The Bathtub and a Field of Daisies.

This story contains sensitive content such as suicide, mental health, substance abuse, gore, and physical violence.

Do not be afraid; our fate

Cannot be taken from us; it is a gift.

Dante Aligiri, Inferno

***

There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.

Ernest Hemingway, From Whom the Bell Tolls

The  boy got out of bed and ran to his mother’s room. Today was Letter Day. Today was the day his father would write to him and his mother. As the boy made his way through the apartment they shared his feet slapped on the hardwood and his messy brown hair bounced up and down. When he got to the doorway leading to his mothers bedroom he peeked inside trying to see if she was awake. He couldn't see anything mother'se anything, but a large blob covered with blankets and the sheets. The boy entered his mother’s room and maneuvered around the passing piles of magazines and books. As the boy made his way around the room he was careful not to step on the snuffed out cigarette butts, Mommy did not like black ash on the hardwood on the side of the bed his mother slept on and looked into her sleeping face. Her sullen eyes and long face looked pale as a ghost in the darkness. He shook her shoulder. 

‘Mommy,’ he whispered, ‘Mommy wake up. It's letter day.’ The boy continued doing this until she woke up. 

‘Chris, what do you need at 6 in the morning?’ Wilma slurred half asleep. Her raspy voice sent a chill down Chris’s spine. 

‘It’s letter day!’ Chris yelled. Wilma winced at the sound and rolled over to the other side of the bed. Chris stood at the side of the bed for a while longer until his patience was spent. He climbed up on the bed and snuggled up next to Wilma. Her warm body was comforting to Chris, and he closed his eyes thinking of his father. 

As the day passed Chris got more and more giddy for the letter to arrive. The wait was killing him and left him to wonder if his father was going to send a letter or not. At around two in the afternoon the mailman came and delivered the letters and bills. Chris was the first to shuffle through the stack of letters looking for one whose billing address was in Vietnam. All of the letters he shuffled by were from other family members either sending money or sending letters explaining why they couldn’t. Chris and his mother had a financial issue. They couldn’t even pay the rent for their two bedroom apartment. Once Chris found the letter he was looking for, he of joy, and ran to his mother. His feet slapping the hardwood once again

‘It came! It came!’ Chris was yelling on his way to his mother. She was in the kitchenette starting to put a ham in the oven. She was caught off guard and jumped in the air hitting her hand on the stove handle. She let out a yelp and started shaking her hand around trying to ease the pain. Her yellow dress reflected the opposite of what she felt.

‘Chris don’t sneak up on me like that,’ Wilma said sternly without a hint of agitation in her voice. Chris offered her the letter but didn’t respond. Wilma let out a sigh and took the letter reluctantly.  Her yellow dress was as bright as the sun, but it reflected the opposite of what she was feeling. 

She was nervous

She put her finger under the flap of the letter and slashed it. Leaving the letter torn open, she pulled out a yellowed piece of paper that had red spots on it. She unfolded the paper and started reading.

‘Dear, Wilma and Chris, this is the last letter I will be sending you. I am going to die soon. I’m on my deathbed right now. I was shot in the stomach. The medics can’t patch or remove it. I don’t have long so I will keep this quick. Wilma you are and always will be the love of my life and you're a great…’ She choked on tears and suppressed sobs. ‘Mother. Chris my boy I love you so much, always listen to your mother, and make me proud.’

The letter was left unsigned.

***

The worst feeling attached to loneliness is the thought of dying.

Unknown.

Chris walked out of the high school with his backpack on and a smile on his face. It was the day the report cards were sent home and he knew he passed every class with flying colors.  Although a happy occasion he would have to visit his mom in rehab which always brought him despair. The thought of his mothers condition always did. After the death of his father, she turned mother and drugs to keep the thought of his death away from her. During this time Chriswase was diagnosed with clinical depression and given pills—the pills although they made him feel less depressed— made him feel nothing, but resentment toward his mother. He could remember as clearly as day one of the conversations he had with her before rehab.

  ‘Don’t you dare talk back to me!’ she yelled at Chris. Wilma thought he had taken a pack of her cigarettes, but instead, she had misplaced the pack and was currently high as a bird. It was right before Chris had to leave for school.

‘I didn’t though!’ Chris snapped back. 

‘Then who did?’

‘I didn–’

‘Chris you liar! I went through hell and back to birth you and now you treat me like shit! Me and your father should have had the abortion!’ Wilma shrieked, waving the shot glass she held in her hand. She threw the glass as hard as she could at Chris’s head, but missed sending shards of glass every which way. Chris was in shock and was ready to fight back, but  thought better of it and stamped out of the room ending the conversation there.

When he got home from school the day of the fight he stopped at his mother’s door. He could hear the faint sound of weeping. He opened the door and saw his mother sitting on the side of the bed with a bottle of tequila and a cigarette. Her makeup was running and pooling in her sullen eye sockets. ‘Why did I snap at him? Why? He didn’t do anything. John, why did you have to die? Why did you have to go out and shoot yourself? Why did you leave me to be a single parent?’

She took a puff of her cigarette. 

‘Why did you have to leave me alone!’

***

When Chris made it to the rehab center he had changed his school clothes to something more comfortable. The clouds matched his mood and started to darken leaving the land desolate and lonely. He walked into the entrance room, it was a small room, and straight ahead was a desk. The desk was directly to the right of the door that led to the rooms and therapy offices of the rehab center. Chris checked in and went through the door next to the desk. He made his way through many hallways until he came to the main room. The room had a lot of furniture, a kitchen, and a mess hall. They all blended seamlessly into one another. It was activity time so all the patients would be outside during this time except his mother. She had recently had to get a new liver because of her excessive drinking. The doctors said to keep her in a wheelchair for at least three or four weeks. Chris wandered past the doors until he found room number 209. He knocked.

No answer.

He knocked on the door again.

No answer.

He opened the door just a crack and peeked his head through. ‘Ma!’ he yelled. The sound of his voice reverberated around the room giving him chills. He opened the door fully and decided to let himself in. The chamber in which his mother slept was spotless. The bed was made, the floor was clean, and all her books were organized on her shelf. Chris noticed that the door to the adjoining bathroom was open just slightly. The light shone out beckoning him to go in. 

He entered the room.

He saw his mother on the ground, her wheelchair tipped over and her head was propped on the ledge of the shower, dried blood was under her head giving it a halo. 

Chris collapsed to his knees.

The light that beckoned him to come in knew what had happened, and watched this scene with enjoyment. It knew that after the abortion talk he only valued himself, the light was mocking him. It brought back memories of his mother trying to teach him something, but all he could hear was his mother's sobs and pleas, most of all one sentence. 

Why did you have to leave me alone!

***

The sky, the sky beyond the door is blue.

Ryan Stiles

Chris sat in his bathtub, seventeen years after his mother's death, and thirty after his father’s. There was a kitchen knife on the side of the tub. The design was sleek yet deadly. The devil talked to him about it.

Do it. We all die sometime. 

 He picked up the knife and put it up to his wrist. He started to cry. Tears welled in his eyes. He was tired of life, he was tired of the depression, he was tired of the eternal joke he was. Four years ago his friend died during 9/11. Chris’s life was full of death. 

Death that couldn’t be escaped. 

He tried blinking his tears away, but when he opened them he was in a field. A field of daisies. The sky was a cotton candy pink and the sun beamed down on him. It was only him in the field, but he didn’t feel alone. The light of the sun looked oddly fluorescent like the light in the rehab center's bathroom. He got up and walked around the field inspecting the odd place he was in.

He heard laughing.

Chris jerked his head to the right to see two people: one in a U.S. army uniform the other wearing a yellow dress.  They looked oddly familiar. 

He realized who they were.

Chris started to sprint to them. Tears of joy welled up in his eyes once again.

As he was sprinting a tears came loose. The tears fell as all tears fall. It was flying in a downward spiral, but everything must come to a landing.

The tear hit the floor of the bathroom tubs sending little droplets of blood to spray onto Chris. 

In his mind, he was on his knees crying in front of his parents. His father looked at him disapprovingly and his mother was crying herself. Where the tears hit the grass daisies grew and sent out joyful rays. The happiness Chris felt was unparalleled by the feeling of nirvana. ‘Poppa, why did you leave me and Mama so soon?’ Chris asked through his tears. His father’s facial expression softened when Chris popped the question. ‘I never even knew your name!’ Chris continued. His body was now shaking and the tears produced more daisies on the ground and more splashing in the tub. His father slowly bent down until he was face level with Chris. He put his arm on Chris’s shoulder. 

‘Chris,’ his father said. 

‘What!’ Chris cried, ‘What the hell do you want!’

‘That's my name.’

Chris looked into his father's eyes. He saw his life in those eyes. When he got his first dog, when he met his first girlfriend, everything that happened in his life was in those eyes. Chris broke down again losing eye contact with his father.

I was wrong, he thought.

His life was full of death, but he didn’t value the gift. It is gone now. Locked behind the door. 

Now all he had was a bathtub full of blood and a corpse in an apartment.

The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone. 

Harriet Beecher Stowe