Shadowed Soul (12 page)

By three in the morning I had finished cleaning up the apartment.  My initial euphoria had stayed with me, fortifying my resolve and reinforcing my sense of purpose.  I sat down and let the wave of happiness and warmth drift across me, massaging my spirit and soul and giving me the much needed gift of hope.

I would not sleep, that was impossible when I was like this.  So, I decided I would be even more productive.  I was stronger than any imagined compulsion and I could use my laptop to start searching for a new job.  I could continue to care for my family and provide them a safe and secure home.  I flipped open the lid and began to type.  Things were going to be good, they had to be good.

After an eternity on Indeed.com and Monster.com, by dawn, a cold sense of disappointment and hopelessness overtook my fatigue.  No employer was going to hire a guy afflicted with depression. And even though by law my previous employer would not be able to state why I was fired, the fact of having been let go would further marginalize my candidacy with a prospective employer. It meant that most of the jobs for which I was eligible were going to be hard for me to get, and the other, less qualified roles would be over-subscribed and under-paid.  It was imperative I find a job.  Unemployment meant doom for all that I cherished.  Beth would lose respect for me if she found out.  I loved her and I knew that she loved me but she was only human and her patience was not infinite.

Reaching for a hopeful thread, I recalled our first Christmas together.

“Stop being such a Scrooge,” said Beth laughing as she saw me pull a face at the Christmas decorations she had used to turn our apartment into a fantasy grotto.

“I’m not being a Scrooge,” I replied with mock outrage. “I just hate Christmas.”

“How can you hate Christmas?” Beth sighed with exasperation. “It’s the best time of the year.”

“It’s a time when we all spend far too much money on people that we hardly ever see and then when it’s over we wonder why we went to all the trouble.”  I lectured while she kissed me to try to shut me the hell up.  “The thing is though, Christmas is so alluring that by the time it comes around again we all fall into the same trap.”

“Scrooge!” howled Beth, pulling me onto the couch, pealing laughter as she kissed me again and again.

Beth was not much of a drinker, neither of us was.  But she indulged a little in her home-made Christmas eggnog.  While its viscosity nauseated me, Beth got tipsy.  Her sudden clumsiness and silly gibbering were endearing.  Beth was beautiful, there was no doubt but seeing her drunk added a new kind of cuteness to her that was irresistible.  It was true, I detested Christmas but I wanted our first one together to be wonderful.  Already, it was better than my previous Christmases combined, with the exception of those pre-dating my dad’s disappearance.   I recalled him as a giant bear of a man full of endless laughter; when he left the joy evaporated.  In contrast, my mother, never one to be comfortable expressing more than tight repression, had seemingly been illuminated in joy by my father.  After he bolted she found flaws in all that came on her radar.  After my father had gone, we would go through the motions on Christmas, and while I had never been without gifts, my mother had reminded me how much they cost on such a regular basis that I had seldom felt comfortable playing with them anyway.

This was the first Christmas Eve in which the splinters of my ingrained resentment were gradually plucked out. In truth, I was delighted to play up to Beth’s amusement.

“I know what will cheer you up, Mr. Grinch,” said Beth giggling, and got up from straddling me on the couch.  My heart had lurched as she stumbled a little bit but before I could reach out and help her she laughed and dashed off to the kitchen.

“What’re you doing, Beth?”

“It’s a surprise, Mr. Grinch. Wait there!  Won’t be long!”

Bemused, I mellowed out as the tree lights danced and twinkled in a way that was oddly mesmerizing.  My heart felt something resembling a holiday spirit that night and I smiled.  How had I managed to find someone as loving and fun as Beth?  With her, I felt able to conquer anything in life.

My reverie was broken by the familiar sound of Bailey padding through from the kitchen to the living room.  The sight of him caused me to laugh uproariously.  He wore a pair of felt antlers with shimmery tinsel streamers.  His tail wagged furiously and on his wise face his expression had seemed to say, “Hey, man, I think I look stupid, too, but what Beth wants she gets.”  I reached over and Bailey entered my embrace in relief.

“Do you like your surprise?” Beth called out from the kitchen.

“Yeah, Bailey looks gorgeous,” I said and Bailey looked at me with disbelieving eyes. “It’s only for a little while, buddy.” I assured Bailey who replied with an affectionate lick to my nose.

“There’s more,” purred Beth from the doorway and I raised my head.  She stood there wearing nothing but strands of glimmering tinsel and a pair of antlers. “So, Mr. Grinch, still hate Christmas?”

Unable to speak, I shook my head.  This seemed the reaction she wanted.  As she slowly approached me, I gently pushed Bailey to one side and stood up to meet her.  Our lips met and the warmth and delicacy of the kiss was magical.  My body responded passionately as I removed the silvery threads from the woman I loved.  Beth and I made love for hours, bathed in the glow of the Christmas lights.

As my reverie faded, I opened my eyes to the Christmas tree in my empty apartment and glanced around.  The vacant doorway and stark morning light felt cold and menacing, despite my decorations, cards and cleaning.

“She knows you’re suffering without her, Thomas, and she’s diggin’ it,” taunted the Shadowed Soul.  “That bitch knows she’s got you by the balls.”

A torrent of fury surged through me and I kicked over the tree and ripped the decorations from the wall.  By the time I regained control, the apartment looked like a cyclone had hit.  I sank to my knees and wept surrounded by the debris comprised of a
once upon a time
that had promised to bring only happiness.  Exhausted at last from my hypo-manic night, I cried myself into shrunken sleep there on the floor amidst shards of broken Christmas ornaments.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The streets were empty, yet I was certain I was being watched from darkened windows.  This time, I didn’t care.  The spies were nothing to me.  I felt no hatred or love, no anger or calm.  I walked along the sidewalks, far off I heard the predatory howl of police sirens echo through the man-made canyons of New York City.  Would they come for me?  I did not care.  I had something I needed to do, something terrible that would either destroy me or the Shadowed Soul, or both of us.

Intense sun beat down on my neck, scouring the sweat from my skin as I trudged along wide, abandoned streets.  I had a terrifying weight in my heart and an even more terrifying one in my jacket, but my determination propelled me to reach my destination.  I did not have far to go but in the blistering heat it seemed as though I had a million miles to walk.  I was sure I would make it.

It was odd, even though the scorching sun cast my shadow beneath my feet, I could also hear the sound of Christmas songs drifting from open shop doors.  Christmas bling festooned every doorway and lamp post, even though it seemed to me to be the height of summer.  I did not care though.  Not really.  My focus was so strong that the anomalies registered but no longer mattered.  All that mattered was that I should reach my destination and do what I had to do.

“What do you have to do?” asked Beth from somewhere in the back of my head.

The truth was that I had literally no idea what was going to happen, I just knew that it
would
happen and that it would set me free.  I walked on, sirens closer and closer, and above me a helicopter appeared in the sky and was following my path.

I did not care.  They could not stop me.  I walked on, ever closer to the final freedom I so deserved.

“Thomas?” Beth’s voice again gave me cause to hesitate.  A reason to stop was not enough, not really.  I was doing what needed to be done and it was for Beth as much as it was for my own peace of mind.

The air shimmered with heat.  Ahead of me a cavernous doorway opened.  It was where I needed to be.

I stepped inside.

My eyes snapped open from the heat of my nightmare.  Still a shipwreck on the apartment floor where I had fallen asleep, I moved and felt a crunch of glass.  On my back I lay in shattered Christmas ornaments strewn across the floor.  The clock told me I had been out only about fifteen minutes.

“Fuck!” I yelled as a sharp pain shot through the palm of my hand.  A blue glass shard stuck out of my thumb pad.  I swore again and tiptoed through a minefield of broken Christmas baubles to reach the bathroom.  Wincing I picked glass out of the wound and treated it with soapy water. 
Neosporin
was buoyed out of the wound by heavy blood flow. There were no
Band-Aids
so I used a towel to stanch it.  I glanced at the bone dry shower; I hadn’t used it in days.  Gripping the towel tight, my stubbly reflection over the sink surprised me.  Cadaverous, bloodshot eyes stared back at me like a crazy person. 

“Merry fucking Christmas, fucking
bi
-
Polar Express
!” I muttered at my reflection.  Then looking around I realized it was just me and me.  Alone.  My Shadowed Soul had vanished.  “Son of a bitch!  Fuck you, Shadowed Soul, now that I need you, you decide to fuck off and leave me alone.  Well, fuck you, asshole!” 

Shattered glass in my hand, shattered from lack of sleep, shattered from love and fear, I had to sleep.  I decided that before I could climb into bed, I would have to sweep up every broken bit of Christmas glass.  If Bailey came back, his paws, or the baby and Beth, I had to be prepared.  Drenching the hand towel in red, I sought the broom in the kitchen.  But I spotted the coffee first, and chucked down a double of
Maxwell House
crystals from the freezer mixed with hot tap water.  Juan Valdez and his donkey stared back at me from the jar and I wondered if he, too, was tormented by his own Shadowed Soul somewhere up the Andes Mountains on his coffee plantation.

“Where are you, you fuck?” I shouted into thin air wondering why I was now not even able to conjure the Shadowed Soul.  “Think you can just abandon me, too, like the rest of them?  You prick!  I know you’re there!  Wake up, you lazy fucker, I bet you’re sleeping.”

Instant coffee, like sludge caused me to crave cigarettes.  Habitually, this craving happened when I was in the thrall of my vicious friend.  Like a slave to a detested task, I hated smoking.  In my entire life, I had only smoked about thirty times.  But when I was like this, wound up in a sleepless hypo-manic twist, the desire to slowly destroy myself with any form of carcinogen was powerful.  I had come for the broom and got a nicotine craving instead.  The floor needed to be swept but I could no longer bear to be inside the cramped apartment.  I needed to go out, for space, for air, for variety, for energy, to impose a constructive structure on my day.  Get out before the Shadowed Soul awakened and found me again.   I set down the broom and grabbed my coat.

Outside, the air was so sharp my lungs hurt.  The first kiosk provided smokes.  As I lit up, my hands were shaking.  The world had changed and people looked at you as though you were murdering a baby as soon as you lit a cigarette.  In my paranoid state, the glances were personal affronts, as if these non-smokers judged every aspect of my life.  Hunched with my head slung low I walked on, smoking and avoiding the gaze of passersby.  No sooner had I sucked down half a cigarette, I wished I had not.  Nauseous, I stubbed it underfoot and crumpled the remaining pack into the nearest trashcan.

Christmas was everywhere.  Pockets of light and hope prickled the unrelenting drabness of a December’s day in New York.  Suddenly, I knew what I needed to do.  I needed to buy gifts for people, after all it was the time of giving and I was not going to let my loved ones down any more than I had already.  I stopped at the next ATM.  I did not care that I would struggle for food and rent because all that mattered to me at that point was my family’s gifts.

The shops were opening and already busy, uncomfortably so.  On auto-pilot, I buzzed from store to store.

“Busy bunny, aren’t we,” snickered the Shadowed Soul.

“Back again, shit head?” I muttered.  “Leave me the fuck alone.  I don’t need you now.”  A shopkeeper glanced up uncomfortably then pretended to ignore me nattering to myself.

I shopped and shopped for the people who mattered to me.  As soon as a gift was in the bag I forgot what I had purchased and continued buying euphorically.  Like a controlled substance, this one normal act inspired me to escalate higher and higher.  I roved from shop to shop not recalling which ones I had visited already.  Once, I confounded a clerk by unwittingly returning to buy the same item a second time. 

“You sure?” asked the clerk.  “You got twin girlfriends?”

“Yes!” I assured the clerk. “They’re so beautiful!”

“Keep spending, Thomas,” whispered the Shadowed Soul.  “We’re going to have such fun being homeless together.”

Wherever possible I used the gift-wrap option as that unburdened me of the tedium of wrapping alone in an oppressive apartment.  Within two hours the shopping process set me in an infantile rage.  The alternating exposure to bitter cold and stifling heat as I roamed between stores trapped me in my clothing.  My agitation increased as I was shoved and jostled by pushy people obscuring my vision of a beautiful set of
something
, I could not recall until much later what it was. 

Laden with gifts, I dropped into a burger place and quaffed a
Coke
.  The sugar and caffeine lifted me before I started a journey that I would definitely regret but one that had to be completed.  If only because of a weird sense of duty I had to see my mother.  Unshaven and unclean I arrived unannounced.

“What do you want?” asked my mother, irritated.  She looked at me with narrow-faced suspicion as she opened the door part way.