Julie and I had been married for ten years. We had two kids, one boy and one girl. Our anniversary was fast approaching and I hadn’t planned anything. Truth be told, I hadn’t planned anything significant for the last three years. I had fallen in that funk. So, I decided to book a trip to Chicago over the weekend. She had never been and when I told her she was elated. It was only going to be a weekend trip but she was building an itinerary as if we were going to be there for a year. I let her plan the whole trip, whatever she wanted to do we did it. I had no input. I felt like she had never loved me more than at that moment.
When we got home from the airport I fumbled for the keys. Not only did I have problems getting the keys out of my pocket, but I struggled to insert it into the keyhole. Julie grabbed the keys from me and opened the front door.
“Damn Dan,” laughing as she walked into the house.
I was having similar issues in all areas of my life. Simple tasks became extremely difficult. I couldn’t keep my balance and was prone to accidents. My legs and arms felt useless, dead, weak beyond use, becoming vestigial. It progressed over the following year, so much so that I finally forced myself to go to the doctor. ALS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, was the diagnosis, or better known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. The story of my life had instantly been reduced, abridged to only a few more chapters.
“How long,” Julie asked the doctor.
“Two to five years. Some have been known to live ten more years.”
As if ten was really that much better. Not ten good years, but ten worsening years. Ten years of becoming immobile and lifeless. Ten slow years of dying.
The car ride home was quiet. Julie was crying to herself, driving, but not paying attention to the road. She was thinking about a life without me, I was thinking about how best to die. A part of me considered suicide, but I wasn’t quite ready to be away from my children. I had to at least put things in order for them. I also wanted to create lasting memories of who I was, that with all my faults I was at least a good father.
Time passed. A year and a half later and I couldn’t walk, confined to a wheelchair. A nurse came to visit me every week to check my vitals and bring me my medication. She taught Julie how to change out the colostomy bag and some other simple tasks when the nurse wasn’t available.
Julie’s demeanor began to change. She went from loving and patient to irritated and depressed. With each passing stage of my illness, she became ever more hateful. One night we were watching television together, me slumped in my wheelchair and her all the way across the room in her favorite recliner. She never would wheel me close to her but kept me as far away as possible. Her cell phone rang.
“Hey Randy. What’s up? Ok, I can’t talk. I’m here with ole deadweight. I can’t wait either.”
“Who was that?” I asked.
“None of your business but if you must know, someone from work. We might hang out Saturday night,” cutting her eyes towards me to see my reaction.
“With Randy, a guy?”
“Yep, it’s no big deal. We’re just friends.”
That friendship blossomed into something deeper. Julie was rarely home, spending all her time down at the Alley Bar and Grill. She would come home drunk, existing in a different world than mine. She all but ignored me except when factors of my disease became too visible to ignore. Changing the colostomy bag was of particular agitation for her.
“I hate changing your shit bag. If you really loved me, you would just go ahead and die,” slurring the last half of the sentence. I would usually ignore it and chalk it up to the alcohol. She didn’t really mean it. She’s just frustrated and drunk.
Another year passed and I couldn’t move at all, confined to my hospital bed, hooked up to a system of medical machinery, clicking out the last moments of my life. Julie had moved the kids to her parent’s house along with a good deal of the furniture. I never felt so alone. The only happiness I had at that time was my kids. I thought they would eventually tire of me like Julie, but they were always willing to spend time with me. I only needed a few minutes a day. I didn’t want them to waste their lives sitting at a dying man’s rented gravesite.
Julie always put a different face on in front of the nurse. She wasn’t physically abusive, but she was a mind grinding, ego shattering bitch. She knew what to say to aggravate me. She always did, but now she turned on her craft to its highest wave of severity, crushing my soul with her relentless pounding vitriol. Her favorite line was always a variation of “If you love me, then such and such,” insert hateful clause. Finally, though, it did get physical.
She started bringing Randy home. They always came through the front door and went straight upstairs. I could hear them upstairs doing what we used to do as a married couple. I could tell that she truly loved Randy and was so ready to be with him and done with me. At this point, I could hardly speak, but one night I had heard enough. This man in my house, that I paid for, with my wife, acting as if I wasn’t here, and like he had sacrificed his own time and effort for everything he was now enjoying. I started moaning and causing a racket, straining to be a nuisance, even though it took an unimaginable amount of will power just to do that. I heard the upstairs door slam open and a stampede of steps down the stairs.
“Shut the fuck up. What’s wrong with you?”
I just moaned even more, and at one point I accidentally squealed. That pissed her off for some reason, so I increased the squealing.
“Maybe he’s in pain Julie.”
“No, he’s a fucking baby.” She went over to the couch and grabbed a throw pillow and smashed it in my face. She wasn’t letting up. I was struggling to breathe, trapped in my own corpse, unable to defend myself. Finally, I felt a rush of fresh air, as the pillow was thrown off my face. Randy had intervened.
“What are you doing? Are you psycho? You trying to kill the man!”
“No, of course not. I was going to let up. I just lost my temper.” Randy looked over at me and I could see that he had lost something for her. She looked entirely different now. She wasn’t the fun-loving brunette he had fallen in love with at the bar. For the first time, I could see that Randy was sympathetic. I still hated him, but I knew it was probably over between him and her. Mission accomplished. The power of squealing.
I wept that night. My emotions welling up, but not pity, full on fucking anger. My face was wet with tears, tears that my pathetic no-good limp-ass arms couldn’t wipe away. The more I thought about the trivial task of wiping away tears and how I was unable to do that, the angrier I got. I prayed to God, but not the type of prayer you hear in church. I begged God to perform a miracle. I prayed that Julie would die and watch me walk away healthy and with a beautiful blond by my side. I prayed that our kids would hate her forever and spit in her god damned face. I prayed for the worst possible traumas and calamities to befall her, but in the end, all was silent. The adulterous no good fucking couple had turned out the lights. They didn’t even leave the television on for me. I laid there in the dark, listening to the wind blow outside. Even my slight forgiveness of Randy had subsided.
And then my anger turned towards God. How could he do this? He couldn’t even give me a peaceful death. He couldn’t give me a loving wife until the very end, until my very last breath. I wouldn’t have begrudged her to move on the very next day, after they had shoveled the final piece of dust onto my coffin. I wondered how God could be so cruel as to rip me from my children. Why such a slow agonizing death and so, out of spite, not really expecting anything to happen, I prayed to Satan. I asked him if he healed me, I would do whatever he asked. Just give me back my kids, give me back my life.
The wind outside picked up. The moon seemed to dim its light. I heard the swing set swaying violently, the chains clanging against the bars. At the foot of the bed, I saw a dark arm fumble for the footboard, long fingers grasping, and then the other arm. A stench filled the room and everything else but the figure before me fell out of focus. The head emerged, thinning hair, sunken in face, and exposed teeth. I noticed there were no lips and where his nose should have been, there was only a flap of skin. He crawled up onto my body, skin grey, and oily, taut to the bone and every little muscle in his body twitching rapidly. He crawled all the way up to me and put his mouth to my mouth.
I fell out of my body and into another dimension. In front of me I could see a field with trees, flowers budding and growing in rapid succession, the most beautiful blue skies, my kids bouncing around the playground and me watching on a park bench. I felt my body falling again. There was Julie lying in bed. From the other side of the bed, I watched a figure from behind walk up and strangle Julie. The figure looked back at me, and I was staring at my own face. I fell again, and there chained in a dark room was myself, with no chance of escape, locked away for eternity.
I understood the offer, and it’s simple but terrifying details. I could have my kids and my life back, if I killed Julie, but at a price. I would lose my soul. I opened my eyes, and the dark figure was sitting on top of my chest staring at me with inquisitive white eyes, and for the first time in a long time, I uttered one coherent word, “Yes.” The deal was made, and the figure slowly disappeared. I instantly felt my legs, my arms, my gut, all of it, every inch of my body was oscillating with vibrant sensation. When everything is dead, and then suddenly alive, you feel it all, immaculate nerve firing, pulsating, gyrating biological functions. The beauty of it was overwhelming, but then my thought was clouded with hate.
I slowly walked upstairs. I was worried about Randy. He was bigger than me. He would have no problem beating me off of her, but I had made a deal and I was determined to see the fear and bewilderment in her eyes when I was on top of her. I didn’t have to worry about Randy. Randy was laying on his back with his eyes wide open and his intestines torn from his gut and strewn across the bed. I saw a pair of eyes watching me from the closet. I climbed on top of Julie, her eyes open wide, and there it was, the fear I so relished. It was astonishingly beautiful, yet fearful at the same time. I let go. I’m not a killer. I heard a low growl from the closet.
“If you love me…”
“But I don’t.”
Of course, I got away. I was missing. Assumed dead. How can a paralyzed man kill his wife and lover? It was all a lie. A fugitive can’t spend any time with his kids. The dark charlatan tricked me. My time is limited. Now I wonder if it was worth it. I don’t enjoy myself. I can’t enjoy my time. I don’t enjoy the freedom of moving about without having to depend on anyone else, because I’m a prisoner of anonymity. All I ever think about is dying. Death is constantly on my mind, well not death, but what happens after death. Sometimes I lie in bed unable to move, as if someone is sitting on top of me. I hear the clicking of the machines, counting down the days of my accursed life. I took the apple the serpent offered, and now I’m waiting to pay the price.