Relapse

Dan saw her again. She was definitely alive.

A rush of joy and relief surged through his body as he stumbled towards her. She was wearing her favourite dress, white with a floral pattern. Her blond curls glistened in the moonlight.

“Kat? Oh my God, you’re here. I’m so sorry, babe—” His voice cracked.

She turned and looked at him with an expression that stirred something dark in Dan.

Disgust.

“What’s wrong? Let’s go home.” He grabbed her arm. She was there. He could feel her warm skin.

“Oh my God, leave me alone!” she yelled.

He was angry now. He wouldn’t let her go.

Not again.

Her fingers curled against the ground. Blood covered her hands. And that haunting sound grew louder.

Scratch.

Scratch.

SCRATCH.

Dan woke in his room. The stench of sweat, urine, and whiskey hit him first. Then came the taste of vomit and tobacco.

The dark room spun around him. The walls barely looked familiar, though he had lived among them for over twenty years.

He was curled around his wife’s favourite dress, clutching it against his chest. Unsure of the time, he sat up. At the edge of the bed, his skinny shoulders sagged beneath the weight of his head.

He broke his seven-year sobriety on the night of the wake. A thick, rotten mixture of grief, denial, shame, and anger made his hangover feel like dying. In fairness, he thought, death didn’t sound that bad after all.

He grabbed the blue AA token from the bedside table and fiddled with it, touching the words carved into it with his thumb.

To thine own self be true.

He noticed blood on his fingers, his wedding ring streaked with thin, dark-red lines. He may have cut himself while in the whiskey-fueled haze. It wouldn’t be the first time.

He stood up and put the token away.

Katherine’s wake was painful. He had to endure the empty words and pity of people he barely knew.

“What a tragedy, Dan. How are you holding on?” Len, his neighbour of ten years, barely lifted his beady eyes from the floor.

“I’m alright. One day at a time.” He lied, looking at the beer in Len’s hand and gripping the token in his pocket tightly.

He couldn’t stop thinking she died because of him. He remembered little things.

Him yelling at her.

Katherine slapping him. Then walking away.

The street.

The truck.

The hollow thud of her body hitting the ground.

One second was all it took.

He managed to say sorry to her dying body, but all she could do was gasp for air and scratch the tarmac beneath her, her fingers torn, bloody, and broken.

Those dying eyes and that scratching sound would haunt him forever.

“I’m sorry, Len.” Dan tried to find an excuse. “I need to get some water.”

“Of course, man. If you need anything, you know where to find me. Be strong, brother.”

Dan half-smiled and turned away.

He walked through the people, pushing through a sea of “sorry for your loss” and “she’s with the Lord now.” Each word tightened something inside him.

He realised nobody from his family or friends was there. Everyone who had gathered that day was from Katherine’s side. He felt like a stranger at his own wife’s wake.

He approached the table of beverages and saw Kat’s sister. She was wiping her nose with a paper towel, her face red and sunken. She didn’t notice Dan at first. Then she looked up.

Her sad mask shifted into anger. She turned and left without saying a word.

She didn’t need to.

She had been talking to Linda, Kat’s best friend, who turned to him.

“She’s going through a lot. Don’t take it personally.”

“That’s alright.”

“Dan.” She paused. “I know things were difficult between you and Kat at the end. But just so you know, she loved you. And that tragedy… it wasn’t your fault.”

She reached for his arm.

Dan recoiled.

“I know.”

He turned and rushed through the strangers, leaving his wife’s wake.

He needed a drink.

The kitchen clock marked 3:25 p.m. It was almost twenty-four hours since he had stormed out of the wake and relapsed. More than three days since Katherine took her last breath.

Dan couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten.

The house was drowned in darkness. Black and blue shadows crept up the walls. Even in the early afternoon, no light came through the drawn curtains.

Moving slowly through the house, he realised how exhausted he was. Absently, he placed two mugs in the coffee machine. It roared and spat out the hot, brown liquid.

A faint noise came from behind him.

He grabbed both mugs and turned towards the table, expecting to see Kat sitting there like every morning. The knot in his chest tightened.

He sat down and cried for the first time since her death.

He left the coffees untouched and poured himself a glass from the half-empty whiskey bottle instead. The liquid warmed his throat, filling his empty stomach. His tongue and hands went slightly numb.

Then he heard it. Somewhere distant. Contained. Faint, but clear.

Scratch.

Scratch.

He froze, listening.

It must have been the house. The pipes. The windows. The memory of Kat’s fingers, torn from scratching the tarmac, came vividly to him.

He closed his eyes.

Scratch.

He stood so quickly the chair banged against the floor. Then the doorbell rang.

He jumped.

Len was standing at the door, holding a food container with pasta in it.

“Hey, Dan—” He looked up. “Oh, God. Are you okay?”

“My wife just died, Len, so… no.”

“I mean, your face.” He pointed at Dan’s right cheek. Len tilted his small head to the left.

Dan thought it made him look like a rat. He touched where Len was pointing and felt a sting. He closed his eyes, grimacing.

Dan came up with something about falling down. He was sure Len could smell the alcohol on him. Falling was totally believable.

A memory came fast.

Katherine yelling.

Her hand flying towards him.

Slap.

The truck.

Scratch.

He looked over his shoulder, no longer listening to the little man talking at his doorstep.

Scratch.

“—after you left yesterday. We were worried. Margaret made this pasta for you.” He extended his arms with the food container.

Dan was still looking over his shoulder, at the dark corners of the house. He felt like someone was in there.

“Uhm, Dan…”

“Oh, yes. Thanks, Len.” He took the container. “I had a rough night, but I’m fine. Thanks for checking in.”

He stepped back, slowly closing the door.

“Say thanks to Margaret. I’ll clean this and bring it later.”

“Don’t you worry. Take care of yourself—” Dan closed the door and moved to the mirror in the hallway.

He barely recognised the person in the mirror. He looked more like a corpse than a forty-three-year-old man. He touched the wound on his cheek, red, swollen, and fresh. Did he really fall?

He left the food on the table and finished what whiskey was left. He heard it again.

“Fuck this.”

He wiped the alcohol from his mouth with the back of his hand and rushed to the bedroom. He opened the closet and got the wrench he kept close at hand in case someone broke in.

“You’re too silly. Who would want to break in?”

“Better safe than sorry, babe. You never know who’s out there. You’re too beautiful. Any man would break into any house for you.”

“That’s the weirdest way to be romantic I’ve ever heard.”

That day, it was sunny outside. She was ready to leave for work, wearing her favourite dress.

Dan stopped in place.

In front of him hung a row of clothes. Among them was the white floral dress. But that was impossible. He had been hugging that dress when he woke up. He turned towards the bed. A different dress lay there.

Not white.

Light blue.

He went back to the kitchen, listening closely for the sound. The alcohol had blurred his sight, but his hearing seemed sharper than ever. One hand slid along the walls while the other gripped the heavy wrench. He was certain someone was playing with him, feeding on his grief.

He stepped into the dark living room when he heard the sound behind him. He turned, stumbling into the coffee table. He growled and kicked it out of the way.

Scratch.

Dan put his ear to the wall. Maybe it was a rat tormenting him. He heard it, close. He slammed the wrench against the wall. Dust blew everywhere. The framed picture of their wedding fell to the ground, its glass cracked, distorting the beautiful memory of that day.

Scratch.

The sound was louder here, but he couldn’t pinpoint where it was coming from.

At the end of the hall, he could see the door to the garage.

The garage.

“We saw your garage door open and thought about checking on you…”

He darted through the hallway and slammed the garage door open.

Scratch. Scratch.

He stood in the middle of the room. Outside, the winter sun was setting. The street was bathed in the familiar dark-blue hue. The temperature was dropping fast. He was barefoot and almost naked. He closed the garage door and stood there in pitch-black darkness. Listening.

He heard it again. Louder. More intense.

He turned on the only lightbulb. His shadow moved across the walls. The red wrench hung heavy in his hand. He moved slowly towards a door at the back, a supply closet he had probably opened twice in twenty years.

Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.

He stood at the door. The sound stopped.

He lifted the wrench over his head, ready to bring it down on whatever was behind the door. With his free hand, he gripped the doorknob and pulled.

In the darkness, he could see a distorted, shivering shape. Unnaturally pale. Naked. Contorted.

A dirty foot.

A knee.

Two bloody, bound hands covering a face.

A crying, terrified face.

Her mouth was gagged with a rag.

Dan dropped the wrench. Its loud clatter made the woman recoil in the small closet.

“Kat, you’re home!” He knelt down. “I made coffee. C’mon, before it gets cold.”

The woman started sobbing.

The cold concrete beneath his feet and the dark blue of her eyes brought him back to the night he left Kat’s wake. The AA token was tight in his grip, a beer in his other hand.

For a moment, he considered standing up and going home.

To thine own self be true.

He left the pub, got in the car, and drove to the off-licence instead. With a bottle of whiskey in hand, he sat down on the bridge around the corner.

He looked into the woman’s eyes. The same dark blue as the river below the bridge. His feet dangled over the edge. The pain would never go away. He slipped closer to the edge when he saw her.

She was walking towards him, her blue dress blowing in the winter breeze.

She had come back to save him.

He moved quickly, almost falling, bottle in hand, rushing to meet her.

The moon shone bright.

He was almost crying.

He grabbed her.

“Oh my God, leave me alone!”

She slapped him, just like the last time, her fingers scratching his face.

This time he wouldn’t make the same mistake. He wouldn’t let her go.

Towards the street. Towards the truck.

This time she’d come home with him.

Alive.

Dan looked at the shivering woman, curled against the closet wall.

He locked eyes with hers. He saw her fear, anger, disgust.

His expression hardened.

She still didn’t understand.

His eyes moved to the scratches covering the inside of the closet door.

Then to her hands, bound tightly as they covered her face.

He heard it.

Scratch.

He froze.

Scratch.

Louder than before.

He looked at her hands.

They weren’t moving.

SCRATCH.