The Tiger, The Pool, and The Chill of Death

The tiger peered with its black beads. It spoke comforts that fell to nothing. Henry did not care. He preferred it to the pit in the walls. Outside did nothing either. In here, the heat beating on his meaty shoulders, it was cool.

Then she came in. The door opened wide and creaky. He was gone then. The talking stopped. The air was let in, and his light was snuffed.

“In here again?” Jessie said.

Perhaps she felt the dream of the garage too. All feel it. Not in there, exactly, but everyone has one like it. Though everyone feels it, not all can let it in. Their sobering spaces speak a different whisper.

“You’ve got a call, dear.”

Henry held the tiger. The pleas from his throat broke into near wails in the wide grey. Jessie could not understand this embrace. How could she? How could anyone? He thought he had told her everything. There was something else, though. It never left with her, or the house, or Misty. It merely gave him a few paces more.

“I can’t keep answering these for you.”

“Can’t, or won’t?” Henry says.

“What keeps you in this crummy garage, anyhow? It’s so hot.”

“So is upstairs.”

Jessie swung the door back and forth beside her. The creaks begged at Henry. Nothing Jessie touched did anything but that anymore.

“Why don’t you cool off? Let’s go to the pool.”

“The pool…”

Henry thought back to all that time ago. He cried, a small spot in the wide blue. His mother drifted to him and held him. She told Henry it would be alright. She never asked him what he was crying about. He didn’t know himself then. Now he did.

“Hobble will get wet.”

“What makes you think he’d be coming?” Jessie pointed to Hobble, seated limp on the chair.

“I’ve always brought him.”

“Listen to me. This has–”

“I’ll answer the phone. Please just go.”

“No, you ain’t shelving me this time. I’m thinking you ain’t gonna shelve that therapy either.”

“I’m not depressed.”

“Look at the way you carry on. I hear you breathing at night.”

“It’s not that bad.”

“It sounds like you’re about to cough your heart up to your throat.”

“I can’t control what my body does.”

“There are things you can control about it.”

“Cancer, too?”

“We’ve done the tests for you, you’re fine.”

Jessie walked forward, circling around Henry. She threw Hobble aside–locking on Henry’s wandering face.

“This is not some disease around here, Henry.” She gestured at his body.

Henry couldn’t be bothered to smack her away this time.

“You’re not getting him back. He won’t help you.”

“He has been my friend for a long time.”

“He’s a stuffed animal.”

“You know he’s more to me.”

Jessie groaned.

“Of course I do, Henry.”

“Then let me have him back.”

“If I give him to you, will you talk to me about this? All these garage trips? Go back to therapy? Do something with me?”

“I watch streaming with you.”

“More involved, Henry.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Why? Why are you slipping?”

“It feels better…”

“Christ, better than what?”

“No, my head. It feels better, really. I just need a few more minutes here, with Hobble.”

Jessie sighed. She turned to Hobble. He was breathing and alive to Henry. Over the time, Henry’s breathing tears seeped inside the fluff and gave him a will, love, and ears within the drooping shapes atop his dome.

He couldn’t have it, not anymore. Was he causing this? Would it do anything to take him? A therapist would know…but then, the last one–

“Henry, what is missing? You have a steady collection of writing: what you dreamed of having. We provide enough to keep us going. I’m happy. We’ve had several vacations together.”

“Misty, for one.”

“Oh, Misty…”

Jessie had never seen Henry so glistening since the days she roamed their halls. Her big ears, the way her tail wagged at the slightest hint of a foot, foreign or not, her barks of excitement that used to drive Henry up a wall.

“I told you, we could always get–”

“It won’t be the same.”

“Just because it’s not Misty, doesn’t mean they won’t–”

“It’s not that.”

“Then what? What is wrong, please…talk to me.”

“What for?”

“What do you mean what for?” Jessie said.

“My writing is not successful.”

“You’re published. Your work is out there. Isn’t that all you’ve wanted?”

“Yeah, I thought so.”

“You want a best-seller?”

“...I don’t know.”

“Don’t know what?”

“I don’t know what it would do.”

“Yes, yes, you don’t want to lose yourself to that fame. That’s why I thought–”

“My chest burns.”

“--you were content with just people reading your stuff.”

“I thought I was.”

“What happened?”

“I’ve hit a slump.”

“Slump? Love, I’ve seen you in a slump, this isn’t it.”

“I had that one…lasted a year.”

“That was a slump.”

“What do you want from me?”

“I want you, Henry. Here. You’re not here.”

“Talk to Hobble.”

Jessie felt around behind her, grabbing Hobble by his brown crusted chest. She waved him in front of Henry. The toy drive, the shelter, that Christmas week. All those nice kids. The closest Henry got to considering children.

“He’s a relic. A toy.”

“You know–”

“He’s more, I know. You used to be–” Jessie bit her lip.

“I used to be what? Be more, too?”

“I didn’t mean it that way, just, God, what is going on?”

Jessie slapped Hobble by his chin. “He can’t speak and breathe, Henry. You know that.”

“He can and he does. Always will.”

“Look at him, I’d give him a couple more years left.”

The smile on Hobble’s face had drooped. His fur was coated with grime, sweat, snot, dirt. The once beaming orange and black across his back was beaten to the shade of rot.

“He’s all I have.”

“All you have?” Jessie threw Hobble in Henry’s face, he bounced to the floor. “Me? Your mom? Your dad? Your sister?”

“No, I didn’t…I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Then what, baby? What? Please…”

“I…can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I shouldn’t be like this. Everyone else…”

“Henry–you need help. Let it out to me. I’m here.”

“You shouldn’t be. He’s here. I’m here, I am.”

“I want to believe that, baby.”

“Why can’t you?”

“Henry, you’ve left that tiger up standing in your office. It was cute. I knew how much it meant to you, and I let it up there. Now, you have it with you in this damn garage for hours at a time. When you come up, it’s like a ghost is in the house.”

“Maybe I am one.”

“Henry–I don’t know what you’re afraid of, but you need to let this out. I can’t keep this up.”

“This is mine to bear.”

“You’ve bore a lot with me and so many others, Henry. This I can’t let you do alone.”

“Why? You’ve done it before.”

“You were here, you were you.”

“I am still me, fuck, just please…”

Henry clutched his chest. He felt his eyes burning. Everything was coming in. Hobble couldn’t hold it. Now, the grey of the garage felt splintering into shadow. The shadow he felt with Mom that night in the pool.

“Henry! Baby! Are you okay? I can get a doctor.”

“I’m fine, I’m fine. Go, go upstairs. I’ll get the phone. I’ll go to the pool with you. I’ll do whatever you need, just let me have Hobble. I want Hobble back. I need him.”

Henry reached a hand out to Hobble on the floor. Jessie snatched him up. Henry’s hand smacked on the cement floor–a silent note among the steady purring of the fridge and pipes above.

“Why do you need him?”

“He…he won’t….he won’t leave me.”

Henry clenched his mouth, hiding it with one hand. His face bounced despair. His chest was tight.

The image came again. That haunting idea of nothing. Everything around suddenly gone: never been at all. Your body, your memory, all a blip on a TV that flips by. The world not a world at all. A dream he was alive for, meant to be mockingly soaking up, just for it to stop. That was what hit him all those years ago in the pool.

He didn’t care about his memory, it was the presence; life. It was everything. There would be no more of it. Yet, somehow, it kept on. It couldn’t; why would he be here, why would anybody be, with all these passions and thoughts and hopes, just to blip away?

Jessie held him, tighter than she ever had. It hit her too. Though she also felt something else. She felt him. His heartbeats are inflating. The skin's sagging. His muscles tensed. It was still him.

“I love you, Henry. I love you so much. Stay with me, baby. Always.”

Henry couldn’t hold it in. Everything came out with that simple “I”. Then after, she couldn’t hold it in either. They leaked all over in a sweaty pile, the world stopped.

“Are you real, Jessie? Tell me this is real. Just tell me it’s real.”

Jessie nodded like a bobblehead on a dashboard rolling down the freeway. They could each bear no more words. Why waste any more breath, when that embrace, that touch of the here, could hold the cosmos still.

Hobble watched the hug with the same blank bead stare as ever. It was alive, but never as Henry wanted. Not like he held in childhood, filled with dreams of the forever powerful–shrouded. That shroud has grown past him–leaving him a relic of a past assurance. Though he wouldn’t go as quick as his Misty, his mother, his father, Jessie, they spoke, they held, they loved him; spat in the face of the dark like nothing ever could before…or since.