savidb0r

Hanging On

It was a new day. Of pain. Another restless night had passed in the cold bed he shared with his wife. She was still sleeping when he got out of bed and went downstairs. He made himself some toast and butter in the kitchen and then sat in the den to watch the morning news and prepare for another day. It was June 11th, 2001. He was 53 years old and had been married for 21 of those years. He rubbed his eyes. He was so tired. Soon, he dozed off to the monotonous voice of the morning news anchor.

“Jeff!” the voice shocked him awake. “Jeff, where are you? The kids need breakfast!” The imperial voice of his wife had woken from its slumber. Yawning, he turned off the television and went to the kitchen. There he made eggs and bagels for two of his children who would be running down the stairs soon. The first to arrive was Joanne, his youngest daughter.

“Where’s my egg? Give me my eggs!” she demanded. He sighed. Another day. Joanne looked at her eggs. “Dad! I don’t like them like this! Why did you make them gross? Mom!” Jeff braced himself for the inevitable.

“Jeff, Cant you even make them breakfast without fucking up?” Once more he sighed and then looked up as a little blonde boy, seven years old, ran into the room. He kissed his father and took his eggs to the den to watch the television.

“FRANK, I WAS HERE FIRST!” he heard being shouted from the den. Like mother like daughter. He cleaned up the kitchen in time to see his wife come down the stairs in her running suit. She was going for her morning jog. Two hours of bliss.

Frank and Joanne soon finished their breakfast and went outside to play with the neighborhood children. He knew that his day had yet to begin. She would be back and the constant screaming, shouting, bickering, and berating would continue as it always did; every day of every months, for years past. He was so tired. He wanted to sleep. He wanted some peace and quiet. While the children were occupied and his wife was out, he went down to the basement.

The basement was quiet with the exception of the stairs creaking under his feet. His eldest daughter, Lee, slept in a basement room, behind the curtain at the bottom of the stairs. She was fast asleep. He past the curtain and turned to walk through the storage room, past the bathroom, and finally beyond the food shelves to the far corner of the basement where his tools and the work table were. The table had four drawers. The rope was three drawers down. It was already cut to the right length. He had been thinking about this for a long time. Maybe today.

With his electric drill, Jeff made a hole on the top of the inside door frame. In the hole he screwed an eye-bolt. Putting the drill away, he went back upstairs to the kitchen. There he got a cup and poured himself some Manishevitz wine. It tasted bitter. He smirked. While washing the cup, Frank, his youngest son, came in through the back door. “Dad, can I have some lemonade please?” Jeff smiled and patted his son on the head.

“Sure Frank,” he said. Frank went back outside and Jeff went back down into the basement to find some lemonade, but when he came to the shelves of food, he couldn’t help but turn his head to the workroom. He forgot about the lemonade and walked over to his work table. The rope was still there. Using a stool, he tied the rope to the eye-bolt, and then started tying the other end into a noose. He had learned how to tie a noose on a website. His son, Eric, had caught him looking, but not before he learned the knot. While he was finishing the noose, his glasses fell off. The world went blurry. Jeff got down off the stool, ran up the stairs, and then up another flight. His older sons’ door was open. Joseph, his eldest son was asleep, but Eric was in bed reading. “Eric, can you help me find my glasses? I dropped them in the basement,” he asked. Eric put his book down.

“Sure dad. Oh, and can you take me to the library at 12:00?”

“Okay,” said Jeff. He wasn’t sure if he meant it though. If I am still here, he thought to himself. He went back down to the basement ahead of his son who was pulling on his pants. On the floor back in the workroom, something was reflecting brightly. His glasses. He picked them up and put them on just as Eric showed up across the basement from him. “It’s okay Eric, I found them.” His son shrugged and went back upstairs. He was alone. He looked at the rope. He hoped Joseph and Eric would be okay. He had protected them as long as he could, but he thought would be fine. At seventeen and nineteen they had become masters of avoiding and ignoring their mother, something he could not do. He hoped Frank would be okay, but he had brothers to take care of him. Today is the day. Slowly he climbed onto the stool and placed the noose around his neck. His glasses he removed and put safely on the work table. They were three hundred dollar prescription glasses and he didn’t want them to break.

He took a deep breath. It was time. He stepped off the stool. The rope tightened around his neck. He could not breathe. There was pain and fear. He heard a snap, and the pain went away. He did not feel the wetness that stained the front of his shorts. His vision blinked and sparkled and then went out. Peace and quiet.

She came home soon after, screaming for him angrily, but he could not hear her. She kept screaming until Eric went to the basement to warn his father of the mother’s wrath. It was then Eric screaming, shouting for his mother to come. He tried to lift his hanging father, but he also needed to cut him down. He took a wire cutter off the work table with his right hand, and with his left, he lifted his fathers body. His arm would be sore for days. The body fell to the ground, but he caught the head and laid it down gently. His mother still had not come, but his sister, Lee, did. She began CPR. She shouted for their mother, who at her daughters voice, finally came. She saw her husband’s body and two of her children around it. She could not speak. Finally, he had his peace and quiet.

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-Robert Davis
http://www.savidbor.com