I can see her crying again, down the bottom of this bottle. She’s cursing me, telling me how much of an animal I was. How I didn’t deserve to call myself a man. She’s screaming and yelling in the apartment we once owned together. I was getting angry, the alcohol in my blood boiling and raising my temper. I shouldn’t have, but I did. She’s on the ground now, crying and nursing one side of her face. I stand above her, numb with shock. I did it, and I don’t know why. I instantly regret it but it’s too late, far too late. She crawls back on her feet and spits at me, but I don’t retaliate. Somehow I manage to wrestle that rage down and push it out of my mind. That’s when I realize the emptiness that has gripped me. In the absence of my own anger, there is nothingness. I’m nothing more than a vessel of rage and that realization almost sends me to tears. She hits me back in the face, claws me with her manicured nails. I’m angry again but I still don’t attack back. I’ve done enough damage, it’s time for me to receive my punishment.
I try to apologise, but my slurred speech, thick with the night’s heavy drinking just angers her further, and she picks up her coat from the dinner table and leaves, slamming the door so hard behind her it shakes a picture of us free from the wall and it shatters on the linoleum floor. Silence so sudden it shocks me grips the dingy apartment, the final resting places of all our dreams. She deserved more, anyway. She was like a white dove cooped in a cage with a ball and chain attached to her leg. I felt like that ball and chain. Now she’s free of me and for all the depression and anger that night had caused, for an instant I feel almost happy.
My hand starts shaking. The bottle in front of me is empty. I reach for another and pop the cap. I guzzle nearly half and place the bottle gently on the table. But my hand’s shaking so much I knock it down and spill amber fluid everywhere.
It’s as I was sleeping when the buzzer sounds. I stumble up, head pounding from the liquor and head to the door. Maybe she’s coming back? No, it’s not her. It’s the police. I swallow my fear and my urge to run. There was nowhere for me to go. I let them in and in a minute they reach my front door. I open it and they walk in. That’s when they tell me the news. She left in such a fit of anger… it looks as if she lost control of the car and wrapped it around a tree. Died instantly. I feel as if someone just took an ice cream scoop and cleaned out everything under my skin. The policeman’s voice sounds like it’s coming from the end of a long winding tunnel. She’s dead.
The police leave and I reach for a bottle.
