CALL JOHN ABOUT DOG”

Short-Short Story by David Sky

Just got in from mothers, put my purse down on the kitchen isle and I cry a little for the first time, just a little? I guess this is that Elisabeth Kubler-Ross stuff? I keep hearing in my head that he's dead and each time it is impossible to believe. A goddamn cliché. I had never heard this house to be so utterly silent before and suddenly I miss that, old energy inefficient and noisy refrigerator we had. I look back at the door and I can see myself looking back at me standing here … if that makes any sense … somehow seeing myself here looking so … lost .. my eyes with this desperation. I want to flee, you know, but I don't flee because I understand that what I really want to do is run so goddamn fast that I run clear out of my own skin.
But I am not crazy, I think. Not really. I know that I cannot actually run completely out of my own skin like that.

Can I? 

Ever since I found out I wanted to go into our bedroom and I don't know why maybe somehow I think that he will be there, after all. Like all this is a dream or something. Now I want to go into the bedroom and yet I don't really want to go into the bedroom because the bedroom is frightening me more than I have ever been frightened in my life like out of my own skin frightened and I realize that the truth of it is that I MUST go into that bedroom, after all. I must and I will. I make a few steps in that direction then turn back around thinking that I have forgotten something? I pick up my purse which I usually leave on the table by the door and I take it with me now, clutching it tight against my stomach.

Maybe, I wonder, oddly, I wonder, is this purse Elizabeth and I am holding her hand because she is coming now – thank god – and I feel like I should wait for Lizzie so she can actually take my hand and walk with me into the bedroom … but I cannot wait. No not at all. 

It would only be a couple more hours by the time Lizzie lands and gets here.

But instead of waiting to hold Lizzie's hand, I go on upstairs because I cannot help myself now alone with my purse and finally standing at the threshold looking into the bedroom thinking that this is far enough perhaps and feeling frozen and unable to cross through the threshold. of he door from the hallway into our bedroom. Some part of me says, “okay so just looking and this is as far as I go until Lizzie gets in.

She is probably close to landing, I think. She won't be much longer. 

Then I see one of his notes on David's side of the bed on the top of his pillow where he always puts his notes that he always is leaving for himself because the better part of his mind is off helping someone else, helping those others – 'all the broken ones”, he calls them. For the first time I think about his office, his patients. It's too much ...

I do not cry but I see myself inside my own mind collapsed on the floor, my purse fallen and everything is scattered across the bedroom floor, some things under the bed, some under the dresser and it is very real to me and I am crying now not really but in this vision of myself, having fallen through the threshold and onto the bedroom floor in this vision, sobbing and lost and out of my own skin with this … this irrevocable horror.

Then I tell myself that I must see what is on that note that he probably wrote only this morning – O my God only this morning! I choke a single sob off knowing that it is something that will take me down if I let it so I just choke it back now with everything I have because I must see what he wrote to himself this morning before leaving . It was only really a few hours ago, I wonder? In pen? His handwriting?

I focus on the note and shut out the rest of this bedroom O my god because it is too much but only I want to see what David has written as a reminder – what does he remind himself about here? Suddenly it is like this one little note laying neatly on his pillow expands to occupy all the space in this world and it reads:

“CALL JOHN ABOUT DOG”

Call John About Dog!?

I am looking at the note feeling maybe if I look at it hard enough by some ridiculous magic David will look back at me but he doesn't and I look at it trembling now so badly that I cannot hold it and let it drop my mind racing, “A dog, but David doesn't even LIKE dogs!?” racing around inside my own skull like some wild banshee, “And who the hell is JOHN!?”

The banshee my mind has become works itself up into a frenzy but I still cannot find this “John” among our cadre of friends … so who? … so some acquaintance? … wracking my mind and sitting on his side of the bed not even crying but when I try to pick up the note again I cannot because my hand is trembling too badly and just as the banshee tears off on her own out of the room, I am left in mystery and all that matters in life is WHAT dog and WHO the hell is John!?”