The End Of Their World
Amanda
When she was a little girl, Amanda had once asked her mother what the end of the world would look like. They’d watched a movie about a post-apocalyptic world and she’d wanted to know if that’s what it would really look like. Would it really be so hard to survive? What would happen to cause such a catastrophic event? Would the world really make it through the worst humanity could throw at it?
Now she knew. She knew what the end of the world looked like. It looked like a broken man, laid out on their couch, his blood soaking into the worn, faded leather. It looked like the hard glint of fear and the underlying brokenness flashing through her normally unshakable husband’s eyes.
It felt like everything she thought she knew coming to an end.
The end of the world, her world, came while the rest of the world went right on functioning. It didn’t seem fair, somehow, that it should happen that way.
The end of the world looked like Jason working on the worst of the stranger’s wounds, his shotgun set down beside a pot of bloodied boiled water and soiled bandages. It looked like a needle and thread, bandages, peroxide and a whiskey bottle on their coffee table. It smelled like the horrible tang of metal and sounded like the groans of a man who should, from the look of him, probably be dead.
“Jason…” Amanda hovered on the periphery, hardly daring to sit. She didn’t know what she could possibly do to help so she stood, wringing her hands, utterly useless.
His eyes, those eyes that she loved so very much, swiveled to her face. They looked like the eyes of a stranger. Haunted. Dangerous. The eyes of a man she thought she knew and didn’t.
“Can you pass me another bandage? I think I’ve got the worst of this cleaned up. They beat him up pretty good, but it was like I said. I think he’s going to pull through. He’s used to it. His body, I mean. It gets used to taking blows. It builds up resistance, just like your immune system.”
“I don’t even want to know what you’re talking about,” Amanda whispered in a halting, broken voice.
She forced herself to get another clean bandage from the dwindling pile on the table and pass it on to Jason.
He wound it tightly around an open gash on the side of the man’s skull. How Jason even recognized the guy, Amanda wasn’t certain. His features were so swollen, bruised and bloody, he didn’t even look human. It frightened her to think of the men who had done this. How could anyone be so cruel to another human being?
“Don’t think about it,” Jason ground out. “It will make you crazy if you do.”
“Think- think of what?” Amanda stammered.
“About who did this. About the violence and cruelty inside of people. I swear I will keep you safe like I always have. Nothing will happen to you. You are the love of my life. I would die before I saw you hurt.”
Amanda’s legs turned to jelly as a jolt of fear, stronger than anything she’d ever felt in her life, crippled her. She collapsed onto her knees, gripping the edge of the coffee table for support. Jason worked beside her, his eyes on her face, his hands sealing up the gash, working surely, so sure it was obvious he had done this before.
“I… dear god, don’t talk about dying,” she gasped.
Jason blinked hard before he finally tore his eyes from her face, back to the man on the couch. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Just… don’t.”
“I have to take his shirt off.”
“You have to tell me what the hell is going on!”
“I will. I will, Amanda, I promise. Just help me right now. Just a little while longer.”
Because she almost didn’t want to know, because she was more afraid of the truth than the unknown, because if she didn’t know what was out there, she could almost still pretend it didn’t exist, she dove into helping Jason finish up.
Together they removed the man’s shirt and pants. At first it was embarrassing, stripping down someone who wasn’t even conscious, but the more they worked, the more clinical and detached Amanda felt.
Her horrible fear eventually faded into numbness. She grew tired and then exhausted, tending the man’s wounds. His torso looked as bad as his face. It was a mass of cuts and bruises. His legs fared better, with only a few bruises here and there. Obviously whoever had done the job had focused on beating him in all the places it actually counted.
They were just about through when the man’s shallow breathing changed. He let out a low moan and his eyelids raised open a fraction. They were almost swollen completely shut. What little of his eye showed was horribly bloodshot.
“Jason?” the man croaked past a dry throat.
“I’m here, Andy.” Jason grabbed the guy’s hand to reassure him.
Amanda stepped back a pace, far enough that she wasn’t within reach of the now conscious stranger, but not far enough away that she couldn’t hear what was being said.
“I got out. Finally… came to warn you. They’re coming… never stopped looking. Ricci was wild when you got away. The one man in all those years who escaped his clutches. They found Gerard Domas last month- threatened his wife and kid until he talked. They let him go legit and he was never Ricci’s to run, so he couldn’t do much. Just scared him. He didn’t know anything. Said he’d run into you a year ago in Boulder.”
Jason tensed and Amanda’s breath caught in her lungs. She remembered the guy and his wife at the baby store. They’d run into them in the crib section when she was four months pregnant. Jason hadn’t wanted to speak to the guy. He’d tried to turn around and leave, but she’d tried to strike a conversation. She hadn’t known. She couldn’t have known. She still didn’t know the extent of whatever was happening, but she knew it was bad.
“Where is he now?” From the tone of Jason’s voice, he obviously didn’t want to hear the answer.
“Like I said…” the man had to pause and take a breath that rattled in his chest before he could continue. “He wasn’t Ricci’s. Didn’t want- trouble- with Van. He… got- away. Went to Mexico or something- overseas… maybe. Took… his family.”
It was clear that the guy couldn’t keep talking. He let out a low moan, coughed and bloody spittle appeared on his lips.
Jason bent and ran a hand gently over the guy’s forehead. It struck a chord in Amanda. She’d never seen her husband be so kind or familiar with another person who wasn’t her. He loved their son, but he had no one close in the world. The way he looked at that man on the couch, it was like he was looking at a brother he hadn’t seen in years.
“Just rest now, Andy. You’ve come a long way to warn me. I won’t forget it. I’ve cleaned you up and you’re going to survive. You just need to take it easy. You’ll be right in the morning.”
The man coughed again and his eyes closed. He breathed a long sigh and it was impossible to tell if he was even still conscious.
A horrible thought gripped Amanda. She didn’t know the first thing about Jason’s family. Not really. She’d always assumed he didn’t have one. That man on the couch truly could be his brother, for all she knew.
After a minute Jason stepped away. He gathered up the soiled cloths and dirty water. He motioned with his eyes for Amanda to follow him. He didn’t have to bother. She would have chased him down wherever he went. She needed answers and he was the only one who had them.
Jason dumped the pot of dirty water into the sink. Amanda’s stomach churned as she watched the bloody water swirl over the white porcelain before disappearing down the drain. He rinsed it out calmly, as though he was washing their damn supper dishes.
He threw the dirty rags in the garbage, all with such maddening calm.
Amanda couldn’t take it anymore. She ran across the kitchen and gripped Jason’s arm roughly. She forced him to turn and face her. Her eyes searched his face, wondering for all the world if this was the last time she’d ever see him in this kitchen.
“Jason please! You have to tell me what’s going on!’
“I know.” His words were a whisper, heavy with regret. They floated in the air between them, as heavy and thick as a cloud of smoke, which made sense considering their life was burning down around them.
“Come talk to me in the bedroom. Please.”
Jason finally nodded. He looked as numb in that moment as she felt. He took her hand and let her lead them down the hall to the room they shared.
When Amanda pushed open the door she nearly burst into tears. “This can’t be the last time that we’re here. This can’t be it for us.” She looked up into the face of the man she trusted and loved so very much. “Tell me it’s not it, Jason!”
He ripped his hand free from hers and gripped her face between his hard, calloused palms. It didn’t even matter to her that they were still bloody. She just wanted his touch, needed his touch, craved the reassurance only he could give her.
“I don’t know,” he whispered before he bent his head and savagely claimed her lips.