Till Madness

 

 

            The faint smell of perfume pulls Richard back from his light sleep.

            “It’s a dream, it has to be.” He whispers to himself looking at the half empty glass of vodka resting on the coffee table. He can feel the nightmares struggling to creep back in and pulls himself off the couch before he can fall asleep again. 

The cold that grips him as he enters the kitchen is almost palpable. He looks around at the sterile room, knowing the cabinets are filled with nothing but liquor bottles. The infinite hum-drum of the fridge conjures up memories of their time together. He can almost see her sitting in the counter, reading a book as he sips his coffee and stares at her smile. The thoughts eat at him like a cancer that slowly erodes his entrails and make him hollow.

            He walks through quickly, pushing the memories away. Her scent comes to him again when he reaches the staircase. It lasts but for a second; just enough to know his brain is playing games with him again. He has come to terms with losing his mind, and knows that every shadow hides in wait for him, and every noise carries with it the soft velvet of her voice.

            He reaches the top of the stairs and looks to his left. He pauses, knowing there is a reason he hasn’t opened that door since she was last there; yet nostalgia and a macabre obsession with his past life pull him in.

            The door to his master bedroom creaks with complaints of dormancy. The stale smell of the room, hot and dusty, scratches at his throat. He presses his hand against the rumpled bedding and a part of him swears her warmth still permeates the sheets. As if brought by this thought her scent once again envelops him. The familiar smell is all at once out of place in the room where it used to linger endlessly. 

            The picture from their honeymoon lies on the floor in front of his nightstand. He picks it up; looking at her hair blowing against the wind through a shattered glass and broken frame. His eyes drift toward the nightstand; a feeling on his chest like ice fingers gripping his heart. Cold sweat tingles through his neck, passing trough strands of hair that suddenly stand at attention. Richard gazes at the clean circular void in the tick dust layer covering his nightstand, and his stomach turn to lead.

            “Alice!” He screams, threading carefully towards the hallway

            “Alice, aren’t you a little old for hide and seek.” He yells again, but prays there is no answer.

            A soft laughter, both revolting and delicious to his ears, reaches to him from Katie’s room at the end of the hall. The sound of her voice surrounds him and caresses him like a silk sheet. As she walks slowly towards him, the dim light bulb revealing her one step at a time, the colors drain from his world accentuating the woman in front of him with the porcelain skin and the shimmering black dress. 

           “Alice.” He says weakly, the word like a last breath escaping from his lungs.

                        Her long blond hair shines with reddish highlights as she walks under the light bulb. Her slender body seems to float as she moves towards him; her hips swinging from side to side whispering secrets of what’s hidden within its curves. Her eyes draw him like a magnet. Those bright beautiful blues that seem to reflect the entire world back at him like a perfectly polished mirror. A sweet smile illuminates her face. The smile he fell in love with. The smile she had before things went wrong.

            How can it be? He thinks trying to process what he sees.

“I’ve missed you.” She says softly.

            He takes a step towards her, hypnotized by the sweet smell of her skin. His mind screams of horrors and deceptions, but despite all warnings he moves closer, intoxicated by her presence. She raises her hand towards him, the wedding ring she took from his nightstand gleaming in her finger. He reaches for her, his entire world in a haze, and for a moment feels as if she never left.

            “I came back for you love.” She says, squeezing his hand tightly and raising the gun she was holding behind her.

 

 

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   * 

 

             He remembers the dreamlike feeling that subsided only after the pain settled in. He remembers his wife’s body lying next to him, limp and unresponsive, but still warm and drawing in breaths. He remembers looking back, hoping to find Katie safe in the backseat, and seeing instead empty space and broken glass. He remembers the panic as he stepped out of the car screaming her name and yelling for help. He remembers her flip-flops strewn about the road, tattered and bloody. He doesn’t know if he found her body before cops arrived and pulled him away. That part he doesn’t remember. What he knows is that he’s thankful only a few memories remain in his mind from the accident; and that if the image of his little girl laying dead on the street haunted his dreams, he would have gone mad as well.

            He rested that night in a hospital chair, watching over Alice as machines hissed and beeped.  A wedge of light seeped in through the door, bathing her in a dim golden column as she slept. Shock and sedatives masked his grief while he sat in the pale room that smelled of death and old urine masked with lysol. She awoke the next day completely catatonic. He spent the next three days nursing Alice back into response; but unable to recognize in her the woman he married. With every hour he spent with her, Richard became more and more convinced she was still in there somewhere in the midst of that emotional coma. When he took her home, he knew she was lost and had very little hope she would ever find her way back. 

For the next two weeks the only progress Alice made was towards lunacy; fueled by painkillers and paranoia. A month after leaving the hospital Richard began coming home late, or not at all; the only certainty being that when he did show up, he was numbed to Alice’s screams for Katie. He would fall asleep drunk, hearing her calls in his dreams, and her inconsolable cries when Katie wouldn’t answer back. 

Most of that time is just a blur of pain and desperation in Richard’s head. The memory of their last day together has a different quality to it; a surreal clarity as if viewing it through a thin sheet of ice.

He stumbled home with the help of a cab driver that was rapidly becoming his best friend. After his tenth try, the key finally found its mark, and after some back-and-forth play, the door gave way before him. The darkness inside seemed to swallow him whole. Following the early morning brightness of the outside, the pitch black cave that was his living room soothed his burning heavy eyes. After taking a few seconds to steady himself, he started towards the kitchen, doing his best to remember the layout of his house, and avoid any obstacles along the way. 

His hand felt up and around the archway that marks the boundary of the living room. He tried to count the steps in his head from there to the stairway. He started to move, hesitantly, and faintly noticed movement behind him. His alcohol filled brain never processed it in time before his body hit the floor, unconscious.

He awoke to a sharp headache and nausea; both of which he had become accustomed to in recent weeks. When the pain allowed him to, he opened his eyes, slowly, and found himself in the passenger seat of his car. His hands were bound and resting against his lap. His head filled with a sharp pain when he tried to move it, and it stuck to the backrest where blood had been steadily trickling out. He turned his head and saw Alice behind the wheel. 

“Hon, what are you doing.” He asked, confusion and panic overwhelming him.

“I’m going to see my baby, Richard. We both are.”

He looked at her eyes and found nothing but a colorless void. The beautiful resplendent blue replaced by a sickly pale behind which he didn’t see his Alice. 

He reached for the key and felt the steel barrel of a gun push his face back into his seat.

            “Shhh love. Just sit there and let me take care of things.”

            He felt the terror spread through his body. His hands reached to his right, and found the car’s handle. He felt himself fall back, her fingers reach for him, grasp him, and then slip through her grip and into darkness.

             An officer was standing patiently by the door when he woke up in the hospital. He recognized him from the car accident where he lost Katie, and felt somehow relieved to see a familiar face. He listened in silence and filled himself with frustration. For an hour the officer asked him how he ended up on the side of the road, bound and almost dead. How his car ended up at the bottom of the river, and what he had done with his wife. 

            There was no energy in him to lie. He stared at policeman and saw him grow impatient with every question, but he could do no better for him than to shake his head and act confused, which in his current state, and with so many questions floating around his head, it was not that much of a lie at all. He expected to be arrested, but the officer just stood up when he could ask no more, wished him luck and walked out. 

Richard left the hospital a week later, his days after consumed by binge drinking, interrupted only when he became too crippled by his own misery to even leave the bed in the guest room where he had taken residency. His nights filled with the memories of his daughter, and his body’s hunger for the feel of his wife’s warmth next to him.

 

*    *    *    *    *    *    *    *

            The deafening boom of the gun echoes through the walls in the hallway. A burst of adrenaline courses through Richard's veins like a spiking power line, awakening every cell in his body, and washing over the foggy confusion that were his thoughts. He had somehow managed to slap her wrist away just enough to keep the bullet from ripping his face. He frees his other hand from her grip and shoves at her hard enough to make her stumble back and loose her balance. He starts towards Alice, ready to jump on her and wrestle the gun away. Alice however points the gun up and starts firing away randomly, without slowing down or hesitating, despite her hard landing. Richard turns and sprints towards the stairs, his body pulsing with the need to survive.

            All Richard feels when the bullet hits him is a small dot of fire in his lower back.    His legs go numb and he falls on the carpet like a string-less puppet. The next instant is eternal to him as it seems he may lie there, helpless, waiting for Alice to finish him off. Slowly, the numbness in his body subsides enough for him to crawl towards the opening. He tries to stand, but his legs fail and the best he can manage is an awkward dive towards the stairs as two more bullets strike the wall behind him.

            He tumbles clumsily down the steps and lies at the bottom, struggling to pump air back into his lungs in quick desperate gasps. The sound of her footsteps urges his body into responding, and with a deep breath, he drags himself toward the living room. Pain flares up in waves throughout his body turning every move into a fight between willpower and agony. Pain is good. He thinks, remembering the bullet now lodged in his back; and the terror that accompanied the initial lack of feeling. 

            “Richard honey, please let's not do this. Let's talk, you are always so good at talking.” 

            The top edge of the front door is barely visible from his spot in the kitchen floor. He knows he needs to stand up if he wants to make it out of the house. He crawls what looks like a mile to the arched wall leading into the living room. Her footsteps echo at the stair landing as he drags himself laboriously to his feet. He takes two solid steps before a burning pain flares up from his chest, and radiates through his body. The smell of gunpowder overpowers his senses. He sees the tiny droplets of blood exploding forward from him as he crashes through the coffee table, and slides across the glass covered carpet. Richard opens his mouth, not sure if he's going to cry or scream; he can do neither.

            “Richard honey, have you been drinking? It reeks of cheap vodka in here.” 

            It's Belvedere you b***h. He thinks, looking at the bottle resting by the couch. He tries to talk again, but can only manage a weak groan; a low gurgling sound creeps up in his throat. 

            “Oh, don't worry love, I'm here now. I'll take care of all your problems.”

            He looks at her then and sees them. The eyes. Brilliant and wide and pure crazy; consuming everything around them and fading to an almost inhuman cloudy-white. Alice kneels next to Richard. She holds the gun at her side. He's still fixated on her eyes, but is faintly aware of her hand gently brushing his hair. The glint of the gun reaches his eyes as she raises it, then her hand moves over his face. He takes a deep breath that feels thick as syrup. His right hand feels along the carpet. He finds what he's looking for, wraps his fingers around it, and swings it with the little strength he has left.

 

 

 

            The feel of the glass ripping through her skin makes him sick. Alice starts to cry in pain, but the sound stop as he finishes driving the glass into her.  Richard winces from the pain as the gun falls on his chest. Her hand moves away from his face, and he can see the confusion in her blue eyes; all trace of madness gone from them.

            He sees the blood pouring from his chest. The small trickle has turned into a steady stream, air bubbles fizzing trough it like fountain soda. 

            “I miss her.” She says weakly, as Richard makes his way across the carpet towards her. 

            He squeezes her hand and wipes the tears from her eyes, the shard of coffee table sticking out below her left armpit. 

            “I love you.” She whispers. 

            “I love you too.” He makes the words with his lips, unable to speak, blood dripping from his lips. 

            He reaches around his neck, pulls his own wedding ring from the chain where he keeps it, and slips it on. He sees her faint smile and kisses her, the blood in his mouth smearing on her like lipstick.

            Richard stares at her ones one last time, then wraps his body around hers, placing his head on her chest and feeling the warmth of his blood between them, and the life quickly fading from the woman he still loves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Author's Note

Please don't sugarcoat your comments; I hate that. Be honest, be direct. Thanks for reading!

Reviews

[Sabbath_Nikole]

This was pretty great. I mean I usually find myself being distracted from longer pieces but i couldn't tear my eyes away from the screen on this one. I mean really.
I love the concept as well. Love strong enough to last through madness such as this, its romantic, and i'm a sucker for that kind of thing.
Your flow was amazing, wasn't disjointed or anything it just went. You've a way with this type of detail to. Felt like i was there.
Keep up the good work.

[deeps]

Such a creepy write that gave me the chills!
I like it, I don't see anything wrong with it.
Very vivid imagery. Horror, suspenseful and love
all rolled into one. I like this.