Final Cut (4 page)

“I know. Don’t worry, I’ll be here. Besides I’m pretty sure that Teri would kick my tail if I didn’t come back here and see her every day. That girl is fierce.”

The doctor said goodbye and got the ball rolling on his release papers.

Bill was going home.

“HOMECOMING”

Bill could not believe that he was finally setting foot in his own house again. He was shocked to see how nicely his friends and neighbors had kept his lawn and that his house had been cleaned and dusted in his absence fairly regularly. It had even been aired out. Bill had walked into the place expecting it to smell like dust and mildew, but it was actually fresh and sweet smelling. Someone had taken the liberty of putting plug in air fresheners in all of the rooms and his place smelled wonderful because of it. Pumpkin was his favorite scent.

He was glad as hell to be back home.

“Welcome back, buddy!” Buzz said behind him carrying a suitcase and sitting it down beside the couch. He pretended to be super winded from the exertion. The man was still in great shape despite his football days long behind him. Some people stayed in perfect health and physical condition without doing any real physical exercise at all. Buzz was an accountant. He sat in an office and did payroll and crunched numbers all day. He knew the man did not do anything else when he got home except gaming and watching reality shows.

Bill staggered forward on his crutch wishing that he did not have the stupid thing in his hand, but he knew that the second he let go of it he would feel wobbly and probably fall down. It was insane what happened to someone after being in a coma. He had essentially had to relearn how to do everything all over again. It was weird and it made him feel like a baby half the time. It made him feel like a big baby when he was not able to do something basic that he had always done since he was a small child. He literally felt like he was two years old sometimes.

It was surreal being back in his house. It all looked exactly the way he had left it. He had spoken to his landlord and apparently his mother had paid his rent for the past few months that he was away. She was so certain that he was going to wake up soon. Just thinking about how much his mother had sacrificed for him in his life and how much she loved and believed in him was touching. It brought a tear to his eye every time he thought about it.

His legs began to feel like they were about to cramp up and he realized that he needed to rest quickly. It was aggravating how much work he still had ahead of him in his rehab. But it was nice knowing that he was going to be able to rest in his own bed at least and he truly felt that the combination of those two circumstances was going to aid in the speed of his recovery.

“Wow, it all looks pretty much the same, huh?” The voice of Andrew Wilson, his neighbor from three doors down came from behind him. He turned and shook Andrew’s hand, amazed that he was still able to turn somewhat comfortably.

Andrew and Bill had become fast friends when Bill first moved into the neighborhood. They hung out and had BBQ’s and watched football together while drinking enormous amounts of beer some weekends. Of course this was always on the weekends when Andrew’s wife Wendy went out of town with his kids to her mother’s for the weekend. This typically happened once and sometimes twice a month. It was hilarious to see how relieved Andrew was when his wife was gone. Bill knew the man loved his family, but it was easy to see that he required the occasional break. Maybe that was a part of being married? People had to get sick of being around each other all the time, didn’t they?

“Yea. I can’t thank everybody enough for keeping an eye on things for me. I would have counted me out and pulled the plug a few months ago,” Bill joked.

“Well, we have a bit more faith than you do,” Andrew said slapping Bill on the back and taking him by surprise. He thought for a moment he might fall over, but he did not show it. He was just glad to be around his good friend again. It felt like it was just yesterday, but somehow he felt as if he was meeting his friend again after being away for a good long while. Maybe it was just the reality of everything coming back to him all at once. Bill still had the occasional weird dream.

Andrew walked to the kitchen. “Hey, you want a beer? I think there are a few cold ones in the fridge. I didn’t drink them all!”

Bill laughed. “Yea, that sounds great.” He had not had a beer in three months and the sound of it was amazing.

“I’ll take one too!” Buzz said as Bill sat down on the couch and he joined him.

Bill was suddenly aware of just how tired he was. It was impossible to think about how much energy he did not have. Even after all of the physical therapy his whole body still felt like it was asleep most of the time. The doctor had told him that was normal and he would have to be patient until his strength returned to full normal.

He sat around with Buzz and Andrew for about another hour just shooting the shit and catching up on old times. It felt like a typical day in his life and Bill was feeling incredibly grateful to be alive after everything that had happened to him. He’d escaped the clutches of death and was damned lucky to be alive. He wanted to shout it from the rooftops how happy he was to still be walking the earth.

That was more than he could say for his sweet Nancy. He still thought of her often, but he had started to forget to think about her more and more he noticed. He did not forget her; he would never really be able to do that. But he was able to get interested in and distracted by other things more easily and then he would suddenly remember that he had forgotten to think about her for a while and this would be followed by a sense of loss and tremendous guilt that he had trouble shaking for a while. But this was becoming less and less frequent. That was the good news. That was part of the healing process he supposed. He had never really lost anyone that close to him and that combined with the physical struggles he was still dealing with were starting to wear on him a bit mentally.

But he had to stay strong and stay positive. That was the way his mother had shown him to be growing up. And of course he had so many great family and friends in his corner offering their never ending support. That was the key. He did not know where he would really be without them.

That night Bill had the weird dream for the first time.

He’d had no trouble really falling asleep. After watching several hours of television and catching up on some of his favorite shows on Netflix he found himself too drowsy to attempt the climb up the stairs with the walker and before he knew it he was sound asleep.

The dream began with him in a dark room. At first he had no idea where he was. There was just a little tiny stream of light coming through and he had to squint his tired eyes just to make his way through the darkness to see where he was going.

The first thing he really noticed was that he did not need the walker. He was moving on his own feet without any help or pain and his head did not contain the foggy element to it he had noticed since he woke up from the coma. It was like coming out of a painful fever that you struggled with until you passed out, but when you woke up seemingly a split second later you felt totally fine.

The air was dank and cool against his skin. It smelled musty and stale. It took him a few minutes to realize that he was in a basement. He thought he was alone. He did not see anyone or feel anyone else alone or close to him. The isolation was terrible and he wanted to scream. It was like he’d been dropped off the face of the earth and locked somewhere that no one would ever find him.

He knew that he was being punished for what he did. He was not careful enough with Nancy. It was his fault that Jake had discovered their illicit affair and it was his fault that she had killed herself. He would burn in hell for what he allowed to happen to his sweet Nancy.

How long had Jake known? How long had he studied them and possibly watched them making love to each other and being with one another? Was it just something he saw once and snapped or was it something that he carefully observed letting the rage build up inside of him until he was boiling over like a hot kettle?

Bill realized there were so many things about the situation that he just did not know. Jake was a disturbed man, that was for sure, but how much did Bill trigger his psychoses this time? How much of this was his fault?

He heard the whimpering just then. It was coming from the corner of the room. It was so dark that he could not see a foot in front of him and he found that he had to wave his arms back and forth to make sure he was not running into anything. He could feel his heart beating wildly in his chest and in a weird spot behind his eyes, like in the spring when his allergies acted up and his face felt like he’d been hit with a brick. For at least two weeks every April he had to combat the allergies that had plagued him since he was a boy. It was worse right at the beginning, but usually got better towards the end of May. Thank God for Bourbon was all he could say about that.

As Bill got closer to the sound in the corner it grew louder and the small sliver of light that was giving the entire room an ominous gray glow that allowed him just enough light to see a dark shadow of shape in the corner was getting dimmer. He could not figure out where the light was coming from. It was like he was walking inside of a room that had the lowest setting dimmer he had ever seen. It was not even on enough to register, but since he was in the room he could plainly see that something was happening.

It was Nancy. The shape in the corner was Nancy. That he was sure of. How had she arrived here? What the hell was going on?

“Nancy?” Bill called. His voice sounded raspy and unnatural to him. Where had that come from? He sounded more like… Jake than himself.

“Are you ok?” Bill asked. The voice once again sounded unmistakably like Jake’s. Nancy was obviously crying, her squeals the sound of pain. She was hurt. As Bill
squinted his eyes he tried to see what was wrong with her and he thought he was able to make out that she was bleeding. But he could not tell from where.

As he came closer he could clearly see the contrast of dark wetness that covered her hands against the backdrop of the slightly less darkness that was surrounding them.

He moved more quickly covering the distance between himself and Nancy in just a few seconds time. The thoughts of tripping and hurting himself over some unseen object in the way was behind him now. He had to see what was wrong with his sweet Nancy.

“Nancy!” Bill said as he reached out and touched her shoulder.

The entity that was Nancy turned and looked at him but it was his own face staring back at him. The face was screaming its head off as if it was about to be murdered.

Before Bill could even react to it he felt something thump him in the back of the head and everything went dark.

Bill woke up gasping for breath. He was aware that his clothes were soaked with sweat and the perspiration was pouring rapidly into his eyes, stinging his eyeballs. He wiped his brow furiously with his wet shirt and as his eyes adjusted they darted around the room trying to register where the hell he was.

He was on the couch in his living room. His television had gone into sleep mode as it did when he was streaming video but had not given it any commands for a while. The room was dark, but illuminated with the lights from the windows of his front door branching the light from his front porch as well as the lights of several appliances glowing brightly in the kitchen.

It was really quite peaceful. He loved to sit in this room and think in the semi-darkness. Bill had always hated full darkness, but semi-darkness he loved. Everything seemed more peaceful than they did under the glow of light, but it was still light enough to see everything around you.

“What the hell…” Bill said to himself as he grabbed the now warm beer off the TV tray beside him. He chugged it hard and then lay back to rest a moment.

What did the dream mean? Was it just a weird manifestation of the guilt he felt about what happened to Nancy? Was that all it was? He thought so. What else could it be? Bill rubbed his aching eyes and tried to erase the memory of that awful scream he had just heard. It would forever be entrenched on his psyche he feared.

The room felt freezing. He was suddenly aware that despite being covered in sweat he was now feeling cold and chilled to the bone. He had fallen asleep on the couch without any covers. The house could get quite chilly at night and he imagined that those who had been covering his bills in his absence had forgotten to turn the heat up to a respectable level.

Bill stood up gradually, trying not to use the cane any more than he had to. He was trying to wean himself off the walker and use the cane as much as possible, but sometimes he just did not feel steady enough and had to use the damn walker. The walker made him feel like some invalid whereas the cane allowed him to feel that he was trying at least.

He stretched his legs and walked down the hall to the linen closet. He grabbed his favorite fleece blanket off the top shelf and was turning to walk away when the small jewelry box landed at his feet. He stared at it for several seconds trying to remember where he had picked up a jewelry box. He had never been the type to wear jewelry, hell he hated even wearing a watch, but here was a small rectangular box that had just fallen out of the top of his linen closet.

Bill steadied himself against the door frame and with the aid of the cane he bent over and picked up the box. He was anxious to see what the hell was in it. He walked back to the couch where he intended to hopefully continue his sleep, although after that nightmare he probably would not sleep another wink tonight. He figured some more television might help as it often did on nights that he could not sleep.

He turned on the lamp beside the couch and sat down, spreading the blanket over him. He was already feeling warmer.

Bill opened up the small box to see what was inside.

He was now looking at a pair of human ears.