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la-appel-du-vide · 4 years

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02•19•20 - QUEENSTOWN

This morning was a crazy one. We woke up later than planned, and by the time we left for the airport, we were supposed to already be there. And THEN the TRAFFIC. We hit rush hour completely, and were in a line of cars five miles long. Insta-stressed. We waited, and waited, and waited, and we were convinced we’d miss the flight. We moved 10 feet in 20 minutes. There was an empty lane to the left of us, that said “Transit Lane – T3 from 6:30 AM-10:00 AM” and we weren’t sure what it meant, but we decided to risk it and assume it was a carpool lane, so we took it. We FLEW past all of the traffic, and were on the freeway in a matter of minutes. Cut our drive time to the airport down from 32 minutes to like 14. Come to find out later, that was definitely against the law. T3 means you have to have at least 3 people in your car to use that lane. Oops. It was an honest, risky, mistake. But it was honestly the only thing that saved us making that flight.

We didn’t even have time to refuel our rental car, so we had to drop it off knowing we’d have to pay a bunch extra for gas as a result. But it was either that, or miss the flight. You do what you gotta do! Turns out, this whole car rental has been a nightmare. A couple days later, we were charged $667 for this dumb car. We tried to ask the Budget office in Queenstown what had gone wrong, as we were quoted somewhere around $450, and realized we had ZERO paperwork from Budget Auckland to prove there was even a contract. They didn’t offer us paperwork, they didn’t email us paperwork…. So frustrating. And they spent almost an hour looking for the rental in their system before they eventually found it. What a waste of time and money. We are going to try and dispute the insane charges, but we’re doubtful it will get better. UGH. PSA – Rent your cars super far in advance, from refutable companies, and GET ALL THE PAPERWORK. TAKE LICENSE PLATE PHOTOS. SO. DONE.

Flying into Queenstown – it looked absolutely beautiful!! So green, so many mountains, shining lakes… little did I know that this would become my favorite city of the entire trip. We landed and picked up our final rental car, and walked out into the fresh Queenstown air. As happy as I was to be there, my stomach was also a bit in knots, because this was BUNGY DAY. I’d been denial about bungy jumping the entire trip, and kept pushing the thought of it into the back of my mind during this day as well.

We weren’t able to check into our Airbnb early, or even drop off our stuff, so we just had to take it with us downtown. We parked and started walking through the cute streets, looking for a place to have lunch. It reminded me so much of Park City, but bigger, and with a gorgeous body of water (not sure if it’s a lake or the ocean or what, but regardless…. Stunning). We had some churros, and ate lunch at one of the 200 restaurant options in the area. And then… it was go time.

So here’s the thing – I also thought I would never bungy jump hahaha. But when you’re in New Zealand, home of the original commercial bungy jump, and home of bungy jumping in general, you just have to do it. We drove 20 minutes up to the Kawarau Bridge, where commercial bungy jumping was started on the bridge after it was closed to traffic. It was the perfect day to do it – I SUPPOSE – because the sun was shining, the water below was the most beautiful of blue, and there were large crowds watching and cheering everybody on.

It’s not that I’m afraid of heights, they’re really fine by me, but more the concept of going head-first that had me hesitant to do it. So I took it in steps. Booked the jump a few months back, but hey! That doesn’t mean I have to go through with it. Drove to the bridge, but hey again! Still don’t have to do it! Got checked it – but could still back out. Got the equipment on – doesn’t mean I have to jump! You get the point. I was in denial up until the point I flung myself from the platform. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

We got there about an hour early, and since they’re so busy, we just had to wait it out. We sat out on the viewing deck, watching people jump one after another. Ironically, watching them jump made me less nervous. It looked fun – once you get yourself off the platform! The best part was watching the old people do it! I knew that if they could be that brave – so could I hahaha. The record age is 91!! Wow.

When we checked in, they had to check our weight so many times – which is comforting to know that they want to be certain they have everything right to keep you safe. I wanted to go first, so that I’d have Beach with me up at the top for encouragement. I was way more nervous than she was. The problem was, they ended up splitting us up at the top anyway into two separate lines, so I couldn’t even talk to her if I wanted to! Rude. (; Another problem, I had to tuck my shirt into my bra so that I didn’t flash everyone while I was falling haha. Not exactly the look I was going for, but better than the alternative (;

When it was my turn, they had me sit down so they could wrap the towels and harness around my ankles. It was tight, and I was freaking out, but trying to stay calm. The guy in front of me was absolutely freaking out, but they were able to talk him through it and get him to jump. They said he was the 113th jumper that day, making me the 115th, and that no one had had any problems, and we would be just fine. That’s also comforting. He also told me only about 1% of people end up backing out at the last second, and I knew I couldn’t be one of those people.

He asked if I wanted to do a water touch and I said yes. He gave me two choices: A – he goes conservative and I might touch the water or I might not or B – he makes sure I touch the water, but there’s a chance my whole head goes in too. For some crazy reason, I chose B. Who am I?!?

Then I stood up, and shuffled my way over to the edge, trying to stay cool and collected – but yeah, I was freaking out hahaha. He counted down from five, told me to keep my chin down and my arms up, and then told me to jump. I’m honestly shocked that I jumped at the first count of five. I never do that. I think I just wanted the anxiety to be OVER. But I was brave, and there I went.

WHAT AN ADRENALINE RUSH. I’ve done a lot of things, but this tops the charts for the most insane adrenaline rush, and most terrifying experience, of my entire life. That free fall was insane – the water is coming at you so fast, and before you know it you get ripped upside down and snapped back like a rubber band. I DID touch the water, but only a little bit with my hands, so that’s ideal. My body was in a state of chaos, getting flip-flopped around like a rag doll. But I absolutely remember flying back up and standing straight up vertically somehow, and thinking that this was not what was supposed to be happening hahaha. No worries, I got absolutely ripped back the other direction in no time, but what a sensation.

It was actually such a blast. What a cool thing to do in such a gorgeous place. Then you have to grab onto a pole, and get pulled down into a little life raft at the bottom. Weird to be suspended upside down while they unhook you. I was QUAKING when I got into the boat. My muscles were all just shaking, probably from all the adrenaline.

They dropped me off at shore, and I got to watch Beach jump! Fun to see her do it – she was also so brave and went for it without hesitation. She told me that she had a moment where her heart stopped and she genuinely thought she was going to die during that free fall, and I could tell by her face when she landed in the boat that she was actually SHOOK. I’ve never seen something affect her like that, so that was freaking awesome hahaha.

We felt SO ACCOMPLISHED! Live more, fear less!!

We went and collected our photos and videos, which are awesome, and then hung out to watch a few more jumpers and relax. We had the best iced chocolates in the world (basically glorified Nesquik with ice, but it freaking slaps) and were absolutely on cloud nine the rest of the afternoon.

We drove back into town for dinner, and stumbled upon a massive line of people out the door. I stopped and asked someone what they were waiting for, and she let us know that Fergburger had been named the best burger in the world, and that there was never a time that people weren’t lined up out the door to try one. I’m not really a burger person, but who can say no to that? We jumped in line to find out if it lived up to the hype. Not gonna lie – it was a pretty good burger. Great sauce, great flavor, and I added avocado to mine so that always makes everything better. Who knew we’d try the best burger in the world today too!

Ended a fun, crazy day with dessert down by the water – and determined that Queenstown is absolutely perfect, in every possible way.

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jackfollmanwriter-blog · 6 years

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In Chains

Sonya

Date 1 ~ Drinks.

Date 2 ~ Dinner. Drinks.

Date 3 ~ Dinner. Drinks. Lot’s of them. Invitation to her place.

I was shocked when Sonya had me follow her car out to the suburbs to her McMansion at the end of a cul-de-sac surrounded by houses that looked all the same. The girl wasn’t even 30, but she lived in a three-bedroom, 2.5-bathroom house a good 30 minutes outside of the city? It’s funny how much less you vocalize questions you have about people before you have had sex with them for the first time.

I had a distinct feeling that wall was coming down that particular night. There was no way Sonya had me drive a half hour each way, already somewhere between buzzed and drunk, just to have one more drink.

Once inside the house, Sonya explained that both of her parents died fairly young and left her the house. It was a heavy dose of negative emotion to throw into the heavy petting and making out we were doing on the couch, but I was relieved to find out she wasn’t actually married to a 40-year-old guy who was going to burst through the door in the morning with a shotgun or something.

The conversation melted away faster than I thought it would. It was only a matter of time before I was in Sonya’s pink bedroom which looked like it hadn’t been redecorated since her high school years. Even more morbid than hearing about her parents dying as I had my hands all over her was taking things to the next level next to a poster of The Jonas Brothers.

Things unfolded the way I hoped they would. Actually, even better than I thought they would. Had I been the kind of guy who had a list written out of the best sexual partners I have had in my life, Sonya would have been number one with a bullet.

I laid back on Sonya’s bed at peace. I was excited to sleep in with her and wake up to cool off in the pool the next morning. I thought there was a good chance I might actually end up spending the whole weekend with Sonya at her place. I could get used to the burbs.

Sonya interrupted my daydreaming when she returned from a post-coital trip to the bathroom. I sat up when I felt wet tears wipe off her cheeks and onto my shoulder as she snuggled up next to me.

Shit.

“I need your help with something. I hope it doesn’t freak you out,” Sonya said into my naked chest.

Sonya led me over to the closet in the corner of her room. She opened the doors and revealed a wooden rack adorned with metal shackles and chains. It looked like a torture rack you would see in Game of Thrones.

“I need you to chain me up,” Sonya said.

I laughed.

“It’s not funny.”

Sonya walked in front of me, still naked and put her back up against the rack.

Okay. So the girl was into some serious S&M. It was probably going to keep me from bringing her home to mom and dad, but I could roll with it for a while.

I helped Sonya put her wrists and ankles in the shackles and latched them shut.

I reached down and took my boxers off and took a step towards Sonya, poised for a kiss. She turned her head away.

“It’s not like that,” Sonya said, her eyes on the floor. “You should put your clothes back on. “The key is in the nightstand by my bed. You have to use it to lock these up and then unlock me in the morning. You can sleep in my bed. Close the door when you’re done.”

I pulled my boxers back up.

Sonya looked me in the eyes, fresh tears dripping down her cheeks.

“Yes. I can explain more eventually, but this is just how it is right now.”

“Seriously?”

“Just do it!” Sonya said.

I locked the shackles, closed the door on Sonya and walked back downstairs to the kitchen to make a drink. It was going to take a lot more booze to get me to fall asleep after that.

I woke up on the couch. My head ached. I polished off four glasses of straight whiskey to force myself to go to sleep and it took me well into the night to accomplish that. I must have only got about three hours of restless sleep on the couch before the morning sun blazed through the large window in the living room and shoved me back awake.

I climbed the stairs up to Sonya’s room. I pushed through her door and was greeted by peaceful silence. I looked at her closed closet door. My body shivered, even though we had forgot to turn the air conditioning on and the temperature in the room had to be above 80 degrees.

“Sonya,” I said in the direction of the closet from the doorway.

“Good morning,” I heard Sonya’s groggy voice through the door of the closet.

I walked over to the closet and opened it up. I recoiled a bit when I saw Sonya laying back against the wooden board, her body naked and sweaty, her eyes barely open. She gave me a little smile.

“You can let me out now,” Sonya said.

Sonya and I caught up about the night over iced coffee next to the pool to the soundtrack of singing birds. It would have been bliss had the topic not been about tying her up in a closet so she could sleep at night.

“I’ll save you the awkwardness of even having to ask,” Sonya broached the subject before I had to. “I don’t know exactly what it is, but I have horrible blackouts at night, but only after I have sex.”

I thought Sonya was making this up. I thought this was the world’s most-elaborate prank. I almost laughed.

“What do you mean, blackouts?”

“I don’t really even know. It started happening once I started having sex when I was in college. I would go to sleep and then wake up somewhere completely different with a path of destruction in my wake. One time I woke up with my car covered in debris in a creekbed. Once I woke up in my Kindergarten classroom, covered in blood from punching a window out to get in, one time I woke up in downtown LA on skid row sleeping with a bunch of bums. I eventually had to install the rack thing in there to keep me from running away in the night. I tried just having the door sealed from the outside or getting tied to the bed, but it never worked. I would always find a way to get out.”

“Do you hurt people?” I asked.

“Physically, I don’t know. Emotionally, yes. I understand if it is too much, and I’m sorry for throwing you into this without a real choice, but I got drunk last night and I needed some company. It had been a long, long time. Since before my parents passed. Thank you. Now, I understand if this is too much to deal with.”

“I mean...yeah. That’s pretty crazy.”

“I know.”

“You’ve been to specialists and stuff for this?”

“Of course.”

“Yeah, stupid question.”

“I’ve done everything someone could do in this situation except get themselves committed. Which I’m sure could happen at some point.”

“Only if you have sex.”

“Yes.”

“So you just don’t usually have it?”

“Yes.”

“So we will be fine and you won’t have to sleep in a closet as long as we don’t have sex?”

“Precisely, but I doubt that will work in the long run.”

“I know I’m probably not supposed to say this, and you’ll probably run to the Tinder hills because I did, but I really like you,” I said (nervous laugh).

“We can try.”

Sonya and I tried. We dated seriously for a couple of months without doing the deed.

I came up to her house in the suburbs on the weekends for sleep overs, she came over to my place in the city on weeknights. It was bliss. My endless nights of swiping right only to find damaged goods that didn’t have time, energy or the heart for a real relationship were over. Strange enough, the girl who needed to be shackled at night to make sure she didn’t burn the city down was the least-damaged girl I had found in years of dating in LA.

Sonya and I made it work. There were ways around sex and I think avoiding it for a couple of months helped us build a better bond in a day and age when a lot of people start relationships on a one-night stand.

I have to say the issue was the elephant in the room of our relationship which grew larger each day. Well, more like a hideous monster. I felt that monster might grow so large that it pushed us out of our cubby hole of comfort if we didn’t confront it, but I said nothing. I didn’t want to sabotage what we had.

Sabotage ended up being something we didn’t discuss, we just did it one night, when two drinks with dinner turned into seven drinks and a late-night skinny dip in the pool. I interrupted our make out session when the REO Speedwagon song “Can’t Fight This Feeling” popped into my head. There was no getting away from it this time.

Sonya and I made love in her bed. We soaked the sheets with the chlorine water which still clung to us. We were so drunk, I don’t think either of us thought about the consequences until we were lying with our eyes to the ceiling, catching our breath with that post-coital urge of sleep filling our bodies.

“Well...at least it was worth it,” Sonya said.

Sonya got up and went into the bathroom. I almost feel asleep by the time she came back a few minutes later. She didn’t even come back to the bed, she just walked over to the closet and started locking herself in.

“Just come lock it and we can go to sleep,” Sonya said.

I walked over and locked up the closet. Sonya and I avoided eye contact when the door closed.

“Good night,” we said at the same time just before the door closed all the way.

I retreated to the bed. I was so drunk and tired, it didn’t take me long to drift away into sleep.

I woke to the sound of heavy pounding on the closet door. I slowly opened my eyes. The room was still lit by a dying candle next to the bed I forgot to put out before going to sleep.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Methodical pounds rapped against the inside of the closet door. I looked over and saw its white doors shuddering with each hit. The pace of my heart started to pick up like the engine of a car that just pulled onto the on ramp of a freeway and started to accelerate.

“Sonya?”

I waited about 10 seconds for an answer. None came.

“Sonya?” I said again.

I got up from the bed and walked over towards the closet. The pounding stopped. The sound was replaced by the sound of heavy breathing.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

No answer.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

I slowly walked away and went back to bed. I laid there for hours, never falling back asleep, listening to those steady pounds hit the inside of the closet door until morning came.

I was shocked how normal Sonya looked when I let her out just after sunrise. You could have never imagined the girl was up the entire night before attacking a door. She pulled me in for a long, sweet hug as soon as she was free.

“We messed up, but it’s okay,” Sonya whispered into my ear during our embrace.

We promised again to not get too drunk and let our desires get the best of us. It was a nice short-term promise, but I still had my doubts about the long-term plausibility of how this would all work. Were we going to spend our whole lives sober and celibate? We might as well have become Mormons. Neither of us seemed to have a solution.

I would prod Sonya with questions whenever the time felt right. She swore up and down that all doctors had no idea what it was. Night terrors or something, was about the best explanation I ever got. She showed me official documentation from physicians. Confirmed that she had tried a bunch of medications, but none of them ever worked. I saw the half-empty pill bottles.

We went on with life. Every day together was a joy. We went Facebook official. I knew we were only a few months away from having to decide if we want to move in together full-time. The obvious choice would be to move into her already paid-off house with the pool, but I had my hesitations, for obvious reasons.

Those hesitations picked up some momentum when Sonya and I slipped up again on Halloween. We had too much to drink. Had incredible sex (it’s amazing how good it is when you let it linger for months at a time) and I locked my love in a god damn closet with iron clasps around her limbs.

The sounds from the closet started before I could fall asleep this time. A low growl, like the one a mean dog gives when you start to get to close to its food dish. I stared up at the ceiling and listened to it drone on for minutes before it was replaced by soft crying in Sonya’s usual soft feminine tone. It took everything I had to not run over to the closet, throw it open and pull out Sonya, but she promised that addressing her once it all started was the worst thing to do.

I listened to those growls and cries for hours. I felt like each minute that I had to listen sucked my soul out of me a little bit more and more.

Those pieces of my soul still floated out in the ether even with my relationship with Sonya flourishing. I couldn’t help but feel hollow each night when we said goodnight, kissed and I laid there with a throbbing erection (sorry, but it’s the truth) and a wonder if my girlfriend who was sleeping next to me was telling the truth about everything.

I soldiered on. Everything in my life seemed to take shape once I started things with Sonya. My mental imbalances appeared to mostly just be the stress and anguish of being a hopelessly single young person. Going to a spacious home with an actual kitchen and a backyard conducive to zen on the weekends helped me fight off the troubles of each work week and come back in on Monday refreshed and not drinking more than a couple of drinks on any given night was probably the best thing for me, mentally and physically.

So...I compromised...I let slide...whatever you want to call it. I was happy. We were happy. That was all that mattered.

Until...there’s always an until, isn’t there? Even in the happiest of stories.

This one didn’t start with booze. It started with a very sober, very thought-out and very-calm conversation with Sonya.

Sonya met me as soon as I walked in the front door of her house on a Friday night. I at first thought this was going to be one of those “talks” where I ended up driving back home in tears, but it was much the opposite. Sonya wanted to start scheduling sex on a regular basis. She was worried we were going to eventually have a problem, if we didn’t already,unless we did something. She could live with being locked up for a night every other week, she decided. I agreed. We set the next night as a lift off night.

Lift off came and went. It was amazing. Making love with someone you have been with for just the fourth time well over a year into your relationship causes you to release some unbelievable passion when you finally lock horns. I could barely walk by the time we were done.

Our lack of intoxication finally let us cuddle and bond after the deed. We laid there in bed for about an hour. I asked Sonya what would happen if she just didn’t go to sleep, but she said she didn’t want to risk it. What if she dozed off for a minute and then took off on a tear? Fair. I locked her up. I gave her a long kiss before I shut the door.

I was able to go to sleep peacefully that night. The formality of the whole thing seemed to give me security. It felt like a well-planned vacation or work activity.

I woke up to silence. I gave it a few minutes - listened for pounding from the closet. I listened for crying, growling, plead for help. I heard nothing. Just the hum of the air conditioning.

My bladder was what nudged me from my slumber. We pre-gamed our intimacy with virgin daiquiris in the pool and my body was ready to expel the fruity goodness at 5:30 in the morning.

I sat up in bed and instantly forgot about having to go to the bathroom. From the bed, I saw the doors to the closet resting open.

“Sonya?”

I got out of the bed and walked to the closet.

“Sonya?”

I looked in the open closet. The shackles were empty.

“Sonya?” I whispered.

I checked the bathroom. No Sonya.

Had I forgotten to lock the shackles? I couldn’t remember.

The door to the bedroom was closed. I walked over and put my ear to it. I didn’t hear anything.

I opened the bedroom door and peered out. The rest of the house seemed still, silent, dead. I left the bedroom and took off exploring.

My first destination was Sonya’s parents’ room at the end of the hall. It seems crazy to say now, but more than a year into half living at Sonya’s place, I had never been in her parents’ room.

The room let out a musty scent the second I cracked open the door. I peeked inside and saw a room that looked lived-in, but clearly had not been touched in quite some time. It reminded me of the re-staged historical rooms you commonly see in museums which try to capture how a place may have looked 100 years ago.

Everything about the room was unnerving. There was a pair of white boxer briefs on the floor to the side of the bed, an uncapped pen rested on a calendar on a desk, half-empty glasses of water rested on each nightstand. What looked like a red wine stain at the foot of the bed which trickled burgundy splatters into the bathroom.

No Sonya.

I took my investigation to the rest of the house. No luck. I even checked the garage and backyard and saw no sign of Sonya, or her potential exit. All the doors were still locked. Her car was still in the garage.

I went back to Sonya’s room. I checked her bathroom and closet again. Nothing. I gave a look under the bed. Just dust bunnies and old shoeboxes.

I stood back up and noticed something I must have missed earlier out of the corner of my eye. There was a space created behind the door when left opened the way I left it. The light was low and it appeared there was a shadow hiding behind the cover of the door.

“Fuck,” I muttered to myself.

I took a few steps towards the door.

“Sonya?”

I took a few steps closer. I thought I saw the shadow behind the door move closer to the wall.

That was it. I had enough. I was a 6’2 205-pound guy in his late-20s afraid of his girlfriend. I stomped up to the door and pulled it shut.

Nothing was behind the door. Something was on top of it.

Perched on the top of the door like a frightened housecat was Sonya. She had maneuvered her barely over five feet and and 100-pound frame onto the thing and squatted above me, naked and coated with sweat.

“Holy…

Sonya jumped down at me. She pinned me to the floor. She held me down with a strength I never could have imagined could come from her tiny body.

I looked at Sonya’s face. Her eyes were red and bloodshot, opened wide and set on me like those of an rabid dog, her usual full and voluminous hair was slicked back, her teeth clenched in her mouth which was clenched in a snarl.

“Please, Sonya…

Sonya’s hand came down and her nails ripped across my lip, immediately drawing blood. I screamed out and tried to squirm away from her, but could only make it a few inches on the hardwood floors.

Sonya’s nails went from my lips right to my back where they dug in like razors. I tried to swing her off of me. She wouldn’t budge. I felt her teeth dig into my back and chomp down on my soft flesh.

I screamed like a baby.

“PLEASE! SONYA! PLEASE!”

I found that superhuman strength people always say they find deep within themselves when faced with death. I was able to do a push-up and shake Sonya from me for a second. I scrambled to my feet and ran for the bathroom.

I slammed the door behind me as soon as I crashed into the bathroom. I twisted the lock in the door handle. I prayed the bolt lock and the flimsy wood of the door would hold up under the stress Sonya started to put it under like she was a female Jack Torrance.

Pounds harder than the ones from when I could hear Sonya going at the closet door months before blasted the bathroom door. I watched the door shake on its hinges. I feared it would only hold up for about a dozen of those powerful strikes before it came down.

A few more strikes shook the door, but then stopped. Maybe the sun came up, sunrise was approaching? No. The power on the other side of the door turned its attention to the door handle. I watched the gold handle rattle like a toy in front of my face.

The door handle seemed much more vulnerable than the door. Good thinking psycho Sonya.

A few twists of that handle had the thing spinning around in the door, no longer attached to the wood. I saw the handle scrape out of its hole and fall to the hard tile of the bathroom at my feet.

A single crazy eye appeared in the hole.

“Sonya...it’s Jake,” I said as calm as I possibly could at that moment. “I know something is really wrong with you right now, but I just need you to know that I love you and I only mean you good. Please, I just want to get that through to you,” I said.

A few crazed scrapes ripped on the other side of the door, but the eye remained. I stared at the eye with tears forming in mine.

“Please...Sonya.”

The scrapes stopped. The eye vanished from the hole in the door. I let out a deep breath and then turned around. There was a little window above the shower/tub behind me and I saw a sliver of gray light coming out of it. Sunrise must have come.

I gave myself a few minutes to catch my breath. Just focused on breathing in and out at a steady pace. I wiped heavy sweat off of my face with my t-shirt.

“Jake…

I heard Sonya’s voice through the door.

“I’m sorry,” Sonya went on.

Sonya eventually talked me out of the bathroom. She wrapped me in a huge hug and leaked tears all over my body. She quivered in my arms for minutes before we went outside and we caught our breath and lowered our temperatures.

Sonya and I talked through things. She didn’t know how she got out of the shackles and the closet, but I admitted that I thought that I may have not actually locked them. She had no idea why she didn’t just go right at me when she got out, but how the hell were you going to try and attach reason to the madness that was her condition?

Our relationship went on, but it was never the same. It was like one of those colossal fights, or little pieces of information that is a sharp knife to a relationship, but not a kill shot. It’s almost worse than a blow up, because it didn’t submarine the relationship, but instead poked enough holes in it to where it would never be the same and it would eventually sink.

I internally delayed plans to move in with Sonya full-time. I stepped our relationship back a little bit. Took some nights off, even poked around on Tinder to see the lay of the land. I created a little bit of a distance. I was pretty sure Sonya noticed.

We drifted. It happens. Like everyone in the modern dating scene, we let things linger for as long as humanly possible, even though we knew it was bound to fail and it was going to create more problems.

I still spent weekends at Sonya’s. My visits felt a little hollow, but I still hit the freeway every Friday afternoon and slogged through traffic until I was in her cul de sac and ready for an awkward weekend.

We were about two months into this when things got strange. I got off work a little early and made it to Sonya’s house a little over an hour before I usually got there. She wasn’t there.

Sonya worked from home and knew I was coming so her absence was fairly strange. I had texted her a couple hours before that I was going to be early, so she knew I was coming.

I waited for her for nearly 30 minutes on the front steps of her house. She showed up hot and bothered and excused her tardiness from getting stuck at the store buying wild shrimp instead of the farmed shrimp at Ralph’s or something. I didn’t really think anything of it at the time. I just wanted to move on and get the night over with.

Our night went according to plan. Sonya was a bit standoffish and I was a bit distant, but that had become our M.O. We went in the pool and jacuzzi, had a couple of drinks and headed off to bed for sleep without sex.

The last thing I remember thinking about before I fell asleep was what my excuse was going to be to say I had to go back to my apartment in the city the next day.

I woke up in the bed alone in the middle of the night. I couldn’t feel Sonya’s form next to me the second I opened my eyes.

I scrambled around the bed as if she may have been hiding in the fold of the blanket or something. I looked to the bathroom, the door was open, it was dark inside. The closet door was closed as well.

“Fuck me.”

I figured there was a good chance Sonya was just down in the kitchen or something getting water. We hadn’t had sex, so she shouldn’t have been rabid.

Footsteps pounded outside the closed bedroom door. They sounded swift. Hitting the ground at a pace between a fast walk and a jog.

A thought flashed into my mind. Sonya didn’t have sex with me, but she may have had sex with someone else. It explained why she showed up late and flustered.

The footsteps stopped right outside the door. The door opened slowly. I saw the outline of Sonya standing in the doorway. I couldn’t make out her face, her features, it was too dark, but her slack stance wasn’t as threatening as it had been the last time she had been creeping around in the night.

I started to walk backwards, towards the only window in the room. Luckily it was left open the night before. It had a screen, but I pictured myself ripping that thing off and jumping out of the second-story window. There was grass outside. I hopefully wouldn’t break anything.

“Did you fuck some other guy?” I asked Sonya.

Sonya stepped into the room without an answer. I saw blood in her eyes in the low light of the room.

I took off to the window. I heard Sonya’s feel slam on the hardwood on my tail. She was right behind me when I reached the chest-high window.

I punched an arm through the screen of the window as hard as I could. My arm tore through the hard mesh, but I felt the thing rip my flesh all the way down to the elbow before it stopped.

I pulled the screen backwards and felt something shred my back worse than the screen had my arm. I recognized the hot sting of Sonya’s long nails dig into the top of my naked back and then rip down to my lower back. I screamed and stumbled backwards with the screen stuck on my arm.

Sonya pulled me away from the window with the furious strength I recognized from her last attack. I was able to fight it and stand my ground, but getting out that window seemed like a bridge too far.

“Please!”

I started to plead, but I knew it was hopeless. I saw a clock which read 4:14 when I first woke up. I would not be saved by the rising sun this time. I was going to have to fight.

I turned around to face Sonya. She frothed at the mouth and slapped her hands at me. She locked eyes.

“You’re right. I fucked that guy. Then I came home and kissed you,” Sonya yelled at me, sounding a lot like the demon from The Exorcist.

“You’re fucking crazy,” I screamed back.

I used the little gap of space our interaction provided to spin around and make a mad dash at the window again. I dove out of the opening from a few feet away and felt myself soar in the air. I felt Sonya’s nails slash me on the calves as I flew through the window looking like a dolphin going through a hoop at SeaWorld.

Sonya’s cuts still hurt on the way down to the grass lawn on the side of Sonya’s house. I hit the ground with a hard thud. I didn’t even take a breath to examine the damage. I just took off to get around the front of the house. I had a Hide-A-Key underneath the bumper of my car. I prayed I could get to it before Sonya tore out of the front of the house.

I grabbed the keys with no presence of Sonya. I unlocked the door with no presence of Sonya. I started the engine with no presence of Sonya.

I thought I was going to get out of their scott free until I started to back up and saw Sonya standing in the street completely naked, blocking my path.

I didn’t care anymore. I reversed the car as hard as I could.

Sonya must have dove out of the way of the car, because I lost sight of her before I whipped the car around and floor-boarded the hell out of her driveway. I made the long drive home in just my boxers, without a phone and was damn lucky to have roommates who let me into my place when I knocked because my main keys were still in Sonya’s bedroom.

I called the police in Sonya’s suburban town and told them what happened. They didn’t really seem to care. At best, my case was a domestic violence dust up between two people who went their separate ways. I was fine with letting it go.

Not an hour goes by where I don’t think about everything that happened. I assume it will stay that way till the day I die.

It has been nine months and the whole incident just zapped back into my mind full-time. My god awful manager at work who I hate more than anyone I have ever met in my entire life showed me something very interesting on his phone while trying to brag at a lunch.

He showed me a “smokin-hot babe” he recently started dating off of Bumble. He had only “slayed” her one time so far, but he explained that he was closing in. He said she had a killer place outside of the city.

He showed me a picture of her on Facebook. Yep, it was Sonya.

I just smiled and said I thought she was hot. I decided I’m just going to let that one play itself out. Maybe he will forget to lock up Sonya one night too.

Originally published by Thought Catalog on www.ThoughtCatalog.com.

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jakestravels · 7 years

Text

My Town

(A work of fiction)

This is the kind of town no one wants to live in, but they do anyway.

It’s small enough that you think you know everyone, but big enough that you don’t.

It’s got no strip clubs here – they’re not illegal, and the city counsel probably wouldn’t mind if someone built one. But it’s just too much of a risk – even if somebody could raise the capital, would anyone go? It’s just that small enough of a town. Then again, there’d probably be no problem keeping the place staffed. It’s just that big enough of a town.

The roads to and inside the city center were planned out. The 305 freeway spurs off the main interstate some 20 miles back, goes through town, and then continues into the mountains (if you can call them that) for another 40 or so miles before rejoining the interstate. It’s a longer drive, but the sights are (marginally) prettier.

The city center is actually a feat of European engineering, designed by the one immigrant that wanted to use a little old-world sensibility rather than sprawl out into the desert – there’s a plaza in the middle of town, much like the ones you find in the most beautiful of European cities. It was intended to be a place for meeting, a place for commerce, a place for celebrating – but everyone’s moved out to the cheaper strip malls and business parks that are scattered along the fringes of town. There’s plenty of space out there: No use in shoving everybody into a four-block square. It’s just a parking lot now.

The traffic grid that makes up the downtown is a thing of beauty: symmetrical streets, each one running perfectly parallel to one another, each one distanced apart exactly the same. If you drive 27 miles per hour, you will hit each green light, never having to stop all the way through town. That is, until you come to Commercial Street. It serves as a testament to the garishness and selfishness of the “new” way of city planning that occurred during the growth boom of the 1980s. Streets began to curve for no reason, and slant in order to avoid scrub tree patches and large rocks and “potentially historical sites” and anything else of very little meaning. Houses out there have different plot sizes, there are no public parks, and there’s no median down every other road.

I’ve lived here all my life: I’ve never left this town. I’m not sure what else is out there that isn’t here, and we’ve got plenty of space. I’ve been through the county of course, but don’t see a single reason to visit anywhere else.

There’s more bars here than anywhere else in the state, at least per capita. That’s because the weather is so shitty so much of the time. It’s always too hot, too cold, too humid, or a combination of them. But the bars pride themselves on the coldest beer in the state, the kind that will make truckers take the 305 just to have a cold one. It is one of those bars where I spend most days after work. I hate my job.

The bar is old: at least by some’s standards. It sits off of Harrison Avenue, which used to be the main street through the city center. It’s hard to say where the name came from, though most insist it was named after an old mayor, even though his family had only been here since the early 1900s. Others, including me, believe it was named after the president. The road used to be the main arterial for everyone coming through town, but now that all the business sits on the fringe of town, no one has to go through town, and we don’t know our neighbors anymore.

The bar was built in the 1960s, just on the tail end of the postwar boom. It was renovated in the early 1970s, when the rest of the nation was falling into depression. But we were buoyed by a newfound mineral mine not far out of town. We were lucky – the 1970s were good to us, and we made it through the gas crunch without anybody buying those little import cars to save on gas. The neon beer signs that hang in the windows and the tin ones that hang on the walls are from that era, and they advertise beers that no one remembers anymore.

My dad had a job at the mine, as a supervisor. He went to college and learned about rocks, geology. He was hired as a technical advisor, one of the town’s local boys returning and becoming something. He was paid well, had a Cadillac, and we had a nice ranch house in the new subdivision build just north of town. But in 1979, something went wrong. Miners (we called them diggers, because dad said an open pit wasn’t exactly a mine, but they were officially miners, nonetheless) stopped finding anything. The town got scared. Big-name geologists – ones brought in from out of state – revealed that the largest mineral vein in the state’s history was gone. They used words like “metasomatism,” meaning that the vein was a freak accident due to specific conditions and chemicals, and no such vein would exist anywhere else in the area. My dad, the expert, the man who had been here for ten years, politely told them he disagreed and they could go fuck themselves. He persuaded the mine to invest millions in other sites, but they came up with nothing. My dad killed himself six months later.

I like this bar. It’s a “regulars” type of bar, meaning that the same group of guys comes in every day. I myself have been coming here for six years now. I have my stool in the back at the bar, right next to the bathroom, so I know no one will take it. One time two Aprils ago, I came in and a guy was sitting there, so I had to go home and drink a beer out of my fridge. It wasn’t as cold.

I stay out of here on the weekends: there’s too many people, too much of a chance somebody will take my seat, too many aggressive drunks bumping into me on the way to bathroom, reeking of cigarette smoke. “What the fuck’s your problem?” they mutter, or something similar. If I do come in on a Friday, it will be brief. I start early and get off early, so I can usually sneak a beer or two in.

Because of the bar’s status we don’t see many new faces, which is a blessing and a curse. I don’t do well with new people, though I like it when the pretty girls come through. Bert, the owner, who is a female despite the name, says she’ll close the place down someday and move to one of the new strip malls near where the new city center is. I don’t know if she means it though, I just hear her say it a lot.

ESPN occupies most of my time, and I like the jukebox when somebody plays something I like. It’s mostly full of country and classic rock, but on occasion an errant pop song sneaks its way in there and we’ll hear the song from C11 when what somebody meant to play was the song from C12. I don’t play pool, but the smack of the pool balls on a break is nice. I try not to bug anyone: I’m certain the other regulars don’t like me and I once heard Bert say, “that retard next to the bathroom,” and there wasn’t anyone else around, except for the regulars, and Bert, and the cook in the back she was talking to, so I’m pretty sure it was me. But I buy my drinks, I don’t bother nobody, and I take a space others won’t – “Shit corner,” as many of the regulars call it.

I work in the tech field. We have several plants, including a silicon disk plant. That’s the one I work in. We make parts for computers, but also for other stuff like fancy toasters that can read the bread and know just how to toast it, and toys that can tell if a child is happy, or something like that. I’ve never seen one. We spend all day inside white rooms in our contamination-free suits. I was told once that the white is to be better aware of the clean conditions of the area, but I imagine it like that movie, the one with the computer, set in the future? 2010, I think. Or maybe 2001. I’ve been there for a while, and I want to do something else, but they keep telling me that I’m really good at what I do, and if I left my position, who could replace me? I guess that makes sense.

Last week, I made my first mistake. I accidentally broke a machine by not following protocol. It wasn’t my fault, actually: I used the machine, a precision laser cutter, for the first time on my shift and Jim, the man I relieve, did not properly shut it down. But they’re telling me that I’ll get my wish, that I get to move positions. They’re putting me on night shift starting next week, and I don’t want to be there.

When I was a child, we used to go up Harrison to get groceries. People would shout hello across the street. My dad was known by everyone, and they respected him. When the mine was making money, they said it was because of him. When the mine stopped making money, they blamed him as well. No one spoke to him. We had to go to a different grocery store. I can’t work nights; I won’t be able to go to my bar after work.

Maybe it’s time to move on. But I don’t know how to do that. Maybe it’s time to try a new trade, but I don’t know how to do that either. I don’t want to do this anymore. I want to leave, but I can’t. I hate this fucking town, but I don’t know anything else.

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