The knock on the door came as an unpleasant surprise. It was quite disrespectful to interrupt a man mourning his late wife and half-drowning in a bottle of scotch. The young man on the front porch appeared no older than twenty-five, dressed neatly in a black business suit, well-built and spoke formally, without the slight hint of expression.
“Mr. Travis Pates, my sincerest condolences to you and your family. I know that nothing can take away the grief you must be feeling, but I hope this eases your troubles if only just a little.” He held out an envelope.
“What is this?” Travis grunted.
“You and your late wife’s generosity towards the community haven’t gone unnoticed. The company I work for wishes to send their deepest regrets and hopes that this will ease your troubles.”
Travis took the envelope. “How do you know my wife?”
“I regretfully have never met your wife personally. My employers said she was a generous investor.”
“Investor? We didn’t have any money, in case you haven’t noticed the house your standing in front of.”
“You have a beautiful home, Mr. Pates.”
“Yeah, it’s the fucking Ritz.” Travis took the envelope and the man nodded.
“Goodbye, Mr. Pates.”
Travis shut the door without a word. He took the envelope with him into the kitchen and sat down at the table with his drink in front of him then tore it open.
Inside was a simple spreadsheet listing the names of businesses all relating to Rebecca. Funeral arrangements, medical bills, even his antibiotics after the accident—all paid for by Omni Tech, a company Travis had never heard of until now.
How much had she invested? Was she wealthier than Travis realized? Why didn’t she tell him? The questions whirled in his head. Rebecca was a wonderful lady, a loving wife, and daughter, but neither of them was special with a profound impact on anyone outside of Bridgeport. At least that’s what he believed, but she must’ve been keeping something from him, why else would this company pay all their medical bills? What was his wife hiding?
He felt reluctant to be grateful towards their generosity, but knowing they had been provided for was a significant release of financial burden.
The days leading up to the funeral came and went like a haze with no clear memories at all. Before the accident, he drank his Scotch in moderation, usually in the living room beside Rebecca who spent her evenings sketching in her notebook. Afterward, he’d finish his glass and rinse it in the sink before leaving it on a towel to dry. During those dreamlike days and lonely evenings afterward, he sat at the kitchen table and, unsure of what to do with himself alone in the quite house, dishes piling in the sink and a wretched odor rising from the garbage, he had polished off the entire bottle by nearly six o’clock and was ready to open another. He didn’t care about alcohol poisoning and figured if he happened to drink himself to death, then so be it.
Travis and Rebecca’s family juggled finances and responsibilities for the arrangements. Dying was expensive and Bridgeport was poor. Her father, Alan Johnson, was as torn up about her death as Travis, and for a short while, Rebecca’s mother was practically catatonic. It was Rebecca’s younger sister, Shiloh, who stepped in and kept correspondence with the paramedics, dealt with the medical examiner and the grim responsibilities at the funeral parlor. Travis had spent the morning vomiting when he learned it would be a closed casket ceremony. He didn’t need to ask why, his imagination was an asshole, and when he couldn’t prevent the gruesome image of his loving, cheerful wife in a broken, dismembered heap of meat and bloody flesh, he ran to the back porch and purged all over the steps and into the grass. There hadn’t been any solid food in his stomach for days, just liquor, so it burned like hell and he wondered how he hadn’t yet died of alcohol poisoning.
He lost nearly fifteen pounds in ten days from consuming only alcohol and hardly anything but. Death had taken away his wife and his appetite. Now he only thirsted for bourbon.
Travis was shit faced when some of the boys on his team showed up with six pizzas and two grocery bags filled with expensive liquors and two more cases of beer three days after the funeral. He hadn’t eaten a meal in a week by then and still the thought of food made him want to wretch. The house was a disgusting mess and the overfilled garbage can spilled its contents on the floor, which wasn’t much more than paper towels, leftovers from the last meal he and Rebecca ate, and about a dozen empty bottles of bourbon. They had taken out the garbage almost immediately for him, turned the television onto the hockey game, Travis didn’t remember who was playing at the time, but Travis and his colleagues pounded the drinks and smoked cigars until the early morning hours. It was just before sunset when a couple of the guys found him in a crying fit and puking over the backyard railing. He couldn’t remember who had rubbed his back until there was nothing more to puke up, but almost immediately he felt soberer, which wasn’t a good feeling at the time. The drinking allowed him to expunge his emotions, a cathartic experience. Nathan Andrews, a tall and lanky bearded man—the Charlie’s explosive expert with long, narrow fingers tossed him a beer which Travis used to rinse out his mouth. He gargled and spat several times and chugged the last half of the beer. Nathan passed him another one.
Santiago Delgado, the Bravo’s communications expert, an immigrant from Argentina offered each of them fine cigars. Lean-faced with thick, well-groomed dark stubble and straight eyebrows over eyes that glowed a wolf-like yellow, Santiago looked like a centerfold model and was the source of distraction for the female officers, two of the males, and envy from everyone else.
As they smoked cigars they raised their beers in Rebecca’s memory. It was a sight to see, a bunch of drunk military men, some half-naked and fully hammered, bawling their eyes out in each other’s arms.
“When you’re hurting, we’re all hurting,” Santiago told him. The other men tipped their glasses again.
The rest of the night was spent in high spirits, laughing and sharing their favorite stories about Rebecca. Jonah Sedgewick, the chief medical officer for the Bravo team was an attractive short man, about the same height as Danko, and weighed no more than one hundred and forty pounds, practically just bones and skin with intricate and faded tattoos over his arms, chest, back and some on his legs. He looked like a hipster with his goatee and a handlebar mustache and a curly crop of hair neatly greased and parted at the side. He told his favorite story about Rebecca with the slightest hint of a northwest country accent, a beer in one hand, his dick of enviable size in the other as he urinated over a fern in the back yard, and a burning cigar wedged between his lips.
It was at the air show festival in Aberdeen back when Travis and Rebecca were still considered newlyweds. Jonah and a former Alpha member were the two pilots offering sky tours in the helicopter for four hundred dollars and Rebecca must’ve looked pretty official in her own jeans and camo shirt because, as she was chatting with Jonah, a father and his two sons approached them and proceeded to ask them when they planned on taking off. Before Jonah had a chance to explain that Rebecca wasn’t a pilot she quickly answered, “That depends on Pilot number 2 right here”—gesturing to Jonah— “as he blacked out last time and it appears that his heart condition is worsening.”
Travis didn’t get a chance to see the expression on the father’s face but from the stories they shared later he was sorry to have missed it.
“Should he even be flying with his heart condition?” the father of the two boys asked.
Without even a smile, and completely serious, Rebecca explained that the rapid decent engages the reverse rotor system and brings the craft relatively safely to the ground. At the very worst passengers may experience back injuries.
This was about the time that Travis had tuned in to their conversation and couldn’t help but to grin. He was aware Rebecca had a strange sense of humor, and her delivery made it even better.
The father of the two boys had his mouth open and his eyes darted from side to side in disbelief at their blasé demeano
r. He then yanked the kids away yelling at her over his shoulder, threatening to get the police involved. To say the least, he was a little irate and when he was out of sight, they burst into laughter.
Eventually, things settled down around three in the morning and Santiago had passed out drunk and naked on the couch, Travis in very much the same state except in the bathtub, while Jonah and a couple of the other guys piled in the bed. When they had all left later that day the empty feeling which had briefly dissipated in the company of his friends had returned, and the leftover bottles of liquor and cans of beer were his only company. That was the night the nightmares came.
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Twitter: @LKScott1
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Works by L.K. SCOTT
Novels
Massacre’ade Party
Nightmare Eve
She Tried the Window
Evilution
Short Stories
Snoflower
Murder After Sunset
The Spider and the Fly
Frozen Charlotte
Heretic
End Transmission
Violin
Cyclone Sally
Anthologies
Another Place
3 Minutes to Midnight (Coming Soon)
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