The Last Season

After the crash, everything was over. The neighbor's dog didn't make me smile, a popsicle on a hot afternoon wasn't as refreshing, and the smell of the earth in spring wasn't as sweet. Speaking of spring, that's when I locked myself away.
It's not that everything was gray, like how they talk about depression in movies. It was painfully beautiful. Everything reminded me of Elle. Now that everything was this aggressively gorgeous, I didn't see any use going out anymore.
I stopped leaving home when the snow melted away and the grass could breathe. Winter was gone, so the biting air couldn't numb my pain anymore. Little purple flowers reminded me of her favorite dress. The blue sky was as bright and deep as her eyes. The beauty of spring was painful, and the sight of pleasantness was almost insulting. I only left for the odd trip to kroger, which often resulted in a breakdown. I started working from home. Spring came and went like a bad phone call.
Summer wasn't as offensive as spring, but it was much more dreary. The dusty path that led to my mailbox cut through the forest where my little ranch style was. It was common to see some wild animals out there. One day after dragging myself out the door to get the mail, a doe was stood in the center of the lane. She looked blankly at me like deer do before running off. Elle always loved deer. She had a stick-n-poke of a fawn on her shoulder.
I'm not sure what was going through my head at the moment but whatever it was was pitiful enough to make a 34 year old man collapse to the ground and sob. I never made it to the mailbox that day.
Finally fall came. summer passed slowly but swiftly in the way that it tends to do. At this point I was passed sadness and denial and onto anger. The only person in the world who loved me was gone. taken without a warning. I denied what had really happened for so long, when it finally washed over me I was livid. I knew what I had to do.
It was around 4 a.m. when I packed up my truck. I knew that when I threw my sack of tools in the back they were supposed to clank, but I couldn't hear it. I was too distracted on thinking on what I was about to do.
Once I was all done, I got in the driver's seat and drove off. The ride to the bastard's house was pretty forgetful. The only thing memorable was the trees. They were gorgeous; autumn had cast its spell on them and turned the leaves red, gold, orange and brown. It was like they were on fire.
There were three things i knew about this guy; the first one was where he lived. After the wreck, he and his lawyer invited me over to his home to "talk it over". I never showed, but I still had his address that the bastard's lawyer gave me over the phone.
The second one was that he was alone; no wife, no kids, no living family. He lived by himself. His pansy ass lawyer told me about this, trying to excuse his client from what he'd done. Fat fucking chance.
The third was the most obvious; he was a drunk. He decided to drown his loneliness in a bottle. Apparently he was lonely enough to crash into my wife's sedan. The most important thing about this little fact was that right about now he would be stumbling home from some shitty bar.
I finally got to his house, if you could call it that. It was hardly even a shed. Anyways, there was no lights in the house on, so I grabbed my equipment out of the truck bed and strolled right in.
His house was nasty, to say the least. It wasn't that shocking he had no wife. It stank like stale beer and dirty laundry. After taking in all of that stimuli, I checked all four of the rooms of the house before setting my sack of shit down in his bedroom.
My arsenal of tools was made up of a three pound hammer, a pair of pliers, and a switchblade. I sat there for a few minutes, fiddling with my knife, when I heard the door slam open. I swiftly ducked into his closet and sat.
I heard him drunkenly flounder in, stopping to lean against the wall every now and again. I knew when he was in the room because he was muttering senseless shit under his breath to himself and his stench was overpowering.
He slumped himself on his dirty mattress he used as a bed and almost immediately passed out. The last thing I can clearly remember was stalking up to the foot of the mattress and staring at the man who murdered my wife.
Everything there on out was a blur. I know there was a whole lot of smashing, cutting, and plucking, from what the feds told me afterwards, and I suppose that rings a few bells. That's pretty much it.
So anyway, your honor, i plead guilty. Put me in jail, send me to the madhouse, whatever you want. But next time a drunk driver kills my fucking wife, think twice before letting him go with a warning.