Rain

His glass was empty and he bent to the task of refilling it, yet the bottle gave only a meagre morsel, he looked at it as if there must be some mistake, held it up to the light, and then took it with him through to the kitchen and dropped it lightly into the recycling. He pulled the blind down over the sink, went through to his bedroom and pulled the curtains shut. Taking the blanket he went back to the spare bedroom and grabbed another bottle, passed down the hallway closing doors and then sank back into the armchair hoping some of his warmth remained.

The television showed images of buildings leaning drunkenly, reduced to piles of concrete dust with groups of dazed people standing at the edge of the shot, strange assortments of possessions in their arms. They looked so tired and spent, he knew that at least, shared that with them, he was so incredibly tired.

He felt his selfishness again, he was tired because he spent so many nights hiding from the things the man in the car had demanded he face now, demanded in that silent, immutable way.

He took a cushion off the sofa and threw it down to the head of the long rectangle of the heavy rug running across the face of the fireplace and cast the blanket wide so that it fluttered down and covered the rug. He moved the glass and bottle down the length of the coffee table to where he would be able to reach them, and switched off the lamp. Slipping in beneath the heavy woollen blanket he leaned on one elbow and took a long draw on the glass.

Down low now it seemed he was part of the bright images which kept coming from the screen and leaping across the dark room, so that the faces with their huge, harrowing eyes were there at the end of the rug. He was so tired, yet sleep was the furthest thing from his mind.

 He propped himself on an elbow and finished the glass, reached for the bottle, and again it gave next to nothing. He did not question this this time, didn’t care, and simply left it next to the coffee table and got up and went down the hallway.  

He grabbed another bottle, pulling it roughly out of the carton so that those remaining clanked a protest and he shoved a knee against the box to make sure it stayed where it was. The wind began in under the eaves, the one that whispers warnings of rain chasing close behind, and he stood for some time watching his blurry silhouette fill the blank windows. The iron of the garage roof beyond signalled the pattering of a shower coming and going, the beginning of the rain that would fill the night and he thought of how he should head to bed, how he wished there could be someone already there, someone longing for him and his warmth, his arms.

He went back to the lounge, the trees outside murmuring as the rain grew. Crawling back in under the blanket he took the top off the bottle, and then could not see where the glass had ended up and didn’t really care so he simply put the bottle to his mouth. He sat forward now with the blanket pulled up around him, the bottle nestled in his lap throwing the light of the big screen back as the images moved and changed. He did not really hear the words anymore, what he could not escape were those eyes, every shot seemed to hold a little girl, an older woman her face a patchwork of creases, or a man who simply stood and stood, and stared. And each one looked at him, each one knew that Andy had seen pain, really seen pain. And every one of them knew too that he had brought that pain as often as he had taken it away.

Their eyes showed that they had no choice but to stand before such pain, and endure, they did not bring it, and yet they could do nothing to stop it or take it away.

He had had the luxury of choices that they had not.

He raised the bottle high and drank, and he felt the wine fill him and the disconnection begin. He wanted his knife then, he wanted to feel it in his hands as he always did in times such as that. But more, he wanted to know he was worthy of sitting before these people and the things they endured, for them to believe that he could be that selfless, that he had done things that would stand for all time, as well as all the bad.

He got up unsteadily and went down the hallway to the table near the front door. His wallet and phone sat there still, he swiped the screen of the phone and saw that he had missed nothing. But there was no knife with them. There should have been, he knew. He checked under the table, stumbling forwards a little and steadying himself against the wall. He fumbled around the dark space inside the door, in case he had dropped it as he came in, knowing full well he had not.

He went through to the kitchen and scanned the bench tops, the floor. His beautiful chef’s knives stood at the far end of the bench and he took the largest of them from the holder, remembering the feeling when he had been given the set as a gift, and times when he and she had used that knife, there. He went back to the lounge and sat down on the floor, not worrying about the blanket he reached for the bottle and drank with his head thrown back.

Andy was so close to the screen now with his legs crossed as much as he could these days, and the man looked at him, standing before his home and his dead children he looked straight at Andy and Andy raised the knife, showed the man, and Andy cried the tears that the man was so far beyond. And he took the knife in his right hand and watched as it described a long, deliberate arc across the whiteness of his left arm, angling down from his elbow towards his wrist.

It hurt a great deal the first time.

He moved the knife across his arm again, and again, and it hurt. But a little less each time.

He swapped the knife to his left hand and it was much easier to begin on his right arm.

He drank long from the bottle sometimes, and then began again. The knife became sticky and when he drank some of the label would come off on the tips of his fingers and he would have one of those silly fights with himself trying to knock the pieces off with his other hand and only managing to transfer the fragments from one hand to the other.

The bottle finished and he got another without thought, and then it would be drink, three or four cuts, drink, three or four more, like that.

Blood ran into the heavy dark material of his trousers, blotched the floor where he placed his hands to steady himself.

He thought of the faces he had seen, people who had put themselves beyond his help, beyond any. He knew the crazy strength they had in those moments, sitting in his own blood, alone.

It was pain he wanted most, not death. Pain that would run out of him in long slow lines.

So that the man on the screen, all the men and women on the screen could know that at last he could admit what pain is. So the man and the woman on the hill would know. They would trust, at last, that he could never do such terrible things again.

There was no denial anymore. If he could have, if it would have helped anyone, if it would have undone anything, he would have done these things for all to see.

He was very tired now and he stretched out along the rug with his head turned away from the television. He could not think where the remote was, whatever it was too far away now. He cradled his head on his arm at the edge of the cushion and watched the dark liquid gather slowly beneath him and run across the floor towards the hearth of the fireplace. He saw it fill the gaps between the wide boards and then quietly run on again.

He heard the rain grow again in intensity and absently pulled the blanket up to cover him, feeling the stickiness holding the heavy material to the skin of his neck. The rain seemed to throb and he closed his eyes so that the blood behind his ears began to match its time to the strength of the sound outside.

He curled himself up a little more seeking warmth, pushed his head down into the crook of his arm and felt his hair stick to the skin, clump up and pull whenever he moved.

He slept at last, dreamless, lifeless.

The light of the television playing out over him unseen in stuttering bursts, the rain coming still, heavy and constant.