Sinking Ship

He’d learnt to limit his words and in doing so he had become quieter. Now, anyone who encountered him mistook him for a taciturn man, not the prisoner he had become. Imprisoned in his own body. Trapped in a place that he had made his home only to see it taken down brick by brick to reveal impenetrable bars that no one in their right mind would seek to go beyond, for surrounded by the bars of this place was a cloying and eternal darkness which reached out for him, beckoning him forth. Promising oblivion when it was clear that pain was all it could deliver. Limitless and endless anguish.

Thirty years he’d been with Ann. It surprised him that he still remembered their first meeting and the dates that followed. That he had retained their history. It also hurt him, because he knew the truth of those times and that he’d been happy. His life was a promise and he was delighted in the future outlined to him via his dreams.

Now, as he cast his mind back, there were no remnants of that joy. The last thirty years had bleached those memories and sanitised them into dry and dead things. A stuttering home movie that he had to take care of as it threatened to fail and tear and unravel. A highly flammable, fragile thing that he knew with absolute certainty would one day catch light in the rays of the sun, never to be seen again. Once gone, no one would know. Gone would be the man he had once been. A fading shadow of what once was. Nothing left to understand.

He wished he could understand. The twee consolation of his excuses shamed him. He told himself that some things were not there to be understood. That part of the trap he’d allowed himself to be led into was the senselessness of it.

Considering the eggshell floor that surrounded him with a thankless challenge, he returned to his limited utterances. He’d told himself that he had learnt to be this way. The lesson was that it was better not to say anything. Had he really learnt this? Or was this yet another of his limp and lifeless excuses?

The truth hurt and humiliated him. All of this had crept up on him. He hadn’t seen it coming. Worse still, he’d chosen not to see it coming. Steeped himself in the blindness of a hopeless belief. The beautiful intricacies of his life boiled down around him, creating a lava of pain that numbed him into a dumb state of paralysing acceptance.

Where were his dreams? Had they really all deserted him? Dreams were supposedly for the young, but the vision afforded by wisdom and experience was clouded and he was left to feel the claustrophobic darkness closing in around him.

In his hand he held a worn collar. Unselfconsciously, he brought the leather to his nose and breathed deeply, inhaling the ghost of his companion and feeling her love all the more sharply. There was loss here, but not the simple loss there should have been. Death carried with it a constancy and a clarity that no amount of grief could sully. Grief was a delaying tactic. A state of denial that further delayed preparation for the acceptance of a change that was always going to take place. The only way a person could cheat death was to take their life. That was to avoid the inevitable cull that took place around every living being. The lottery of life played out come what may. He paused and wondered whether the theft of the life of another was much the same thing. Both were a sin. Both went against the order of things. Stealing dreams was to take life and to strangle the life out of someone was to take their dreams. 

In thinking of dreams he danced around thoughts of hope. The well of his hope had been poisoned and he had been made to drink that poison time and time again. He knew this to be the case, but he could not deny his thirst. For three whole decades, polluted hope had raised him aloft and afforded him a glimpse of what could be, cast him asunder and dashed him against the ragged rocks that bayed at the storming seas of darkness.

Breathing in the familiar and reassuring scent of his beloved dog, Marmalade, he closed his eyes with such a force that the film of moisture on his left eye was condensed into a single tear. He felt it roll down his cheek and resented it for its existence. He was beyond tears and the falsehood of the moment cut yet another wound in amongst a patchwork of silently wailing mouths.

He allowed himself to drift into the depths of Marmalade’s fur, but this was bittersweet. The last time he had done this was as she lay on the vet’s table and he said his goodbyes. Felt her let go of her final breath with a sigh of release that he wanted with all his heart to grab a hold of. Not to keep her here in a world that had been far too cruel, but to go with her to wherever she was headed. To take up her lead one last time and follow that nose of hers. Go with her flow and find a way out of the mess his life had become.

His body convulsed with the unbidden memory of the vet’s words to him. The explanation of a why, that could never be explained. Poison. Yet more poison. The vet placated him with reassurances, these things happened. Could have been anything she’d picked up on a walk. In the garden. He’d made a thoughtful face in response to the vet’s words, searching for the point at which Marmalade’s nose and her comical greed led her to her demise. But knowing. Knowing with a dread certainty that it wasn’t Marmalade’s fault. That she’d done nothing to deserve this, or anything else that may have happened to her when she was supposedly in his care.

He'd paid for the vet’s services. An additional sum for her cremation. Leaving her there felt like a further betrayal. He doubted he’d bring her ashes back here. Better to scatter them on her favourite paths and allow the other dogs one last sniff of one of their own. Dogs knew how to love. They loved with a simplicity and a passion that knew no bounds. They understood far more than people gave them credit for, and Marmalade had known to give Ann an increasingly wide berth. Smelt the danger that the woman presented. A danger she could not escape.

He should have seen it coming, but did not want to believe it. He had seen it coming but could not find it within himself to look upon the pathetic wreckage of the remains of his life. He’d given Ann everything and not content with his offering, she’d taken more. He’d been a fool and she’d used his foolishness to systematically destroy him. And she’d done it with a painted on smile that mirrored his own. Only the once genuine smile he’d so effortlessly defaulted to had become cold and deathly. Now it was the rictus grin of a corpse that had been tortured to death.

None of this could ever make sense to him and that absence of meaning was a part of the trap he’d been enmeshed in for more than half his life. How could he tell anyone when he himself didn’t believe the words that described his predicament? He’d tried to look at the truth of his reality, he really had, but there was something so utterly wrong with it that he had to conclude that it was him that was wrong. And so he went again and again at hit. Tried so hard. Every time he hit a wall of pain and anguish he pretended it did not exist and that he was mistaken and in being mistaken he just was not good enough. Not up to the task. Not capable of making things work. And so he tried harder and that should have told him something.

That he still believed in himself.

That he still knew that he could make a difference.

All the same, the scale of his shambolic failure crushed him. Failing himself was bad enough, but in refusing to acknowledge Ann’s cruelty he had exposed Marmalade to it. He’d climbed into bed with a cold predator each and every night and pretended that she was his dear, loving wife. The truth was that the love he had experienced was his own. Ann had dulled him with a reflection of what it was that he thought he wanted and he’d done the rest. He’d not only aided and abetted the sick fantasy she’d created for them both, he’d done all of the heavy lifting. Ann had stepped back and invited him to fill the gap that she created. Treated him as mean as it was possible to treat a person and used his need for connection to keep him keen.

Now she’d killed Marmalade.

Of course, he had no proof and he did not seek it. There were any number of ways to kill someone and Ann knew them all. Beneath that veneer she had painstakingly created, she was frighteningly intelligent and unencumbered by the self-doubts and worries of a mere mortal. Ann did not care. She did not invest herself in the welfare of another living being and this freed her to focus her entire being on the punishment and annihilation of others.

He should have been honoured that Ann chose him. Selected him to be the scapegoat for the sins of the world. Focused all of her efforts on him as a rejection of reality and truth. It had taken him a long while to see this for what it was. Ann, in hating him and making him the totem of the world, hated herself. Her intense hatred of everything around her was a reflection of her self-hatred and the fury of her hatred had burnt her almost entirely away.

There was nothing there.

And yet he’d carried on and on in the desperate hope that he could save her. He wanted so much more for her. Whatever she’d done, she didn’t deserve this. He reasoned that something terrible must have happened to her in her childhood. A trauma so deep that it had led to her mistrust of all that which was good in the world. She fought the world because it had hurt her. If only he could gain her trust and help her heal. 

Thirty years! That had to count for something. That level of investment. All that love. Being there for the person you loved and devoting yourself to them. In sickness, as well as in health. He’d never wanted to abandon her. He wasn’t a quitter.

Now he felt Marmalade’s collar against the flesh of his wet cheek and caught the dying embers of her presence and he knew he could not go on. That he’d gone beyond what was right and reasonable and on into a madness that corrupted everything. He was not himself and he’d betrayed all that was good, and in doing that, he’d betrayed Marmalade and lost the only being that still loved him.

His isolation now complete, he could at last see the results of his manipulated life. He was twisted and contorted. Tortured in a web of Ann’s callous lies. Opening his eyes he looked upon a house that he had thought was their home. Gritting his teeth he sought any remaining reserves of energy and the supposedly indomitable spirit that dwelt within him. 

Sighing, he wished, and not for the first time, that he could expel the last of his life into the fetid air of the place that Ann had made a living hell. Unable to muster the energy to crawl outside and at least deprive her of the last of him.

She would be home soon and he would choose his few words carefully. Even with the most deliberate and discerning selection she would punish him. She had him right where she wanted him now. Her existence was a constant threat. He was a whipped dog, scuttling around and cowering. In a constant need to please her and in failing, his pain increased and pushed another piece of his life into her forever hungry maw.

Looking upon her, he knew that no one would ever know her true nature. They may fleetingly suspect it, but then they would turn away, lest they be burnt by the darkness that whispered evil promises to them. Everyone was afraid of the dark for good reason. But it was not the monster under the bed, or lurking behind the ajar wardrobe door that provoked that ancient fear. It was the monster within. The ever present darkness that the spark of life illuminates. The side to us that should never be given free reign, for once it is invited forth it possesses a person and will not readily let go of that control.

He should have been proud of his resistance to that darkness. Even as it assailed him from all sides. He was not even relieved that he had avoided the worst of it by never succumbing to the evil that resided within him. He’d rather die than do that.

And yet he’d struggled to let go.

This was his as well. All of it. To let go would be to admit that he was worthless. That none of the last thirty years counted for anything. But it was worse than that. What they counted for was far worse than nothing and it had taken Marmalade’s death to bring that home to him.

Marmalade was why he’d stayed. He couldn’t leave her here and he couldn’t bring her with him. That much was clear. Also clear was that Marmalade’s sacrifice could not be in vain. She meant something even if he no longer did.

When Ann came in from work she brought with her the scent of the man she was having her latest affair with. In his detachment, he saw the theatre of her. The way she breezed into the room and gave him a knowing look. Telegraphing her betrayal, but never saying a word. A challenge to call her out on her affair, accompanied by a suite of threats should he ever say a word against her. 

In his weakened state she knew he needed her. But when he was all used up she would be gone. She was only in it for as long as she could take what she had become so addicted to. She would leave him one day and he’d continue to exist in a protracted purgatory that led right into the jaws of hell.

Tonight, he played his part. His tattered senses sparking and shorting in his acute awareness that he was now consciously playing her game, but at last by his own rules. Terrified that she would see through him and tear him apart for daring to see through her.

The evening drew out into a tortured dance. The eggshell floor was now a lake of glass and the air itself barbed and treacherous. His body thrummed with the energy of a fear he’d never before experienced. The door of his prison wide open and Ann standing beside it. 

Now he saw it. The door of his prison had always been open. He’d always been free to leave. His presence here was voluntary. More so as Ann had never fulfilled the contract of life. Instead she’d betrayed him before he’d ever met her. She’d lain in wait and it didn’t matter who he was, only that she’d lead him by his nose into her lair and then feed upon him. 

Acid thoughts assailed him. Telling him of his failure to escape before he could ever reach that door and the light of life beyond. Each traitor that spoke within him almost made the worst of differences. He so wanted to give up. None of it was fair. 

It was Marmalade that kept him going. His grief for her life cut short by the monster before him. He grounded himself in her love and recalled the patience with which she carried that love. 

Later, as he sat in the dark downstairs, listening to every step and every movement and knowing what each and every one of them meant, he knew he was close. So very close. But he still had to follow the script. Half an hour after Ann had settled, he would go to their bedroom and get ready in the dark so as not to disturb or upset her. Slipping under the covers next to her, she would tut and roll over so she had her back to him. Five minutes later she would be snoring as he stared at the ceiling and wished he was anywhere but in that room.

Tonight, he would at last fulfil that wish. An hour after Ann had fallen asleep he would slip away, like a thief in the night, only the theft entailed him taking what remained of his life. He would take nothing other than himself and he would go as far away as he could and start all over again.

He’d said nothing and told no one. Afraid to speak the truth of this plan of his. Terrified of being overheard by Ann.

As he crept out of the bedroom and out of the hell that had been his existence for over three decades the words of a war time slogan whispered softly to him; loose lips, sink ships.

He didn’t once look back as he left that ship and headed for the dry land of the life that awaited him.