HELLO FEAR

This is the other piece co-written by Charity Vivi and me. She is a lady of exceptional talent and creativity whom I hope continues to write even after. 

He slumped at the door, head pounding. He’d drunk too much. His wife was shrieking at him again. His eyes shut, he tried to steady himself. His head throbbed harder. Maria went on; all the more incensed.

‘Look at you, drunk and dozing in my door way, ‘she burst out, ‘you’re useless!’

‘He staggered forward, shut the door, looked at her then leaned back against the wall. He would interject but saw no point to it. She never listened nor did she understand him. Not anymore. He’d fallen from grace and that was all that mattered.

Owen had had an awful month and this week was the crown jewel on it. His business portfolio had fallen out under him. His clients had either gone bankrupt or just shut down their accounts. The firm was ‘right sizing’ and he had been let go of. His clandestine affairs had glaringly come to light, and all else that could go wrong did.

He slid down the wall and sat on his haunches. Pain seared through him like spurts of lightening. He became aware that he was bleeding from his abdomen. Maria had not noticed. The bar fight had left him badly wounded. With any luck, this would be the end of his mysteries.

He was sure the nosey neighbours were keenly waiting for him to raise his voice too. Sadly, the script had changed. Maria had noticed the change too. She glowered at him. Her fiery eyes that he had fallen in love with. Their deep brown colour that seemed to hypnotize all. He smiled at how lovely she still was. She had caught his attention in university after she had barked at a lecturer for making a snide remark. Her fiery temper made most men cower at her sight. He had only spoken to her as a dare from his less courageous counterparts.

She stood in a blue dress, beautiful but formidable. She was a rare breed, a lady who commanded respect and attention. Her company was mostly ladies of mettle but none as impressive as her. She had told him off severally, but he was too scared of the embarrassment and enthralled in her beauty to give up. He persisted until finally she gave in.

He was drawn to the joy she gave him. The numerous times he said,

‘My beauty, you make me happy.’

‘You had better keep me happy,’ she kidded.

He strove if only to impress her, but love like headlights depend on a battery and his was waning lately. They spent more time apart, and when together, tempers were short. Then came the drinking, the partying and all that characterized the slippery slope. Now he was at the bottom of it all.   

‘What are smiling at, you fool?’ she growled.

‘Your beauty dear, I am sorry I never took the time to appreciate it,’ he said soothingly.

‘You’re not squeezing your way out of this one. No, you’re not,’ she rebuffed wagging her finger and shaking her head, eyes closed.

He felt himself drift off slowly, he was getting light headed. The shards of glass were making themselves effectively felt. Owen was seated in a pool of blood, his brown suit now a strange hue of red, so was the blue shirt. Maria noticed it with a start. Her scream served more to ignite curiosity than to cause alarm among her bigoted neighbours. The came rushing, expecting to spectate as the fight was underway. Owen half mumbled something before drifting off.

‘You did this, didn’t you?’ accused a neighbour

She screamed at Owen to wake up while the neighbours came up with comic speculations that were too fantastic. Only one had dialled the emergency services. By the time the police and paramedics arrived, there was pandemonium. They had to whisk Maria away before the angry mob descended on her. Owen mumbled how much he loved her and how sorry he was. He’d been sedated and wheeled away on a stretcher. The medics worried about his chances.

Owen was slipping from this reality to the next. He felt complicated at that time and much worse. He felt raw, as if he was being dismantled by the good lord down to his bare essentials. The good old Owen stood before himself. Unlike some, whose lives flash before their eyes, he only had time to cry.

‘Listen to me Owen, don’t lose my voice. Okay?’ Kent, the medic attending to him said as he studied his heart rate on the B.P. monitor. Kent was doing his best to stay afloat in his own panic. Not that he knew Owen and neither had he seen him before but the fact that he kept saying, ‘Maria, I’ m sorry…’ made his heart ache for him. At this point he hated his job because it stipulated that he had to rescue those too afraid to step into hades, though half of them deserved it. He was human, he didn’t ask permission to be, and he just was. Owen was human too, and was slowly sinking down the drain.

‘Owen, you’re doing great, you’ll get through this,’ Kent counselled

‘Is this the end?’ he asked cryptically. God knew he was scared to the core.

Owen was scared that one plus one was always two that a man reapeth what he soweth. He felt in himself that he sowed a lot of fear. Fear from every side even in his own wife. He had heard that even though a sinner, god loved it when a dying man gave up the fight. Not only would the man stop running from the truth, but also gently offered the white towel down on a bended knee; for man knew too well to ‘throw in the white towel’ to the great one. At this point, Owen was at the end of his road, he was giving up. He looked at the monitor at his side and vaguely wished that just as the pulse portrayed itself as a curve rising from one end to another, his battery which was slowly waning would have power to send Maria some sort of message. A curve saying ‘I-love-you’ and if that would not suffice he would send a straight line to her saying ‘I am sorry’ even though he knew that the monitor would not show such. That meant he was dying. As he stared in to that green glow, Owen newton III felt empty and the last thing he remembered thinking was, ‘hello fear, it has been a while.’

***

It was yet another night and Maria was staring blankly at the moon, she saw a shooting star and thought off Owen. She was running away from the fragility of her own passion and she didn’t know what she was looking or even what she’d find. She had been dumb since Owen was taken away in an ambulance and she herself to the police station. The policemen, she remembered, had been brain washed by the neighbours, they wouldn’t let her speak. As she sat in the corner of her cell crying, she felt tired of being tired. Every once in a while constable Luroe, being one of her neighbours, came and beat the daylight out of her. He also made insane accusations refusing to believe that she had nothing to do with Owen’s stabbing.

She wanted Owen so bad that she would have carved him out of the mattress she slept on just so she could touch him. Owen was the brighter definition of ambiguous. He confused her and she would die just looking at him and trying to decipher him. Every time he said ‘hey, love I’m headed to work. Take care of yourself for me, will you?’ it felt like an antacid that revealed the pain of an ever burning feeling of inadequacy. Inadequacy back at work, with her friends and even with her family. She felt the room getting bigger and she getting smaller. No words would have the magic to take the sting out of her emotions. Owen was the only one who broke down every wall she had built. Even though things were shaky now, he was the only one who understood what it meant to be her.

Pain, it splattered tear drops on her blouse and she wished her blood would turn into alcohol, inebriate her, make her drowsy and forget it all. She was thinking, ‘maybe I should let go.’ She pawned herself out and the pawn broker demanded for her wedding ring just in case she wouldn’t come back to hold up her end. As she crept out of the prison cell, most of her stayed behind with the wedding ring, ‘in situ’ and not willing to let it go. She was currently a suspect to a case she could not even comprehend. ‘What’s happening to me?’ she asked between sobs.

Maria was always inquisitive from the day her father left and her mother stopped caring. Not to say that her mother did not bother with her affairs. She was just unable to care after Maria’s father walked out on her. With love, she’d learnt that it takes a whole lot of medication to realize what they had as husband and wife. They did not have it anymore. not only had Maria's mother died a short while earlier, she had gone with whatever semblance of love that Maria had  known all her life. She  knew that as much as she hated herself,she loved her daughter and did not whisked of the face of the earth like so many others. Her mother was a tormented soul, always afraid of things  she could not understand, even love itself.
On that uneventful day that she took a gallon of bleaching agent carefully mixed with pesticide, she wrote a note, "Do not let my daughter know I took my own life, keep her safe." That was a throwback through time. unfortunately  for Maria, the ghosts her mother had tried to keep veiled from her were creeping out of the shadows. Maria was atop times tower, ready tell the suckers by and leap for glory. the height above people level was scary, so scary she couldn't count one, two, three jump. she felt like an eraser always trying to fix mistakes  and wasting away slowly, unable to leave her mark on society.
Owen was on the otherside as the sky light split in two, miles away, unable to see her or slap the senses back into her and bring her to reality. She lost her grip on reality and was ready to hit the wall to confirm it was solid. She was lost.
"If you were here Owen, I swear I wouldn't go this far...They're everywhere looking for me, saying that I killed you!" she broke down and let the warm tears gash down her cheeks. Maria felt timeless, she had camouflaged into insanity and for what it was worth, she spread her arms and shut her eyes for a moment. She leaned forward but before she started to tip over she had a voice behind her.
' Please stop. come on its not worth it,' he spoke.
'You dont know me, so stop talking to me, " she gnarled back at him.
 "Then tell me your name miss..." he implored
This was not what she had in mind. She just wanted to end it all and this man in uniform was not helping"
'My name is Maria, Maria Newton ....