Chapter 5 - Till death do us part
Later that night while John’s room was swallowed up by darkness. His room suddenly exploded in bright light, enough to startle John awake. A familiar buzz followed by the chirping of what sounded like a bird carried itself across the room. It was his mobile phone. He scowled, turning over in his slumber and attemting to transmute his faint consciousness back into dreams. He then realized how odd and queer it was for him to receive a text so late into the night. Truth be told, he hadn’t received a text in months. The only person to contact him these days was Dr. Sternal and that was always by phone call. The notion that it could be anyone else skipped his mind entirely.
Unable to scare away the curiosity, he rolled back over and reached for the handheld buzzer. He awoke the phone as unceremoniously as it had woken him; pushing every which button till the screen lit up temporarily blinding himself. Framing the little window on the screen reserved for highlighting text messages was the name: Jennifer.
The time on his phone read three-thirty-four in the morning whcih sent a wave of irritation to crash against the pounding in his head. Opening the message, the abigious text read: “W-u-u-2”
John stared at the three-letter, one number message for some time. When he gave up, he replied: “What?”
The reply was almost instant and John could even see the symbol that notified you when the other person was typing.
Jennifer: “I forgot how old you were…What. Are. You. Up. Too?”
Those waves of irritation came back for another assault, this one intent of bursting down the flood walls.
John: “Sleep. Ing.”
No reply. No speech bubble to warn of an incoming text. Just the 'read' notifcication that hung beneath the text.
John: “Are you okay?”
Still no reply. John waited, typing out other texts in a similar vein to his most recent one without sending them. Then he realized with awkward horror; if Jennifer were watching from the other end she would be seeing him typing.
Reluctantly he rolled over, attempting to banish the girl from his mind and return to blissful sleep. Two minutes passed. John’s thoughts sunk deeper and deeper into that void that ultimately folded into sleep, then his phone did its symphony of: lighting up, buzzing, chirping, fading back to black. John snatched up the phone like a man seizing some infuriating alarm clock on a Monday morning.
Jennifer: “Can I come over?”
The messaged stunned him for a moment. Here was a girl John had only just met yesterday, asking him if she could come over. Anxiety crept up into John like hot wires. After some consideration, John focused on his phone.
John: “What’s happened?”
Jennifer: “Nothing, I just can’t be at home right now.”
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John: “I don’t think it’s a good idea, Jennifer.”
Jennifer: “K”
He felt bad, but what was he meant to do? Invite a eighteen-year-old girl over to his house? Worse, a eighteen-year-old girl he only met yesterday? No, no, he couldn’t. But despite this rationality he found guilt still plaguing him long after the text was sent. Jennifer had reached out to him and he had turned her down. He didn’t know what the girl was going through, seen as she was seldom liberal on information. John picked up his phone again to inquire further, then reconsidered...
He lay awake for some time folding over Jennifer’s potential motives. She wanted to come over yes, but to what end? Simply to sleep? Or was it something else, something less innocent? She knew he was a married man and if that obscene but still very real possibility was to play out. That same fantasy that both disgusted and excited John, well, he would shut it down. He was a married man who loved...still loves, rather, his wife. But what was the proverb? Till death do us part.
No, no, John just hoped Jennifer was alright. Come the morning he would text her to make sure. If she needed someone to talk to, he could offer her that much. Anymore, and he would just have to tell her straight. He was old enough to be her father after all.
Finally, he questioned the fact he might have it all wrong. Why had his seedy mind even put that fantasy there the first place? (and yes, that was what it was). This was a young woman he was talking about. The common likelihood was she simply needed a place to stay, nothing more; but why? She might have even looked to him as if a father figure. These thoughts chased John for most of the night making him dizzy until sleep mercifully came like some shepherd rescuing his flock from the a hungry predator.
To John, it felt as though he had only just embraced sleep again when the alarm clock alerted him rudely it was time to wake up. That morning: John got up, showered, brushed his teeth, and went outside for his ritual morning smoke. The minty toothpaste and tobacco colliding in his mouth like two warring faction’s intent on supremacy was unpleasant, and John took a mental note he would brush his teeth after his cigarette, like he always had tomorrow. This morning, however, he found he drifted through the house doing his bodily functions and errands absently, his mind already allocated to a separate task; a task that required ALL his cognitive resources. He thought about Jennifer and hoped silently to himself she was okay.
He texted Jennifer, knowing full well in the back of his mind she likely wouldn’t reply till later in the day. If John knew one thing about today’s youth it was that the morning didn’t exist to them unless it was between the hours of twelve and four in the morning. He tried to call his daughter again, but was met with the constant ringing and evidently the voicemail that follows. He tried his daughter yet again while having his second smoke outside, feeling the goose prickles run up his back from the autumn chill. It would be winter soon and with it the icy temperatures John liked. The memory of a vicious sunburn back in the summer of 2001 floated before him, but John swatted it away like a man swatting away a bug.
After surrendering the third attempt to call his daughter, he figured today he would instead go visit her. And if she refused to answer the door he would simply let himself in. He had a key to her place after all and he highly doubted she would have the willingness to change the locks. The idea of that possibility sent a further shiver to run up his spine, this one nothing to do with the cold. Guilt sank its sharpened teeth into him when he came to realize, he’d seemingly had a stronger emotional tie to Jennifer, a girl he barely knew, than to his own daughter.
With breakfast out of the way, John collected his things together. Jennifer still hadn’t texted and by ten-thirty in the morning he threw on his jacket and grabbed his keys by the door. An enormous bright yellow figure consumed the shimmering glass on the door and John paused. The figure outside raised a fist and knocked. John answered pretty much immediately and was alarmed to see it was a set of police officers.
The officers looked mournfully at John, both; respectfully removing their hats and frowning slightly. The male officer who was flanked by the female officer spoke first.
“Are you Mr. Grimshaw?” He asked. John nodded nervously.
“I’m afraid there’s been an incident.” He added.
And on that chilly morning, John Grimshaw was informed of his daughter’s death.