The walls are covered with notes.
His cell phone is gone. Discarded. Thrown away somewhere on interstate eighty-one after the thirty-seventh missed call from Dean. He can't find it in himself to feel guilty, and if he bothered to search for a deeper reaction, he'd probably find some form of relief buried in the recesses of his mind. No one to answer for. Nobody to have to explain himself too. Instead he sits on the sinking mattress in the pay-by-the-hour motel he's stopped at staring at his life's work. Everything he had been working towards — brought together and laid out in front of him, whispering tales of blood and lies; of deceit and cruelty. Of shame. For how he raised his boys; how he thrust a baby and a gun into the arms of his oldest and demand he be a marine. For the way he yelled those haunting, echoing words (thanstaygone) that still reverberated inside his head whenever he tried to sleep. Deep, cutting, bleeding shame that screams abuses at in him the voice of his sweet angel with the jargon of his former drill sergeant. Staring at the crude rendition of too yellow eyes, he can almost remember the scent of burning flesh stinging at his senses. Prickling him. Daring him to run forward. To wrap his arms — those same arms that had carried their son to bed only hours before — around an already charred corpse.
His fingers loosely wrap around the bottle of whiskey that stands by his feet, tall and proud, it's presence the only constant over the years. He takes a swig, his eyes burning as he forces them to stay open, staring at the wall. His masterpiece. This achingly beautiful mural of broken lives and distorted memories, the lies bleeding into each other like puckered stitches that dig into torn flesh. He wants to scream; to let somebody know he's cracked it, this code that has haunted him for two long, tiresome decades. Only there's nothing but an abyss outside and the victory seems hollow in all the ways it's still incomplete.
He takes another drink from the bottle. It tastes of ashes and sulfur. He coughs.
His voice still too raw from the tears he hasn't cried, John lets out a single, wrecked, low-pitched moan, "Mary."