Postictal

Golden light filtered through bent blinds, sending shadows twisting across the room. Stripes of light and dark fell on a hunched man reading on stained grey couch, shaggy hair concealing his eyes and a free hand alternating between scratching a pen in a notebook and a finger in his beard. He wore loose grey pajama pants and lacked a shirt, exposing a tattoo of a Greek cross on a skinny torso whose skin stretched thin over his ribs. He continued his scratching as the mantel clock ticked, becoming slightly tenser as each minute passed before sighing and closing his books while slouching back. He stared with dead eyes at the setting sun, and remained motionless until the phone beside him chimed. Languidly he checked it and, sighing again, drew himself up. He kicked plastic bags and styrofoam boxes aside, making his way into a kitchen where a stained slow cooker sat.

He unplugged the cooker and, with two forks, pulled at the pork shoulder in it, scooping pieces of meat and onion onto a plastic plate. This finished, he pulled at a refrigerator door covered in sticky notes and squatted, considering his options. Within lay two bottles of cheap beer, half a can of Coke, and an empty water pitcher. He pulled out a beer and pulled the top off, setting it and his plate on the table. He sat and began to eat.

Flecks of pork juice spattered the mail covering the table, staining insurance bills and welfare checks as he ate quickly and dispassionately, pausing only to drink deeply from his bottle. The pork had not tasted the same since they had taken Claire, but it brought her memory to his mind all the same. His phone chimed again and he pushed his plate to the side, taking another sip as he reached into the sea of mail and grabbed a letter at random, tearing it open. The water bill, now sixty days overdue. He set it aside and grabbed another. Car insurance. Another. Electricity. Gas. Phone. He tapped his phone and opened the calculator, summing the payments, then checked his account balance. He only had a third of what he needed, and he set his phone aside, mentally debating which bill to pay this month. Hazy arguments drifted; the water was the most overdue, but he needed his car to work, but then again, winter was coming and he needed his heater to function, and so on down the line.

The last swig of beer went down and filled his chest with a sharp warmth, and he swept the bills aside, flinging the bottle and shattering it against a dented wall, then swore loudly as he stood up and kicked the table over, paper fluttering onto the dirty floor. His wife, his fucking wife had left him in some shitty trailer with a mind full of fog and without a penny to his name, then had the gall to bill him anyway for "therapy." Never mind that he was barely hanging onto a job mopping floors at Mickey D's and had to pawn all the shit she'd bought to decorate the place just to get through the first couple months after she'd left, before he'd been clear to drive again and had found someone desperate enough to hire him after years stuck at home.

The anger receded and he ran his hand through his hair. That wasn't fair. The men she had left with didn't look to friendly, and at the time he had shuddered to wonder what might have brought a couple of brawny men in suits to their door. The economics of their household had never been right, but he'd never asked her what she did to keep the two of them going for so long. He heaved the table back up, kicking envelopes aside, and pulled another two pieces of paper out of a kitchen drawer, before grabbing his phone from where it had fallen, ignoring the cracks spiderwebbing the screen. He tapped and swiped before putting it on the counter as the smooth tones of Ella Fitzgerald began to float into the air. He sat back down and stared at the first sheet. The Fraktur blurred before his eyes, but the large "Marriage Certificate" above the state seal was readable enough. He saw glimpses of their wedding day; her parents crying with joy, his stone-faced but approving, rows of Claire's friends applauding and a handful of his throwing attaboys his way. They wouldn't have known, of course, that it was a second wedding. They still didn't, as far as he knew. His parents had reached out to him to express their sorrow when word had reached them of Claire's absence, and an old pal from college had sent a few dollars his way to keep him going, but there was never a mention of anything else.

He pushed the marriage certificate aside and gazed upon the bloodstained paper that was his and Claire's true covenant. In Claire's hand were the vows they made that first night, and below their mixed blood had soaked the paper brown. Many times he had felt the urge, as he did now, to rip it apart and burn it, to do to her as she had done to him. Yet every time he stayed his hand. She had left, she had crippled him,she had slaughtered the man he once was, but she was still his wife and he had made an oath. Til death did they part and both were yet to die. But she had parted with him, had she not? Or would she return as she once did, her absence just a slightly longer workday.

He shook his head. Unlikely.

He wandered back into the now-dark living room, watching the final rays of the sun disappear below the horizon before he heard a chime from the kitchen. The bottles were different now, which made him feel better about medicating. His wedding ring lay in a drawer somewhere, seal still intact even though the pills within were worse than useless, and sometimes to gaze upon it was enough to soothe the guilt that rose within him while he choked down two grams of anticonvulsants. Sometimes.

He pulled a dark green bottle from the freezer and poured the dark, thick liquid into a plastic cup. The smell of licorice disguised the bitterness of the Keppra, and the wave of ethanol on his tongue was enough to excise it completely. He picked his phone up again and stared at the clock. Still too early to sleep.

He drained the rest of the liquor and felt warmth again, along with a resolve to do something. The boredom of the afternoon weighed on him, Fichte's words sinkers on his every hair, but they flew off as he strode into the front hall, throwing on a dark green hoodie and grabbing his keys from the hook on the wall. A drive would do. A quick one, an easy cruise there and back. He had left his phone in the kitchen, but he didn't care, pounding down the steps and throwing open the door of the Camry. The engine coughed to life and strained as he stamped on the throttle to spin around towards the road. He cranked the radio up and staccato kicks pounded through the speakers, shaking the car as he shifted it into gear and peeled out onto the road, speeding past the evergreens and into the dusk.