A~ Dreams of Reality (Chapter I)

Chapter I

Martin McDavies dropped his pen in frustration. Removing his glasses he
massaged his throbbing temples and counted to ten&;#8230; once, then
again, and again. He breathed in deeply and exhaled, squeezing every
last breath of air from his lungs, squeezing until it hurt.

"Goddamnit," he sighed.

He closed his eyes tightly and sat with his head in his hands, his
temples between his index finger and his thumb and tried to banish the
images of paperwork that were burned into the base of his skull,
branded there on his mind like breed numbers onto the rump of a
bull.

He looked up towards the tarnished old clock on the blank wall of his
basement office.

"Twenty to eight," he mumbled, "Enough time for a drink before I get
back to Florence,"

He stood and cluttered out the door, banging it and locking it noisily,
trying to break the suffocating silence that surrounded him. It was
always so quiet down here, so quiet and so dark...

Once he was out of the office and into the basement parking lot, he lit
a cigarette, the hissing of his lighter making a comforting sound in
his ears.
The only noise thereafter was the slamming of his car door and the
squealing of tires as he raced away from the stress of his work towards
the bar on the corner of Barkley and Main.

Tick...tick...tick...tick...tick...tick...tick...tick...
Florence McDavies watched the hands of the clock seem to spin as she
huddled on the threadbare couch. The ticking of the dingy plastic clock
over the kitchen counter seemed to turn into a steady rhythm, a rhythm
that mirrored that of her own beating heart.

Tick...tick...throb...throb...

She got to her feet and shuffled across the shaggy rug on the floor
towards the kitchen. Emptying out the cold contents of her third
untouched cup of tea, she set the kettle to boil.

Glancing again at the clock, she sighed deeply.

"Twenty to one," she murmured under her breath, "for God's sake Martin,
where are you?"

She of course already knew the answer to that question, the same
question that she seemed to ask herself almost every night.

Her husband was slumped over the sticky wooden surface of the bar. You
know that bar on the corner of Barkley and Main?

She calculated in her head how many drinks he'd had so far... the
answer to that question almost always went unknown.

Pushing her thick copper coloured hair away from her face, she angrily
struggled to fight back the tears. There was no use in crying, but it
always seemed to happen.
Her sobbing drowned the ticking of the clock out as her tears trickled
down her cheeks and off her chin into the empty cracked coffee mug,
swirling into the tea-stain at the bottom.

* * *

The car shuddered to a halt in the driveway, jerking Florence from a
light sleep. She struggled up onto the elbows on the couch and fixed
her eyes on the thin dark wood of the door. She heard a dry
half-hearted cough and her husband's thick hands fumbling with the keys
in the lock. The door banged open and Martin McDavies stumbled into the
apartment.

"For God's sake Martin," Florence scolded, "where have you been? I've
been up for hours!"

"Yeah? You have, have you? I'm sho shorry shweetheart, I jusht shtopped
to have a little drink on the way home..."

Martin stumbled over to his wife, tripping up on the edge of the shaggy
carpet on the floor, "How's about a little kish, hey
shweetheart?"

Florence turned her head away from his drunken lips and took a step
towards the bedroom door, "Goodnight Martin, I'm going to bed
now,"

Martin's face twisted into a grotesque mask of rage, "I shaid, I want a
kish," he slurred angrily

"And I said I'm going to bed," Florence said bravely, fear niggling at
the base of her spine.

His hands all of a sudden didn't seem so much drunk as they did large
and strong. He advanced towards her, his face distorted until it
depicted nothing but anger, "When I shay I want a kish, you're gonna
damnwell give it to me woman!"

"Martin, please...don't," Florence backed away, shielding her face with
her hands.

From the second bedroom door, a tiny pale face surveyed the scene
through the crack. Frightened eyes watched as the woman was thrown to
the floor with a strike of the man's hand. The child's chin trembled as
the tears began to roll, and the door was closed to shut out the terror
that raged behind it...