It Gets Worse

Fragments of Fiction insert #21987

In my dreams a battle rages. I am floating above a battlefield in which men are fighting with clubs, axes, swords and crossbows. There are no guns or bombs because this is a fight based upon brutality. This is a fight in which the combatants come face to face, where the victor’s prize is watching the loser die a horrific death. I don’t want to watch, but I cannot help it. I have had this dream too many times to count and every time I have it I am forced to watch as limbs are hewn from bodies, heads are caved in and blood runs like a river. There is so much blood I imagine that if the ancient Hebrews are to believed the Nile must once have looked like this.

Each time I wake up I am breathless and covered in sweat. I lie in bed shaking and sore. I feel like someone has beaten me up. I get out of bed and cannot help but check for bruises. I know that they are there, but they are located in a place that I cannot see.

I am broken. I am damaged and I am well aware that things are not right inside my head. The only thing that keeps me from completely losing it is her. She is holding on to me so tightly that I cannot fall over the edge. I want to. I want to. I want to. I want to let go and roll off of the cliff because I am so tired that I cannot keep this up any longer.

She has wrapped me in a protective love that is so strong I cannot break its grip, but I will soon. I won’t want to, but there is a demon inside me and he is starving. He is not alone. He has an ally who is tough and determined. He has a friend who waits patiently. Georgie is crafty. He has street smarts and he understands that it will not take much to push me back down into the pit. He knows that if he pulls hard enough it is all going to come crashing down.

I haven’t seen Georgie in quite some time and I am not smart enough to realize that it is his absence that has given me the strength to begin to crawl back into the light. She knows that he is the cancer that is killing me and she does all that she can to fight it. But we all get frustrated and sometimes it is our frustration that is at the root of our greatest pain.

Georgie wants to go hang out, kick around a bit. He doesn’t have any specific plans other than a simple request to do this with me. I might not have gone. I might have stayed in that night but for her comments. She calls me a fool.

“You know going out with him is a mistake. He is a jerk.” I look at her in silence. She takes my lack of response as encouragement to continue.

“Georgie is an asshole, is that who you want to hang out with.” The truth hurts. Her words bite and sting so much so that my ego is bruised.

I am not kind or gentle in my reply, “What are you my mother. I’ll see you later.”
She blocks the door and tells me that if I leave I shouldn’t expect her to hang around waiting for me.

We exchange some more words but none of them are the kind that provide room for reconciliation. And by the time I catch up with Georgie I am looking for trouble. I am angry and he knows it.

“Dude, why do you let that bitch tell you what to do.”

If he had said that to me a few months earlier I might have tried to remove his head from his body, but not now. The anger is in control and I have left my self-control and judgment somewhere else. Trouble is coming and I am racing to meet it. Now I sit silent and stew in my anger.

Georgie is driving. I haven’t any idea where we are going because I am too busy with the six pack in my lap. By the time we got to the parking lot I had finished the four beers and had discarded the two orphans for whiskey. I hadn’t even gotten out of the car when I hear Georgie cursing at someone.

I didn’t bother to find out what was going on. I walked around the side of the car and punched the first guy in the mouth. He fell down but that didn’t stop me. I started stomping and kicking him. I wasn’t able to do too much damage because someone grabbed me from behind.

They didn’t realize what a big mistake that was. I was too drunk to feel any pain and too numb to care about the pain I was handing out. I used my legs to push off of the car in front of me and slammed him into the car behind me. He gasped and crumpled to the ground.

There is a full fledged melee going on around me. I am swinging at anyone that comes close to me and trying to get to those who do not. I am screaming incoherently. No one is close enough for me to hit so I start kicking cars and punching the windows. If ever there was an indictment of the police and their response time, it is tonight. I should have been arrested but they must have been busy elsewhere.

My hands are bloody and bruised but my anger is not sated. I grab Georgie and we get back into the car to go looking for more people to take it out on. I have time to take a couple more sips of whiskey. The cowards secret sauce is warming my insides when I notice her standing outside a restaurant talking to some guy.

“Georgie, stop the fucking car” and let me out. I don’t bother waiting for the car to completely stop before I get out and charge the man speaking to my girl. I am like the bull going for the matador. My head is down and I will not stop until I have my prey upon my horns.

It is not a fair fight. He doesn’t see me coming and hasn’t any idea that in a moment he is going to lose the ability to chew solids for the next few months. Fortunately for him there are at least three other valets and they are able to pull me off of him before I can kill him because that is what I want to do. I am drunk and I don’t care about the consequences.

But the valets are friends and they are not willing to let one of their boys get hurt without exacting their own payment. The last thing I see is a boot coming down on my face. As I pass out I can hear her crying and screaming at Georgie. He still manages to get the last word in.

“I told you that she was a bitch.”