Devil You Know(7)
You’re so optimistic; it’s disgusting.
Nothingness again coats my stare, and I scuff my way to the garden shed to get the shirt, all the while cringing at each smash, and crash that echoes from within the house. At what stage of my life did I ever think this was an acceptable outcome? When the hell did I stop caring so much about myself, and agree to enslave myself to a man who doesn’t show an ounce of love toward me? A man who thinks it’s perfectly fine to destroy our home because he was taken by surprise?
The side of me that hopes the world is somehow pure outside our boundary fences runs through the possibility of knocking on the neighbor’s door. But the devil on my shoulder taps the shell of my ear, and whispers his poisoned thoughts. If he’d wanted to help you, he would have stayed. He only wants to help your dog.
My life, not worth as much as a dog’s.
It sums how pointless I feel perfectly.
If I had more guts, I might have thought about using something sharp in the garden shed to end my life.
But therein lies the problem. I don’t have enough guts. Otherwise I would have left this prison a long time back.
And once again, the depressing thoughts come full circle.
At the end of the day, it’s all my fault.
• • • • •
I AWAKE with a whimper a little while after dawn. At some stage in my short and unsatisfying nap, I’d rolled off the cushions I’d pilfered from the patio setting, and ended up on the concrete. Cramps congregate in the old injuries I sport, sending pain searing through my back, and knees.
Like the good bitch I am, I tidy the cushions, and put the bush-shirt away before making my way to the back door where I stand now. The hum of the air-conditioning is the only perceptible sound as I strain my ears to locate Dylan before I enter. One of the first survival skills I taught myself was the need for a plan. No matter how in charge he thinks he is, I always know where he is, and before he thinks to raise his hand to me I’ve mapped out five different outcomes for the situation we enter into.
Preparation is the key to survival. And this Girl Scout always goes in prepared.
The silence lasts too long, and given the man hasn’t slept in for the last ten years, I know something is off. A strange excitement amps my heart as I think through the slim possibility that he’s passed out, and choked on his vomit. But that damn voice of reason reminds me that never once, in his years of drinking to the point of being comatose, has he ever vomited. My shoulders fall as the balloon of hope bursts with a resounding pop in my head.
The answer is so predictable that the local bookies wouldn’t have taken bets on it, but I try the handle all the same. No movement. Plan B, then. I slip around the side of the house, and peek out from behind a Camellia shrub at the front corner. The driveway sits empty.
The fucker has gone out without letting me in.
A smug smile takes residence as I saunter up to the Aloe Vera plant that grows beside the front steps. I look far too happy for a woman creeping about the front of her home in her nightie, but what do I care? For once I’ve outsmarted him.
After a cursory glance to check for spiders, I dive my hand in between the two thick leaves I hide the key in. My fingers fish the crease at the bottom of the plant, but nothing metallic resides there. Confused, I draw my hand out, and look again.
Definitely not there.
That asshole has found it. And the asshole has taken it.
My cheeks flare in shame at what a fool I am to gloat, when as usual, it’s him who’s outsmarted me.
I could sit and wait until he comes home, but for all I know that could be in an hour, or two days. Besides, I have a dog I desperately want to check up on. I simply hadn’t wanted to do it in my nightie.
The lights next door glow pale yellow against the thin curtains on my side of his house. At least the guy is awake. I’m not sure I can handle pissing off two men in the space of twenty-four hours.
Ten minutes is what it takes me to drum up the courage to walk to the end of the driveway. My paranoia works overtime on what could happen if any of the other neighbors see me. What if they tell Dylan where I’m going? What if Dylan thinks that the guy is my lover? Fuck. I don’t want to live that day.
Lucky for me then, the street is its normal, quiet self; not a mower to be heard, not a moving car to be seen. No children laugh as they play, and there isn’t even a postie riding past with the mail. Regular ghost town around here; five points for guessing why Dylan wanted to buy a house in these parts.
My steps falter as I round our paved driveway, and start up his gravel one. The stones are sharp, and I can see a few of them embedded in the tires of his truck. Sucking my bottom lip between my teeth, I make the journey to the front door, and climb the steps to the landing. My feet burn, and I take a moment to let the skin shirk the imprints of that damn gravel.