In Memory of Annie Wells

A writer is haunted by the death of his wife.

The sound of what seemed to be a million semis all honking their horns at once woke Brian Wells from his afternoon nap. Startled and confused he stumbled over to his office window.

            Rows of semis lined West DePere’s Main st with horns blaring. It was once again that time of summer, the annual Semi appreciation weekend, truck rodeo, or whatever they called it, and by God, he always hated it. To him there was nothing more disturbing to his writing (or his naps) than the sound of all those horns.

            “Honey, we’ve got to get out of this town.” He declared to the empty house two houses from the corner of Main st and Eighth St in which he and his late wife Annie had lived for seventeen years.

Slowly coming out of the delirium of sleep, he realized that he had forgotten that Annie was gone. She was for a little over a year now, dead of lung cancer at the age of thirty-nine, but she never smoked a day in her life. He turned away from the window the tears welling up in his eyes. It seemed tragic how one small slip of thought could reopen some wounds, but then some wounds never healed.

He didn’t know why he cared so much about the sound of the horns anyway, he hadn’t written anything in a little over a year either. His electric Smith and Corona typewriter was still sitting on the desk in his office with the same sheet of paper in it that was in it since the day before she died, the hollow words of a story long forgotten printed on the piece of typing paper.

He hadn’t even attempted to write anything. Every time he sat down at that desk, he felt a pain in his stomach that reminded him of all the time he lost with his wife, because he was hard at work. If only he hadn’t needed money, but hell it was only the first few years of hard work that he actually needed the money. After that he had enough put aside possibly to live on for quite a few year, and if not he still had roughly a dozen novels that he had written and stashed during those few years. Moreover, they were still unpublished and sitting in old Hammer Mill paper boxes in the closet of his office, untouched since the day that he had last edited them, the last was twelve years ago.

 It wasn’t the money it was the fact that he loved writing. To him it was like being God for a few hours a day and watching the lives that he created unfold before his eyes. Now to him it seemed like such a selfish love, which was why he no longer wrote even though deep inside it killed him not to write.

Damn society and its monetary greed, he thought, and damn me for being too f*****g selfish. He turned toward the desk and for the first time in over a year took notice of the last line that were typed on the white typing paper.

“Do it, because I want you to be happy.” Said Annie. Is what it read.

He didn’t remember the story he was working on line for line, hell he didn’t remember much of the story at all, but he knew one thing he didn’t type that line. He was in the middle of writing a short horror story and there was no character named after his wife, of that he was positive.

He took a few steps closer to the type writer and started to peer closer at the print thinking that he might have made a mistake, after all his eye sight wasn’t the greatest when he slept with his contacts in. As he peered down at the paper a sudden gust of cold air blew through the room ruffling the page in the typewriter and causing him to jump. He turned quickly toward the window. It was closed. Why would he have opened it anyway, he had central air and it was smoldering outside.

A sudden thought came to him, what if Annie had typed that. As quickly as the thought had reached the surface of his mind, he banished it. “Your imagination’s running away with you again.” He said to himself. After all, she couldn’t have typed it, she was dead and he was working on the story the morning of the day she had died at St. Vincent Hospital.

The reminder again hit him in the stomach like a baseball bat and he began to cry. All of his regrets and pains began to surface with those tears, he fell to his knees and began to beg as he had done some many times over the last year for a second chance. However, he knew this was impossible.

He got to his feet, tears streaming down his face, walked down stairs into the living room, and collapsed on the couch. There he cried himself to sleep as he had done a hundred times since Annie had become just a memory.

As usual dreams of Annie plagued him. He dreamed that he was sitting in his office staring Annie in the doorway. She was trying to say something to him, but he could not hear her words.

            Brian opened his eyes, if it weren’t for the dingy light from the street lamps flooding in through the windows his living room would have been pitch black. A seemly surreal night had fallen while he slept though he felt as though he might have only been out for about ten minutes, maybe an hour at the most. He stood up and started toward the bathroom.

            “Oww, son of a b***h!” his foot had slammed into something heavy lying in the middle of the living room floor. He stumble backward searching for the lamp on the end table and found nothing but the floor as he tripped over the coffee table.

            Gaining some of his bearings back by finding the coffee table Brian crawled around it, found the couch once more, and followed it to the end table and the lamp. When he switched it on, he looked around for the object he had tripped over and was amazed at what he found. It was his old Royal typewriter that he put in the attic years ago when he had upgraded to his Smith and Corona electric model, but he didn’t remember ever pulling it out, let alone bring it into the living room.

            He stared at it a moment remembering when Annie had first given it to him. She had picked it up for two dollars at a garage sale when they were living in an apartment on Fort Howard Dr. That was back when he had first discovered his love of the craft. They were too poor to afford much else, but he loved it and the first thing he wrote on it was a love letter to her telling her how much he had loved it.

Later, when he actually sold some of his stories, he had bought the electric. He loved the typewriter too much to replace it with a computer, besides he never really like the machines anyway.

He smiled at the thoughts of all the great times he had writing on the old Royal, but that smile faded with the fresh thoughts of Annie. Those days were no more and what was that blasted antique doing in the middle of the living room floor anyway.

Suddenly he noticed the sheet of typing paper wound into it. He was too absorbed in the memories of better times to take notice of it before. He got up off the couch and crawled over to it. There was something typed on it, but he was too in shock to believe what he was seeing.

Do it, because it makes you happy, and I want you to be happy. That was the only line typed on the sheet.

He back away from the typewriter slowly as if it were a poisonous snake that might strike if provoked. For a moment, its black rough surface even resembled scales.

A cool breeze flowed through the room making his skin break out in goose flesh. With his back against the couch, he drew his legs up to his chest, trying to warm himself, but the chill lingered in his body. It seemed there was no way to rid him of the horrible penetrating cold.

It reminded him of a time when he was a child and he had gotten horribly sick. He and his brother Paul were out playing in the rain one day in early spring, even though their mother had told them not to. That evening he had come down with a horrible fever that had racked his body with chills. He had not been able to get warm no matter how many blankets he wrapped himself in and now it felt much the same except for the fact that his body was not aching with that horrid feverish ache.

He got up from where he sat huddled on the floor against the couch and turned off the central air, hoping that that would bring back some heat to the living room. Then he went into the bathroom and relieved his aching bladder. When he returned to the living room, it was indeed much warmer in fact. It was sweltering hot. He checked the thermostat, it was eighty degrees. He stood there baffled, not five minutes ago, it was freezing in there and now that he turned off the central air, it was stifling. It made absolutely no sense.

“What the hell is going on here?” he murmured to the empty room as he turned back on the central air.

            He headed up stairs to the bedroom Annie and he had shared for seventeen years. The bedroom he hadn’t slept in once since the day she died. Oh, he tried at least that first night, but with little sleep to show for the eight hours that he had spent lying there staring at the ceiling while the searing pain of heartache absorbed him. The second night would have been just as unproductive except that after an hour of lying there staring at the ceiling and crying, he crept into his study and slept on the old rollaway he kept in there.

            Opening the door he realized that he hadn’t even set foot in this room in almost a year. He had moved all of his clothes into one of the spare bedrooms down the hall and left all of Annie’s stuff there, because it seemed somehow wrong to move any of it.

            His heart leapt up into his throat as he crossed the threshold. His eyes lingering on the open closet where the few dresses she owned hung neatly untouched for over a year. Tears began to well up in his eyes, some for the reminder of happy moments and some for the reminder that she was gone and would never return to dawn any of those dresses that seemed to hang there looking upset over the fact that there owner would never again bring beauty to any of them.

            It wasn’t impossible for him to think of never opening the door to their bedroom again, and yet now he knew that there was no way he could keep himself away from here. He buried most of the things that brought memories of her back to him in here and he didn’t want to disturb their rest, but felt that he wanted their company now more than ever, because he thought that he was going mad.

             He crossed the room to her vanity and pulled a silver locket from the jewelry box which resided on top, next to her makeup. He had purchased the silver locket, silver never gold, Annie never liked gold, for her for their first anniversary and had a small portrait of the two of them, young lovers, put inside.

            Brian clutched the locket as tightly as he could and held it to his chest. She loved the locket and it was the only necklace that she ever wore. He did not buried her with it because somehow he knew she would have wanted him to keep it.

            He crossed to the bed and laid his head on her pillow still clutching the locket. She shed tears of joy when he had given it to her and now he was shedding tears of anguish holding it, knowing that he would never hold her again. The tears streamed down his cheeks dampening her pillow case. He could still smell the scent of shampoo on the pillow even through a year’s worth of dust and it tore at his heart even harder. He cried there in their bed until sleep took him once more.

            When Brian opened his eyes it was still dark in the room. He was on his side of the bed and facing his alarm clock, which had apparently burned out and stopped working sometime over the last year, because the display was black. He tried to roll onto his back, but was stopped by something behind him, something big enough to be a someone.

            It’s just her pillow, he thought, but then it shifted. There was someone there in bed with him. Who the hell would crawl in bed with him? There was reason anyone else would even think about being in the house. They had no children, no dogs, no cats. It had just been he and Annie. Well, his brother Paul had offered to stay with him for awhile after the funeral, but he had ended that idea swiftly, stating that he just wanted to be alone.

            That of course hadn’t gone without argument. Paul stated that he felt that was a bad idea, because of his loss and emotion “trauma” of the situation, that he felt that Bryan might feel that he should take action upon himself with a certain fire arm that he kept in the draw of his night stand. This was due to a bought with depression that Bryan suffered

when he was twenty. Bryan had gotten angry; to have a little bout with depression and have it thrown back in his face during the worst time in his life was deplorable. His know-it-all brother had disrespected him on every level while they were growing up and at Annie’s funeral he had done it again. True there was some merit to the idea that Bryan might redecorate his study in brain matter gray, he had after all already considered the idea, but even though he loved Paul as a brother, he loathed the man’s company. And in the end Bryan hadn’t even looked at the gun let alone painted the walls with his brains with it. Bryan had just wallowed, because he felt that he deserved nothing better.

            The thing behind him moved again and gave a groan. A GROAN! It groaned, pillows don’t groan! There was definitely someone in bed with him.

            Terror engulfed him and even though he knew he should turn over and see who was sharing the bed of that he and his late wife had shared for fifteen years, wait, that wasn’t quite right was it. They were married fifteen years; they had only shared this bed for twelve. Annie had bought after he had gotten his first royalties check. That was four months after his first The Darkness Within was published. Before they had slept on an old bed they had gotten from his parents. The slab is what Annie had called it. She said it felt like you were sleeping on a slab of granite. But were these things, ping-ponging through his brain, there was something in his bed. Something alive. Something that sounded very human.

            Slowly he started to turn over, and then stopped. The smell of Annie’s perfume was strong. Almost like she was right there. He was scared, but suddenly infuriated. Who the hell would break into his house put on his late wife’s perfume and climb in bed with him.

            With his fear gone he turned over and ripped the blankets off of the person behind him. Frozen in horror his eyes welded to what he saw in from of him. He tried to scream but couldn’t. One breath, then another, the rotting lungs were visible through holes the putrid flesh had rotted away leaving the good view of the ribs and what was left of the viscera riddled with maggots.

Bryan gagged and vomited all over the bed and into what was left of the chest cavity.  Quickly he turned away his feet touching the cold floor and braced himself with his hands on his knees. The smell of engulfed him and once more he puked. He tried to hold it back, but there was no stopping it as his stomach decided that it wanted to be rid of anything that he had eaten that day.

Bryan sat there with his head between his knees, his mind swirling with the images of the corpse lying in the bed behind him. She’s dead, he thought, a rotting corpse. Who would be so sick as to dig up her corpse and…? She’s dead. Wait! She was breathing. I could see her lungs moving, taking in air. That’s not right. She’s dead, isn’t she? He tried to focus on just one thing it just kept coming back to the lungs. Moving. Breathing. Taking in air. Pushing it out. Alive? How?

Bryan felt something hard and like four twigs on his right shoulder. No, not like twigs, bones. He panicked and turned to see she was trying to sit up.

“What’s the matter, honey?” She said as maggots spilled out through her rotting lips.

Bryan began to scream.

Wham!! He clutched his head as must have hit it on the headboard as he thrashed about. He was lying down. Wasn’t he just sitting up vomiting on the floor? A dream, he thought, just a dream. It was just a bad dream. Just a dream, but it had seemed so real. He tried to sit up. Wham!!

“What the hell?” he said, trying to figure out what he just hit his head on.

He placed his hands in front of his face and pushed upward until he came in contact with the surface he hit his head on. It was about six inches away. Then he heard it. The breathing again and he began to panic.

Suddenly boney armed closed around his chest and held him tight and Annie’s voice whispered in his ear. “Now we can stay buried here together forever.” She said.

Bryan sat up screaming. The sun was shining in through the bedroom window. It was morning and he was not in Annie’s coffin. The rotting thing that had once been Annie was not in his bed. He was alone. Safe and alone.

He looked around the room at all the things that had once been hers. Everything reminded him if her, but he didn’t want to cry. No this time he smiled, because he felt like she was there. Not the rotting thing he had dreamed of, but her. Then he saw it sitting on his dresser. He hadn’t used the dresser in a year, but he was sure it wasn’t there before. It was a piece of paper, the stationary that Annie once used to leave him notes if she needed to. A piece of it folded and lying on the top of his dresser, like a note that he had missed.

Bryan got up out of bed. Now he was pretty sure there wasn’t a note there before. He walked over to the dresser and saw there was Annie’s lipstick, the light pink shade he loved so much on her, on the note. Every time she left him a note she had kissed it. It was just one of her things and he loved it.

Bryan picked up the note and opened it.

Bry,

Write. Do it, because it makes you happy. Your happiness has always made me happy, too. I love you.

Love,

A

            Bryan folded the note and set it back on the dresser. He smiled and ran down stairs to his study. He threw himself down in his office chair and ripped the old sheet from his type writer. It was time for something new.

            He closed his eyes for a moment breathing deeply. The smell of Annie’s perfume was all around him. He grabbed a clean sheet from the dusty box of typing paper and rolled it in. In the middle of the sheet he typed two lines:

In Memory of Annie Wells

I love you

            Bryan took the page out of the type writer and set it beside him on the desk. He then rolled a fresh sheet into his Smith and Corona and he began to write.

Author's Note

Newly edited and thanks for the tips.

Reviews

[Mashoosh Kateb]

Very well written. Easy to visualize what you were describing. Since I am not used to your writing style I am not sure I understand the transition from touchy feely to gore. Perhaps that is what you were going for. I will surely be reading more of your work.