spoke of being awake for an hour, at least, already. Edward had been right on both thoughts, there was a moment of scrutinizing silence, as if the bastard had been trying to read his mind through the phone, and then a forced "Oh! I'm sorry."

Edward wondered if the prick had ever been married, if any woman could possibly stand him long enough to go out on a second date, let alone marry him. He probably paid for sex. Edward smiled silently and hung up the phone. He was off for the day, and he walked into the kitchen to fetch his wife's keys. They were on the peg, behind the half-full bottle of water, and as he pulled them down and palmed them, he filled a small paper cup.

God, how he'd kill for a smoke.

He had quit the day before they moved into the house, together. She wasn't an asshole about it, but she wasn't a smoker, and she could handle it while they were dating, as she was sparingly forced to endure it (the habit itself and his home, they spent most of the time at her apartment, really), but once they decided to move into together, she kindly suggested that he quit. He had been wanting to for years, and this was his motivation to do so. But now, damn he wanted one. To feel the burn of smoke as it filled his lungs. The first drag after 11 years would surely make him cough, but he didn't care.

Edward fired up the engine and pulled out of the drive onto the silent road that he lived on, full of retiree's and the like, few people were up this early in the city, let alone on his street. Her car had a nice feel to it, really. He liked it, but he couldn't afford it. A thought crossed his mind and he cursed loudly over the stereo. Her work, her job. Her – fuck. He kept driving on auto-pilot as he tried to figure out an answer. No call, no show, and if they called the house, he'd tell them about the fight, about her boyfriend, about her running off into the night. It might raise a couple eyebrows, maybe, but it was the only option he had, and it would work. He hoped.

The car floated down the roads in the amber warmth of dawn. It would be a hot day, he knew it would be a hot day, this was one of the hottest summers he remembered. This would be no different, and he growled at the people who made light of global warming. He wanted to call them imbeciles, to rage and scream and point fingers, to blow whistles, to wake them up, but from now on, he would have to be exceptionally quiet, yes. He listened to his teeth grind as he drove, trying to push it all from his mind, to remain calm and cool and collected. He tried, and maybe it worked, at least on the exterior. He was like the duck on the pond that he approached – cool and sleek on top, regal, but beneath the water, his feet were scrambling like a terrified, drowning child.

He could play his part well, and he would.

As he pushed the car into neutral and stepped out, edging it forward from the open driver's door. At the last moment with an unintelligible curse, he jerked open the rear door and pulled out her Ipod and headphones. He thanked god as he dropped them down onto the parched earth and continued pushing the car into the pond. The cold water licked at his shoes and pant legs, at his hands as it rushed over the car door and began filling the inside. He stepped back and began pushing from the trunk until the undertow, the force of the water pouring inside drove it forward of its own accord, and so the pond swallowed the car with hiccups and burps as it purged the air from inside.

The cicada sang from the woods and his eyes surveyed every inch for any observer, but as he had seen no one on his way there, he saw no one amidst the trees. He scooped up the music and set back toward home, the heavy muff headphones covering his ears and all the noise around him. The music was slow and soft, an instrumental and mournful album. He could hear the emptiness and the ghosts that surrounded it, flowed through it and into his head with his own ghost.

[Grandpa died last week, now he's buried in the rocks. Everybody still talks about how badly they were shocked. But me, I expected it to happen. I knew he'd lost control, when he built a fire on Main Street and shot it full of holes]

The house creaked with silence as he stepped inside and went downstairs to the darkness of what had once been the garage but was now dubbed the family room, with a rickety couch and large LCD television – it was one of the first major things he had bought for himself, and really, thirteen years on, it was still a source of happiness and of accomplishment. It was simple and silly, but that described him and his happiness, to a degree, but we're not going to get into that. He needed the cool darkness of this room, of a movie, and a nap.

Yes, a nap, and then he would fix lunch. He smiled and stretched out on the old couch to watch a movie. It was brief and dreamless, and he awoke with a phone call around noon. The sweat from the long walk home had dried and left his skin feeling flaky as he reached over his head for the cordless phone. It was the wife's firm, and he did his best to explain through yawns (thought to be choked back tears) what had happened the night before, that she had left, run off into the early morning. They offered their condolences, and hung up without much else. The woman who had called was a bit more sincere than his own manager, and he understood why she had liked her job so much. They seemed to be, from that brief call and the occasions they had met (office Christmas parties and the like), to be goodhearted people. He supposed it happened with people who wanted to save the world and human rights. He smiled at the thought of her good deeds and rolled over to the flickering menu of his DVD.

He groaned as he sat up and ran his fingers through his tousled hair. He remembered how they used to lay on the couch, her fingers wrapped loosely in his hair and his stroking hers out of her face, playing with it, just wanting to be close to her. They could never be close enough, and when they hugged, it was so tight they threatened to become one and their ribs ached with it. He sighed and looked to the floor, where an empty soda can served as an ashtray. He searched his pockets for the fresh pack of smokes and a colourful Bic lighter. She would have liked it, the colours. Bright and vibrant pinks and greens and blues and purples swirled together in a spiral.

The first drag after eleven years had been hard, but the ones that followed and this one went down like fine, fine wine. It calmed his nerves as he stood up and went into the kitchen, where his lunch pail from the night before stood (luckily nothing he had already packed was perishable, he thought), and he began to search through the fridge to find not much. Left over's and a doggie bag of Thai, a few bacon rinds and a mistake he had tried to cook a couple nights ago, that she didn't have the heart to throw out as they ordered pizza. She wrapped it in cellophane and placed it in the foreground of the fridge as a consolation prize, a Good Job, Honey But Leave the Cooking to Me award. He smiled and poked it, back against the milk.

Two baked potatoes (a little dark and crunch at the edges of where they had been split down the centre) and a pair of baked chicken breast later, he set the table for two and wondered what she would think. If she would have liked it, or laughed. Probably both, a kind-hearted laugh that came from the very bottom of her lungs. He already missed the laugh. It would always fill the room and was painfully sincere and good-natured. He smiled as he placed a candle at the epicentre of the table and lit it with the bright Bic lighter, and laid a single pink rose from her garden above the plate. She would like it, he told himself, as he walked out of the small kitchen and down the hall to his den.

The door opened and he walked inside, watched by the glass eyes of various animals, most were varmints he practiced on, or birds, nothing too attractive but he was getting better, in fact, this last one may be his masterpiece, as he picked it up off the heavy metal desk he had gotten from a doctor's office that was closing for cheap. He carried it in his arms to the kitchen and sat it at her place at the table before he took his chair and placed a silk napkin at his throat, tucked neatly under the collar of his shirt. The shirt he had worn to work the day before – he would shower after lunch and change.

"I love you," he said softly over the silence of the small dining room, the first sincere voice he had used since last night hurt his throat and his heart, made his entire body ache.

[Call an optimist, she's turning blue. I'd like to sit and stare at you.]

Her lips did not move, but her glass eyes flickered under the candle light and he smiled as he cut into his chicken.

"So, how did you sleep, my dear? Well? Well, that's good. Did you have any dreams? No? Yeah, I suppose you wouldn't after the night you had last night. Probably slept like the dead, heh? Yeah, I just woke up from a nap. It was alright, after the crazy morning, it was refreshing and it was – well, you know. I slept like a log. Oh? Yeah, I'm sorry about that. Don't worry, it's okay, you can sleep in the bed with me tonight. I'm sorry I made you sleep in there last night. I know, I know. I love you, babe. I'm sorry, okay? It's alright, I understand. We'll always have disagreements, it's a part of any marriage," he ate at the potato and chicken as he looked at the glass eyes he had implanted into his wife's sockets, staring at him without blinking. He smiled at her as he ate and finished the lunch. "Are you done?" he asked, taking their plates to the sink, depositing her half a breast and untouched potato into the trash, and the plates to the dishwasher after having been rinsed.

"If you don't mind, I'm going to go shower, is that okay? Alright, I have a surprise for you when I get out," his smile was deviously flirtatious as he left the kitchen, undressed on his way to the shower. The water was hot and scorched his flesh, leaving it a bit pink as he stepped out and looked into the mirror, noting the dark circles left under his eyes from too little sleep, and began shaving his face and chest, and down around his pubic region. Her surprise, he told himself.

When they were first together, he shaved on a fairly regular basis, but as their relationship progressed and they were married, he grew comfortable and in short, lazy. She had made a comment about it, the last time they slept together, after coming back up to kiss him full on the mouth, that maybe he would start again, that it was a bit uncomfortable (She made some other comments about it, but we'll leave it there for the time being – you get the picture), and so he did. He was freshly shaved, everywhere but his head and eyebrows, and with naught but a towel around his waist, he returned to the kitchen to whisk his wife out of her chair, and carried her to their bedroom.

The drapes were pulled tight, leaving it dark as night, and through the afternoon until the first streak of dusk rang like a division bell outside, they made love. Exhausted and drowning in his own sweat, he collapsed next to her bare body and draped both an arm and a leg over her, his face nuzzling her neck as he kissed her once softly and fell to sleep, lost in the soft perfume of her hair, whispering I love you, one more time before drifting off to the world of dreams...

[Dead as dead can be, the doctor tells me. But I just can't believe him, ever the optimistic one.]