Thomas

The burn of whisky was always sweeter after the first drink.

Thomas Porter never used to touch the stuff. He used to scoff at people who had a drink or two after a hard day or those who longed to find an ounce of solace at the bottom of a bottle. They were weak. Shameful. Unable to deal with the realities of life.

He used to believe that the reason certain people weren’t successful was because they were the ones holding themselves back. What a fucking joke.

He knew better now. After living through a year of hell that scarred him inside and out. He damn well knew better.

His home office was dark, the shades drawn against the overly warm Phoenix sunlight. It was early. Far too early to start drinking, but then again, he hadn’t slept. Couldn’t remember the last time he had. Sure, he lay in bed, sometimes during the appropriate hours of darkness, sometimes not. He lay there, alone, because he wanted to be. Alone and awake because if he slept then the dreams would come. No, the terrors. Not dreams. Never dreams.

The whisky splashed from the bottle into the crystal glass with a dull hiss. Thomas liked the sound. It was somehow lyrical, musical. His savior in a bottle.

He finally got it now; what everyone else saw in the stuff.

He realized, through a fog, that the bottle was half full. Or was it half empty? Who the fuck cares? It still meant the same thing. He’d still drunk half of it since he got up and fumbled his way to his office just past seven that morning.

He’d heard Evie get up and get dressed. She’d called to him, once. At least she still cared enough to do that. He’d left her alone. The way she wanted to be. He knew. He knew she didn’t love him. Couldn’t. He didn’t blame her. He couldn’t even love himself, the way he was now.

The feel of the flames came on suddenly, hot, wretchedly hot, licking their way up his leg first. Tearing at jeans that had fused with his skin before eating their way up his flesh, climbing higher and higher, the pain all-consuming.

Thomas dropped the glass, half raised to his mouth, as he cried out. It slipped from his hand, the whisky sloshing uselessly over his desk and the floor as the glass hit. It shattered on impact with the hard tile. The sound of breaking glass slammed him back into the present. The flames disappeared.

He brought his hands up and tugged uselessly at his hair. He’d cut it. Shaved the sides and left the top long. Went to the barber earlier that week. He thought doing something normal would make him normal. Instead, he’d faced exactly what he knew he would. The stares. The cold, hard stares of those around him. The barber, a middle-age balding man, staring incessantly at the whirled, twisted patterns of grafted, healed skin on his neck and cheek. He must have wondered just how deep those scars went, how much of his body they covered.

All of it. They covered all of him. Went beyond his skin into his mind and soul.

Thomas bent to inspect the shards of broken glass. He’d been sitting in his desk chair, a modern monstrosity that never really was very comfortable. Despite that, he’d spent the past hours in it. How many, he wasn’t even sure. It was so easy to lose track of time when you didn’t give a shit about it any longer.

He leaned forward and tipped out of the chair, landing unceremoniously on the floor in a pile of broken glass.

It bit into his skin. His face, his hands. He didn’t care. He enjoyed the sharp burst of pain. The fog in his brain made it nearly impossible to right himself. He tucked his hand under his chest, came into contact with more broken glass. More cuts. The pain from those tiny cuts didn’t matter. Not after half his body had been grafted with the skin of the dead. That’s what they did. Used skin from another person, a non-living person, to heal those who should have died but hadn’t.

He managed to get to his knees. His head swam, and he fell back against the desk. How much whisky did I drink? He didn’t know.

Through the soupy fog in his head, the swimming room and the whirling thoughts that never quite left him alone, Thomas stood. He groped his way through the room, gripping the wall to keep vertical. He made his way down the hall, into the large kitchen.

Sunlight streamed through the open blinds. He hated the fucking sunlight. He stumbled over to the window and managed to draw them half closed. He stumbled over to the kitchen table. His hands gripped the cool, hard edge of the glass top. He hated that fucking table. Hated the modern silver chairs that matched. Hated the entire god damn kitchen with its sleek metal backsplash, the white quartz countertops, the cold stainless steel appliances.

The whole house had been for Evie. She’d picked it. She liked modern, new, shiny. The unlived, unloved feel.

It was like a metaphor for their entire relationship.

He didn’t love the house, but he stayed.

She didn’t love him, but she stayed.

This house that he hated had become more of a prison than a sanctuary. The woman he loved disappeared long before that accident, but she stuck with him out of obligation. Out of pity. Out of something. He clung to her because she was all he had left. No one else would want him now. Not like this. Not ever. He craved solitude, but he didn’t want to be truly alone.

The glass was cool under his fingertips. He realized it was his left hand on the table top. His right, the fingerprints melted off, wouldn’t have felt a thing.

The urge to shatter that table top, splinter it like the broken glass in his office, was so great it took all he had not to make a fist and attempt to smash it through the top. It probably would have held. The glass was thick. Impenetrable.

Thomas moved his hand away. His eyes focused on the bloody marks his cut hand had left behind. There were probably splinters of glass in his hand. It didn’t matter. Nothing truly did.

His vision cleared, as though the whisky decided to give up the ghost for the moment, and his eyes fixed on the glossy white cabinets.

Inside those pristine cabinets he detested so much were the dishes he hated. Dishes Eve loved. Square things. Heavy. Annoying as hell to wash and dry and put back.

Thomas fumbled his way over to the closet cabinet. He braced his hand on the countertop, satisfied at the smears of red he left on the shining white surface. He ripped open the cabinet and stared at the mounds of dishes stacked inside.

He reached in with a hand that was usually numb. The hand itself had feelings, but the fingertips were deadened. He produced one of the dinner plates. The square was offensive in itself. Who the hell designed something like this?

He drew back his arm. In his mind, he saw his car. Flipped over, on its roof. Gas leaking, leaking everywhere. The spark from somewhere unseen, the flames licking their way through the car, over to him. So very slowly, eating everything, devouring everything.

An inhuman cry of rage was torn from the deep recess of a throat always perpetually raw. Raw with sorrow. Impotent rage. Anger. Hopelessness.

He let the plate fly. Fly across the kitchen and smash into the fridge.

The fucking thing left a dent on impact. It dropped to the floor, still whole. Unharmed.

Thomas just lost it. Blackness closed in around the edges of his vision. The room swam, changed, morphed. Nothing was real. He felt nothing.

He was aware of the sounds of breaking glass, shattering dishes, cups, drawers pulled out and emptied onto the floor.

Then one sound. A voice, crystal, clear, melodic. The one sound that could pull him back from the brink of oblivion.

He opened his eyes.

There, standing across the kitchen, pink high heels surrounded by broken shards of plates, mugs, cups, was Evie.

Thomas slammed back into his body at the same time he felt his knees give out. He was falling. Falling hard. He hit the floor, broken glass biting into his knees. One good, one with the twisted, scarred skin he kept hidden and refused to look at.

He covered his face. Hid it in his arm because he couldn’t look at her. Couldn’t bear to see the judgment and the disappointment and the lack of love that had once shone so brightly.

When he felt her arms, so infinitely soft and warm, whole and perfect, slide around his shoulders, he trembled with shock and shame. He should have died that day. Died and spared them all of this, this constant no man’s land of non-existence.