Icy Rent

It was always the same. No matter what Mark did, the images were still there. After two goddamn years, Mark couldn’t understand why he could not stop thinking about his cheating wife.

Every night when the lights went out, no matter how tired he might have been before climbing into bed, he always ended up lying wide awake beneath the covers. It had now become something of a ritual where sleep appeared to sidestep him until the early hours. Images of Nancy reached out towards him at these times, taking a firm grip on him like a cold dead hand reaching up from a dark open grave. The need to examine these images was like a drug to him. He hated these images just as much as he hated not being able to sleep. She had left Mark two years ago, and still, she haunted him. She drilled into his mind, dancing and swaying in front of his eyes. The way she had danced on their honeymoon, which now seemed so long ago. She spoke to him, too. Nancy’s voice was always as apparent to Mark as it had been two years ago when she’d told him she was seeing someone else. It all just made the night drag on through an endless slow twisting time, where dreams and reality were seamless and distorted.

Most nights, Mark would just lie there, restlessly, watching the images of Nancy dance in front of him. Then, as the first light of the sun poked its head through the window, he would finally drift away for a few hours, dreaming a dream of complete nothingness.

If the nights were terrible, then the days were even worse. When Mark opened his eyes to a new day, the light felt as if it burned. Yet, those images of Nancy dancing no longer floated in his mind. They fled as if frightened by the grim early light.

But, as he now laid in his bed, the daylight was still a few hours away. Mark scrambled from beneath the bedcovers as he had done every other night because it was always the same.

He kicked the covers off from his legs in a furious fit until they landed in a heaped mess on the floor. He sat up in bed, swinging his legs out and immediately grimaced as the absolute coldness touched his bare feet.

‘Cold,’ he spat frustratingly at the floorboards. ‘Why does everything have to be so cold in my life?’

Nancy had once been a certain comeliness to him. Her with the lips that had once felt like red-hot embers when they’d covered him with kisses. She had also had the talent to turn those hot kisses cool, comforting after a long day. But now, those days were gone.

Nancy, more gracious than anything the world could have ever given him, but those kisses had only been cold by the end. The heat from her lips had fled, and before long, the coolness had turned to freeze. Those rare times she kissed him, Mark would feel those cold lips touching his and think the words: Icy Rent.

She was no longer his by then; he had been borrowing her—or, at least, renting her. She had belonged to another by the end. She had even called out his name when Mark and she had made love.

Mark stood up from the bed and made his way down to the kitchen. There was no need for the light. He knew his way around the house fairly well after having walked it so often in the middle of the night. Besides, he didn’t need the bitterness of the overheads blazing into his eyes.

Grabbing his cigarettes and lighter from the kitchen table, he opened the back door and stepped out into the cold air. Immediately the winter air bit into him, causing gooseflesh to appear on his arms; his nipples to stiffen against his black shirt. This was another part of his nightly rituals, so it seemed – climbing out of bed so he could chain smoke beneath the stars.

Mark dragged a cigarette from the packet and lit it, shielding the flame from the wind with his hand. He pulled on the cigarette deeply, letting the burn play havoc as the smoke sailed down his throat and into his lungs. He turned his head up to the night sky, exhaling a plume of smoke into the already misty blackness. He could barely make out the stars tonight, hidden slightly behind the screen of mist floating between him and the small brilliance that was the universe.

Damn, it was cold but being out here in the night’s chill, beneath the mist was better than lying in the bedroom’s stillness, watching the dancing images of his estranged wife tease him. There was also something about the firm pillow that lay beside him in that bed, the way it seemed to mock him in a kind of scornful vile manner.

Two years and it felt like the light of life had somehow died inside him, like the final flame of a candle will die out when left to burn during the night down to nothing more than a stub.

He looked away from the mist-covered stars towards the rear of the backyard. In the darkness, Mark could just make out the small mound against the back fence.

Nancy had left him for another man. But this was the\ man Mark could not fight to win her back. He would have only lost. When he’d finally let her go, it had been because he’d known there was no winning her back from the arms of such a man. She had become his new Magdalena, and so he had let her be with him. There had been a strangeness about her affair with this other man, though. She had never tried to keep it a secret from him. Shit, she had screamed out his name when they’d made love!

What a bitch, he thought.

Nancy always told him where she was going every time she left the house.

‘Okay, I’m off now,’ she would say. ‘I shouldn’t be late, though. Are you sure you don’t want to come? It’ll be good for you, Mark.’

As Mark stood in the cold night air, remembering how she had said that to him, he uttered a spurt of laughter.

Are you sure you don’t want to come?

Had she asked him that, just before leaving to run off to her new lover’s bed? Oh, he was sure he did not want to go with her and see her new lover. She’d called out his name, goddamn it.

It’ll be good for you .

Yeah, as good as a sledgehammer to the head.

She knew all about the hammer to the head; he supposed and smiled.

What had she expected him to do? Go to her new lover’s house and sit in the car, twiddling his thumbs while she was in there getting… No, he wasn’t stupid. So, he never went with her, but the night he let her go to him, Mark had followed her.

He became aware he’d walked away from the spot on the front porch and was now looking down at the mound. He knelt beside it and placed his palm on the dirt.

He’d sat in his car a little up the street and watched her walk out of the building, staggering across the road, clutching that damn book her lover had given her to her breasts. And what else had he seen? Oh, you will not believe this, but as Mark had sat there, watching Nancy get into her car, he had also seen other women leaving the building and—damn—men were walking out of there. It was nothing but a goddamn sex orgy, and it seemed someone had invited the whole town, except Mark.

So that had been when he’d decided he would not play house puppy for her anymore. If she wanted this guy that badly then she could have him.

Mark had let Nancy’s car disappear out of sight before he’d pulled away from the curb after her. He drove home slowly. He was in no hurry. After he’d parked up in the garage, Mark had taken the hammer from his tool board in the garage. He went inside.

‘You’re with him now,’ Mark said to the mound. ‘And I suppose you think you’ve won?’ Turning his head towards the mist-covered sky, he said louder, ‘I suppose you both think you’ve won! You’re both probably up there looking down at me with great big shit-eating grins on your faces. Well, guess what? You haven’t won! I’m still here, and I’m still alive. I won; you bitch!’ But, as those words left his mouth, Mark knew he was lying to himself.

He stood from his kneeling position beside the mound. Mark wiped the dirt away from his hand on the seat of his boxer shorts. For the first time that night, he realised how cold his legs were. He’d forgotten to pull on pants before leaving the bedroom.

He had not won. He had given in to Nancy’s wants and needs, had let her go to him, and so he had not won. Mark had sent her to her lover with the hammer. He had made love to her one last time, feeling disgusted with himself because he’d known he had been there before him earlier that night. And she had screamed out his name! Then there was blood. There had been… so… much… blood.

He walked back inside, climbed back into bed, and the images danced again. He watched them, wallowing in his self-pity.

Morning came, and the daylight burned as he knew it would. Mark lay in bed, looking up at the ceiling, watching the cobwebs sway on the slight breeze of the burning light. He lay there, thinking about how he’d allowed Nancy to win. She might be only that mound of dirt out back near the fence now, but she had still won because he let her go to her lover and the guilt of that ate him up inside. He could not get her back, and if he had tried before the hammer incident, how do you win against such a man?

As the morning turned to afternoon and the afternoon light faded into darkness, Mark let the guilt eat him away as the dancing images came again. The dancing images of the woman who was no longer his, the woman who was now that other man’s Black Madonna—his Magdalena. And she had screamed… out… his… name.

Stained on his lips now was the other man’s name. Mark whispered that name over and over, letting it feed his guilt and spark his anger—a fury he knew he’d never be able to release because he could never get revenge on the man who stole his wife.

He whispered the man’s name, ‘Jesus… Jesus… Jesus…’

Jesus.