“You okay there?”
That night.She couldn’t remember that night!
The images were blurry, dissipating when she touched upon them.
All she remembered was the yelling and the crying.
The anger.
The violence.
And the red, red blood.
“Hey, you okay?”
Mark’s voice interrupted her thoughts and she realised that she was crying. Salty tears were trailing down her pale cheeks, and dripping off the edge of her jaw.
“I, yes, I’m fine thank you.” She put the coffee down and wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand, smudging the tears away. “Sorry, I…” her words trailed off.
“Did I say something wrong again? I’m like that. I just say the first thing that comes into my head.” He rummaged in his pocket and pulled out a fresh tissue before handing it to her. “It’s clean.”
“Thank you.” Delores took it and wiped away the rest of the tears. “No, it’s not you.”
Her headache had returned even worse than previously. She’d slipped one of the bottles of aspirin into her purse, and she took it out now. She opened it up and swallowed down two tablets quickly without a drink to wash them down with. They weren’t as dry as the other ones, leaving a much milder taste in her mouth. Still tasted like crap though, she sighed again.
“Do you ever think that things are meant to happen for a reason?” Mark’s voice pierced her thoughts again.
“No,” she said quietly still dabbing at her eyes.
He took a long swallow of the coffee and gagged. “No? I don’t think that anyone has ever said no to that question before. Not to me anyway. Most people think that there is a reaction for every action and that it’s like a piece of string being pulled and twisted. I think there’s a name for it, but it eludes me now. Do you know what I mean? Am I even making sense?” He looked at her, his forehead scrunching in concentration.
“No, Mark, you’re not,” she replied.
“Really?” He jumped down from the table and stood in front of her, his eyes wide with wonder like a child on Christmas morning. “What do you believe then? This is fascinating.” He smiled warmly, ignoring the sadness that crept across her face. “Because I truly think that we’re meant to meet certain people in this life, and we can try and alter our course—our destiny—but it will always end up back on track, to where we were supposed to go.” He used his left hand to wipe the hair back from his face. “And I believe that we all have a destiny. We are all supposed to do something in this life. Something good, something bad, it doesn’t really matter. It’s all part and parcel; one and the same thing. What it’s really about is existing, about being in the moment, and affecting things. The simple push and pull of life.”
Mark stared at her, his dark lashes casting shadows down his face, and Delores looked away self-consciously.
“What do you believe?” he asked, his words rushed, his voice pitched higher in his eagerness. “You must believe in something.”
“I believe that, that…,” her voice raised an octave too, self-pity rearing its ugly head likes hives on her skin. Delores swallowed, the lump in her throat getting bigger and bigger, the tears threatening to trail hot blazes down her face again.
‘You’re nothing, Del. You’re less than nothing.’
“I don’t know what I believe anymore. Things are so much more complicated than I ever thought they could be.”
The ghosts of memories whispered too her. Her head buzzed, a thousand thoughts trying to escape all at once. ‘Let me out’, they cried, ‘let me out.’ She needed to take her meds, she knew, but instead she was saving them. They hadn’t helped make sense of the world for a while now anyway, so what did it really matter? These last few days wouldn’t be made any better by them, she knew that for certain. She closed her eyes, warding off the frenzy of too many thoughts and too many feelings. But it was no good. Resistance was futile, as the saying goes.
‘What did you do?’
Her breath caught in her throat and she gagged, her chest tightening, restricting the air in and out of her.
‘You’re evil, Del.’
“Hey, hey, calm down, just breathe!”
She shook her head, the thoughts clattering inside her skull like marbles.
‘Mama!’
