BLACK PILLS IN EXILE

The last time I saw her, she’d said she’d forgotten an item at the store. We did our weekly shop every Sunday at the Walmart in the town a few hours drive from the remote cabin where we lived.

I have gone back over endlessly in my mind those last few moments before she vanished. I remember she distinctly hesitated when I asked her if she needed any money. She shook her head and paused only briefly to catch my eye before exiting the vehicle.

As I waited for her return, it must have been forty minutes before I finally called her phone. After being repeatedly diverted to her answerphone each time I tried to call, I finally left the car myself.

Scouring the many aisles in the sterile looking Walmart for her, I must have gone round the place five whole times before eventually giving up and returning to my vehicle. I would have looked like one of those lunatics who drive in endless circles around roundabouts before finally being pulled over by the cops.

It was getting late and I could think of no more logical choice than to ask the staff back at the Walmart for help. I made a plea with the manager of the store to let me review security footage of the past two hours so I could see if she’d even made it to the store in the first place, but she wouldn’t let me, saying it would be in breach of several workplace protocols.

As I walked slowly back to the car, my mind racing, heavy snow began to fall. The dilemma in my mind which was weighing as heavy as my heart was whether to call the police yet or wait it out a little longer.

For the first time in a long while, I genuinely had no idea what to do next. I was lost and the only thing I could think to do was to wait the night in my car and hope she returned.

Sitting behind the wheel of my car, the snow began to settle on my windscreen until eventually I could no longer see anything but white. It felt like a perfect metaphor for my mind which had become a complete blur.

I sat in the silence, rewinding our last conversations in my mind like old videotape. I knew she wasn’t happy with our situation but I believed our love was strong enough to withstand the frustrations we currently faced. Maybe I had it all wrong and had ignored the warning signs these past few weeks.

My mind refused to believe she had been abducted but even if she had, what could I do until morning anyway? I turned the car radio on to distract my anxious mind. Miraculously, perhaps due to the familiar sound of Sibelius, I fell asleep despite the stress of it all.

In my dream, I drove endlessly through the night in search of her. Speeding down endless lost highways, I saw nothing but darkness.

When I woke up, the snow had been mostly washed away by unexpected heavy rain.

A feeling of dread spread through my body as I woke up to the very real nightmare of her vanishing. After twenty minutes of procrastination I finally resigned myself to calling the police, but as I turned on my phone, I realised it was completely out of charge.

I searched around the vehicle for a spare cable to charge my phone with. Opening the glove compartment on the passenger side I rummaged around for a few seconds when I not only found a cable, but a small, square perfectly folded up piece of paper.

I unfolded it and instantly recognised her Jackson Pollock style scrawl.

It read : “I can’t do this anymore. Please don’t worry about me. We just have different paths in this life. It’s really as simple as that. I love you.”

Never before had I had two such opposite feelings inside of me. On one hand, relief that I could at least understand her motive and that I wouldn’t have to call the police; on the other, anguish that someone I had made so many sacrifices for had the audacity to leave me in the middle of nowhere to face a future in solitary. Had I seen the warning signs? Yes. But sometimes its only when someone close to you takes action that you’re suddenly forced to wake up to the truth of the matter.

The snow had turn to grey and black sludge. An hour into my journey home, I had to pull over at a gas station to collect myself. The prospect of returning to an empty house filled me with an overwhelming sense of depression. It was hard for me then and there to reason with any logic other than to end it all as soon as possible.

I tried to zone out of myself and just see if I could make myself materially vanish, but the sheer dead weight of my body was inescapable. I was trapped in my flesh and blood strait jacket and until I committed to the final action of killing myself I had to keep going.

I went to the gas station washroom to wash my face and try and clear the storm clouds in my mind. As I studied my reflection, I suddenly realised how much I’d aged these past few months. Clearly events had taken their toll on me in all aspects and now I’d paid an even greater sacrifice. The death of a relationship.

The bright lights inside the gas station created an extreme contrast to the darkness everywhere else around me.

The rugged looking attendant behind the counter had fallen asleep. If ever there was a time to stage a robbery it was now.

I coughed politely to alert his attention.

He responded as if on auto-pilot.

“Yes. How can I help you, sir?”

“Just these and the fuel.”

He check the pump number and totalled up the items.

“You need to go back to bed I reckon,” I lightly suggested to divert my mind from the impending doom I felt inside of myself.

The attendant chuckled.

“I should never have gotten out of it.”

It was then I noticed he had two stumps where his middle fingers should have been.

“What happened?”

“Frostbite.”

“How?”

“Was up top of Snow Peak in the Spray Mountains when my wife and I fell from a great height during an avalanche.”

“You made it out alive at least?”

“I did. My wife didn’t.”

In this moment, I had met my match, as if some higher power had deliberately juxtaposed our suffering to give me perspective.

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

Somehow the banal lyrics of the pop song on the tinny speaker above the counter marked an even greater contrast with this man’s profound loss.

“Well, take care,” I said, uncertain what else to say right now.

I paid the man and went to turn my back.

“We all have our burdens. Mine is not seeing her again. Except in my dreams. Another reason to go back to bed I reckon.”

I wasn’t expecting that elaboration of expression after our strange, almost monosyllabic exchange.

I paused for a moment at the door. I ran through what I wanted to say to him in my head. Something along the lines of “say mister. You just might have saved my life tonight.”

But I said nothing and headed back to the car.

Driving through the night, I felt like a wounded animal, leaving an invisible trail of blood on the tracks behind me.

In some ways, I felt like I had shed a skin back there in the town where I lost her.

I returned to my home near the woods and retreated for the long winter. My stock piles would see me through and perhaps, by the grace of God, I would re-emerge into a brighter spring.

I climbed into the bed where she had spent so much time in refuge and could smell her hybrid scent of perfume, sweat and tears across the sheets and pillows. I imagined recreating her from these remaining fragments of her essence like a human hologram, but the truth was she was gone and I was here.

Lost.

Lost and alone.