Glimpse

By Christopher Shupe

“Ice cream, seriously?”

Andrew exhaled slowly as Lauren started again.

“You’re an adult now. All you want to do is play your guitar or complain about your job or do stupid things like eat ice cream.”

On their way to shop some more, they stood on the street corner, waiting for the light to turn. Traffic was up from usual on a Saturday and the crowd already had his wife on edge.

The guy next to him spoke on the phone, but grumbled about calling back. “This loud woman keeps reaming out her husband. Yeah, if I were him, I’d kill myself.” The man then hung up and happened to notice Andrew’s glance. He looked away.

Andrew turned to face forward.

“No, you come home, you flop on the couch and you don’t do a thing all day. I do everything around our house. If I ask for anything, you don’t do anything the way I need it done.”

The light changed and Andrew stepped out. There was a screech and something hammered into his side. As his body spun in the air, he looked and saw a truck’s grill, blood marring the chrome. Guess they ran the light, he thought as he landed.

A flash of light. Multiple hands on him. Vision blurred, and his ears rang like the last time Lauren had jerked the cord out of his amplifier. He felt himself being lifted as pain took over, adrenaline failing to shield him. There was an ambulance ride, he thought, then doctors and more light.

“…at least he had life insurance.”

There was a disjointed voice, then he was standing in a lawyer’s office. His lawyer’s office. “Yes, the policy has you as the only beneficiary. The will’s bequests are firm, though.”

“Wasted money on all those toys. And that library he’d gathered would have brought some money in. Whatever. Once the bequests are handled, I’m selling the lot. Carlos and I are heading out West.”

Carlos. That was her trainer at the gym. He’d long suspected that she was cheating on him, but never had proof. More light.

“…our family has history here!”

He stood in his living room. Former living room.

“Not my problem. I had to put up with Andrew’s wasting of my time and then I find out that he gifted out anything he had of value. That music school he volunteered at didn’t need that stuff. That library had books. What about me? What about my needs?”

“I’ll buy the house. I’ll find a way to get the money together.”

“I already have a buyer and they’re going to sell off this crap for me.”

There were boxes that Andrew had remembered hauling to the attic. Old books that had belonged to the family, heirlooms and family art, all replaced by her choices. Why had he let that happen?

“Can’t we just slow this down to try to take care of things for everyone else?”

Lauren met his brother’s gaze with a cold look that he recognized easily. She’d turned those eyes on him too many times for him to miss the smug victory. “The contract is signed. They will be here in the hour. You should have made some kind of move to save this junk a long time ago.”

His brother turned and sagged as he headed through the door, followed by the threat of police assistance if he returned. Andrew closed his eyes, but felt the shift as he heard the crashing sounds and machinery. He couldn’t bring himself to open his eyes to see what he knew to be the landfill, the smell filling his nostrils. There’d been no agreement.

Another shift.

He opened his eyes to see a void, one where he stood on an invisible surface. His knees gave way and he fell to sit in the abyssal black. For an eternity, he pondered his past. It had been subtle, he realized, the death of his soul at his wife’s hands. There’d only been a spark here and there, a glimpse of a life that could have been, stolen from her grasp as he read to children at the library or played his guitar and taught students at the music classes at the community college. He’d tried in the relationship. She took.

He’d hated his job working for the male version of the succubus he’d married, and hated the life that had resulted from it. His family had faded out of his life, chased away by her haughty attitude and the unwanted renovations of his grandfather’s house. To make her happy, his own dreams of teaching music were set aside for an office job in hellish boredom.

“…if I were him, I’d kill myself.”

“I was already dead.” Andrew whispered the words that seemed to echo forever, covering the reverberation of memory that had been the cell phone man’s proclamation on the street. He closed his eyes and prayed for an end to the darkness.

“…if I were him, I’d kill myself.” A car horn blared and Andrew opened his eyes. He met the embarrassed gaze of the man on the phone. Confusion drowned out his wife’s tirade and he watched as the light turned. He paused. Lauren didn’t.

There was a screech and her broken body hurtled through the air, landing with a wet thud in the intersection. There were a few screams and Andrew felt sick to his stomach, partly from seeing the body on the street and partly from the warped sense of relief.

He looked to the guy on the cell phone and said, “Maybe I don’t have to kill myself after all.” He stood silent for a moment, then lifted his own phone to his ear, dialing his supervisor’s number.

“What do you want?”

“To live. I quit.” He hung up his phone and took a deep breath, glancing up as the sun broke through the cloud overhead.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Christopher Shupe lives a quiet life in the real world with his wife and daughter, but dreams of dragons and magic and the universe beyond our reach. He hopes to share those dreams as best as possible with those readers who find his work, maybe inspiring them to dream as well.