The Message

The sun was almost through setting and the sky looked like an eerie swirl of pink and blue cotton candy. The lush green trees reached up to pick at the clouds and fell over onto each other’s branch tips, then back up, and back over, with the wind. The air smelled as though it would rain soon, and so she decided to get up off the mossy grass, pack her bags, and go back home.
She walked toward her motorbike, gave the trunk a good pop open and replaced the helmet with her bag. She shook her long strings of hair away from her face and placed the helmet over her head. In one swift and fluent move, she swung her leg over the bike, turned it on, pushed it forward off of its kickstand, vroom-vroomed it going, and fled the scene. Her drive home was long and windy and thankfully not full of traffic. Luckily she knew the way home automatically since her mind was not on the road, but instead on the inevitable situation waiting for her at home. He would surely be there, on her answering machine, asking the question she would inevitably have to answer. He would know that she inevitably returned to her apartment tonight and that she would, in her obsessive manner, listen to her messages. He also knew that she would avoid his question, and his assumption of her delay gave him a sense of arrogant superiority; this infuriated her and assured a prompt response from her to him. It was because they both knew this complicated chain of events that she had to go home, listen to the message, and call him tonight.
She turned into her designated parking spot and paused in a confused state. “How did I get home?” she thought. She traced her path and realized she never consciously chose to turn left out of the park nor to make the second right after the stop sign. A couple of nerves danced wildly in her stomach at the realization that this sort of implicit homecoming was increasingly frequent. “Whatever,” she resolved. She walked into her building, up the three flights of stairs, and into her apartment. She reached up and pulled off her helmet, then sighed in frustration upon looking at it. “Seriously?” she said almost audibly. She was in no mood to go back downstairs and swap helmet for bag. The helmet was tossed onto the couch, so that it kept the bra, sweater, newspaper, and the seven frozen pudding popsicle wrappers company.
The rods in her eyes were sending blinking signals to her brain. She turned her head toward it. Her cones confirmed the red flashing light. She had 5 new messages. Her eyes rolled over into their sockets and she sighed loudly and obnoxiously, ending the sigh with a bit of an “aaarrrruuuuughhh”. She reached over and pressed play.
“You have five new messages.”
Beep!
“Message One. Friday, Eleven-O-Two AM.”
“Hi Andy, its Megan. I know you’re at work; just wanted to confirm tomorrow’s dinner plans and ask if we can maybe make it for a little bit later, like maybe 9ish? Let me know. Hope that works. Can’t wait to see you; its been too long!”
Beep!
“Message Two. Friday, One-Seventeen PM”
“Hi sister. Mom needs you to help out tomorrow with the garage sale so come over like at 9, Okay? It might help get your mind off things, you know. Think about it.”
Beep!
“Message Three. Friday, Three-Thirty-Three PM”
“uhhh Andy. Hey. Listen. Ummm. Look, I don’t really. Just let me know if you are going, okay? Because I’m buying the plane tickets now and if you don’t want to go then just… Look, you don’t have to go if you don’t really…”
Beep!
“Message Four. Friday, Three-Thirty-Six PM”
“uuuuh. Andy. Yeah well I got cut off. Ummm, you don’t have to go okay? I know you know. I mean, I know you know and I know that we are all independent human beings and of course you don’t have to go. I guess what I really…”
Beep!
“Message Five. Friday, Three-Forty PM”
“Aww fuck this Andy. Just fuck this. Just fucking tell me. Just let me know. Goodbye. Bye.”
Beep!

If there was any fear in her heart at this moment, it had more to do with her lack of visceral response to his obviously flustered and emotional current situation. The lack of response only highlighted how completely she had been avoiding this question and its corresponding answer. Her procrastination served as proof to what she did not want to admit and did not want to communicate. She wasn’t going to go. He was going to the funeral alone.

She picked up the phone and stared at it. She walked over to her couch and plopped on top of the newspaper and kicked the clothes off with her leg. Stretched out on the couch, she stared at the phone again. She took a breath so deep it made her cough. Then, she dialed.

“Finally.”
“Umm hello?”
“Hi Andy, I have caller ID. I’m glad you finally called me.”
“Oh, hey. What’s up?”
“Uhhh, yeah. So are you coming with me or not? I’m on Orbitz right now and am about to purchase the tickets. I can’t wait any longer. I’m sure I know the answer, but I’m asking anyway under the assumption that there is still some degree of humanity left inside of you.”
“Oh what the fuck, Carl. Humanity? Now this is about my human decency? Like this hasn’t been eating me up inside? I’m in a really tough position, you know? You don’t…”
“Tough position! Oh nice one. Tough position and you are telling this to me. She was my ex-wife Andy. The mother of my children.”
Don’t blow up. Don’t blow up. Don’t blow up.
“I know this, Carl. I was at your wedding. I know your children.”
Neither of them spoke for a few seconds. She closed her eyes and thought frantically of what to say. Finally, as she exhaled, the words came out of her mouth with her breath.
“Okay, I’ll be there. I personally think it will just make it worse for every…”
He cut her off. “Ok good. I just bought our tickets.” Apparently, his finger had been on the button of a pending two-person reservation.
“Fine. I still can’t believe this, Carl. How can we be there?”
“How can we not?”
“She killed herself.”
Silence.
She continued, “and it was because of us.”
“Don’t say that. It was not because of us. Don’t fucking put this on us, Andy. Don’t do it. She chose to do this.”
“Because of us.”
“Because of a lot of reasons, Andy. And you have known this for years. You and I knew her better than probably anybody else.”
“Carl, if we knew her better than anybody else, it was because we were her two closest…”
A solid ball of emotion wedged itself in her throat and she was unable to speak. Tears flowed down her cheek. She held her breath. The ball wedged itself further into her throat; she appreciated the pain.
“I love you, Andy.”
She wanted to tell him not to say that. She wanted to tell him that all of this was a mistake. That they should have never gotten together. That she didn’t love him this much.
“I love you, too, Carl.”
“We’ll talk later.”
“Later.”
“Bye, love.”
The ball in her throat made her gag.
“Bye.”
Click.

She returned the phone to its receiver and collapsed onto the couch, smacking the helmet toward the floor, making a crashing sound. She stared at the helmet for the next hour. When the hour was over, she slowly sat up and looked around her apartment. She got up off of the couch and walked over to the living room closet to retrieve her luggage bags. She dragged her largest bag to her bedroom, plopped it onto her bed, opened it and began to pack. When she filled her largest bag, she returned to the closet and dragged another bag over to her bedroom. She filled that one as well. She didn’t stop all night. When she ran out of bags, she drove to the corner liquor store and asked for empty boxes. She packed until she had nothing left to pack. She sat on her bed sans bedsheet and watched the sun rise through her window. Exhaustion tempted her, and she laid back and closed her eyes. She awoke four hours later with an excited jump and ran downstairs.

She got back on her motorbike and drove to the U-Haul station 30 minutes away. There, she asked about renting a moving truck.
“Where’s your destination?” asked the employee between sips of morning java.
She stared at him for a silent moment and began to laugh.
“What’s the difference?”
“In prices? I mean, it just depends. Where are you going?”
“Away.”
The employee was not amused. “Is it a one-way trip or are you returning.”
“One way”, she answered authoritatively.
“Well, do you need a whole truck or just a trailer or…”
“A moving truck.”
Suddenly she thought of truckers which made her think, for some reason unknown to her consciousness, of Pennsylvania.
“I am moving to Pennsylvania.”
“Okay, when?”
“Today.”
“Okay, well, you wanna rent it now?”
“Yes.” She was now answering all of his questions quickly.
“Okay then. Fill this out.”
Many minutes later, she loaded her motorbike onto the moving truck and drove back to her apartment.

By midnight, she was on the road.

do you mind placing this in TMR? I like it.

Glad you liiked it! What’s TMR? Yeah post it wherever you’d like.

Don’t believe in plagerizing. If you don’t mind posting it yourself. TMR stands for The Mental Revolution the ‘creative writing’ section is called Imperial Minds.

Oh right. DUH. Thanks, Smooth! Will do!