The Return

Parking a full block from her destination, Victoria stepped into the balmy, night air to begin her walk along the quiet suburban street. Her pace was casual, as were the Capri cut jeans and baby blue hoodie she wore. Her beauty was understated and quintessentially suburban. Her blue eyes and short blond hair blending seamlessly with those that occupied this upper middle-class subdivision. The only distinguishable feature she had was the deep dimple in her left cheek. He had loved that dimple. As she smoothly walked along in her plain white Converse, she softly hummed a Bon Jovi song, its melody breaking through the tranquility of the night.

She took in the pretty lawns covered in nighttime dew, and luxury cars parked on rounded driveways in front of perfectly laid brick homes, before slowing before one house. It looked like a copy of the homes closely surrounding it, but she knew it intimately. It was a crime to stand out here, and she knew that fact as well. She was once a part of this world with its backyard barbeques and dinner parties. She knew the neighbors all around – their secrets and their dreams – and she knew this house.

She had carefully selected the cobblestone pattern that made up the walkway to the heavy, glass-paneled door. This walkway is what made this house, her house, slightly different from the rest on the street. She had planted each brightly colored flower that dotted the bed nestled on the front lawn and had cared for them like they were her children.

Smiling at the memory, she tiptoed up the cobblestones to bend down to her flowers. After such a long time away, Victoria couldn’t wait to breathe in their sweet scent. She leaned over the flowerbed before stumbling back in horror, almost tripping over a decorative garden gnome perched cheerfully behind her. The wildly bright buds were gone, replaced by a neat row of classic, red roses. Victoria tilted her head to the left eyeing the roses for a long moment before her pretty, blue eyes went coldly calm.

There had been another place with roses…

Victoria shook her head to clear the thought. She was home now. Dismissing the roses, she rounded the side of the house and paused as she noted that the flowers in the backyard bed had also been switched to roses. Her humming grew louder as she walked past the shiny new grill standing proud on the patio. She ran both of her hands along the painted wood of the back door. It was red now, red like the roses that should not have been there, red like blood. Still humming, she lifted the mat with a cheerful welcome scrawled in cursive and smiled when she revealed the shiny key resting beneath. Oh, how she knew this house and the man that owned it.

She opened the door quietly and stepped into a space that still felt the same. The air conditioner still hummed at the same frequency and the walls still settled in the same rhythm. She entered the kitchen and her smile tensed at the vase of fresh-cut roses marring the pretty, white granite countertop she had chosen. Her eyes scanned the space, catching on the updated stainless-steel appliances that were unfamiliar to her.

She slid her fingertips along the kitchen table, larger than the one she remembered, as she, still smiling, turned her back on the kitchen and moved through to the living room. There, her smile dropped as her quiet humming turned into the low muttering of the lyrics to the song stuck in her head.

“Misery likes company, I like the way that sounds…” She sang softly as she walked up to the large photo prominently displayed on the fireplace mantle.

“I’ve been trying to find the meaning, so I can write it down…” She continued as she ran a fingertip over the smiling male face in the photo. She hovered her finger over the other face before pulling the photo from the mantle.

“Staring out the window, it’s such a long way down…” She mumbled, not quite speaking and not quite singing, as she looked down at the wedding photo in her hand. He was her husband, but she wasn’t the one smiling next to him in this photo. It was some other woman wearing white, some other woman planting roses in her yard. Fresh pain exploded inside her chest and mingled with the agony already there. She carried the frame down the hall, her heart sluggish and her mind numb as she absently sang the next line.

“I’d like to jump, but I’m afraid to hit the ground.”

She mechanically opened each door along with hallway, relieved to see that the small guestroom was still a guestroom, even if the bedspread wasn’t the one she had left smoothed across the bed. When she reached the office, she stopped humming, stopped breathing as she sank slowly to her knees.

Where her desk once sat, a crib now stood proudly, draped with a frilly, pink blanket and a small, plush bunny. A matching changing table and rocking chair were already placed, but the boxes neatly lining the wall indicated that a small dresser and several bunny-themed decorations would soon be added. She left the picture on the floor, forgotten, and crawled across the soft carpet to run her hands up the little, white crib. It looked exactly like the one she had wanted. She had to assure herself that it was real – so many things tended to not be. A tear slid over the pretty dimple in her cheek as she felt the cool, smooth wood under her palm.

“Each day you know you’re dying from the cradle to the grave…” She turned to sit with her back against the crib. She closed her eyes to take several calming breaths, and, when she opened them, the dull misery burned in their blue depths.

“I get so numb sometimes, that I just feel the pain.”

She let the blessed numb settle over her before pulling herself to her feet and walking from the room. Her hand turned the silver doorknob before she realized her feet had led her to the master bedroom door. Lying alone in the large queen bed was the scarlet-haired woman that had smiled at her from the mantle. Her hair was red like roses, red like blood, and her delicate hand rested on a stomach that was swollen with promise.

Victoria stood for a moment and studied the stunning woman breathing softly in the bed that was once hers. This woman was more than simply pretty; she glowed in a way that would never blend into the surrounding community. Victoria plucked one of the petals from the vase of roses on the dresser and crushed it between her fingertips.

Victoria’s gaze shifted to the nightstand by the empty side of the bed. She knew the man that owned the reading glasses that sat perched on the unfinished novel he would read a chapter of before settling to sleep. She knew he had to be the master of the remote control that sat next to the book, and she knew that he would arrive home from work at precisely three in the morning – an hour from the time that flashed in large, blue numbers from the digital clock she had always hated.

The woman shifted in the bed and mumbled sleepily.

“Honey, is that you?”

Victoria’s smile didn’t reach her eyes as she tilted her head slightly to the left and continued her soft humming on the way to the bedroom door. As she closed herself inside with the beautifully terrified woman, she sang in a sweet, but broken voice, “Misery likes company, I like the way that sounds...”

An hour later, Victoria was perched on the couch in the living room, eating a pint of her favorite ice cream and basking in the knowledge that, while this couch was prettier than the one she had selected, hers was far more comfortable. She wasn’t surprised to see that Mint Chocolate Chip was still kept in the freezer. After all, she knew this house and she knew the man that owned it.

When he turned the key and shuffled inside at precisely 3am, he clicked on the small entryway lamp only, as was his habit, and nearly missed the petite blond on the couch. She tilted her head to the left to note the small changes in him and the movement caught his eye.

“Victoria? What are you doing here?” His question was roughly whispered and, instead of answering, Victoria licked a dollop of Mint Chocolate Chip from her spoon. He narrowed his eyes and took a threatening step forward; his expression lit with his intent to cast her out. He stopped when his shoe slipped through something sticky.

Confused, he reached back and flicked on the overhead light. Victoria just sat, watching him and licking her spoon as brightness flooded the room. His hair held whispers of grey, but he was still the most handsome man in the world. She watched as he angrily examined his shoe to determine what he had stepped in, and she watched as his eyes found the dark, red substance seeping through the plush carpeting. Her smile began as he, frantically, whipped around to see where the trail of it led.

His face went ashen when he saw the sweet, pregnant redhead lying in blood as red as her roses, her eyes wide and vacant. He fell next to her, his eyes jerking to Victoria, noticing the fingers streaked in red as she brought yet another spoonful of ice cream to her mouth. The scream that left him as he shook the still figure on the wet carpet pushed Victoria’s smile to fully light her face. When his tear-streaked eyes found Victoria again, his face was a mask of horror and pain. It was then that she set aside the container of ice cream and released a contented sigh.

“There it is.” she whispered as the blood soaked through her Converse shoes. “There’s the misery. Now you feel it too.”

*Featured Song: My Guitar Lies Bleeding in My Arms by Bon Jovi