Read All is Lost: A Tale of Disappointment in 3 Acts Page 2

Act Two

  In the car on the way home, Sam's phone buzzed in the cup holder. He looked down to see that it was Wife. He slid the green bar to answer the call. Sam could hear panting and moaning and quickly realized that he was listening to the neighbor thrusting into his wife.

  The phone must have been underneath his wife because he could hear the rubbing on some fabric of some sort in between moans and holy exclamations. Listening to the sounds of Wife's unfaithfulness did not affect Sam so much as it made him feel responsible for it. He ended the call and set his phone down. He would let his wife finish her fucking before heading home. That seemed the most respectful thing to do.

  He picked his phone back up while he sat at the red light in the turn around. Sam called Child 1. He answered with an explanation of why he wasn't in school, but Sam cut him off. He told Child 1 that he didn't give a shit that he was at the arcade, and that he was on his way to see him. Sam suggested that they could play Arch Rivals together like old times. Child 1 informed him that that game had been gone for a while and that he did not have any interest in seeing Sam or playing any games with him. Child 1 laughed, called Sam a prick, and ended the call.

  Sam was feeling somewhat forsaken, but decided to drive to the bar that Child 2 had checked in at. He drove there and hesitated for a second in the parking lot. This bar in this neighborhood reminded him of his own younger days. He may have closed this bar a few times in his prime. Those were the days. Sam was feeling nostalgic as he walked through the propped-open door of the bar.

  His daughter was seated on a barstool with one hand holding a drink and the other running through the long hair of a twenty-something-year-old piece-of-shit guy seated next to her. He was taking a drink from his beer and glaring at Sam as he walked up behind her. She turned just before Sam was about to reach his hand out to her, looked mildly surprised, and grunted. Her left hand stayed entwined in the dirty long hair. With her right hand, she held up the drink and smiled at her dad. She had no interest in explaining why she was here, and not in school, as Child 1 had started doing on the phone. She just stared and smiled while she drank from her glass. Some odd mumbling came from the hair seated next to her, and she made a remark about Sam being her dad. They were both drunk.

  Sam stared at the two of them sitting there at the bar. He could not think of one thing to say. On the way here, he pictured picking up his little girl and squeezing her to let her know how much he loved her, but the girl he was looking at now was nothing like he imagined she still was. Child 1 asked Sam what the fuck he was staring at, and that was all it took to push him that little bit that he needed to be pushed. He looked at the bartender and then at the rest of the people in the bar. His little girl was a part of this shit world now.

  From the moaning that Sam could still hear and feel inside, the shadow emerged into the room. Sam could feel it come from somewhere deep inside his broken soul. It was the moaning for man that he had been hearing since the fire started in his office. The shadow moved swiftly through the bar and mutilated everything in its path. The bar was a silent, swirling cloud of blood and hair and gristle and bone. Mouths were open in fear and screaming in pain, but there was no sound coming from them. The silence continued until everything was dead, then the chanting began again as the shadow settled back into Sam.

  Sam figured that the neighbor was probably done playing with his wife, and it was safe to return home. He decided to stop at the arcade just to see if there was any hope left in Child 2.

  When he arrived, he remembered being at the arcade when he was younger. Sam asked himself two questions: 'Did nothing change in this town?' and 'Would this sadness eventually happen to everyone else, or just him?'

  He walked into the arcade and found Child 2 shooting zombies with a plastic rifle. Sam watched for a few minutes, then tapped him on the shoulder. Child 2 jumped and turned to face his dad. In a moment, the dream of connecting to his young son was crushed. Sam saw that the life was already gone from his eyes; the innocence lost. Child 2 pushed Sam and told him to fuck off. He turned back around to the game and continued to shoot zombies. Sam had no choice in the matter. As soon as Child 2 turned around, the shadow was on him. Again, guilt was very far away as Sam watched the shadow tear and rip through the teenagers at the arcade. The calm silence was there again, as it had been at the bar, and muted screams were left unheard.

  At one point, Sam saw the shadow's gaping, inhuman mouth opening and closing over the flesh of its victims. He thought of a lion eating, then about the lion sleeping after having devoured an antelope, and hoped that the shadow would have enough energy to do what needed to be done when he got to his house. The chanting began again, and another part of Sam's torture was gone.

  With the shadow safely back inside, Sam drove home. He could feel that the shadow was tired from the killing but also excited to be changing the face of the world that it did not belong to. Or, did it?

  Sam was starting to feel an old freedom return to his soul. There was just one person holding him back from being free to live the way he wanted to live. His intention of forgiving Wife was replaced with a need for her to disappear forever. But first, he would pay a visit to his neighbor.