Post by khardaway on Dec 16, 2009 23:48:40 GMT -5
Baltimore, Maryland. Night time. This time, we see a different house than what we're used to seeing as a familar car comes driving up it's driveway. Once it stops, a familar woman comes out of the car. Angie Hardaway. Appears that this house is only a rental. It's nothing big, little small. But for a family of three, they'll manage for a few days. But it's when she goes inside to what she sees. Her husband, out of bed for a change, cleaning up around the house apparently. She sets the grocery bags down on the kitchen table and goes back in the other room to see him picking up things.
"Ah, I wanted it to be a surprise."
"What are you doing?"
"Cleaning up around the house."
He ends up putting a dust rag in his back pocket. Something he picked up from his father for no reason whatsoever. She is just in complete bewilderment and shock. Like she has no idea what to say.
"You...cleaning? Now i've seen everything."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"Oh, nothing. It's just weird seeing my husband who never really does a thing around here cleaning up around the house. It's just...nice, that's all."
"I do things around here. I cook for us, I'm there for you when you're sick, and I take care of our daughter, am I correct or I am just lying?"
As he's saying this, he's putting the groceries away. Either trying to make up for things or actually helping. In her case, she knows it's the former doing business around here.
"You haven't done anything lately to be honest. All you do is just sit around, lay around, watching TV, and stuffing your face with food. Not the person I married one single bit. You've been a different person lately, not the person I love the past few weeks."
"If you had a problem with it, why didn't you just tell me instead of letting me lay there like a couch potato?"
"Because I was dealing with our daughter. It's not my damn fault that she keeps crying every single hour, ok? She's not even one yet. It's not like she can just learn how to eat and go to the bathroom before she turns one."
"I learned my ABC's and 123's from Sesame Street when I was about two and a half. How I learned to count...I counted the stairs in my old house every single day."
Insert foot into mouth.....NOW! He realizes this every single bit as that little person in his head is kicking his own head in right now over that comment. Not the right time to become a smartass.
"But she's not you, ok. She isn't. You may be her father, but you're sure as hell not the spitting image of her."
And here we go...he shouldn't of said anything. Just left it alone. Hell, he should've stayed in bed before she came home. Least there wouldn't be complaining on the other end.
"See, here we go. I try to do a nice thing for a change and I still get my head ripped off. I get out of bed for the first time in forever for a couple weeks, but I realize that I should've just stayed in bed in the first place. It wasn't worth it."
"Don't give me that. I know the very reason why you're doing this."
"So you know...big whoop."
"I heard what you said to him. You said to the entire world about what i'm going through, what your daughter is going through. She's crying because she misses her father. And i'm crying because I miss you."
"Well here I am."
Like DEFCON 4...now.
"THAT'S NOT THE FUCKING POINT!"
"I don't get it."
How does he not get that? Wait...women.
"I miss...YOU. The real you. The "you" that would take care of me when I was sick. The "you" that would laugh at every single corny joke I would make. The "you" that suffered and went through hell and back just to be with me. The person who was against this idea that the father of our daughter was the person who is meeting you in that ring on Sunday, but decided to go through with it just for business. It's all his damn fault. You're acting like some kind of sad, pathetic loser just because of one person who decided to try and ruin you. He tried, and you fell into it's suffering. All you had to do was just walk away, not go into this 6 month long grudge. And you did it anyway, not once thinking about me, our daughter, our family. All you did was think about yourself. Brad was right...you DO have an ego."
Now she should insert her foot into her own mouth as well. Over the months, that's all he heard from everybody. That he has an ego the size of Texas. He will admit, he has one. But it's not as big as any state. He can just let things get to his head way too easy. But those words she just said. She agreed with somebody who he can't stand at this point. That's near death. Apparently he thinks that, as he grabs the keys and tries to head on outside.
"Where you going?"
"I don't need this one bit."
"Don't you walk out on this, Kevin. Please."
"Why not? You're yelling at me like I did something wrong and when I just want to get away from it all, you try and ask nicely for me to come back? You're just like him."
And with the driving force of women across the world, she slaps him as hard as he can across the face as he holds his cheek in pain, it turning into a bright red. In his head, a ton of thoughts are boggling into his head. He could retilate and slap her back, but instead of becoming the next Chris Brown or something even worse, he keeps on walking. Outside she follows him though as the night time sky has opened up the clouds, raining just enough to soak them lightly.
"I should just leave...for good. Because i'm not dealing with somebody who has the nerve to do that. Never in my life am I going to succumb to something like that."
"Then leave...just go. But just know that when you come back home, we won't even be here. You're going to be all alone. Your demons may be gone by that time, but you'll have new demons to look forward to. One that will never go away no matter how much you try to deal with them. You're going to be alone in this house, dealing with everything yourself. Your daughter is going to grow up not even knowing who her real father is. Just like in your other world."
He stops now. Hearing those words, it feels like a dagger just stabbed him. He could've cared less about her all he wanted to, but he wasn't going to lose his daughter. Not now, not ever. He wasn't going to stop caring about her daughter one simple bit at all. He turns around to face his wife in the pouring down rain now.
"You know...I could've walked away from all of this. Not this moment, but in general. I could've just walked away like you said and not dealt with a stupid little grudge. But that wasn't my style. It wasn't me. I had to deal with it. I was just in too deep to get out of everything so I went down the road head on straight. I dealt with all of my problems that way. You can't deal with it by other means, you have to deal with problems cold turkey. And that's what I did. Do I regret some of the things I did then? Of course. But everything that comes up must come down. And it was better sooner rather than later."
She starts to walk closer to her husband, seeing the red mark that she left on his cheek as she wipes away the rain from her head and the hair away from her eyes. It's confusing to tell on whether or not she's crying due to the rain coming down like a torrential downpour. Kind of sets a mood in a creepy tone.
"I just want you back, that's all. Not for my sake. Not for Kimmy's sake. But for you. I want you to feel better. I want your demons to be released once and for all. You're not healthy, Kev. I can hear you awake at night. I can hear the pain and the torture inside. It makes me cry as well. I can tell you that it makes Kimmy cry as well. She hasn't stopped crying because she knows you're not safe either. She somehow sees this too, and she's only a baby. That's how bad it is."
He thinks back to last night, the words he said on top of his car to his opponent. The difference of want and need. The difference of those two words being what he needs in life. He just wonders if she saw any of it whatsoever.
"Did you watch all of what I said last night?"
"Most of it."
"Did you hear ALL of it?"
"Not really."
He walks up closer to her and carefully wipes away her hair again. Now she is crying as she wipes it away from her eyes. He seems to have a couple tears down his face as well.
"There's a difference between a want and a need. You know and I know that we need this, honey. I hate to retread on old things, but you need to know what I said. I need this more than anything in the world. I want these demons to go away. I want to come to bed, wish you sweet dreams, kiss you goodnight, and hold you till we both fall asleep. I want to have a night where Kimmy doesn't cry, she just sleeps the night away tucked in her crib. I want to have a peaceful life, and I think the only way I can do it is if I finally wash away those demons."
He grabs her hand and interlocks their fingers together, like a bond of something special.
"Please. Just wait...wait a few more days. It'll all be over then. I promise."
"And what if everything fails?"
"It won't...I promise."
She comes even closer to him and carefully touches his cheek, still burning and still red as intended. She gently caresses it in her hand, wiping a few tears away from her eyes.
"I'm sorry I slapped you."
He ends up touching foreheads with her, holding each other in the soothing and the warm rain.
"It's ok. It's ok, my love."
They share a kiss as they slowly walk back inside the house and the second they step in, loud crying can be heard from the other room. The baby seems to be awake now and she's like an alarm on DEFCON 3.
"Well...Kimmy's awake."
"Don't worry about a thing, i'll get her."
"You sure of it?"
"Absolutely. Take a load off."
He smiles and kisses her on the cheek as he walks into the first room on the right, where a crib is set in place, and like we've heard, his daughter is seen crying her eyes out. Babies must have some intense dreams at their age. He goes over and picks her up and cradles his daughter in his arms.
"Hey hey hey. It's ok, sweetheart. Daddy's here."
He sits down on a chair nearby and continues holding and rocking her ever so gently as he looks out the window, into the rainy, dreary sky.
"Shhh...everything will be ok, dear. Everything will be okay. I'm not going anywhere. I promise you that."
|----------------------------------------------|
Seriously, I’m looking at myself right now...holding my baby daughter in my arms. This happened back in March, and right now I think I time traveled back to this moment. Although, it is amazing to see myself holding Kimmy like that. I really do miss that. But standing next to me is the angel messiah, Mali. Ok, maybe not a messiah, I was just making it up. Seriously, I think I’m going in for a cat-scan when all of this is said and done. I think I may have finally snapped and that this is my purgatory for all things wrong. I really want to yell that at her, but she’s too busy being all cutesy at this moment.
“You two look so adorable.”
“Yeah...whatever. Seriously? How in the hell did you do that?”
“What? The fact that I sent you here or the way that we did it? Because, I could’ve done it in a simple, “yeah, here we are” thing. I didn’t have to be all affectionate.”
“Never mind.”
“Ooooh, if we’re going to be subtle then, we’ll do it that way. All you had to do was ask.”
“Once again...never mind.”
“So...with this cutesy moment out of the way, do you want to go to your next destination?”
Ok, I’ll bite...
“What next destination?”
“Of our journey, silly. Actually, you have no other choice now do you?”
“Me knowing you for this short amount of time...I guess not.”
“See, that’s the spirit. Hold on, now...unless...”
I sigh again. I guess she was actually being serious about the whole “affectionate” thing when we came to this point in time. Whatever...once again, I’ll bite.
“Go ahead.”
“I knew you liked it.”
She gets behind me and does the whole “arm on the shoulders” thing again and closes her eyes. Once again, the white light blinds me like I’ve stared into the white hot sun for hours. But once I open them, she opens the door to the basement to my house. Expecting to go downstairs, I try to and end up falling flat on my face...on tiles. Cold actually. The scene has changed from inside a misforgotten house on a rainy, dreary night to a white and grainy hospital in the middle of the day.
I try to remove the small cut on my face to look around the area. Oh god, I remember this place like the back of my head. Everybody should. It’s the god damn hospital. How many times do I have to revisit this hellhole...honestly? It’s like some TV set on some crappy TV show. Then again, with my luck now, I feel like I’m in some rehash of “A Christmas Carol”, or “It’s A Wonderful Life”. Where have I gone wrong here.
I feel a warm glow on my shoulder once again as I turn my head and there she is once again. That damned angel. Only this time, instead of the usual outfit she has one, she has a different one on. One, more appropriate and actually one that looks a ton more lovely. A black short dress with flowers all over it. Complete with matching red heels. She looks...dare I say? Stunning. Yeah I know, I’m complimenting an angel here, it’s crazy...but still. That compliment though turns back into the scenario I’m at now.
I start freezing though. You know, for an angel, it would really kill for her to not have the weather conditions affect us...that or she could’ve just sent us to Hawaii, either was fine. But, she’s nice enough to give me something out of nowhere it seemed to be like. It turns into a hoodie of mine. She smiles gracefully and hands it to me.
“You know, I completely forgot how cold it can get down here.”
“You know, I had no idea that you could change your wardrobe like that.”
“Why did you think I did it?”
“Well...”Mali”, remember...you’re an angel. This isn’t the fuckin’ Academy Awards.”
“Oooh, we can go there once we’re done here. That would so totally rock.”
“No thank you.”
“Oh well...your loss.”
I once again look around the surroundings...to see if I suspect anything familiar. I’m just waiting for it. I remember everything about this day. What the doctors and the nurses were wearing, what their scrubs looked like, what regular patients were wearing, and their families. I remember the clock, the time. I remember everything.
And god damn, I want this part out of my head.
"Ah, I wanted it to be a surprise."
"What are you doing?"
"Cleaning up around the house."
He ends up putting a dust rag in his back pocket. Something he picked up from his father for no reason whatsoever. She is just in complete bewilderment and shock. Like she has no idea what to say.
"You...cleaning? Now i've seen everything."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"Oh, nothing. It's just weird seeing my husband who never really does a thing around here cleaning up around the house. It's just...nice, that's all."
"I do things around here. I cook for us, I'm there for you when you're sick, and I take care of our daughter, am I correct or I am just lying?"
As he's saying this, he's putting the groceries away. Either trying to make up for things or actually helping. In her case, she knows it's the former doing business around here.
"You haven't done anything lately to be honest. All you do is just sit around, lay around, watching TV, and stuffing your face with food. Not the person I married one single bit. You've been a different person lately, not the person I love the past few weeks."
"If you had a problem with it, why didn't you just tell me instead of letting me lay there like a couch potato?"
"Because I was dealing with our daughter. It's not my damn fault that she keeps crying every single hour, ok? She's not even one yet. It's not like she can just learn how to eat and go to the bathroom before she turns one."
"I learned my ABC's and 123's from Sesame Street when I was about two and a half. How I learned to count...I counted the stairs in my old house every single day."
Insert foot into mouth.....NOW! He realizes this every single bit as that little person in his head is kicking his own head in right now over that comment. Not the right time to become a smartass.
"But she's not you, ok. She isn't. You may be her father, but you're sure as hell not the spitting image of her."
And here we go...he shouldn't of said anything. Just left it alone. Hell, he should've stayed in bed before she came home. Least there wouldn't be complaining on the other end.
"See, here we go. I try to do a nice thing for a change and I still get my head ripped off. I get out of bed for the first time in forever for a couple weeks, but I realize that I should've just stayed in bed in the first place. It wasn't worth it."
"Don't give me that. I know the very reason why you're doing this."
"So you know...big whoop."
"I heard what you said to him. You said to the entire world about what i'm going through, what your daughter is going through. She's crying because she misses her father. And i'm crying because I miss you."
"Well here I am."
Like DEFCON 4...now.
"THAT'S NOT THE FUCKING POINT!"
"I don't get it."
How does he not get that? Wait...women.
"I miss...YOU. The real you. The "you" that would take care of me when I was sick. The "you" that would laugh at every single corny joke I would make. The "you" that suffered and went through hell and back just to be with me. The person who was against this idea that the father of our daughter was the person who is meeting you in that ring on Sunday, but decided to go through with it just for business. It's all his damn fault. You're acting like some kind of sad, pathetic loser just because of one person who decided to try and ruin you. He tried, and you fell into it's suffering. All you had to do was just walk away, not go into this 6 month long grudge. And you did it anyway, not once thinking about me, our daughter, our family. All you did was think about yourself. Brad was right...you DO have an ego."
Now she should insert her foot into her own mouth as well. Over the months, that's all he heard from everybody. That he has an ego the size of Texas. He will admit, he has one. But it's not as big as any state. He can just let things get to his head way too easy. But those words she just said. She agreed with somebody who he can't stand at this point. That's near death. Apparently he thinks that, as he grabs the keys and tries to head on outside.
"Where you going?"
"I don't need this one bit."
"Don't you walk out on this, Kevin. Please."
"Why not? You're yelling at me like I did something wrong and when I just want to get away from it all, you try and ask nicely for me to come back? You're just like him."
And with the driving force of women across the world, she slaps him as hard as he can across the face as he holds his cheek in pain, it turning into a bright red. In his head, a ton of thoughts are boggling into his head. He could retilate and slap her back, but instead of becoming the next Chris Brown or something even worse, he keeps on walking. Outside she follows him though as the night time sky has opened up the clouds, raining just enough to soak them lightly.
"I should just leave...for good. Because i'm not dealing with somebody who has the nerve to do that. Never in my life am I going to succumb to something like that."
"Then leave...just go. But just know that when you come back home, we won't even be here. You're going to be all alone. Your demons may be gone by that time, but you'll have new demons to look forward to. One that will never go away no matter how much you try to deal with them. You're going to be alone in this house, dealing with everything yourself. Your daughter is going to grow up not even knowing who her real father is. Just like in your other world."
He stops now. Hearing those words, it feels like a dagger just stabbed him. He could've cared less about her all he wanted to, but he wasn't going to lose his daughter. Not now, not ever. He wasn't going to stop caring about her daughter one simple bit at all. He turns around to face his wife in the pouring down rain now.
"You know...I could've walked away from all of this. Not this moment, but in general. I could've just walked away like you said and not dealt with a stupid little grudge. But that wasn't my style. It wasn't me. I had to deal with it. I was just in too deep to get out of everything so I went down the road head on straight. I dealt with all of my problems that way. You can't deal with it by other means, you have to deal with problems cold turkey. And that's what I did. Do I regret some of the things I did then? Of course. But everything that comes up must come down. And it was better sooner rather than later."
She starts to walk closer to her husband, seeing the red mark that she left on his cheek as she wipes away the rain from her head and the hair away from her eyes. It's confusing to tell on whether or not she's crying due to the rain coming down like a torrential downpour. Kind of sets a mood in a creepy tone.
"I just want you back, that's all. Not for my sake. Not for Kimmy's sake. But for you. I want you to feel better. I want your demons to be released once and for all. You're not healthy, Kev. I can hear you awake at night. I can hear the pain and the torture inside. It makes me cry as well. I can tell you that it makes Kimmy cry as well. She hasn't stopped crying because she knows you're not safe either. She somehow sees this too, and she's only a baby. That's how bad it is."
He thinks back to last night, the words he said on top of his car to his opponent. The difference of want and need. The difference of those two words being what he needs in life. He just wonders if she saw any of it whatsoever.
"Did you watch all of what I said last night?"
"Most of it."
"Did you hear ALL of it?"
"Not really."
He walks up closer to her and carefully wipes away her hair again. Now she is crying as she wipes it away from her eyes. He seems to have a couple tears down his face as well.
"There's a difference between a want and a need. You know and I know that we need this, honey. I hate to retread on old things, but you need to know what I said. I need this more than anything in the world. I want these demons to go away. I want to come to bed, wish you sweet dreams, kiss you goodnight, and hold you till we both fall asleep. I want to have a night where Kimmy doesn't cry, she just sleeps the night away tucked in her crib. I want to have a peaceful life, and I think the only way I can do it is if I finally wash away those demons."
He grabs her hand and interlocks their fingers together, like a bond of something special.
"Please. Just wait...wait a few more days. It'll all be over then. I promise."
"And what if everything fails?"
"It won't...I promise."
She comes even closer to him and carefully touches his cheek, still burning and still red as intended. She gently caresses it in her hand, wiping a few tears away from her eyes.
"I'm sorry I slapped you."
He ends up touching foreheads with her, holding each other in the soothing and the warm rain.
"It's ok. It's ok, my love."
They share a kiss as they slowly walk back inside the house and the second they step in, loud crying can be heard from the other room. The baby seems to be awake now and she's like an alarm on DEFCON 3.
"Well...Kimmy's awake."
"Don't worry about a thing, i'll get her."
"You sure of it?"
"Absolutely. Take a load off."
He smiles and kisses her on the cheek as he walks into the first room on the right, where a crib is set in place, and like we've heard, his daughter is seen crying her eyes out. Babies must have some intense dreams at their age. He goes over and picks her up and cradles his daughter in his arms.
"Hey hey hey. It's ok, sweetheart. Daddy's here."
He sits down on a chair nearby and continues holding and rocking her ever so gently as he looks out the window, into the rainy, dreary sky.
"Shhh...everything will be ok, dear. Everything will be okay. I'm not going anywhere. I promise you that."
|----------------------------------------------|
Seriously, I’m looking at myself right now...holding my baby daughter in my arms. This happened back in March, and right now I think I time traveled back to this moment. Although, it is amazing to see myself holding Kimmy like that. I really do miss that. But standing next to me is the angel messiah, Mali. Ok, maybe not a messiah, I was just making it up. Seriously, I think I’m going in for a cat-scan when all of this is said and done. I think I may have finally snapped and that this is my purgatory for all things wrong. I really want to yell that at her, but she’s too busy being all cutesy at this moment.
“You two look so adorable.”
“Yeah...whatever. Seriously? How in the hell did you do that?”
“What? The fact that I sent you here or the way that we did it? Because, I could’ve done it in a simple, “yeah, here we are” thing. I didn’t have to be all affectionate.”
“Never mind.”
“Ooooh, if we’re going to be subtle then, we’ll do it that way. All you had to do was ask.”
“Once again...never mind.”
“So...with this cutesy moment out of the way, do you want to go to your next destination?”
Ok, I’ll bite...
“What next destination?”
“Of our journey, silly. Actually, you have no other choice now do you?”
“Me knowing you for this short amount of time...I guess not.”
“See, that’s the spirit. Hold on, now...unless...”
I sigh again. I guess she was actually being serious about the whole “affectionate” thing when we came to this point in time. Whatever...once again, I’ll bite.
“Go ahead.”
“I knew you liked it.”
She gets behind me and does the whole “arm on the shoulders” thing again and closes her eyes. Once again, the white light blinds me like I’ve stared into the white hot sun for hours. But once I open them, she opens the door to the basement to my house. Expecting to go downstairs, I try to and end up falling flat on my face...on tiles. Cold actually. The scene has changed from inside a misforgotten house on a rainy, dreary night to a white and grainy hospital in the middle of the day.
I try to remove the small cut on my face to look around the area. Oh god, I remember this place like the back of my head. Everybody should. It’s the god damn hospital. How many times do I have to revisit this hellhole...honestly? It’s like some TV set on some crappy TV show. Then again, with my luck now, I feel like I’m in some rehash of “A Christmas Carol”, or “It’s A Wonderful Life”. Where have I gone wrong here.
I feel a warm glow on my shoulder once again as I turn my head and there she is once again. That damned angel. Only this time, instead of the usual outfit she has one, she has a different one on. One, more appropriate and actually one that looks a ton more lovely. A black short dress with flowers all over it. Complete with matching red heels. She looks...dare I say? Stunning. Yeah I know, I’m complimenting an angel here, it’s crazy...but still. That compliment though turns back into the scenario I’m at now.
I start freezing though. You know, for an angel, it would really kill for her to not have the weather conditions affect us...that or she could’ve just sent us to Hawaii, either was fine. But, she’s nice enough to give me something out of nowhere it seemed to be like. It turns into a hoodie of mine. She smiles gracefully and hands it to me.
“You know, I completely forgot how cold it can get down here.”
“You know, I had no idea that you could change your wardrobe like that.”
“Why did you think I did it?”
“Well...”Mali”, remember...you’re an angel. This isn’t the fuckin’ Academy Awards.”
“Oooh, we can go there once we’re done here. That would so totally rock.”
“No thank you.”
“Oh well...your loss.”
I once again look around the surroundings...to see if I suspect anything familiar. I’m just waiting for it. I remember everything about this day. What the doctors and the nurses were wearing, what their scrubs looked like, what regular patients were wearing, and their families. I remember the clock, the time. I remember everything.
And god damn, I want this part out of my head.