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Part 4: Gentle Fall
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It was the year 1985; and it was liquid horror, thick and dense as it drowned him in its cold embrace. It was thunder inside his skull loud and echoing with too many dead bodies – horror wrought by human nature, the despicable pits of human depravity. It gnawed into him, devoured him; it became the point in his life upon which everything seemed to revolve around. It was an earthquake rumbling through his body, devastating – the aftermath left him in turmoil and agony. However hard-edged and tough you became in his line of work – however much you forged your mind into steel there was still those cases in between that trapped air in your lungs and made your knees weak. There would always be a case that made you want to crawl into your own skin – vomit till you fainted. There was only so much you could fortify yourself against; every cop would have his own weak spots.
This time he felt the fabric of his skin dissembling, disintegrating – the construction of bones seemed suddenly a very weak foundation to him; he had trouble maneuvering and standing. Maybe it was the tendons in his body that were weak with horror; maybe it was a neural network in his brain that had suddenly turned into this repeated pattern of deep naked horror. His very being shattered, was ripped apart, drawn out piece by piece till it became too much, until he stumbled further and further into a very dark hole – unlike any hole he had previously thought existed. It was always like this; it always became worse with each case – with age came only a more visible reaction to the world around him.
He was seconds from breaking down.
He was a mess; cold beads of perspiration had perpetrated his clothes uncomfortable – his insides were occupied by permeated alcohol. His hands shook; they always did when he drank just a bit over his usual limit. His breath felt nauseated in his mouth.
Trembling he managed to bring his knuckles into contact with her door; that the doorbell would sufficiently announce his presence was forgotten in a haze of horror and alcohol. Leaning against the wooden door he rapped his knuckles against the frame, loud and hurtful; he had to see her – she would calm him down. When he felt this rotten nothing else really helped but somehow of all the people in his life she always knew what to do – what to say. Soothe away this horror before it became too much and he surely drowned not only in alcohol but in his own rotten soul.
Sometimes he wondered how she had become so adapt at dealing with pain. Was this another little hint of a puzzle; was it another aspect of her dark being that somehow inflicted her with insight into his.
Looking sideways he noticed the doorbell; he rang it once – waited and rang it again.
He felt almost frantic – what if no one was home. What if they had decided to take a family trip?
In his stupor he had forgotten it was the middle of the night; too doused in anxiety and horror, too quenched by alcohol to put together the fact that the streetlamps were shining in the middle of darkness and he had left headquarters just as the sun had set. That he had spent hours looking into the bottom of a whiskey bottle with his partner and a couple of detectives had escaped his mind; forgotten.
When he was this far away his attention span was severely depraved; he could only concentrate on not vomiting on her doorstep – could only comprehend the notion that he needed to see her.
The door opened suddenly and he nearly fell through it, surprised and inept to control his own gravity.
"Flynn," a male sleepy voice greeted him. It was not the person he most wanted to see; the voice deep and so different from her soft tones. It did not bother him; her husband was just as welcoming as Sharon herself when he came upon their house in the middle of the night. The guy was sometimes more adapt at getting him inside; the tall well-muscled man able to hold up the weight of him when he was too far away to be steady on his feet.
He let the compact form of Michael hold him up; felt strong arms tensing under his armpits as they brought him further inside. Merely the knowledge that he was no longer alone already settling in under his skin, burrowing down and settling into a weary feeling of sleepiness.
"C'mon buddy," the man coaxed him inside, closed the front door behind him.
They managed to stumble through the hallway; his weight heavily leaning on the other man, coming into the living room, the darkness a blessing. Somehow the other guy seemed to know that turning lights on would be too much for his eyes; too much for his mind. Instinct from knowing what happened the moment you drank too much; something they shared even if it was something neither talked about, even if it was something neither acknowledged.
Michael disposed his dense body on the couch, the man neatly tugging in wayward legs as he felt the warmth of a blanket being slipped across his body. He felt the other man pat his shoulder while he burrowed his own face into a cushion.
The couch was a familiar soft furniture he had become acquainted with over the last couple of years; distress and unrest in his soul always forcing him to the familiar door. Sometimes he was too drunk to remember much; only Michael bringing him to the couch and slipping a blanket over him. Sometimes it was Sharon opening the door in the middle of the night and he was always – no matter the consumption of alcohol – mindful of not tumbling her with all his weight. Mindful but he never succeeded in not leaning a bit too much on her; somehow they always managed to stumble to the restroom in unison without falling. She always guided him to the toilet first, soft hands determined to get some fluid in him, the water running from the tap – she usually wet a cloth as well and perished the cold sweat from his brow.
Michael left him with a pat on the shoulder; sometimes little words of 'just sleep it off buddy'. Sharon always sat with him, made him eat rest overs if he was up to it – sat next to his long body unfolded on her couch; soft whispered words always bringing him to spill whatever was troubling him. Sometimes she kissed his temple before she went to her own bed to sleep.
Tonight Sharon replaced Michael, a robe thrown over a nightgown; her hair muffled from sleep – protruding belly now so big he had thought she would never be able to sit down. She was finally on maternity leave; something both he and Michael had grumbled about for a long time. She sat down next to him, patting his hip till he relented and made room for her to sit on the couch as well.
"Thank god you didn't wake Mischa," she said in a hushed voice – she always started this way; little words that had nothing to do with his current problem. He was likewise glad he hadn't woken the little girl; he knew her parents had trouble getting her to sleep.
"You're freezing," she commented and drew the blanket even further up, settled it under his chin. There was never anything pitying in her; she always seemed to comprehend his distress – always seemed ready to understand why he did what he did. He could not go home to an empty apartment; he had done that enough times – it would only bring him further under. He could not go to his ex-wife and two small kids; it was in the middle of the night and he was drunk – it would only end with Marlene suing him and he would never see his kids then. His kids were three hours away in a car; Sharon was always close.
"The Lueta case?" she asked hesitantly after a long period of quietude from the both of them; her fingers soft against his skin – almost coaxing him to sleep – a tender caress that travelled and reversed a pattern, calming in its repetition.
He nodded.
The case had been in the news; it was a widespread case throughout central and all over the city. It had been ongoing for two days now; two days of spinning between anticipated hope and dreadful foreboding. She had been dead all along; the little blond five year old – dead from the start of the kidnapping. He had seen the body; first on scene with his partner to apprehend the suspect – junkie babysitter who had unwittingly killed the daughter of a prominent lawyer with an overdose and tried to cover it up with a kidnapping.
He was filled to the core with disgust.
"She was dead from the start," he told her, mumbled through his cracked lips as he tried to hold back the sting in his eyes – to hold back the raw feeling lining the walls of his intestines. Some nights like this and he cried; tonight however his eyes were already red-rimmed and raw; it felt exhausting just to think of crying again. Sometimes he forgone crying; sometimes he merely took comfort from the presence of her – he knew she would sit with him until he fell asleep if he started crying. Sometimes he just wanted her to get a bit of sleep; felt too guilty to force her to sit with him throughout the night.
"Oh honey," she caressed his jaw – eyes dark in the limited light in the living room. He could count the number of times she had called him honey on one hand – this was the second time. It catapulted him further to edge of breaking down; the connotation of those words so soft, so authentic he could not stop himself from shivering. She was always so gentle when he was in this state; everyone else couldn't stand him – brooding aggression or dark despondency – they usually gave him a wide berth. Everyone else stayed clear of him when they noticed the darkness to his eyes; she only seemed to acknowledge the hurt creature. It was one of these rare times where she appeared tender he had trouble with how to reconcile it with her other moods; the only times he could with certainty file it away as her being genuinely gentle towards him.
She reminded him of fall when she was like this; a gentle fall – it was a very calm impression of warmth then. The warm hue just before the leaves fall to the ground in a tumble, that little slip in time where leaves change into that soothing color of warm yellow and intense red. That time of year where temperature is neither too cold nor too warm; but everything seems to be just okay – everything seems to be comforted by the embrace of the season anyway.
Softly she stroked his temple, his hair; there was nothing to say – in the morning she would say everything there was to say, when he was sober and ready to listen. But for now she simply stroked his hair. Lulled him into sleep with the gentle touch of fingertips on his temple, soothing as they travelled into his hairline.
It was always in one of these moments he felt compelled to ask her a question; but he never dared. It was always in one of these moments he felt on the cusp of finally having comprehended her nature; it felt like something being revealed to him. Mostly he was too sleepy or too drunk to fully understand her though. Afterwards he had trouble recalling the image of gentle fall; it always eluded him when he was lucid.
It was with some regret he found that this was as much a rarity as everything else about her; another little piece of her that was genuine but still so far away he could not grasp its origin. He would not have it any other way; it was the complexity of her that made her unique – at least to him. He had a sneaking suspicion others never saw the nuances to her being; they would never be able to comprehend the many elements that made her this complex, this rare.
She left him but for a moment; sitting down again and forcing him to gulp down water. The soft caress continued and he could feel himself falling deeper into drowsiness, on the brink of sleep. He was barely aware of it when she left him again, going back to her own bed – the soft little whispered kiss to his cheek hardly registering.
Sometimes he woke up to the smell of breakfast, laughter and soft voices in the kitchen as she and the little one ruminated around, making pancakes for him. Sometimes he woke up earlier; Michael putting a cup of coffee on the table before him as he left for work; the guy was always leaving for work at the crack of dawn; there was always a shot of whiskey in the coffee to relieve him of a too heavy headache. Sharon on maternity leave meant she trotted around the house hours after her husband had left, yawning and grousing about not being able to drink caffeine; she used to be a morning person. She always woke him with a glass of water and two aspirin instead of coffee, always a little inscrutable look at the coffee cup when she saw it.
Sometimes he woke to small chubby hands patting his head; small but big eyes regarding him with childish glee – puffs of air hitting him as the little girl continued to stand and look at the strange creature lying on her couch, breathing on him as she tried to observe him quietly. Eventually she woke him up with a squeal of 'Adee' never coming around to pronouncing his name correctly; she always gave him her teddy bear before she ran to her mother.
This time he woke to the sounds of small feet pitter-pattering across linoleum floor; he smiled in spite of the way his head seemed to protest at the motion. Opening his eyes he found the sight of a coffee cup on the table in front of him, suddenly vaguely recalling sensing the blonde man leaving it there. It meant it would be just the tree of them.
A small mass of a body came into his view; he watched mesmerized as the little girl first put a book on the couch and then her teddy bear. Then she climbed up on the couch herself up as well. Grinning he sat up in a hurry, feeling only a slight tad dizzy, lifting her up in what have become a little ritual. She squealed with a delightful little voice – small lips too reminiscent of Sharon, crinkled in amusement. He ruffled her hair and she ruffled his.
Sometimes he had a nagging thought the little girl thought he was a big teddy bear just magically appearing on her couch from time to time; ready to read books to her or draw with her – or force her mother to make pancakes. He supposed he did look a bit like a bear when he woke up from sleep like this; sometimes grumbling and yawning.
Smiling at the little creature he settled both of them, sinking into the cushions again, the girl on his lap as he opened the book – full of pictures. Reaching out he caught the glass with water still on the table from last night, drank a mouthful before he started narrating a story about princesses and frogs. The coffee would be cold and the whiskey stale; it would only nauseate him now.
It did not escape him that this year he saw more of Sharon's kid than his own two; it was not a conscious decision and when he had realized that the little girl on his lap had come to recognize him and saw more of him than his own children, it had hurt. It was merely a development that had happened; it seemed to have snuck up on him.
Work consumed him, whole and raw; it was all that were left for him to hang unto – without work he would surely crumble completely into the bottle. That work had likewise cost him his wife was something he was not entirely sure of; maybe it was as much his tendency to drown his problems in alcohol – maybe it was the fact that deep down he had never seemed that compatible with her anyway. He loved his kids dearly; he was supposed to see them every other weekend – mostly murders caught him in a trap and he saw them once a month. They lived three hours away from him now; it was not trip he could merely go on whenever he felt like it. Showing up unannounced would definitely put Marlene in a fit.
The little girl leaned into his chest, the pajamas marine blue with teddy bears. She was maybe as precious to him as his own kids; not that he loved his own less. It was an indescribable feeling; but she was Sharon's. Anything related to Sharon would always be dear to him.
He could always knock on the front door here; never mind what state he was in – someone always welcomed him. Sometimes being an animated teddy bear was just the sort of mundane thing that brought him back to reality, sometimes merely being in the presence of someone who was unaware of the world's cruelty was a blessing.
Maybe the little girl saw him as a teddy bear because the first few times he woke up on her couch, her mother would ruffle his hair and tell the girl on her hip that he was not that dangerous, that he really was a soft ball of fur. The girl had been shy at first; hesitant at seeing that strange creature suddenly in her house. He imagined it would be weird to wake up and a stranger was on the couch where you usually saw tv in the mornings.
"Adee?" Mischa asked; her head turned as she regarded him, round brown eyes inherited from her father, reddish-brown locks from her mother.
"Yes?"
"Mommy says you wanna go to the park?"
He gave a nod and a smile; he started reading again – Mischa pleased, helping him turn the pages, telling him when he did a voice wrong; apparently princesses did not sound like bears.
Sharon must have called in sick on his behalf – however much a fanatic he was with work twenty-four-seven he also knew that there was nothing he could say to her that would convince either of them that work today would be a good idea. The first time it had happened he had been almost angered, on the point of yelling; only she had given him an arched eyebrow and told him to 'shush it'. He was still amazed he had listened; amazed she had not thrown him out.
Usually she called in sick for him; his partner seemed to understand when he took her phone call. It always meant she was either forcing him to go with her to the park or something equally mundane – forcing him to stay with her, babysit her little one. It always brought him relief; this was even more precious. Maybe he could forget the lifeless cold eyes of the dead girl; the pale pallor of dead skin – he needed to merely exist in this moment – read the story to the little girl in his arms, feel soothed by the knowledge that any minute now Sharon would walk by in her pajamas as well on the way to the kitchen, breakfast soon wafting in the air.
She always seemed to know how to reel him back to reality; reel him into a cocoon of serenity. That it never lasted long with him was beside the point; however fleeting this little moment was it always stayed with him for a long time.
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