When he heard the Black Crowe’s version of Otis Redding’s Hard to Handle, four lines inspired him: “Actions speak louder than words/And I’m a man of great experience/I know you’ve got another man/But I can love you better than him.”
He was so pleased when he wrested her affections from the other man that he did not recognize the gratitude in the loser’s face as he walked away, picking at the hem of his turtleneck sweater as if he wanted to take it apart thread by thread, but was reluctant to reveal what it hid. The triumphant man would hide those secrets himself soon enough.
Inside of a month, the man was covering his bruises with long shirt sleeves. This got him into trouble with HR, who insisted that long sleeves needed a tie. He barked his refusal, then apologized and excused himself for the rest of the day, pleading illness. Noting his paleness, sweaty brow, and slight shortness of breath, HR gave his departure their blessing. The next day, the man had solved HR’s problem by showing up in a turtleneck sweater.
As time passed, his co-workers noticed that he would “space out” when certain things happened. Heated arguments sometimes occurred in the office. The man had once been the voice of reason when they got out of hand, but now he seemed to go away when the shouting started. When exasperated colleagues, women in particular, spoke sharply toward him, he seemed to retreat further inside himself before finally coming back. His efforts to restore order were a faint outline of what they had been, before the woman.
The man broke completely and for the last time when the regional manager came to the office for her quarterly presentation. She had a habit of whacking whichever part of her Powerpoint slide needed emphasis with a ruler. As she stared at the screen while talking, she didn’t notice her employees’ growing alarm as every whack caused the man to jump, as if he was trying to shed his skin and fly away. When his seat squealed as he thumped into it after his penultimate jump, the manager looked at him. “Do not interrupt me,” she said, as she smacked the ruler down on the table in front of him.
He screamed as he leaped to his feet, ripping his sweater half off before standing rigid, as immobile as a stone monolith. Two half scabbed wounds in his neck dribbled blood. He did not speak, having gone somewhere inside where nothing could ever touch him again. The woman had arrived, smelling of lavender and rust. She took the ruler from the manager’s hand and slapped it against her palm. She would take care of him, she said, and her smile was so beguiling that they believed it. The longness of her canine teeth did not bother them at all.
His bloodless corpse turned up in a drainage ditch, not three feet from where the body of the loser he replaced was found a few months earlier. When the man broke down for the last time, she already had a new man who had made the same promise: I am a man of great experience, and I can love you better than him.
Postscript: I feel like I should relate this to self care in some way. So, don't date vampires?
#Disability #Depression #Suicide #MentalHealth #PTSD #Trauma #MightyPoets
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