Next thousand words or so

It had been an hour since he arrived home. The temperature barely rose above the low 20s, the recent bout of warm weather excluded. As such, the boy would need to bring in the firewood they split the previous summer. His father always asked that he and his brother fill the 2 walls adjacent to the old wood stove they inherited with the house, but the two of them would negotiate days where each would do the work solo as one of them would inevitably have to stay at the school for practice until 6.

His younger brother took the bus home when normal hours let out, there was a National Honor Society meeting that demanded his presence after classes. As he washed his hands in the steel kitchen sink, he negotiated an exchange with his brother to use the only computer in the house, lest he be left out of the after-school chatter.

The first few attempts at his password quickly failed, not for forgetfulness, but because his wrists and forearms had begun to cramp from carrying the night’s warmth inside. No sooner than the correct keystrokes had been depressed did he receive and assault of information. They were fervent and incomprehensible, but all the same. He replied to the most trusted of them with a lone question mark. The reply was short enough to not read, but simply stare at:

-She’s dead.

The details quickly followed, messy with typos from the furious keystrokes, all irrelevant. His scepticism got the better of him, and he replied: This isn’t funny. His informant quickly laced in “I’m not joking!!” and continued with the stream of details of who found out, what they thought happened. He only glanced at the passing lines of text. His confusion wouldn’t allow for both reading and processing at the moment. Again he typed: This isnt funny...

She responded: Let me call you. He depressed the code slowly making sure to get the sequence correct in spite of his confusion. He pressed return and the phone rang within the second. His hello was met with a cacophony of sobs and bits of sentences distorted by the frequency of sniffles coming from the girl on the other end.

So it was, and time stood idly by as what was left of his rational thought was reduced to the incomprehensible bits of sound he subconsciously responded to in the receiver. Gradually, the mental fallout dissipated and he was slowly brought back to the present by the recording announcing there was no one at the other end of the line.

While he had been at the computer his mother had been preparing the family’s staple dinner: Breaded pork chops, a baked potato, and either boiled carrots or steamed broccoli was the only variable. Over time from coming home at all hours of the night from hockey games he had discovered methods to make his mother’s cooking tolerable. After cooking the meat for the instructed duration, they were wrapped in tin foil with a teaspoon of water and left to bake with the potatoes for an hour. They were supposed to be placed with all the seams face down so no steam could escape, but even this his mother would sometimes forget. Granted, it was still better than the dehydrated cardboard they had grown to love.

His mother chimed in from the dryer which was conveniently placed next to the oven for lack of a better place within their small house.
“Are you O.K.?” she asked without looking.

“I think so. . . I don’t really know? I had just seen her a few hours ago, but. . . she’s. . . gone?”

She wasn’t listening. She replied “Sit down and eat something before it gets cold or your father gets to it.”

“Yea. I guess. Sure. . . I’m not sure I’m hungry.”

The receiver was still in his hand, and had switched from the courteous recording of the operator to blaring out a two tone signal announcing it’s impatience. He placed it down slowly and floated to the other side of the table where his food had begun to cool from the arctic breeze that wove its way through the ancient, rotting window frames. With the flatware in his right hand, and his meal in his left he gravitated back into the kitchen, dropping the knife and fork into the kitchen sink on his way to the drawer with the aluminum foil.

He set the weightless plate down on the section of counter-top that protruded over the trash bin and pulled a square of foil from the roll, wrapped the meal neatly and reached back with his left foot to pull the refrigerator door open from the base. He spun and placed the package inside without looking; there was never enough food inside to warrant rearranging.

The only bathroom in the house was accessed off the kitchen between the trash and the dryer. As he entered he paused to examine the shoulder height hole in the door that briefly reminded him of the hole in the basement door with the cork board he could never see into when he was younger. Neither the cold water he ground into his weary eyes, not the Listerine could return him to a state of consciousness. The dog sat in the hall and watched intently as he faded past into the room he shared with his brother. The door gently swung closed, coerced by the boys left hand which had memorized the the requisite force to draw a confession from the latch.

The edge of his bed, a twin extra long on a metal frame, laid adjacent to the door and received the weight his muscles could no longer sustain. Consciousness and time eluded him still; his corpse gazed upon the small, monotonous flashing bulb of the smoke detector which for the evening would serve as his pulse. The shadows of the fan blade grew progressively larger until his vision became engrossed in them.

“Yes. . .” the young man replied tersely, amazed his rage remained at bay.

“And do you remember what I said to you that day?”