Imminent Arrival

I stood, transfixed by the stars, my gaze resting on an unspecified point somewhere between the Little Dipper and Orion. I knew the direction as well as I knew the back of my hand, and soon the world would look in that same direction and scream in their naive terror as they faced the last day of their lives. I didn’t feel my wives hand on my shoulder until she spoke to me.

"Darling, come inside. Charles has made a fire and we’re all in the living room deprived of your presence." She said and smiled the warm curve that always graced her face when she looked at me. The smile I fell in love with, and the same smile that determined my mind to get out of that wicked asylum.

She had stayed with me through it all, I think she always felt somewhat guilty for being the one to commit me. No one could have blamed her though, when I couldn’t make anyone understand, when I exhausted all my resources and only managed to make myself into a laughing stalk, when I lost my job, my respect and my dignity, truly for a spell I did go mad. I could only pace the floor for hours, belligerent and unable to be consoled. What else could she have done?

I took her hand into mine, broken from my trance for the time being.

"Ok, after you" I said and smiled. The smile was real in my love for her, but forced all the same, the reality was too bitter to bring my lips to express joy.

She led us into her brothers house, a quaint country cottage large enough to accommodate two families comfortably. We had lived here ever since my release from the hospital some two years prior. Charles F. Morgan, an affable man, and likely the only other man on earth that loved Emily as much as me. I sat down on the living room sofa, Emily beside me, and nodded to Charles as I took the drink he offered me.

"Gin and water for you sir, just as you like it" he said.

"Thank you"

"Brisk night, isn’t it Dennis?" he said.

"Oh, well, yes I suppose." I replied.

"Yet, you never seem to mind, it’s never quite cold enough to break you from your nightly ritual of star gazing is it old man?"

"Well, I imagine I’m just set in my ways" I said with a casual smile, knowing what he so subtly hinted at. "You know how age will do that to the best of us."

"Right, right, well at any rate, here’s to age, present and still to come" he said and lifted his drink.

I lifted mine and we shared our toast, such a mockery it seemed, the arbitrary rituals of the soon to be extinct. The gin tasted good however, it went down like the soothing painkiller I came to know it as. I leaned back in the sofa as Emily locked her arms around mine and we enjoyed the evening fire. My sister in law and Charles wife, Sophia, came in shortly after and we all shared another winters eve in the valley of the dammed.

Sometime around 9:30 that evening I became anxious, the alcohol had set in and while not drunk, I was feeling confined. I continuously worked my hands in a compulsive fashion and had broken into a sweat.

"Dennis, tell me what’s wrong, I only want to help." said Emily, her face shaded with serious concern.

"Nothing, nothings wrong, I… I just need to be outside right now, I’m, well… I’m feeling cooped up, you know how I get."