The Demons

"Tracy! Don't! Please, don't!"

How many times had he said those words? Way too many. Or maybe not enough?

Had he given up on Tracy while they still had a chance? Had he let her go too early? Too stupidly? Too stubbornly?

Most days, such questions would have made him shrug. What's done is done and that's the end of it. Today, though, he couldn't shake them off, no matter how hard he tried.

He closed his eyes for a second, took a deep breath and when he opened them again he switched his focus to the sight beyond his window. It was a glorious May afternoon and he was wasting it by holing up indoors and thinking of his ex-wife. Pinning after his ex-wife, which was a thousand times worse.

But he couldn't help it. She'd left too strong a mark on his mind, on his life, on his soul. She had been his first love. And up until quite recently, his only love.

But that was an even more dangerous thought. He didn't want to go there either. And since his mind seemed determined to cruelly rehash that history of the not so distant past, so be it. He might as well do it and get it over with.

He'd been twenty-one when he'd first met Tracy. And she'd been twenty five. At such tender age, he'd barely slept with two girls, on two separate occasions, each of them one of those episodes of awkward fumbling in the dark that by no means taught a boy how to be a man. At the very best, they'd taught him how to use a condom, though, in truth, he wasn't that big of a fan of said barrier. Tracy, on the other hand, while not particularly experienced in this field either, was the kind of woman who already knew what she liked, what she wanted, and, most importantly, whom she wanted.

And that had been him. They'd dated for three years before getting married. Tracy had pretty much handpicked him from the crowd of boys and men who always seemed to hover around her like moths attracted to a flame. And she had guided him through the whole experience of being in a committed relationship, proposing, getting married...

He still remembered how his friends had reacted when he had gotten married at twenty-four. How he'd ignored their warnings, their pleas to maybe wait a little longer, their sensible advice to not rush into something like this. But he'd been oblivious to everything. The way he'd seen things then, he was one of the lucky few who had the chance of finding their true love right off the bat. And wasn't that wonderful?

The way he saw things now, he hadn't done a damn thing, wonderful or otherwise. Tracy had done everything. She had married him. And then she had carried him through such a roller coaster of emotions, such a dizzying array of ups and downs and ups and downs, and ups and downs, and downs, and downs again...

He had been happy for a while, that much was true. He thought that maybe Tracy had been happy too. But he couldn't really know, now, could he? He had been blind about her in so many ways, he might have been wrong about her happiness too.

Blind, yes, though not stupid. Right after the divorce, he'd called himself an idiot, a fool, a Goddamn retard. But he'd merely been blind. And blinded. By her beauty, by her confidence, by his own sense of pride at seeing this woman, whom so many others coveted and desired, walk hand in hand with him and call herself his wife and acknowledge his claim over her, and his alone.

And how long had that lasted? A whole damn year. Not a honey moon, but a honey year. For a while she'd become his best friend, even replacing Brett to some extent. With her he had discovered not just the physical pleasure of sex, but the joys of making love. She'd been the one he came home to after a hard day at work, the one who always listened, the one who always had something sensible to say, the one who helped him with the cooking, or the shopping, or the cleaning, when he was way too tired for anything...

She'd been his faithful, loving wife and she had made him happy. Until she had stopped.

The Devil was in the detail, wasn't it? He should have thought of that the first time she had coldly dismissed his attempt at making love. The first time when, exhausted and starving, he'd asked her to put together a sandwich or two and she had shrugged it off by claiming she was tired herself. The first time she had failed to sleep at home, claiming some girlfriend of hers was going through a rough patch and needed her help. The first time he had found himself talking to her as to a blank wall, expecting a reply that had never come because she'd completely tuned out the conversation. The first time she had shied away from his kiss. The first time she had lied to him through her teeth...

That one occasion he still remembered clearly. It had been on the evening of the second day of a three-day business trip. Alone in his motel room, he'd already been dreaming of how by that time tomorrow he would be holding his sweet Tracy, kissing her and making love to her, or maybe taking her out to a fancy dinner, the way he knew she liked so much...

A text message had roused him from his day-dream. A text from Brett.

Need to talk to you asap. Please call.

So he'd called. And Brett had wasted no time in telling him that he'd just seen his dear wife, his sweet and loyal Tracy, all dolled-up and looking stunning, walking hand in hand with a man and heading towards their apartment.

A nagging suspicion had formed in his mind almost instantly. He had loved her so deeply, wanted to trust her so badly, he couldn't find it in himself to check on her. But Brett was his best friend. And he was smart as hell, and wouldn't have said anything if he hadn't felt justified to do so.

Eventually, he'd called her. It was, by then, close to midnight. He'd asked her if she was home alone and she'd said yes, of course. She was alone and missing him like crazy and couldn't wait for him to come home.

Then, acting on a crazy impulse, he'd hopped on the first train home that very night and gotten there around 4 in the morning. He'd found Tracy at home, alone, with both windows of their bedroom widely open.

The air still heavy with the smell of smokes and sex.

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The air still heavy with the smell of smokes and sex. The pile of empty beer cans and the occasional wine bottle. The absurd-looking, cheerful purple trash bags waiting by the door. The almost inevitable memento left by one of her mother’s numerous �" and often random �" lovers. The pink wrap of a condom here. A unopened pack of chewing gum there. A handful of flowers still retaining a resemblance of freshness, but most of them scattered on the carpet. An empty box of chocolates. A piece of wrapping paper in a jarring tone of pink. A heart-shaped keychain. A long-forgotten leather belt. A golden lighter. A plastic coffee cup only half empty, with cigarette butts drowning in the remains of age old java.

And the look on her mother’s face telling the same old story all over again.

It hadn’t worked this time either.

Nothing ever did.

And that was how desperate things were with her. Always had been.

That was why the smell of smokes and sex, even more than that of acrid drunkard-breath and pills and vomit, was, to her, the smell of desperation.

Because of her mom.

The smart, good looking, still surprisingly attractive woman who was now looking her in the eyes with something closely resembling reproach.

The woman who, all her life, had been battling horrid depression. And who was now, slowly and painfully, losing the fight.

“How are you feeling, Mom?”

She had to ask, although she knew the answer. She saw it clearly in the way she only shrugged, looking away from her daughter’s inquisitive glance. Looking small, pale, scared and embarrassed.

Ashamed.

“Have you eaten anything today?”

“Some coffee. And a slice of pizza. You know my stomach can’t take much these days…”

She knew, of course. Her stomach couldn’t. Her liver couldn’t. Her kidneys couldn’t. Her heart, and lungs, and brain and blood vessels couldn’t either. Nothing in that frail looking body could take much anymore.

Thirty years of fighting a fight that she couldn’t win had more than taken their toll on the fragile flesh. She still looked beautiful, she still smiled �" and oh, how heart-breaking that smile was to her daughter �" she still had it in her to turn men’s heads and make them want her.

And still the only man she wanted was her long-estranged husband, the one man who had seen into the depths of her soul, who had penetrated their darkness, who had loved her and had fought by her side until he’d been himself on the verge of collapsing.

And then, when he had already lost count of all her suicide attempts, he had realized that it was killing him too.

So he had left and never looked back.

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The smokes were the one bad habit she didn’t quite seem able to kick to the curb. She’d quit them for a while, only to start again, and then she’d grow disgusted with herself �" Think how damaging they are to your beauty! �" and quit again, if only for a short while… But then, inevitably, one way or another, the smokes ended up in her life again.

Ironically enough and despite what she told people �" to the few who dared ask, of course �" she hadn’t picked them up during her divorce. She hadn’t started in high-school either, despite enormous peer pressure to do so. No, smoking had been a novelty shed added to her game halfway through her marriage. A kind of harmless supplement to her collection of decidedly not harmless toys. The tools of her trade, if being a w***e could be considered a trade…

She cringed despite herself. She was not a w***e. James called her that sometimes, sure, but he did so lovingly. Or, at the very least, passionately. With something in his eyes that made her want to kneel in front of him and say it herself.

I am your w***e, your slave, your plaything. Play with me. Make me your toy, make me feel your strength, show me who’s in control. Love me, hit me, save me, hurt me…

But w***e was somehow tainted in her consciousness for the same reason why she hated smokes so much. It had been one of the things she’d seen most often form on her father’s sensual lips. And flying from his mouth along with the cigarette butts that inevitably fell on the snow-white carpet in their elegant living-room. Aimed not at Tracy herself, but at her mom.

She still remembered the expression of that mouth, half cruel and half tender, when he did that. She remembered the glitter in his glassy eyes and the twisted anticipation of what was coming. The sick eagerness. The pleasure. The hugely visible pleasure that made his pants become too tight, his breath too ragged, his face too red…

The b*****d got all hard hitting his wife. Hurting her. Pulling her hair and shoving her and tearing off whatever she would happen to be wearing.

Raping her.

With Tracy, still a child, looking helplessly on.