Hell Within -- Chapter One: The Failure -- Scenes 3&4

-3-

He left for work early, walking past Amy to the door without a word.
On his way, he took a detour down Adair Street to Northside Drive and then out of the slums into the ritzy part of Gainesville behind Green Street.

He’d always liked this area in the fall -- with its timeless oaks and maples reaching into the sky with their many fingers. The trees were interrupted only by the well-kept lawns of the upper class who resided in houses of many different styles and sizes from many different eras.

Some of the newer houses, erected this year were more than three stories tall with the tell-tale vinyl siding or stucco and broad and gaudy front windows that looked large enough to span the length of a large room.

The older houses, built in the 50s, 60s, and 70s were mostly all brick with small sheet-metal-framed windows.

And every lawn and sidewalk was speckled with fallen leaves from the numerous trees.

Living behind Green Street was almost like living inside a city park.

Ben knew.

Not so long ago, one such house had belonged to him.

He had just turned north on Bradford Street when his cell phone started blasting the chorus of Hell’s Bells.

He opened his console and batted around the contents after it, and when he came up with it he glanced at the number.

He’d never seen the area code or the number before.

Debt Collector.

He looked back at the road, dropped his phone and gasped.

Not thirty feet in front of him, a woman stood in the middle of the road staring at him.

He stomped the brakes.

The car fishtailed and skidded forward, the tires shrieking.

He spun the steering wheel left hard.

The rear end of the car spun around. The landscape whirled around him in slow motion. He sat, petrified -- the steering wheel immovable in his hands.

When the car stopped, he found himself gaping dumbly at a tree that stood inches away from his bumper.

"Shit," he snapped, throwing the door open and jumping out.

"Are you all right?" the woman asked.

"Never better."

She gazed at him indifferently as if nothing had happened at all -- her long, brown hair flapping like a loose jib in the wind. And now that he had a good look at her, there seemed to be something familiar about her.

She was a pretty woman but in a peculiar way -- her face was not particularly sharp as was the case with most pretty women but somewhat round. Her hair was so straight that it looked as though she’d ironed it, and it dangled at the small of her back. Her clothing was of a style that had went out more than forty years ago. She wore a thigh-length, tan sundress with platform shoes that looked to be straight out of the sixties. The only thing missing was a peace symbol.

He looked past her at the black, 1964 Lincoln Continental slumping on a flat rear tire.

He smirked. "Is there something I can help you with, ma’am?"

"Do you know how to change a flat?"

He glared at her. He wanted to tell her to fuck off, but she looked helpless. He felt like an ass for being angry.

"Yeah," he sighed and walked over to the back tire to find that she already had the spare, the jack, and the tire iron out.

He gave her a cockeyed look.

"My husband tried to change it, but he couldn’t figure out how to use the jack. He went to find a phone."

Ben grabbed the tire iron and began loosening the lugs.

"So where were you headed in such a hurry?" she said.

He grunted at the underlying accusation that he was driving too fast, and thrust the jack under the car.

"I have something to do before work, if you have to know."

"Hmm, you’re drinking again."

Ben snapped his head around in her direction. She was peering off into the trees on the other side of her car.

"Do I know you?"

She looked directly into his face.

"Of course you do."

He squinted at her.

"But you were probably too young to remember," she sighed.

He grimaced. "You can’t be any older than twenty five. I’m at least a decade older than you."

She looked past him as if she didn’t even hear him. Ben rolled his eyes and went about the laborious task of jacking the car up.

"So how are you?" she said.

Ben looked over his shoulder at his old RX-7 sitting only inches away from the base of a rather large oak tree and huffed.

"Wonderful."

He eyed her reproachfully. "Next time you should consider not standing in the middle of the goddamn road."

"That’s not what I meant."

He dropped the tire iron and glared at her.

"Who the hell are you?"

She smiled knowingly. "You know who I am."

"No, I don’t!"

She took a step toward him and stopped.

"You’re going through a lot right now. I can see it. And I’m terribly sorry that your father and I weren’t able to be around for you. I guess that was my fault."

"What?"

She looked at his car.

"That number on your phone. . . ."

He frowned.

"Don’t return his call."

He squinted at her.

She stared through his car now as if she were looking inside herself. "The House is poisoned. He’ll tell you he came to protect you; he always says that."

She looked straight at him and the gravity of her expression caused him to shudder. Her hair and her skirt undulated now as if she were floating in a pool of water.

"He really wants your soul."

It was suddenly cold now. So cold that Ben shivered in place. And the woods around him seemed full of an old fragrance that he associated with old women. White Shoulders was the name of the perfume.

It couldn’t be.

But it was.

As Ben sat stooped on the asphalt gazing into the face of his mother who had died when he was a baby, he became aware of a new danger.

A car horn blared behind him.

He rolled head over heels forward just as the car skidded past him bumping his head on the sidewalk.

Once he’d stopped tumbling he rolled over on his back and looked back in the general direction of the Lincoln.

But the car had disappeared along with the woman.

He clawed his way back to his feet, shaken and dazzled staring at the empty space where the car had been.

"My phone?"

He staggered over to his car, opened the door, and fished his phone out from under the seat.

And the display read "1 new message."

He dialed into his voicemail, and the electronic voice buzzed in his ear.

"Thursday, eight twenty-three AM, Mr. Eaton," a man’s voice said, "My name is Steven Mize. I work for the law firm Mize-Swartzhouser, and I have an urgent matter of personal business to discuss with you. You can reach me at. . . ."

Ben hung up and steadied himself against the roof of his car.

"A divorce lawyer?"

He dialed the number for work, and after two rings a perky girl’s voice chimed, "Thompson Bridge Publix, how can I direct your call?"

"May I speak with Dick?"

"Dick?" she responded.

"The store manager, Dick. I need to talk to him."

"May I ask who's calling?"

"Ben Eaton," he growled.

"I’m sorry, just a moment."

She put him on hold during which time he was supposed to be entertained by an elevator-music rendition of "Suspicious Minds."

After a few measures Dick answered.

"Hey," Ben said, "I don’t think I can make it today."

"Ben?"

"Yeah."

There was a long pause.

"This wouldn’t have something to do with that lawyer who called this morning, would it?"

"Lawyer?"

"Yeah, I have his numbers right here."

"No, that’s okay. He left a message on my voicemail."

"Is everything okay?"

Ben sighed. "I think Amy wants a divorce."

"You’re kidding!"

"I wish I were."

There was another long pause.

"Man, divorce? Why?"

Ben huffed and sat down hard in the driver’s seat and stared back in the general direction of where the Lincoln had been.

"I don’t want to talk."

Dick waited a moment later for the juicy gossip, and when it was clear that Ben wasn’t going to share, he sighed.

"Well, I’ll run your shifts for today and tomorrow, and you’ve got the weekend off anyway. Call me Sunday, and we’ll go from there."

"Thanks."

"If you need someone to talk to. . . ."

"No."

"Okay, you know where I am."

Ben hung up the phone and tossed it to the floorboard, and for an indeterminate amount of time, he sat staring off into the trees.

-4-

About the time Ben turned on to Thompson Bridge Road, the tempest broke. The wind broadsided his RX-7 nearly wiping him off the road. And the rain tapped his windshield like marbles. Within a few minutes, the road looked like a shallow brook.

So he ducked into Brison’s, a bar that he’d held many of his "planning" sessions during better times.

As soon as he stepped inside and shook the rain off, the bartender recognized him.

"Well, if it ain’t Ben Eaton! I haven’t seen you in a month of Sundays. How’s the restaurant business treating you?"

Ben gave him a weary look. "It isn’t. I had to close the doors a little over a year ago."

Mark’s mouth fell open. "All three locations?"

Ben shrugged.

"I’m sorry to hear that. I knew you were having trouble, but I had no idea. . . ."

Ben waved him off. "As much as I’d love to catch up, I have some thinking to do. I’d like a bottle of scotch and a quiet place, if you don’t mind."

Mark disappeared into the back room, and came back with a bottle and a shot glass, and then directed him to a booth in the back of the bar.

Ben sat and he’d barely choked down two shots before he sensed someone standing behind him.

"Hey, boy," Rudy said.

Ben grinned in spite of himself. He hadn’t seen Rudy Eaton, his father’s brother, in over a year, but Rudy never seemed to age.

In fact, he looked exactly the same now as he had years and years ago when Ben had lived out most of his early childhood with him.

With his stocky build, iron-gray beard, work boots, jeans, and corduroy shirt he looked like some kind of red neck Santa Claus.

Santa Claus.

That wasn’t a bad parallel.

Rudy was an old man when Ben lived with him -- in his apartment in the early seventies. How could he look this good?

Rudy sat down in the seat opposite him and frowned at Ben.

"What?"

Ben shook his head. "You make me sick."

Rudy chuckled – his belly jiggling like a bowl full of jelly. "I do, huh?"

"You never get old, and here I am beginning to look like the dry-rotted driver’s seat of an old Toyota."

Rudy pursed his lips. "You don’t look that bad. ‘Cept for that stupid purple shirt. Where the hell did you get that thing, Fairies-R-Us?"

Ben grinned. "So what the hell are you doing here?"

Rudy looked out the window at the drenched parking lot. "Road’s too fucked up to drive right now. I saw your car out front, thought I’d drop by and save you from yourself."

"Right," Ben said.

He poured himself a shot of the gold liquid and knocked it back making a wry face.

"So what’s with the rot-gut?" Rudy said.

Ben gave him a quizzical look. "Don’t tell me you’ve went out and got religion."

Rudy bunched his lips together. "Hell, if I walked into a church, the damn thing would probably burn down."

Ben nodded.

Rudy leaned forward. "Last time you went on one of your binges, you nearly killed yourself and your marriage."

"Yes, mother."

Rudy looked straight past him as if he didn’t even hear him. "I had a long talk with Amy while you were in the hospital. She’s not a bad girl."

Ben rolled his eyes.

"It didn’t even occur to me during all that time we were out drinkin’ that you hadn’t been home in over two weeks."

"So what?" Ben snapped.

Rudy threw his hands up. "Wasn’t tryin to piss you off, just wake you up."

Ben sighed and looked out the window at the parking lot to find Rudy’s Black ’62 Ranchero sitting beside his RX 7 being pounded by the rain.

"That girl ain’t gonna stick around much longer and watch you self-destruct."

Ben looked down at his lap -- spinning his wedding band around on his finger with his thumb.

"How’s she doin’ anyway?"

Ben poured himself another shot, and gulped it down wiping his mouth afterwards with his shirtsleeve.

"About like me, only less stuck."

"What does that mean?"

Ben grabbed his cigarettes, shook one out and lit up.

"Amy’s at home right now waiting on me. She wants to talk to me about a divorce."

"I see."

Rudy looked down at the table and then back up at him. "It’s your own goddamn fault, you know."

Ben’s mouth fell open. "What the fuck do you know?"

Rudy gave him an innocent look.

"Fuck you and the horse you rode in on!"

Rudy nodded and looked out the window at the nastiness outside, and then he slapped his knees and stood up.

"Well, me and the horse I rode in on have a long ride ahead."

Ben glared at him.

Rudy stepped over and squeezed his shoulder. "My advice? Throw that goddamn bottle in the trash, sober up, go home, get down on your knees, and tell that little lady that you didn’t do it, and that you’ll never do it again."

Ben shook his head and looked straight ahead at the empty seat in front of him.

"Go to hell!"

(Continue to parts 5&6)