D-I-V-O-R-C-E

TRIGGER WARNING: Sensitive themes include substance abuse/drinking and driving, brief descriptions of blood/gore.

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The sky was painted a beautiful dusty rose, bathing everything on the ground beneath it in a pretty pink glow as Clem parked his truck on the side of the dirt road leading up to the driveway of his wife’s new house. He sighed heavily as the comforting hum of the vehicle faded into the silence of the nearby country, staring blankly out the windshield like the swooping birds outside would give him some kind of clarity. 

They couldn’t, of course, given that they weren’t anything smarter than a simple blackbird, but he still stared at them anyway. Anything to prolong the inevitable. Anything to keep the future from rushing toward him at a rate he’d been thus far unable to control.

Slowly but surely, his gaze slid down from the windshield to the dashboard below it. The folder sitting innocuously atop it had been jostled during the drive, and one of the papers from the top of the pile had been shaken loose by the winding road he’d had to take to get up here to the place. He reached out for it to tuck it back away, to ignore the letters spelling D-I-V– for just a second longer, and tried hard to ignore the tremor in his fingers at the same time. 

He’d been doing a lot of ignoring lately, Clem had. 

The bottle of moonshine in the glove box had been lovingly homemade, in a two-week process that had created the strongest stuff he’d ever had the pleasure to get drunk on, and he took a swig of it to steady his hands before finally scooping up the pile of paperwork. That top page, with its D-I-V-O-R-C-E in bold letters up at the top, slid from its place again and flashed him like a woman’s breast at a strip club. 

This, he thought to himself grimly, was decidedly less pleasant than a tit. He wished he’d thought to bring a goddamn stapler. 

The walk up to the doorway felt like it spanned an eternity. By the time he’d gotten to the door, he was certain he’d aged decades during the trek; in fact, he surreptitiously reached up to feel his face to check to see if he’d grown a long, white beard like the old men at the only dive bar back in town. His feet dragged in the dirt; when he glanced back, the imprints in the muddy ground of his boots made him want to backtrack so that he could sink further, further, further, until the goddamn mud swallowed him whole. 

And then, he knocked on the door.

He did it quick, because if he waited any longer, he’d talk himself out of it. For a man who’d been very effectively talking himself out of it for months, the knock sounded out like a gunshot. 

A man –handsome, objectively, though Clem couldn’t say he had any real opinion on the matter, given his strong preference for the fairer sex– answered the door. The bullet dug in deeper. 

“Howdy,” the man said, smiling politely. It was the kind of smile you reserved for someone you didn’t know, who’d surprised you without creating any kind of ill will for it. It was a smile that bore no trace of recognition, just pleasant confusion. Clem wanted to beat it off of him. “Bit far outta the way for a vacuum salesman to come. What can I do’ya for, sir?” 

Clem stared. He looked this man up and down, and for one beautiful, glorious moment, he imagined that gun again, that bullet, but in his own hands. And he imagined this man –this objectively handsome, red-headed man– dripping hot, wet blood all down the front of him. Clem’s pulse quickened. His breathing grew ragged. He stared until it was past the point of being polite, and then he stared still, until the man’s smile began to falter. 

“Y’alright there, fella?” 

Not remotely, Clem thought to himself. 

“Sure,” Clem replied aloud. 

The smile returned, bright and kind. “Well, that’s alright then. What brings you all the way out here at this hour?” 

“I–” 

Before Clem could get any further than that, the man began to frown. “Wait just a sec. Have we met before? Y’look as familiar as a scarecrow in a cornfield.” 

“Here,” Clem said. He thrust the folder into the man’s hand. “Give that to Susie, would you?”

“Susie…?” The man looked down, peering at the folder, and at that traitorous piece of paper at the top that had once again flung itself from the rest of its peers to exposit Clem’s reason for being there at all. 

D-I-V-O-R-C-E. 

“You’re Clem,” the man said quietly. The polite smile had vanished as suddenly as it had come on, fled with the last traces of the sunset around them. 

“See that she signs ‘em,” Clem said in return. He gestured vaguely towards the pages, without truly knowing what he meant by the flapping of his hand. “And… take care of her.” 

Clem turned on his heel, in the mud, in his boots, and stalked away. 

“I’m sorry,” the man called after him, but Clem wasn’t looking, wasn’t listening. “Y’hear? I’m sorry, Clem! It wasn’t how I meant to do things! Clem!” 

If the walk up to the house had taken an eternity, the walk back to the truck happened in the blink of an eye. Clem stepped up into it and let out the heaviest sigh he’d ever pushed from his lungs. A swig of moonshine followed, hot and comforting down his throat. 

It was done. He was done. He and Susie were done. At the end of the day, that was the thing that mattered the most. 

The purr of his truck as it roared to life settled deep in his bones, right in alongside the alcohol bubbling down his throat. He could move on, now. He could finally be free– of Susie, and her handsome new man. 

And if that wasn’t the most bittersweet goddamn thing he’d thought all day, then by god, he would eat his hat.