The Hard Decision

Part VI

I stepped out of the car; my knee length woolen boots crunching in the snow. The skies were clear and blue and there was an eerie silence there among the snow dunes. I could see the snow capped mountains on the horizon and taste the icy breeze on my warm tongue  I closed my eyes and inhaled a large breath of this refreshing oxygen.
I began to walk up the nearest dune, approaching the apex in the hopes of seeing what was laid out ahead. I only made it probably a quarter of the way up when a man on a horse came over the top with urgency. He was dressed in fur and carried a sword on his back. His beard was long, glorious and as black as the void.
"Sovereign! You must come with me post haste! The realm is under attack!" he boomed. I turned to the car, but it wasn't there. Just white nothingness in this beautiful wonderland. I turned back to the man, his horse now reared before me. He ushered me to climb on the back, so I began to. As I did, I heard a distant and irritating rhythm. I concentrated, it sounded like... Eminem?

I woke suddenly and sharply to the high pitched squeal of my shifty mobile phone speakers playing my mp3 alarm tone. For some reason, I always set my alarm tones to songs I enjoy, consequently making me hate them. In this instance, i was no longer a fan of 'Without Me'. I felt extremely tired and as though I'd been hit around the head with a large, dead fish. Why was this incessant noise disturbing the wonder and marvel of my dreams? I reached over and bashed violently around my bedside table. I knocked over a glass of water in the process, but eventually I found the phone and hastily turned off the song. I laid there a moment, dangerously close to drifting off again. Then I remembered the events of the night before.
April had left me. There was a note on the pillow I saw and my heart skipped a beat. Perhaps a phone number? Instead, it read simply 'Good morning :)'. I wasn't really sure how to take it, weather this was a good or a bad sign. Would I ever see her again? I was going to have to ponder it on the move because I needed to get ready pronto. It seemed i snoozed several times because I only had twenty minutes to shower, shave, dress and walk to work.

I got up, made my way to the shower and pondered how tired I was and how unenthused i felt about spending eight hours at my place of employment. I was a full time shelf-stacker at a local supermarket called Wentworths. It was the most degrading thing in my life as I absolutely hated having to be nice to people that made me feel smaller than them. Not so much the customers, more the management. Day in, day out i would drive my body to its limits trying to adhere to their super-human schedule and still i was slandered and trodden on. I had developed a serious grudge against 'The man' and subjected myself to a waterfall of alcohol to wash the shame of being a cog in a machine i despised.

I stepped out of the shower and glanced at my phone. Ten minutes to get ready and walk to work. It was going to be a struggle. I cut myself four times shaving with my blunt razor, partly due to rushing, partly due to the aforementioned dullness of the blade. I placed little ripped up bits of toilet paper on the bleeds and threw my clothes on and ran out the door. I was so tired, i couldn't remember if i had locked it, but didn't have time to check.

I arrived at work, clocking on with the fingerprint scanning machine. The time read 6:03. I was no doubt going to have some snide remark thrown my way for my lack of punctuality. I walked with haste to the stock area and grabbed my first trolley of boxes for the day...

The morning crept very slowly into the afternoon as i droned away at the same monotone tasks i did most every day. When it came time to eventually clock off, i was ecstatic. I retrieved my phone from my locker. Three new messages and one missed call from a private number. I hate private numbers. Now i would never know who this mystery call was from. One message was a message saying i had missed a call, one was from Joel and one was from a number i didn't have saved. I read the one from Joel 'Hey man, I'm sorry about last night. I can be a fuck head sometimes... :/ Anyway, what are you doin tonight?'. Typical, some short winded apology followed by his incessant need to do something. There was no way i wanted to see him tonight, I had no desire to pretend we were fine. I read the mysterious phone number message 'Hey Hey, guess who? :)'. I really didn't know. I hadn't lost a number for years so unless someone got a new number (and even then, i don't know why they would message me as no one ever does), I had no idea who this was from. I replied 'No idea... Hint?'. The thought crossed my mind it may be April and I smiled slightly to myself.
I walked briskly back to my residence, exhausted and debating weather or not i would take a nap when i arrived. As much as I really wanted to, any moment spent away from that place was precious so i decided I would probably use the time to clean all the empty bottles and contraband that was no doubt still littering my home. Snowballs chance in hell Joel had been around to fix it. I arrived and walked through the back door which was unlocked as I had thought in my manic rush that morning. It didn't seem anyone had been in there, though you could forgive a less informed individual for thinking that it had been invaded by a tribe of mad natives. It was a filthy mess, resembling more of an abandoned brothel than an average, suburban dwelling. Broken bottles on the floor, countless spilt liquids, cigarette ash and a broken vase my mother had given me for Christmas. Thankfully, I hated it and was not overly fond of bright colours so it seldom had flowers in it anyway. I decided to start by having a smoke out the back as i hadn't had one all day and was in desperate need. As I sat inhaling the sweet nectar, my phone rang in my pocket. I fumbled around my pants with one hand while the other flapped the cigarette about the air in an attempt to avoid burning myself in the rush. I nearly missed the call but managed to get it out in time. I answered "Hello?"
"Hey hey Jason, what ya doing?" the female voice at the other end responded. I recognized it immediately as being my ex-girfriend Veronica Phelps. We had been together three years and broke up almost a year ago by her doing. The decision wasn't a mutual one at first, but with time I saw wisdom in it. The three years of our relationship were some of the greatest of my life, we had loved each other with the intensity of a cyclone, the only problem was the carnage it left behind. We weren't right for each other and this was abundantly clear in our excessive and intense arguments. The only thing we had in common was our feelings for one another but ultimately, that was not enough. I often thought of it as being kind of sweet that we stuck it out for each other. I still cared about her, i could never stop.
"Hey hun, I just got home from that shit hole of a job of mine. What's up?" I replied.
"Oh, i was just thinking of you and I got an extra half a kilo of lamb leg to roast tonight. Thought I could interest you?" I thought for a moment.
"Sounds great! You gonna pick me up?"
"Sure, I'll be there in an hour,"
"Sounds divine. See you then,"
"Catchya," She hung up. Now, at least i didn't have to worry about adding pressure to my already broken body by forcing it to feed itself. I hadn't seen Veronica in about a week so it would be nice to spend some time with her. I did miss her and the way she cared for me...

We pulled up in Veronica's driveway in front of the house she had just bought. It was overkill. It was just her and her cat that lived here and she had five rooms last i counted.
"Should be about ready by now, i'd better run in and check in case my kitchens on fire!" said Veronica with a quirky expression as she ran up the garden path to her front door. She was so short, I'd almost forgotten it. She was at least a whole head smaller than I but it was in a kind of sexy way. I had always been very attracted to her, that was never a problem in our relationship. She had short blonde hair now, a change from the fiery read head I'd met years ago. But definitely not a bad one, it was matched well with her deep brown eyes. As I strolled up the driveway behind her, i reached into my pocket and retrieved my phone. Two new messages. Joel again saying 'Man, i need you right now. I feel like a cunt and I'm havin real problems. Please answer :(.' I decided i'd reply to him after tea, let him suffer a bit longer. He deserved it after seeing the extent of my homes desolation an hour earlier. The other was from the unnamed sender earlier 'I think you know who... I still need you to convince me your buddy isn't a douche bag ;)'. The realization dawned on me that it was indeed April. I nearly dropped my phone in excitement and immediately felt like an idiot for feeling that way. Knowing it was her was like a streak of sunshine in the thick blanket of misery my life was currently enveloped by. But, in order for me to even have a remote chance with her, she needed to remain oblivious to this fact. Therefore, I decided it best to play it cool and hesitate from answering for at least an hour so i returned the phone to my pocket and walked in the open front door to Veronica's house.
Her house, as per the norm, was immaculately clean the way she liked it. Living with me had always been a challenge for her because of this fact. The cream coloured carpet was spotless, the curtains were neatly laced up and the late afternoon sun was warmingly shining through. She had the coffee table in the middle of the lounge room lit up with five white candles in golden holders. The big plasma television was set up adjacent from this with the blue two person couch on the other side. Perfect set up for watching TV and eating as we had done everyday after work all that time ago. I pictured her doing it here on her own now and it saddened me. She must have been so lonely in this enormous house with only the likes of her annoying cat Tiffany to keep her company. The best reason i could gather for why she was still single is because perhaps she was a little weird, hence her attraction to me. Or perhaps also that she severely lacked in confidence as her parents had not provided her with the emotional support she needed which was pivotal to personal growth. Either way, I knew she didn't want to be here on her own and i felt it was my duty to keep a smile on her face whenever i could, i owed her that.
"Honey, could you give me a hand?" she called from the kitchen. We still used pet names with each other. Our relationship was like an old battlefield, still littered with the chaos of war but no soldiers still skirmished.
"Coming," I responded, walking into the kitchen which was also shining like a diamond minus the preparation tools for our lamb roast. I assisted her by getting the Lamb from the oven with a tea towel as this was always what i had done to help out. As I sat it on the bench to rest, she asked "Jason, can I talk to you?"
"Of course you can darling, what's wrong?"
"I'm not doing so well here on my own," she began, her voice cracking slightly as a sure sign things were not okay behind her brave face.
"I'm struggling to pay for this place on my own and my parents just got divorced. Work is a nightmare and at the end of the day, none of my friends seem to get me like you do," she wrapped her arms around me and i held her back. I realized how much i missed the sensation of human contact, apart from the fist-to-face kind.
"Sweetheart, i know it's hard. I'm not exactly getting by easily either and i'm not one to be able to give you a lot of advice on the subject..." She cut me off.
"I don't need advice. Right now, I just need you to hold me," she began to sob. So I did. For a good long while we just stood in the kitchen as she cried salty tears all onto my black five dollar polo top. My mood grew somber as I related with the pain she was in; desperately wanting to take us both away to a place where we belonged and no one had to hurt anymore. But that place really didn't exist as far as I could see or surely we'd have found it by now. After some time, I broke the silence.
"Well, when it's really hard V, just remember Tiffany has it just as hard," I joked. I got a chuckle and she pushed me away and wiped her eyes.
"Thanks," she said, beginning to carve the leg of Lamb.

We sat fairly quietly eating our tea and exchanging idol conversation with one another. I had really missed how warm it felt to be in a nice home with good food and a good woman. It was authentically peaceful and for a while, i found myself feeling as if i were there, in the relationship again. That scared me somewhat and i quickly jumped back from my delusions and into reality.
We spoke for a while about our lives and how we were fairing in the world and i offered what little advise and support i could which she seemed to appreciate. I would do anything to see to it she spent the rest of her life in happiness, though it seemed there was really nothing i could do. Perhaps to walk out of her life would be best so she could properly move on, but then again, i couldn't stand not knowing how she was so my motives in the end were ultimately selfish. When she asked about me, I tried to lie and make out things were fine and that i wasn't spiraling around the drain but she saw through it. She knew i was having a hard time finding my purpose out there and my methods for numbing the purposelessness. There was nothing she could say she hadn't already. We were just two tortured souls finding comfort in one and others different inabilities to function.
The television was advertising some kind of towel heater, you plug it in and it keeps the towels warm. What a genuinely superfluous idea this seemed yet it was being pushed on TV as if it were as necessary as air. Things like this just served as a quiet reminder that i really did not belong in this world.
We finished our meals and I pondered staying with Veronica the night, she would have been glad to have me and i normally would have. However, this time I had other business i wanted to tend to and I didn't want to hurt her feelings by spending time texting people. I thanked her and we hugged again for a long time. There was even a kiss on the lips good bye. She was definitely in an emotional ditch i could tell as every time i had tried to kiss her in this way since we split, my efforts were met with her struggling to pull her head away. I wasn't complaining.
I walked out the front door to where the taxi i had called earlier was waiting to pick me up. I got in the back seat and looked at my phone. Two messages, one from Joel reading 'Man, seriously! I really need u. I'm sorry for everything but this is important!' and the other from the unknown whom i was now sure was April '...well, if you were looking to convince me I don't have much on tonight ;)'. Wow, this was the most I had felt needed by so many people in a long time!
I sat in the back seat of the taxi and the driver turned and asked "Where to?"