The Halfway House Hotel

He had both his hands on the steering wheel, his foot on the accelerator and his eyes flashing back to half an hour ago to the memory of being told he was being made redundant...again. He stuck his tongue between the gaps in his staggered bottom row of teeth and slammed the breaks hard, his screeching tires skidding to halt where a mother shielded her boy who was no older than five. As his car stopped just over the zebra crossing he mouthed the words "I'm sorry". The mother and son gave him the look he was dreading. The same look he was expecting to see from his wife that told him he had yet again fucked up. Seeing it from a stranger made it no less painful and no more did it prepare him for what was yet to come. He waited until they got onto the pavement before wishing he was dead and went on his way. For the rest of the drive home the lights remained green and he raised a brow at the hopelessness of prolonging the journey back. A journey that usually on most days would have him waiting around in traffic, flicking the radio stations from one irritable song to another and calling the person in the car in front exotic words that involved part worn instruments of the sexual nature. The road ahead was clear. He slowed to a crawl and finally the lights changed to red. This was where he wanted to be right now. Alone and at a standstill with the radio off but with Erik Satie's Gymnopeoedie playing between his ears. The music stopped when the car behind beeped and he saw the man behind through his rear view mirror reaching a new level of annoyance he had not witnessed aimed at him before. Today he had become the part worn instrument and still it meant nothing to him because of what was yet to come.

The pleasant drive across town that he himself had made sour bought him to the front of his three bed semi. He sat in his car, turned the engine off and sat back, every now and then staring at his front door and then forward down his street. The breeze shifted the leaves on the trees. She would be home, she would be happy, she would be getting cosy on the sofa with half a bottle of red and Netflix ready for chill. She was all of these things. She was. He looked across at the window and somewhere in his mind prayed to see her kissing another man just to take the pain away from telling her of his...their situation. His eyes shifted to the rear view mirror and the judgemental eyes looking back no longer felt like his. He got out, locked the car behind him as he strolled across the drive to the nearing door, opened it and stepped in to a home he could no longer afford. She stepped into the kitchen door frame as he stood with his back against the front door and he caught her gaze. She sipped her wine and he gulped the air down whilst loosening his tie. "Hey Johnny, everything okay?" Words would fail him now and he knew it. He strode across, placed one hand around her and took the wine glass out of the other and forced her backwards into the kitchen until she was resting against the island in its centre. He kissed her. Tongues were shared. He grabbed her like it was the last time and tumbling amongst one another they shed their layers and scattered them across the floor, where they remained for the next four and a half minutes. For a minute afterwards, all was forgotten. A bubble enclosed him protecting him from the world. It broke when she spoke and asked "So what's up? What's on your mind? You only do that when you're either terribly low or feeling high?" The sex had made him feel gladly morose. In her eyes he could foretell the future and saw the tears that would sink his heart, pulled down by the weight of her pain at another job lost. "You're not gonna believe it but I'm...getting...a...pay...rise" She squeezed him and congratulated him. He wished she could squeeze harder. So hard that there would be nothing left. Just a blip almost invisible to the human eye. He hadn't wanted to say it. The thought hadn't even been in his mind. She had. As she squeezed at him again he looked over her shoulder and caught his reflection and again didn't recognise the eyes looking back. He was not who he thought he was. He pulled away and met her eyes and the future he had predicted became trivial because the one he saw now had him in chains. Chains made of guilt and shame that were being lowered slowly into a pit of jagged deceit. He moved away from her, sought after her glass and grimaced after he had emptied its contents in one go. Here was where he didn't want to be. So he stretched out his arms, yawned a convincing yawn, kissed her on her head and let her know it was time for him to sleep. She would go up to bed and find it odd at how he had curled up into the foetal position. He would dream of large and long corridors narrowing with each step and elongating with each breath, crushing his very being before he could see its end. He would be gone before she could say anything in the morning.