Jordie

Bam! Clayton’s hand goes through the wall, creating a large hole next to two others. 

“Damit!” 

The TV blares in front of him as sports announcers talk about the play that just scored a touchdown with ten seconds left on the clock. The 60-year-old Clayton holds a beer in his other hand. His jaw clenches and nostrils flare as he looks down at his phone in his lap. Next to him is a pile of empty beer bottles, some not even from today. Dirty clothes are piled around the room, next to overdue bills.

            “Stupid team can’t play defense,” he throws the bottle on the ground, “Jordie can you please…” 

            He looks to the ground in defeat. On his right is a picture of his wife and him, smiling as they sit in front of a cliff overlooking mountains. The two are happy, in love, ready for the day they can retire and live the rest of their lives together. He shakes his head. Why couldn’t you listen, Jordie? Why couldn’t you just leave it? Just walk away and leave it.

            Clayton stands up and walks into the kitchen, almost tripping over a grocery bag on the ground. He picks it up and throws it onto the table, knocking over another empty beer bottle. The sink is filled with dirty dishes, that are caked with sauces and food. 

            He walks over to the blinking light on the home phone and clicks play. 

            “Hey, Clayton. I was wondering how you were doin. We were wondering, actually; all of us at the bocce court. We haven’t seen you for a while and we know Jordie’s death hit you hard, but come on, man. It’s been almost a year; you have to come…”

Clayton slams his fist on the machine, causing it to fly into the air and the message to stop playing.

            “It’s been exactly a year.” He says this as he looks over to the calendar taped to the white fridge, marked on today’s date and says, ‘One-year anniversary of Jordies passing.’  

            He doesn’t know how she did it. Juggling her job, chores, and everything else in her life seems almost impossible to him, yet she still did it and had time to be with him. He opens the fridge to find that it’s empty. Nothing is in it except two cans of beer. He looks at the beer and pauses. He looks at his phone. The gambling website shows loss after loss after loss, thousands of dollars down the drain. Putting his phone away, he reaches for the beer. At least he doesn’t have to feel the pain of her loss all the time. He pops it open and drinks, watching another hundred dollars disappear from his bank account, when a knock at the front door jolts him from his daze.

            He walks over to the front door and opens it to a man in a suit and a briefcase. Immediately Clayton slams the door in the man’s face and turns to walk back to the kitchen. He can hear him talking from outside the door. 

            “Clayton, this is important we do this sooner rather than later. The second beneficiary can accept the payment soon!”

“Good! Give it to them! I don’t need no charity because my wife died, Allen!” 

“Would you just accept it? It was meant for you, not her.”

“Go away!”

“I’ll be back tomorrow. You are obviously not in the mood for this. Think about it, Clayton.”

He walks off as Clayton walks back into the living room to roast in his own misery. 

            That night, he finally gets up from his seat in the living room and trudges up the stairs to head to bed. He passes the bathroom, not even thinking about brushing his teeth. What’s the point? He lives off of liquid, anyway. Finally, he reaches his bed and lays down in complete darkness except for a small night light his wife insisted on keeping. He didn’t have the heart to remove it when she was ripped from his life. In fact, the whole side of her room is the same as it was the day she died. Nothing is moved, not even her lonely, dirty sock on the floor. It is a time capsule back to when she was alive. Two years ago. Last year, his nightmares of her falling over and over again almost caused him to have a heart attack. Hopefully tonight will be easier.

            “Night, Jordie.” 

            Clayton closes his eyes and rolls onto his side, wishing this was one huge nightmare. 

            He opens his eyes to the same dark room. His head pounds and his body aches as a chill runs up his spine. Something feels off. His bed is way too hard, almost rock solid. His pillow is gone, and it smells like Jordie. He takes a deep breath. Her scent was gone six months after she died. He could only retain her psychical space, not her flowery smell. Rubbing his head, he looks around. The night light was gone too. Where the hell is he? 

            Slowly, he stands up, his head spinning and throbbing from his hangover. He stumbles and regains his balance on the concrete floor. He could tell now he was lying on the floor. No bed, no pillow, just concrete. 

            “Hello?”

His voice cut off as soon as it left his mouth, the room, eating his words, making them feel sharp and dry. He felt along the wall with his hand. His fingers run along the sharp, ragged edges of the wall. His walls were wood. They felt nothing like this. 

            “Hello? Is anybody there?”

Nobody responds, not even his own voice, as if it ran away leaving him behind, completely alone and isolated. Suddenly, the lights flash on and off, blinding Clayton. He stops and covers his eyes. What is going on? He continues around the room until he reaches the other side. He felt no door, or hinge, or any type of exit. 

The lights flash on and off once more. He sees something out of the corner of his eye. A shadow? No. A figure? Was someone in the room with him? He strains to hear anything, but all he can hear is the beat of his heart, racing like a train down the tracks at 100 mph. Nothing else. No cars, no ambient sounds, no wildlife, people talking., absolutely nothing. His heart feels as if it’s about to pop out of his chest. 

Who or what is in the room with him? Waves of fear pulsate in his chest as he swings his arm out in front of him, not knowing if he wants to hit something or not. 

“Who’s there? I’m a retired detective. Just let me go and maybe we can work something out.”

Nothing. The darkness does not speak back, it only sits there taunting him. Daring him to speak again. 

The lights flash once more. This time, he is ready. He spots the figure in the middle of the room, standing there, staring at the ground. Not moving. Then darkness. All Clayton hears is his breathing and his racing heart. His knees wobble as he moves back into the corner of the room. 

An echoing voice speaks right into his ear, “Why didn’t you stop me?”

Clayton falls backwards and hits his head on the wall, causing his head to throb even more. He pushes himself into the corner as a lump in his throat forms. 

“Jordie?”

“Why couldn’t you save me, Clay?”

Then, the lights flash on and stay on, as Clayton huddles in the corner, wrapping his arms around his knees like a child. His eyes are wide in shock, and he stares at the wall on the other side of the room. The figure is gone.

The room he is in is pure concrete walls painted white. Nothing else is in the room and there is no door. He is alone. Trapped. Who knows where? With nothing but his past to haunt him. 

A few hours later, Clayton wakes up with his head in the corner of the room for support. The lights are still on, almost blinding him as they bounce off the white walls. It takes a moment for him to focus in on the surrounding room. This time, a beer bottle sits in the middle of the room. The condensation caused it to sweat down towards the floor.

“Really?” He stands up, shaking, “This is not funny! Whoever you are, I will find you!”

He screams towards the ceiling. Then he looks back towards the beer bottle and sits back down in the corner as a loud groan appears throughout the room. The air around him heats up. Clayton just smiles and shakes his head and closes his eyes to rest. 

He opens his eyes once again to see the beer bottle still on the floor. His tongue sits in his mouth, dry, sticking to the top of his mouth. His throat cracked and sore and his lips bleed from barely touching them.

“You idiots do realize drinking that beer will just make me dehydrate more, right?” 

He looks around the room for confirmation. After a few seconds, he grunts and shuffles over to the beer bottle. He shakes his head and picks it up. 

“Well, if I die, at least I can make it feel a little better.”

He puts it to his lips and tilts it back. Nothing. The bottle is empty. He clenches his jaw and throws the bottle against the wall, causing a glass shard to come back and cut him across the cheek.

“What do you want from me?” He slaps the wall with his hand. “Ye, I’m a drunk. Get over it!” 

A loud ringing noise fills his ears, almost as if it’s a continuous screech from a bird. He clamps his hands to his ears, but it doesn’t help at all. In fact, it gets louder. Then, just as soon as it started, it stopped. He looks around the room, making sure it was gone. Then the room goes dark, and Jordie whispers to him again. 

“You should have been the one. Not me! Now look at you, pathetic. I hope you drink yourself to death!”

The lights come back on and Clayton falls to his knees as tears fall down his cheek.

“I’m sorry, Jordie. I’m so sorry.”

He falls to the floor, unconscious.

Clayton wakes up a few hours later, still in a daze. He notices water in the middle of the room and crawls over and chugs it. His will is falling. Will he be able to survive? What do these people want from him? He’s seen enough in his time as a detective to know this won’t end well.

“Clay?” 

He turns around and sees Jordie. She wears hiking clothes and boots. Her long hair falls behind her head and her bracelet is on her wrist. 

“Jordie, I’m so sorry.”

“You are sorry?” She laughs. “You didn’t even try to stop me.”

“That’s not true. I warned you- “ 

She takes a step towards Clayton. Her eyes were like a vulture. Ready to eat the dead corpse in front of her. 

“You could have pulled me back. You could have done it. But no. Instead, you watched me, watched me walk out onto the ledge, watched me stretch my arm to help that poor bird, you watched as the branch cracked, and you watched as I fell down to- “

“No!” Clayton rushes towards Jordie, trying to hail his wife into his arms. “I never wanted this, Jordie.” He grabs her, but as soon as he does, his hands go straight through her body. Clayton gasps and backs up towards the wall, staring at her with disgust. Her sweet, flowery scent is gone. Instead, it is replaced with a rotten stench. The smell of rotten meat and eggs. Then he looks away in thought and sadness. 

Another voice pops up into Clayton’s mind. It is Jordie, her real voice. “Fight it, Clayton. Fight the beast. For me.” Her voice echoes around the room in an angelic glow. 

A memory of Jordie comes to his mind of her sweet soul the day he knew she was going to die. When he still had love in his heart and a future worth living. When he could feel the warmth in his chest and could breathe the crisp air and smile. He turns back to the monster in front of him. 

“I watched my wife fall to her death. I watched her crack her head on the way down. I watched her fall to her death, and I was helpless to do anything about it. Her scream pierces my mind to this day.” 

He walks over to her and points his finger to her chest, and stares at her with anger. Spit flies from his mouth.

“But you, you are not my wife. You’re a figment of my imagination, and I am going to wake up and you will be gone. I will forever regret my decision to let Jordie go out there. I let the loving; beautiful, amazing, sympathetic warrior of a woman fall right through my grasp. She wouldn’t blame me, so why blame myself. She would tell me to move past it and live for her. Not in spite of her.”

The phantom of death disappears in front of him and then everything goes black. He wakes up one last time, but now he is in his room again. He is drenched in sweat and his head still throbs from the drinking.

He gets up from his slumber as light shines through the window onto Jordie’s side of the bed. Lighting it up as if she was an angel being lifted into heaven. 

“I love you so much.” 

He walks down the stairs and into the kitchen, opening the fridge to nothing but his beer bottle. He stops to think and reaches in to grab it and opens it. This time he takes it and pours it out into the sink as a memory of his wife pops into his head. 

“Just promise me, if anything ever happens to me you won’t let the light drain from your soul, Clayton.”

“I promise.”

They sit on the edge of a cliff with their legs hanging on the edge and a sunset past them in the mountains. The trees shake from the wind as a hawk flies past above them.

“You would have to live for me Clayton. I know how you are. You would let it get into your head and you would spiral. Don’t. Don’t let it happen. Keep doing what you love and one day we will meet again.”

“Why are you telling me this? We do dangerous hikes all the time.”

She swallows and looks towards the sunset.

“I don’t have much longer, Clay. A year maybe.”

Snapping him out of it is a knock at the front door. 

“Clayton?”

He opens the door to see Allen standing there with his briefcase. He smiles at the man. 

“Are you finally ready?”

“I am. Come in.”

Allen walks into the house and sits down at the kitchen table. 

“You got a nasty cut on your cheek,” Allen says.

Clayton feels his face and now notices it is bleeding. 

“Umm, uh, ya. Ya I’m fine. Thanks. So, what about this life insurance?”

Two hours later, Clayton takes his phone out and deletes all his sports gambling apps. He walks into the front hall closet and shoves things to the side, causing dust to fly all over the entryway. Finally, he comes out with hiking gear and Jordie’s bracelet. He attaches it to his backpack as the sun shines down onto him through the front door.

“I will do everything in my power to live for you, Jordie.” 

He tightens the straps of his backpack, checks Jordie’s bracelet for reassurance, and strides confidently towards the front door, determined to reclaim his life. Light floods into the room as he takes a deep breath of the fresh air that he hasn’t breathed in years. He gazes outside into the forest and takes a step as the light engulfs him and he lives and dies for Jordie and for himself.