He was a good man.
I told him I didn’t want to leave Colorado. We used to spend every weekend hiking the foothills, kayaking on the slower moving rapids of the Colorado River, and simply breathing fresh, healthy air. It was the perfect place to raise a family. But he insisted we move back to his home town when he learned of his father’s rapidly growing disease. He said he felt as though it was his duty to take over the family business, despite expressing extreme hatred toward that business the year prior. He said it was the only thing he knew to do to help his parents—the same ones he escaped out of state to leave the toxicity behind.
I told him I didn’t want to move here. The suburban street seemed dark and desolate; even though the realtor told us it was a good place to raise a family. “A good school system,” she said. “The subdivision houses many children,” she continued. But in the first weeks of July, when firework displays and sounds of drunken barbeque parties should have wafted through the skies, we had never seen kids playing basketball in driveways or heard splashing in pools. Really, I had never felt the presence of any living souls in this community.
I told him I didn’t want to move into this house. From the moment we walked in, I sensed an emptiness–except for the blackened fog that seemed to drift up and down the hallways, through walls and ceilings. It never felt like home, but he was happy and our newly branded business was gaining more capital every month. If only we went on more weekend trips to escape this forsaken home and leave the toxicity behind.
In mid-August, I threw my car keys into the basket, as usual, and that’s when I saw the haphazardly opened envelope. He only used his grandfather’s envelope opener. I never understood why it was so important to him. He never explained, so I stopped asking. The top of the envelope wasn’t a crisp cut. Instead, it was torn open with a finger, leaving jagged edges with the return address missing. It was the first time I realized he was changing.
He used to have grey and blue hued eyes that eased my belly when life served rotten fruit. Despite his rough exterior, his eyes were kind and soft. When he stormed in the door on that Thursday night, a coldness, direct and crisp, controlled those once forgiving eyes. He slammed down his plastic covered clip board on the dining room table, the same table my grandmother passed on to me in her will. The same table that I polished every week and we only sat and ate at with company or had romantic candlelight dinners. He didn’t care about my table or my objections when I threw the clipboard across the room. All he cared about was how the government was screwing his small business with ridiculously outrageous taxes and limited expenditures. Unnatural shadows lurked through the hallways as his rage smoldered from within that day.
His toxicity grew to the point of smelling fowl, like a garbage truck dumped the day’s waste on the front lawn and he rolled in it like a dog on goose shit. He stunk. I served meatloaf and his stare pierced the news channel that we were no longer allowed to turn off. His eyes were twisting in their cold sockets. Back and forth. News to mashed potatoes. Green beans to news. News to the darkened hallway. Back and forth. Back and forth.
“They’re listening to us!” He shouted and stomped his dirty work boots over the carpet to Alexa. He snatched up the go device, threw the screen door off the hinges, and stormed out of the kitchen. With his full, brute force, he swung Alexa overhead and smashed it in the driveway. There were no neighbors outside to hear my profanities.
The indoor fog grew darker as I slammed the Corian plates into the dishwasher. The southern sunlight normally baking the kitchen, made the windows appear tinted as I steamed, staring at the broken device still in the driveway.
He bought a gun in September, afraid that we would get robbed. Part of my research before we moved here was referencing the city’s homepage. It portrayed a happy town with cute bistros, art galleries once a month, and most importantly, that crime rate in this town was only .02%. After he joined the local gun range, he threatened to shoot anyone who came too close to the house. His rage felt delusional. I asked, “What about the mail man?” The next day, he received his first misdemeanor for destroying government property, the mailbox, and I was forced to pick up our mail at the post office every day.
His constant negativity and temper swarmed our home like murder hornets devouring bees. The Governor is Hitler, always pushing her Third Reich rules on us. My favorite rant was, the school system isn’t doing any justice for our kids! I reminded him while flipping bacon and staring at the once speaker still in the driveway, that we didn’t actually have any children. My taunts seemed to irritate him even more than usual. Ghostly shadows scathing the walls smelt of fresh blood, metallic and putrid.
I joined an online social group to meet new people. The house felt wrong, as did my husband. At first, I made up excuses why I was always gone. But he stopped paying attention to the explanations. When he moved his office into the dining room, piling his laptop and paperwork on top of my grandmother’s mahogany table, I sought a divorce attorney.
The house darkened ever so slightly when he decided to fight “the fucking spics taking our jobs”. I reminded him that no legal wanted to work that hard for so little pay. A study had been conducted, “That’s why the vegetables are still inexpensive.” He punched a hole in the drywall that day and I went to my new friend’s home to gather myself and prepare to leave this evil home forever.
After I organized the U-Haul van to arrive when I thought he’d be at work, he threw every shovel, rake, and edger out of the shed and onto the lawn. He tossed out all the bungie cords, the chicken wire bundles, and even picked up the power washer like a professional weightlifter and slammed it on the concrete before storming in the house. There were no visible neighbors to call the police.
On October 30th, also known as Devil’s night, I grabbed the last of my things, not wanting to say good bye to our marriage. Why wouldn’t he listen? All I wanted was to remind him why we fell in love. Maybe I could break through his self-destructive mentality and help redeem his physical appearance to human. He was my husband of seven years after all.
“Honey, we can get through this…together.” I reached for his hand. “Please, let’s move back and leave this place.” His hand was cold and clammy, tough and unforgiving. “We can go back to our old life, in Colorado,” I pleaded.
But his demeaner turned ugly and evil. “You stupid bitch!” He threw my hand off of his. “You wasted seven years of my life.” He raised his arm and cocked his fist. All I could see were the veins popping from his neck and the white of his knuckles too close to my face. “I know truth. You lie through your teeth.”
There was no reasoning with him any longer. He couldn’t be saved. The tears ran for too long and the well dried up. It was time to start my life over. No regrets, just a bunch of sadness that only time could heal.
Before that last step out the front door, I looked back hoping, praying that his senses came back to normal and he would beg me to stay. Maybe his eyes would flash that soft grayish blue again and we could have the children that apparently the school system deliberately screwed up. I smiled, wishing my dream a reality. But that subtle smile threw him over an edge of insanity. In that moment, I had seen who he had become.
The creature in its full, ungodly form, stood on its hind black legs, towering over him by at least three feet. Its head was shrouded in a black hood showing only its glowing red eyes peering through a narrow, almost deformed skeleton skull. It placed its pointy black claws on his shoulder and pulled him farther down the hall, making him stumbled backward, but not falling. Was he fighting it? Is that why he didn’t follow like a good militia soldier? He needed me.
I took one short step toward him and that’s when the creature of nightmares passed threw him to block him from me. Its stare was so full of rage and hate that my eyes began to water. I took a step back toward the door, not wanting to take my eyes off the hideous creature, but needing desperately to find the door handle.
It stood no less than ten feet tall. I saw clearly that the top of its horns poking through the shroud, pierced the ceiling. Its shadowy body was shaped like an air balloon. I scraped and scratched the wood door to find the handle, never taking my eyes from the thing. I knew if I turned, it would take the movement as vulnerability. It squeezed its balloon looking lungs with its claws. Black mist wafted toward me. I shut my mouth to fight the scream. I would fight, unlike my once-husband.
In that split second, I chose to let the handle go and turned to face the creature. Its mist started to circle my body, but fear would not consume me. I took a deep breath, asked for help from the heavens, and stared the evil in the eye. In a calm deep voice, I commanded it, “You will leave me alone. I am not your puppet.” I held up my hands, palms out. “You have what you desire–my dear lost husband. Let God have mercy on your soul.”
The creature shrieked. Maybe it was the God reference. Maybe it was my free will. But the black mist shrunk back down the hallway. When it reached the creature, it sucked in the mist and refilled its balloon body. It swirled and dragged my once-husband down hell’s hallway into our once-room. When the door slammed them in, I bust out the front door, never looking back, but realizing one important thing as I drove away. That creature pushed evil monsters in people. But a person has a choice to welcome the darkness or live in love’s purity.
I chose love. I chose light.