Flames and Frost
by Bethany Elaine Norwood
‘Til Death Do Us Part have become the words I regret saying the most.
I stare with disgust at my blue-collared husband, slumping forward on the couch with a half-empty Corona resting on his gut. His chubby left hand holds the beer while the right holds the remote. His golden eyes retire to the back of his red head, and his drooling jaw subsequently drops open. I pry the remote out of his hand, push the power button, and flick the living room lights off. I exhaustedly make my way down our creaky hallway to our cold bedroom. The king-size bed has had one side neatly made for some time now, while the other is still freshly undone from last night. I crawl into the undone side and fall asleep.
“Dada! Dada! Get up!” My daughter’s squeaky two year old voice is like a needle in my temple. I open my eyes to the overwhelmingly bright daylight streaming through the wide living room window. Last night’s beer is still in my hand, and my new white shirt is stained with drool. Smoked bacon and eggs fill the air and my bitter dry mouth salivates. I love my wife’s cooking. It’s one of the only things she’s good at. I tell her she should be a chef, but she refuses to get a job. Oh well, she’s stuck with me for a while anyway. I can finally stand the brightness for long enough to open my eyes. My golden-eyed and gold haired beauty stands in front of me. Her little round nose scrunches up with a contagious smile and she says, “Why you have juice?” She points to my beer. Before I respond and look like an even worse example of fatherhood, I heave myself up off the couch and sneak to the kitchen. All the lights in the kitchen are a laser into my head. It’s like she makes it extra bright to punish me. “Hi, Sweetie,” I’ll say, but she won’t answer me. Instead, she glares icily at me while the bacon pops in the skillet under her. I throw the bottle away and return to my little daughter so that I can avoid this mess.
I pull the fresh and fatty bacon strips off the package and toss them on the sizzling skillet. I hear his drunken footsteps lumber into the kitchen from the wide doorway behind me. As I turn to look at him, he drops his head defensively and continues over to the trash can to throw his Corona away. He crashes back onto the couch with a thud and continues to play with our daughter, Aurora. Once again, he’s shut off from me. It remains like that throughout the day. He’s missing work because he called in hung over again. So he plays with Aurora and is the wonderful dad that I married. But around five, he starts drinking again.
The coldness bursts through my lips and hovers over my tongue. It lingers there as the alcohol stings the sides of my tongue slightly. The liquid glides down my throat and warms my belly. I smack my tongue several times and savor the bittersweet lime after taste. It’s heaven. My wife sits all crossed up on the sofa chair cornering me. Her freezing legs and chilly glare make my pulse quicken and my blood simmer. Her disapproving look melts away and she chuckles, “I guess we’re going to have McDonalds for dinner a lot these next couple weeks?” Her attempt at a joke sparks my skin and it becomes reddened. I stare at the empty 6-pack container that she points to as she rants about me taking a day off.
I stuff his empty 6-pack container in the trash and walk back to the living room. As I glaze onto the chair, I see another empty 6-pack that he had just finished. I crack a passive aggressive joke about eating McDonalds for dinner now and try to get him to understand his drinking problem. He stares at the new empty 6-pack container and then gives me a clueless glare. He’s totally checked out. I sigh. This is the side of him I don’t like. It’s the part that makes me chilly to his heat. I feel unsafe in his exaggerated indignation. I curl up tight as we stare each other down. He may be scary but I am strong to his heat. He can’t break ice, only change my form to calm water, which is how our arguments usually end. I’ll compromise and soothe his ferocity. I don’t want Aurora to witness so much strife. I’ll put him to bed on the couch with the remote and a snack, though sometimes he still sneaks another beer. I’ll act like things are mended between us, wait for him to fall asleep, turn the TV off, and then exhaustedly make my way to bed too. In this moment, I stare at him and wait for the first spark to cackle. Suddenly, he gets up and shuffles to the door. He says he needs a cigarette break, and blunders down a couple stairs to our backyard porch. I sit inside for a little bit, but am bothered by his need to avoid me. I flow down the stairs and find him standing with his back toward me, overlooking our several acres of land. He puffs vivaciously on his cigarette and looks manically deep into thought. I begin to probe him about our agreement for me to stay home to take care of Aurora and for him to work to support our family. Still facing away from me, he utters some bitter words back, and our battle escalates. He cuts me off mid-sentence as I call him a useless drunk, throws his cigarette butt at me, and flashes off to the outdoor garage.
She keeps pissing me off about work. I pay the bills, I keep the food on the table, and I would kill for my daughter. I fumble around in the dank garage, half in angry thought and half in an anxious search for something. I kick behind some cobweb cocoon netting and find it. The dented metallic container stands gloriously on the ground, proud in its power to start wars and fires. I grab the rusty old gasoline tank and stomp out of the garage. The fluid swishes back and forth like bellowing waves before a tsunami. My hands shake to hold the flood gates back as I lumber over to Aurora’s play set. She’s outgrown the diaper-swing and is afraid of the twisting slide, so I figure it is useless anyway. My blood starts to boil as I see my wife watching still from the porch in the distance, arms crossed and expression dead cold. With no attempt to stop me, I unscrew the cap and let the gasoline flow.
I watch him walk out of the shed with the gasoline, but before I could realize what was happening, he had already poured the gasoline onto the play set. “Are you crazy?” I yell and he turns to me with hair flamed and wild, like a rooster’s tail feathers, and eyes orange and wicked, like a jack-o-lantern. He wears burnt marshmallow skin underneath his charred malt shirt. His mouth emptily hangs open ever so slightly. So slightly, in fact, that I cannot tell if it is a look of pure idiocy or immobilizing rage. Gasoline tank in hand, flames whip around this man. A stranger to me now, with fury in his brow. Glows from behind him shake in fear of the wind, and in fear of him, then; with a hint of a grin, he hurls the tank toward me. Like a dazzling fire ball, it floats and spins on air until gravity falls. Red, orange, and yellow light, partially blind my sight. There’s not enough blindness for eyes not pass by his evil and malicious alcoholic numbness. Sweltering heat curtain, you melt my ice away. My frozen statue ends by flames of rage today. It is too late to scream, and it’s too late to sing ‘Hallelujah,’ I’m free! How wonderful to be, unchained from the ferocious spite of fire and ice.
It is the first day of the end of my human existence. My consciousness snaps me out of my wasted rage, as the overbearing heat whips my legs. The awful body I see through the wavy fire glow jump starts my heart. My wife—oh God, what have I done? Her quivering body lays limp on the fiery ground. Her arms have wings of fantastic flames and her hair is burnt black. Laced with gasoline, her blue sundress is now brown and shrinking. Her roasting face falls over and then her body stops. Eyes closed and smiling, she appears peaceful through the bright haze. A baby’s scream and fire engine siren together, yet in opposition. Cops will soon follow, but I can’t wallow in pity of my sins. But this is the end of my existence. My kid will miss this father that she has, while I pay for this act. Jail time is no time for raising a girl in this sick world. No more job for a living, I’ll be in a cell thinking about the legality of my temporary insanity. I’ll be thinking of Aurora. She’s my babe, my love, the only thing that loves me back. She is so golden! But what will happen? No mom and no dad, she’ll likely be mad—mad at the world and mad at me too. I burned her mom in flames when she was two. What a terrible dad I really am. Now I’ll never even know her again. Oh, how I’ve lost my loves today by the hand of my own rage. I swear I won’t drink, or even think of a drink. With a clink, clink, pour, I set my life on fire and lost everything I adore. I still stand, gasoline tank in hand, in the middle of our backyard field. The sirens grow deafeningly and then come to a stop as the tires squeak behind me. Echoes of, “You’re under arrest, Sir,” blur around me. There’s some pushing and shoving and suddenly I’m on the concrete ground of my driveway. Arms pierced behind my back, I struggle to look up to Aurora. With Mr. Teddy Bear tucked underneath her delicate arm, she stands in the possession of several police officers and social workers. They scurry her over to a car and shove her in it. I die inside. My angel and light is taken away, out of my sight for an eternity of days. I am solely to blame. The rest of my existence will be spent in shame. With that thought, the officers lock me in their car, and I watch the last of my baby sail away from the dark scene I created today.