STORY: The Fickle Healer

Thanks to Ari Matthews for helping me plot this story. What Tim says about looking the other way was originally said by Colin Wilson. I admit to modifying it. For the record, I hate animal abuse and the scum who do it.

I go to the Reaper - that's a bar - twice a week. But I only drink there once a week. The other day I'm there, I just sit there, soaking in the atmosphere, mingling with the cigarette haze and repressed emotions. And talking to Tim Wall. He's a bartender there.

Tim had a handful of friends when we were kids. I wasn't one of them, but sometimes we'd hang out because everyone else was busy. Now I'm his only friend. Everyone else was put off by his self-loathing and jaded glare. For a good while he was married to a lady named Jill, but she left him when he had an affair with a counselor.

Me, I've had no luck with the women. The most serious relationship I had was about thirty years ago, and I'm approaching fifty now. But I shouldn't care about the past. It's over! What can you do but regret it?

Regret. That's what haunts Tim, I think. Not regret over something he did, but something he (actually, we) saw. Just look at him.

Tim's walking towards me now, mumbling to himself. He calls me by my name, something he hasn't done in years. He's a bit too loud but seems to have came out of his funk. "What's going on?" he asks.

"Not much," I respond. Tim asks me if I want a drink, and I decline. He leans forward and quickly mumbles that he had a nightmare yesterday. And then he asks me if I want to go outside with him while he smokes. I say yes. I know what he wants to talk about.

As soon as we step out into the cold December air, Tim begins to speak: "Jill called me yesterday. She wants to get back together. With me."

I almost tell him that's great, but he might not think so and it might get awkward. So I gesture for him to continue. "I haven't responded," he says. "I love her, honest. But she still has cats. And I can't handle cats. You know it, Rex."

"I don't see what the problem is," I gently respond. "My kids had two cats before they moved out, and I never thought about it. I guess I got over it."

Tim scowls as he pulls out a cigarette and puts it in his mouth. "You didn't get over it. You just forced yourself to look the other way." He pauses, maybe to let the words sink in. They do. For a little bit, anyway.

"Not a day goes by when I don't think of what happened with Mr. Howard. It doesn't scare me anymore, Tim. You need to move on."

"Whatever," Tim says as he lights his cigarette and takes a long puff. "I bet you still have nightmares. I bet every time you saw your kids' cats you thought of that time in the woods."

I pause to think. I think about Tim's affair, and I think of Jill bringing a cat home and Tim having nightmares, and having to see a counselor to deal with the nightmares. I think about a twisted kind of love forming between Tim and the counselor.

And then I think of seeing the town drunk, Mr. Howard, in the woods. We were a good distance away from him, out in the open, but he didn't see us. I think of Mr. Howard digging through the ground with a rusty shovel, and pulling the bodies of dead cats out. I think of Mr. Howard cutting the bodies open and eating the innards. I think of his mouth open as he chews, meat dribbling onto his bare feet. I think of Mr. Howard being forced to work at an animal shelter, and I think of him eventually eating a bullet.

I think of the nightmares Tim and I shared - how CRAZY it was that they were so similar - and how our friendship waned, and why and how it revived.

"Maybe," I lie. "I really can't remember."

"They say time heals," Tim said, taking another puff of the cigarette. "But they're wrong. If time heals, it sure is a fickle healer."

"Yeah."