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Scream
Part Three
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His head screamed as he sat against the headboard of the cheesy, off-the-highway motel. The bedspread stunk of cheap liquor, the nightstand was unsteady on three legs and a tennis ball, while the pillows were riddled with holes.
Little puncture marks like the ones bullets have left in their wake when they pierce malleable and yielding flesh.
He looked to the phone, expected it to ring, but not surprised in the least when it didn't. He knew that someone had probably noticed his exorbitant amount of time off was totally something akin to resignation, that his picture was stuck up on the back side of the DOD timeline board and his friends searching every nuance of his life to find him among the millions of U.S. citizenry.
Logic sternly ordered him to, if nothing else, leave a message for Maria or at his office or for Samantha. Yet he didn't because he knew the minute his soon-to-be ex-wife answered the incessant phone beeping, she'd argue with him and guilt him; the minute the operator picked up, he'd be transferred to someone who'd defiantly drag the information out of him.
Tired and brokenhearted, he cut the idea from his thought process and sniffled.
Refused to cry for himself.
He was confused. Befuddled. Frustrated and exhausted. So many emotions at once, he couldn't deal. The memories conquered his mental state, dredged up in the turmoil of it all. They were hazy red.
Tinted the color of her blood.
His head fell into his hands, while he tried to contain the tears.
Sudden, he swore he felt her fingers comb through his dark, tumbled hair, which was flat to his scalp due to the reduction in his self-care. His body prickled with sensation. His eyes watered.
He lifted his chin to stare into the empty and blackened room. She was not there. She was not seated at the lone chair near the pale-green desk-slash-dinner table, nor was she watching the black and white television from the stained and lumpy couch. Samantha was not dipping the bed when she slipped beneath the covers.
He was alone.
Isolated from everyone and everything.
At least that's what his mind chose to relay in high, pitched tones that sounded suspiciously like Hanna. It screamed for authority while he balled himself up, his cheeks resting between his knees as he laid on his side and his hands pressed tight to his ears.
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*v* Cassie Jamie *v*
FindUs@cassie-jamie.com