A drive always feels longer when you don’t want to make it, when you just want to already be where you’re going. The asphalt stretched out in ways he’d never noticed before even though the road was as familiar as his own skin. He was lost in that familiarity, lost in his own skin. The walls of the world towered over his head in a labyrinthine tangle.

He fought to keep his head up and his eyes open. What if I just let go of the wheel? What if I just slam on the gas and let go? It occurred to Dave that this would resolve nothing; I probably wouldn’t die. It’s just a Prius. I’d have a thousand phone calls to make and even more to answer. It would just make more noise in a life begging for less. I just want peace and quiet. I just want silence.

He pulled up to the apartment. He turned off the car and sat for a second; he enjoyed a deep breath of cold air, taking in the crispness, letting it hit the inside of his lungs like an ice bath hits the skin; this was nothing more than another nuance. He was still abandoning the love of little things, still coming to terms with the weight of their insignificance. He rubbed his face vigorously as if scrubbing his identity away. I want nothing to do with myself. I want nothing to do with anyone.

Dave got out and shut the door. He leaned back against the car for a moment of support. It felt like he had run home. I can’t escape this. I can barely stand. I can barely breathe. What’s the point of this? I go on because I’ve always gone on. Everyone before me has always gone on. We ceaselessly march in unquestioned circles. We keep on playing, keep on saying the lines when we don’t know what they mean. We’re high schoolers with Shakespeare; we just say what we see with no understanding. We just do what we can. We are what we are. I don’t want this.

Slowly he trod forward to the apartment door. He fumbled with his keys; he was finally at the end of a long journey through the labyrinth. He poked at the doorknob, looking for the lock. He slid his key in and turned it, then pushed the door in slowly and felt a small sense of relief.

It was warm inside. Elizabeth was sitting on the couch watching an episode of something. She’d been off work for almost an hour. Dave looked at her and smiled. The ice was melting from behind his eyes.

“Hi,” she said. “You’re late.”

“No, I got off work at eleven-thirty.”

“I thought you said you were getting off at eleven.”

“No.”

“Well, let’s go get food.”

“I really don’t want to go out.”

“Well, we don’t have anything to eat here.”

“Yes, we do.”

“No, we don’t.”

“Sure we do. I just bought groceries, I thought,” said Dave. He walked into the kitchen, looked in the pantry, then looked in the fridge, then went back to the pantry. He saw various cans of various things, some noodles but no pasta sauce, some instant potatoes, and odds and ends for baking.

“Okay…” he sighed. “I guess you’re right. I guess we’ll go out.”

“We don’t have to,” she lied.

“No, it’s fine. We’ll go. I just hate going through drive-throughs.”

“It’s fine. We can stay home.”

“No, I don’t feel like cooking. Let’s go. Let’s just go!” snapped Dave. He snarled like a dog, tense and hateful. He couldn’t look her in the eyes now; he was as ashamed of his behavior as he was of the pain which sparked it.

“Hey! What’s wrong with you?” she accused.

“Nothing. I’m fine.”

“No, something’s wrong. Talk to me!”

I’m not talking to you You’re attacking me Back off! Get away from me! I just want to be alone! Go away! Go away! Go the hell away! “I said I’m fine.”

He stood by the door waiting for her to get up. She stared him down, her face an echo of her words. I don’t want to be here. Stop forcing my hand; I’m tired. I just want to stop. I just want this to be over. I just want to go to sleep. I wish I was dead.

“Please, come sit down,” said Elizabeth. She tried being kind.

“Fine,” said Dave. He huffed over to the couch. He couldn’t look at her. “What do you want?”

“I want you to talk to me.”

“What? What do you want me to say?”

“Talk to me. Why are you so upset?”

“Because you won’t leave me alone.”

“Alright! Fine! Just be upset. Do you like being upset? Is this what you want? You just want to be mean and angry all the time? Do you like being this way?”

Stop it. Stop attacking me. Get away! he thought, again like a wild dog. He could barely keep the words caged in his mind; he wanted to inflict pain on her for what she was doing, and he wanted to inflict a lot of it. She was wrong. She needed to leave him alone. She needed to let him speak in his own time. She needed to wait until morning.

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

These were all things he could’ve said, but he knew they would’ve done nothing. He realized he was still trapped in the labyrinth; he had no idea where to go. He wasn’t home.

He sat with a scowl painted on his tired, hateful face.

“Are you going to talk to me or not?”

“I’m going to tell you to leave me alone. I don’t have anything to say to you! I just want to be left alone!”

“No. Talk to me. What’s wrong?”

“I said ‘nothing.’ I’m fine. Now, let’s go get food.”

“I’m not leaving the house with you, not while you’re acting like this. You need to sit here and talk to me.”

Goddamn! She sounds like a broken record. “I hate my job! Is that what you want to hear? I hate dealing with idiots all day. I hate being proven wrong again and again; I hate being shown repeatedly that the world is cruel and hopeless. I hate not being appreciated. I hate coming home to a filthy mess. I hate myself. I hate my life. I hate being alive! What the fuck is this all for? It’s all just a violent show of shit and consumption!

“They tell me life is important,” he continued, calming down for a breath. “But if it is, then why does it suck so much! Everyone just goes on and on without thinking, and they take and take everything they can. That’s all it feels like life is: people taking for themselves.”

“Well, what about providing for your family? What’s wrong with people doing that?”

“What family? I don’t see any kids! I don’t see one damn child! I have given nothing to the charade of existence; nothing begets nothing!

“Then be something!” she yelled. “Get over yourself; quit feeling so sorry for yourself! All your problems are in your head; you said it yourself.”

“I can’t get these damn thoughts the fuck out! I’m just fucking callin’em as I see ’em: Everyone is their own damn god, and we’re all pretty fucking shitty at it. I’m sick of their divine commandments. There’s nothing good about anything that anyone’s doing. There’s no reason to get out of bed. There’s no reason to keep breathing. There’s no goddamn reason to fucking be alive. Nothing matters. Nothing changes anything. Nothing makes any difference. We’re all just stuck in fucking Hell!

“I don’t know why I keep going,” he said. “We’ll always have trouble covering rent. We can’t have a baby, and even if we could, we couldn’t afford one. I have no talents. I have no worth. I’m just the audience to a trainwreck, and when I’m dead, no matter what I do, everything will end up the same damned way. I have no say in the matter! Is that what you wanted me to say? Is that what you wanted me to fucking tell you? Fuck off!”

He hadn’t struck her, but he may as well have. He hadn’t flipped the table, but he may as well have done that too. His words erupted from his mouth with seething violence. His eyes burst with a furious storm. He looked like an animal poised to kill, towering over his wife. He knew he was wrong, but he didn’t know what was right. He didn’t know which way to turn.

Elizabeth looked back at him, her eyes full of tears, something else that was wrong. Those eyes shouldn’t look like that. He forgot tears like that existed. She looked as violent as Dave, but she refrained herself; she knew getting her husband to talk would eventually be a victory for the both of them. That’s all she wanted: for both of them to win.

“Don’t yell at me,” she said.

“You wanted me to talk! You wanted me to say something! I just gave you what you wanted, damn it!” He was gone already, so he just kept going.

“No. Stop yelling. If you really feel that way, find another job.”

“I did that! I tried that this summer, and you know what, I sucked at it. You don’t remember when we just barely made ends meet because I couldn’t make sales? You don’t remember the two hour drives home where I tore myself apart because I was empty-handed because I was failing my team, failing my wife, and failing myself. No! Of course you don’t remember because you weren’t there! You weren’t there for those moments! I drove home alone, carrying that weight on my own shoulders. Where were you when I called you just for someone to talk to? Huh? Where were you? Too busy feeling sorry for no good reason, that’s where.”

“Maybe you could have sold something if you had some self-confidence!”

“How could I have that? I was alone! I’m still alone! You still don’t understand.”

“Go back to school! Do something! Do something with yourself.”

“Why? What difference will that make?”

“It will make you happier, so I don’t have to deal with you being miserable.”

“Is that all I am to you? Some miserable burden? Gee, great to know my wife loves me.”

“I do love you! That’s why I need you to do something with yourself. Grow up. Get over yourself.”

She was right, but not at the right time. Sometimes we lose the ability to support ourselves; we begin falling in like a poorly pitched tent or an old, rotten house. At such times, compassion is the only rodding that will keep us up, the only thread to keep us together. Compassion can make molded floorboards dry and new with time and effort. Elizabeth knew what Dave should do, but she didn’t know what he needed. Still, he knew she wasn’t wrong.

“I’m done with this conversation. Can we just go?”

“No. You need to talk to me. You need to figure out what you’re going to do with yourself.”

Silence. A moment passed.

“Maybe I should stop wishing I was dead and start wishing I was alive instead.” Maybe I should listen to myself and just end it. That’d be something. Elizabeth didn’t hear these words like she should have. She kept driving the nail.

“There you go. That’s a start. You just need to decide what you want and go for it.” His sincerity was lost on her like a lecture is lost on a sleepy student. “You weren’t born to pay bills and die.”

Why is what I want so important? He saw himself on stage, standing there like a dumb, sad creature with greasy hair and a black peacoat. His wife was sitting on the couch. A blue light isolated him from everything else. He couldn’t tell what was happening on the rest of the stage; it happened so fast. It all seemed lost in the darkness; the only lights he saw were the white ones on his wife and the blue one on himself.

Stage Dave looked up and out into the audience. He looked at one person, sitting eating popcorn. There was another playing on her phone. The same blue light singled out a Dave in the audience.

Audience Dave looked around, a bit startled, then locked eyes with the sad version of himself standing there alone. The actor’s eyes said, ‘what do we do next?’ They both looked over to the red exit sign. They looked back at each other. Audience Dave shrugged.

“Hey,” came a whisper from his right. His glance shot over and met two eyes haunted by a sullen brow. A funeral haircut lay atop a skeleton’s head veiled with a thin human mask. A dark, peppered mustache held the face together like a wingnut. Eugene O’Neill stared at Dave. “Stick to the script. Just keep going; it’s about to get good.”

“What?”

“Yes,” said the plump man to Dave’s left. “Keep going.” Alfred Hitchcock gave him that long-faced look that ran down his nose, his bottom lip sticking slightly out. “You must make it at least to Christmas.”

With the writer and director having said their pieces, audience Dave looked back to the fellow on stage. The actor nodded and turned to his wife. “I’m sorry I lost my temper. It’s been hard lately. Can we just get something to eat?”