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Scratches

Heather McFall


A thin bracelet of blood adorns my wrist. It’s still warm as it slides down and pools in the palm of my hand. The pain is dulled, numb compared to what it was ten minuets ago. I miss her. I reach for the bottle of Scotch sitting on the white tile near my feet, and pull it to my lips. I shutter as the heavy liquid slips past my tongue and burns my throat. I hate the stuff, but Caitlyn liked it. Scotch neat. I twist the ring around my pinky finger with my thumb and take another drink. At first, I hated her for not telling me. It took her passing out and going into hypovolemic shock before I knew a thing. By then it had already metastasized, by then she was already dead.

I struggle to stand. I can’t see well beyond the spots of black and yellow blocking my field of vision, but I want to see myself one last time. Coward. That’s her voice in my head, not my own. She would’ve hated me for taking the easy way out. She would’ve hated me for breaking my promise.

“I’m sorry,” I mutter to my reflection. And what about him?

“He’s better off. He’ll be fine.”

---


When she woke in her hospital bed, I was there. I hadn’t left her side in nearly three days, and I was sure I was beginning to smell, but she just smiled at me.

“It’s going to be okay,” she said, her voice rusty like she’d swallowed a bag of nails.

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.” I reached for her hand.

“Why? So you could wallow in self-pity and worry about everything we never got to do. Don’t be so selfish, Michael.” I started to protest, to tell her I just wanted to be there for her, but she knew me better. That’s exactly what I would’ve done, it’s what I was doing.

“Where’s Mikey?” Mikey is her eleven-year-old son. My namesake, but not my son mind you, because ever since we were teenagers she never let me touch her. She had always told me it was because she cared about me too much for us to get sexually involved, that she didn’t want to loose what we had. I always thought that’s just what women say when they’re too repulsed by the thought of going to bed with you, but I’ve been in her life for nearly sixteen years, while every lover either of us has ever had came and went within a few months. So who knows? But I know she never loved me the way I love her.

“He’s at your mothers, he’s really worried about you. I tried to find Jacob,

but÷,” She held up her hand silencing me.

“Don’t bother. He left and he doesn’t want to be found.” She wasn’t bitter, but very matter-of-fact. It amazed me how she could show so little emotion over the father of her child. When he left I wanted to murder him for abandoning them, but Caitlyn just dusted off and moved on.

She squeezed my hand with a renewed force I didn’t know her weak little body even possessed.

“I need you to do me a favor.”

“Anything.”

---


Asshole. I stare at my pitiful reflection solemnly, in her bathroom mirror. The blood on my wrist drips onto the sink and down to floor. She would hate me for making such a mess. I grab a lavender hand towel off the rack and begin to soak it up. No, that’s a decorative towel you jerk!

“Shit.” I toss the now worthless rag aside and fall back to the floor. I touch the gash lightly but pull back when a sharp sting tears through my arm. I had always heard that for a suicide by wrist slashing to be successful you had to find an artery then cut in a vertical line down your arm, but that sounded like it would require much more precision than I was capable of at that moment.

---


“You have to take care of Mikey for me. I want you to adopt him,” I remained silent, unsure of what to say to her, “You’re all he has now, Michael.”

“He has your mother.”

“After the way that lunatic raised me, you think I’d let her take my son? You are all he has. You have to promise me.”

“Of course I’ll take care of him, haven’t I always? But, you have to stop talking like you’re already dead. You’re gonna be fine, stop being so damn morbid.” I didn’t even believe my own lie enough for it to sound convincing to her.

---


I brought the boy to see her everyday for a week, and he wouldn’t touch her. He said he was afraid he’d unplug her. I got so angry with him, one day in the hallway outside Caitlyn’s room I started to shout.

“Why won’t you give her a hug? Don’t you love her?” I know it was cruel, but I needed him to understand. He didn’t say anything.

“You might not get another chance, don’t you get that?” He hit me then. Not hard but I suspect he gave it his best. He ran into her room and threw his arms around her. She cried and so did he. It was the first time since she got sick that I had seen either of them cry, and I wanted so badly to cry with them but I couldn’t. He walked back out into the hallway minuets later and shoved his hands in his pockets.

“I’m sorry I hit you,” he said.

“I’m sorry I yelled.”

“Can I sleep at your house tonight?”

“Sure.”

---


I didn’t cry at the funeral, though I never knew I could feel so much pain. It was muted though, everything was. It was like this for days. Then the pain dulled and I couldn’t feel anything. I wasn’t even sure if I was still alive. Then I got a call from Caitlyn’s lawyers, time to settle the estate. I didn’t have the energy for this, but there was going to be some question as to who would take custody of Mikey, so I needed to be there.

I was wrong. There was no question. A year and a half ago, as soon as Caitlyn suspected she was sick, she took out a substantial life insurance policy. She was so pessimistic; I always told her that. She said it kept her from being disappointed. She had named me and Mikey co-beneficiaries. I couldn’t process it at the time, but she left me everything. She’d also drawn up adoption papers. The lawyers talked and I nodded, though I didn’t hear a word they said. They talked, I nodded. Sign there, there, and there. Initial there, and there. I walked out a millionaire and a father.

---


This morning I went to clean out her house. I still hadn’t shed a tear over her death, but I thought I was ready. I was going through this little ballerina jewelry box she had on her dresser and I found it, right on top. This cheap glass engagement ring I had given her when we were fifteen. I had asked her to marry me then and I promised to buy her a better one someday. She told me in that lovely, flirty voice that she reserved only for me that she’d think about it and let me know. I was still waiting.

I ransacked her kitchen until I found the Scotch in the cabinet underneath her microwave. I broke down. I can’t be sure why I did it except that I felt something for the first time since the funeral. I knew I was alive, but not for long. I grabbed a kitchen knife and trenched into the bathroom, her ring on my pinky. After a few hesitation nicks I dragged the heavy steel across my left wrist and collapsed, sobbing on the cool tile floor.

That was two hours ago. I guess I should’ve cut the other wrist too, I expected to be dead by now. Selfish bastard.

“I love you,” I whisper.

Nothing. Screw it, Mikey’s gonna be home from school soon anyway. I grab the bloodied towel and wrap it around my left wrist. I stand carefully, conscious of my flaccid limbs, and head out to my car, I’m sure I have some gauze in a first-aid kit somewhere out there.

I squint as the sun assaults my eyes, and I stumble down the front porch stairs. One of Caitlyn’s neighbors is at my side taking hold of my elbow, his eyes drawn to the blood stained towel on my arm.

“Hey, are you okay buddy? Do you need some help?”

“No,” I say, “It’s just a scratch.



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