The Easy Life of Harry Mason

I relented. They had done a great job with her. During the actual viewing, she looked just like she was sleeping. I shied away, too afraid to even touch her hand. Maybe deep down I was thinking that she might still be warm. Ridiculous thinking, but who could blame me for that. I wasn't all there that day, or the day before, or the past forty-one hours I'd spent awake since her passing. It was Cheryl who kept me up, night and day, waking randomly whenever the time suited her, before crying herself to sleep again. Lucky girl. I was probably vaguely aware that my mind had begun to slip, but I guess I didn't care. I had no one to watch over me, and only our three-year-old to keep an eye on now. My wife was gone. Vaguely aware. The sun was shining. Breaking through the autumn leaves. Not a cloud in the sky, as luck would have it. A fine day for a funeral, and for my daughter to run back and forth through the headstones with the other kids. She wasn't. Was she holding my hand? I think she might have been, though I barely felt it. I wasn't all there that day, or the day before.

There was a service. Kind words were spoken. There were prayers and hymns. A bonding moment. We stood and watched her mother's casket being lowered into the freshly dug soil. All I could think about was how nice it would be to drop down and join her.

I made the adjustment. It just took a bit of time.

I clutched my face in my hands and heaved a shuddering sigh. She deserved to know, but it seemed as though I would never be ready. Deception combined with my own selfishness. I was afraid of what she would think of me. The unthinkable things... awful, terrible things. For my own sanity's sake, I had tried to forget it all. But the nightmares never truly went away.

Before I'm lost in death and oblivion.

The notes would tell her everything.

I had spent the better part of a year in a daze. My daughter had "vanished." Not dead, or missing in a classical sense. She was gone from me and from anywhere in this world. Unsure of who—or what—this baby could be, the terrible things crept their way into my grieving mind late at night. I was probably suffering from some form of post-traumatic stress. Understandable. Oh, but I could smother her in her crib while she slept, or snap her tiny little neck like a dry twig. The murder-suicide would be a hot outrage story in the papers the next day. What a terrible man. A pathetic excuse for a human being. What a monster. Good riddance.

I could be generous, too... and too often I fantasized about simply abandoning her out on the side of the highway. Leaving her for someone else to deal with.

Monster.

I slumped back against the locked door, sweaty and gasping for breath. Instinct had taken hold. I was to stay as far away as I could from this thing. The 'thing' being apparently a former member of the hospital staff. A man in a doctor's coat, wielding an over-sized medical instrument. He was carrying one of those parasites on his back; as if it would excuse him for his behavior.

Nope, that's not gonna do it.

The adrenaline had already begun to taper off, easing me back into a rotten mood.

My eyes refused to tear away from the pathetic sight. I hadn't quite finished him off, and my heart sank as he unleashed a long, guttural moan. My God how he twitched—but he wasn't getting back up anytime soon.

That was the hope, at any rate.

The pipe was still clenched in my hands. I relaxed my white knuckled grip on the slippery metal and tried to regain some sense of direction. I'd found a new room and another locked door. I kept my eyes on the doctor while reaching into my inner pocket for the hospital map, and left him in my peripheral vision while I read it.

"Medicine room..." I muttered.

The doctor let out mournful sigh, and his hand clawed in my direction.

"Yeah, sure it is," I said. I picked myself up from the floor and rubbed my sore right shoulder. Beating a creature to the brink of death takes its toll, and he hadn't been the first. Taking advantage of the moment, I checked myself over. I hadn't received any deep lacerations, but the sleeve of my jacket was sporting a new shred. I felt the tacky warmth of blood beneath it. It stung when I put pressure on it, but it was all superficial. I was doing "all right". Physically.

The map said that the examination room was just beyond this door, and beyond that the hallway leading to the exit. By chance I had picked up the key to it in that strange room in the basement. Perhaps someone had left it there for me. Increasingly, that's how things seemed to work around here.

Cheryl.

I had to find her.