Page 3 of One More Chance
All the things I thought were permanent? Profit margins, business deals, my own sense of control? They meant nothing when our fluid-filled lungs collapsed from the onslaught of broken, damaged alveoli due to the danger in the air. So many deaths.
Regardless, I knew what to do. Fuck, things would be different.Iwould be different.
Fuck me, I need a drink.
Angie’s foul taste and my own vomit still lingered on my tongue, sour and sticky, and I wanted to cleanse myself of her. I'd remove her memory from my very being if I could.
I stopped at the store and grabbed some clothes, a toothbrush, toothpaste, a bottle of water, and mints. Anything to feel clean again. As I was checking out, a rose bin sat next to me, its bright bouquets a contradiction to the rising storm inside of me.
Hesitantly I grabbed some; the sickly sweet flowers were a bitter contrast to what I’d done. Should I pick up a ring? No, that felt too ominous and negligent to the pain Sloane was enduring right now.
Standing in the parking lot, I brushed my teeth like a man possessed, gargling the taste of Angie away before popping several mints in my mouth. I rinsed my genitals in a brutal scrub, wishing I could peel the skin off and be done with it all. Had anyone tried to castrate themselves before? I was tempted to try.
After changing clothes, my finger scrolled relentlessly through old text chains, trying to piece together where I stood in this new life. My heart bled as I read the messages, each one a grim reminder of how far I'd fallen.
It seemed I’d taken a few days off to move, abandoning Sloane to juggle everything on her own. The kids. The chaos. The endless demands. I’d left her to carry the weight while I disappeared into my selfish spiral.
My last message to her was a cold, dismissive,“Whatever,”when she’d asked if I could spend some time with the kids and saying they missed me. I didn’t even remember sending a response in my previous life much less this one... but there it was, my indifference staring back at me, like a branded scar.
Fuck, the Old Me is a complete asshole.
Hands trembling, I pulled up the photos from my phone. To my dismay, Angie's perky breasts were the most recent ones, bile threatening to take over again as I began to delete the mistake.
Then I saw it. My family. Little snapshots of the kids and of Sloane. My breath hitched as I stared at her youthful appearance, etching every line into my memory of her.
In my previous life, age had worn her down, leaving the mature woman I had grown to love and respect; fine lines added to a masterpiece on a perfect canvas.
In those photos, in this new life, she looked exquisite. It was as if Aphrodite herself had descended to sculpt every perfect curve andevery beautiful flaw. There was still that quiet, unconditional kindness in her eyes, a quality I loved her for that transcended my two lifetimes.
Seeing her shattered me. I broke down, sobbing into the steering wheel, my whole body heaving as her photo lit up my phone screen. I kissed it, desperate, reverent, like a priest kissing a cross, as if it could bring me absolution as I whispered her name. She was my beginning, my middle, and whatever was left of this fucked up life I was trying to salvage.
Everything felt so alien and all so familiar. It was hard to grasp, comprehend, much less make coherent decisions but I was trying. I wanted to fix my mistake from twelve years ago, in a reality that was only a few hours old to me.
It took hours and the ghost of years' worth of therapy to steady my breathing. This time I would be devout. I would worship the very air she breathed and kiss her feet. These things I vowed to myself as I stared at her photo, time standing still before I truly felt like I could move on from her image.
The next step of my rebranding was my truck. I tore through it like I was trying to erase Angie from existence, scrubbing every trace of her from my life, as if I could will her away.
First, the trash went: empty condom wrappers, receipts for overpriced dinners I'd never even enjoyed, an empty beer bottle, fuck, all the crap that had piled up over time. Then, I dug deeper, pulling out anything that could remind me of her, the stupid little trinkets I'd bought to keep the lie alive, to keep her thinking she mattered more than she ever did. I threw it all away with a savage sense of urgency, each discarded piece a small victory in my fight to reclaim whatever was left of myself.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, the thought crept up, cold and detached: I needed to schedule a vasectomy. A permanent cut to make sure there was no chance I could ever fuck up again. No more mistakes. Fuck that future, and fuck the mess I'd made.
After I scrubbed the truck clean, I left the AC running, trying to fend off the suffocating humidity already creeping into the morning air. The truck hummed softly as I stared at the trash bag in the passenger seat. My hands still felt contaminated. No matter how much I scrubbed, the weight in my chest remained, suffocating. Nothing I did could wipe away the filth clinging to me. I exhaled a long, disgusted breath.
As I stood there listening to the soft, almost imperceptible hum of the radio, memories resurfaced with dizzying force, unwanted and invasive. The world outside blurred, like the edges of a nightmare creeping closer as my brain recalled what was to come. The chaos. The instability. The madness. Soon the world would collapse under its own weight and the fear of the impending pandemic crawled under my skin.
My hands clung to the truck door for balance, grounding myself even as cold sweat slicked my skin. I had to be smart. The world was going to crack wide open and before it did, I needed to be ready to profit off the collapse. I recalled the handful of companies that would bleed us dry during the impending pandemic, the ones that would explode from obscurity to become household names in the coming decade.
I climbed back into the truck with purpose. Plans swarmed my mind as I took the long way home, dragging out the drive. I pulled into a gas station, tossing the trash into a rusted bin while the pump clicked behind me.
I needed to steady my pulse before I walked through the door to my home. I couldn't barge in like some frothing madman, consumed by the knowledge of a horrific virus and the near societal collapse it would trigger.
Though, maybe I should? Hell, if nothing else it'll get me in the door.
Instead, I pulled into the driveway, practicing deep breathing exercises as my eyes caught the glint of Sloane's SUV parked in the garage. My heart sped up.
Well fuck, no amount of breathing exercises can help me right now.
I caught sight of other things I never noticed in my previous life. My daughter's little hand-drawn monsters littering the pavement, their crayon colored chalk faded but somehow still bright, standing out against the cold, gray concrete. Water guns lay discarded in the corner of the front yard, forgotten remnants of summer play, and a painful reminder of childhood innocence.
