Real Novel Chapter Four

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Chapter Four

Darkness. Darkness then light. Darkness then light then darkness (again). It was as if he were in an Edgar Allan Poe poem- the depressing, oppressive atmosphere weighed on his fatigued shoulders. Man, they ached.

Carlo found himself lying on the floor of his decrepit apartment. Inu lay in one corner, curled up and sullen, waiting for Carlo to take him out. A damp, yellow urine stain on the floor near where Carlo lay. A toppled wheelchair lay desolately behind his head. Light pierced through cracks in the blinds and made the dust in the room shimmer. A discarded syringe lay near Carlo's left arm, its needle catching the light and gleaming at him, a reminder of his addiction.

Carlo dragged himself to the toppled wheelchair and righted it. He tried climbing in but his arms seemed to lack the ability to lift him up. The chemical had the effect of conferring on its abuser an illusion of strength and power, but its true effect was just the opposite. Carlos lost his grip on the wheelchair and slumped in a heap on the filthy linoleum. He swore again before everything went black.

The House. Carlo hadn't thought about the house in years. Years. The house where so many memories lay hidden, and half-hidden. A labyrinth of hidden thoughts, harsh and unforgiving. Few knew what had happened there in Carlo's childhood. He never talked about it, and nobody dared ask. Carlo was a menacing man even when he was in a good mood. Whatever it was, it had irreversibly hardened him, shaped him into the man he was today. "Toughened" him up, Carlo would have said.

Who knows?

"Inu, the prints. Will you bring me the prints?" His speech was slurred, he couldn't think why.

Inu gave Carlo a look that Carlo called his "why should I?" look, before heading away and lying down again in the corner of the room, which seemed to be an impossibly long way away. Carlo shrugged, dragged himself over to the cupboard. Throwing open the doors he started to rummage through his rugged Sea-Sailor's Set. It was ancient and falling apart. The stitches that once held it together were worn and holes had started to appear in it. He found the shoe-box containing the near complete blue prints that his father and he had labored hard on that summer many years ago. The summer before his father was called away to Europe.

He smiled. Inu was an intelligent animal, but this was a little complex even for the Great Dane's abilities.

Liz had never cared for Inu, but it was mutual. They barely tolerated each other. She also hated "the house". The house. She couldn't see that it was their dream, the place where they'd finally be happy together. He hated her for it. He loved her for it. The tension of opposites haunts all of our lives, he thought. But he hated her more than he loved her. She wasn't much of a wife. Married too young he would think; but that was no excuse for what she did. He accused her of screwing every man she could find behind his back. She claimed she wasn't - of course she would - but she was a lousy wife, according to Carlo at least. She even screwed Big Tony, also according to Carlo.

These days Carlo's face writhed in pure hatred whenever mere mention of her was raised in conversation. In her experience he was an insensitive lout, who used his disability to excuse his behavior. He ignored her anyway, no matter what she said, what she did.

The tension of opposites indeed. She had been a part of his life, and he couldn't imagine what his life would have been like if he had not met her. Well he could, and it wouldn't have been good. He hated to admit it, but he knew that that was the truth of it.

"I remember this one." He held to the light the print his father fondly named 'Lost Paradise' and remembered the time he himself was in paradise with Liz; it seemed a long time ago, before the drudgery of their life together, and the print itself seemed insubstantial, almost ethereal. He could hardly believe that he was holding it in his hand.

Carlo was sure he could smell the stiff ink in its tin. He could feel the roughly ripped cotton rags that took him back to that time he and Liz lay together on sheets down in Mexico after he sketched her for the very first time. She had the hair of a supermodel, the demeanor of an angel and she was his, long legs and all. Making love to her had been the best thing in the world.

That day he had held her hair between his fingers. Now he preferred to hold Inu's shaggy matted hair in his hands. Her hair had lost its warmth to him, just like her heart.

With a sigh, Carlo looked down at his long-suffering pet. Inu was a strangely indistinct brown blur in the corner. Carlo tried to focus. "Was I really as bad as all that, Inu? Did I really deserve all that anger? All those things she said?"

He thought back over the all years and all the promises he had broken. "What?" he said, as Inu gazed back at him with an impassive stare. "Don't look at me like that. I bought her flowers. I gave her chocolates," panic sounding in his voice, "I said I was SORRY!"

Inu barked. Carlo looked up, tears in his eyes; his face red and beaded with sweat. For a brief second he had seen her again as she used to be. Long hair, long legs, and that warm smile on her face. Liz kissing him and saying "I love you"...before the meds, before the accident...

The accident. Carlo smelt the burning. It was burning, and dear God, he couldn't get out.

And then a loud bang shattered his thoughts. Lights. Lights and darkness. Voices around him, none familiar. None. He was brought back into painful, lucid reality. Reality, where his legs hung uselessly once again.

"What the hell is he on about? Who's 'Inu'?" the doctor asked the EMT that had brought Carlo in, struggling to keep pace with Carlo's gurney as it ploughed through the swinging doors and onwards, deeper into the hospital.

"Search me, doc" the bemused woman replied, keeping the IV drip attached to Carlo's twitching arms aloft. "But I can definitely tell you he's hopped up pretty good on something."

"Something, something, sumpthin, sumptin". The word triggered a reaction in Carlo's mind. Back and forth, in and out, the word ticked away as Carlo laid helplessly listening to his mind bat the word against the pitted wall of his memory, waiting for the relentless echo of it to fade. Like a ping-pong ball bouncing aimlessly. A glimpse, then a flash out of the corner of his mind's eye. He had almost remembered, just as the word was fading away to silence. He tried desperately to hold the feeling, hoping against hope that by doing so the memory would come. The word echoed one last time, barely audibly. Then, with it, the feeling of the memory vanished, leaving him a void of sadness.

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