Into the Velvet

Ten Days After

Henry had always been so hard to pin down. What a fool I was, to think I'd ever known him at all.

The human heart could only withstand so much. I'd drawn the blinds in my room and locked the door. The only relief that I could find was in the darkness. Daylight was a waste of time.

My mind wasn't a good place to be in anymore. It had become inhospitable over the past few days. The same dreadful thoughts repeated themselves, preventing sleep from coming. Rage had poisoned my imagination, so that nothing hopeful could grow. I wasn't hungry. I never slept. I had no other thoughts, no driving desire – only the lust for retribution.

I knew Henry was a sound sleeper. Once he was out, nothing could rouse him again. He'd slept right beside me in that cabin, after lying to his wife about where he was and who he was with. After kissing her goodbye, and ruffling his son's hair, and after driving his idiot child-bride to a safe enough location. Buttering her up with sweet words — then sitting back and reaping his reward, having his ego sucked all night.

His life hadn't been disrupted like mine. In fact, he must've been so busy that he had no time to answer my calls or messages. After the eighty-seventh call, he'd disconnected his line altogether.

Of course he had. Actions only had consequences for everyone who wasn't Henry.

I'd recovered Henry's laptop from where his son had smashed it on the floor — the screen had cracked all the way through the centre. One or two buttons no longer worked. It was fitting, then, to spend my days pouring over a piece of machinery that was as battered and broken as me.

The man I thought of as Henry had never existed. So who was he?

First I looked through Henry's old files. He'd digitalised hundreds of pictures. There was a frowning photo of a curly-haired boy with his father — a burly man with a long beard, standing in front of a tattered weatherboard house. I was shocked by it. His childhood had seemed so... rural. Henry hadn't grown up in the intellectual, cosmopolitan society which he would come to emulate. The house number and a street sign led me to a location: Clearlake, California. The state's poorest town.

But what about his mother? Had he been telling the truth about her? A much more recent photo revealed itself among the pile — a picture of a tombstone. Tonya Cain had died in 1995. No other photos of her had been preserved.

There was nothing wrong with where Henry had come from. It was something to be admired, really, just how successfully he'd grown from a woodland boy to a full-ride scholarship recipient. Henry must've had brains. Plenty of ambition. And he'd used both to escape his town for good. A third photo showed him with braces and long hair, posing in front of The University of Chicago sign. His first day of college.

Of course, there were some blurry shots of his teenage self. These were hidden at the bottom of the file, as if they shamed him to keep. One with Henry smoking, around thirteen or fourteen years old. One with him standing bare-chested beside a lake, with beer cans littered on the ground. A baseball bat in his hand. Henry's rounded, smooth face was marked with a mixture of defiance and discontent. He'd grown up wild and motherless, then. Dashed with the spirit of rebellion.

With a survivalist drive to keep running — at any and all costs.

Oh, how quickly he would grow into his looks! Plenty of college pictures showed him with a different girl around his arm, taken at different parties. He experimented with variations of hair styles until finding the one he still has now. Henry had smartened up and adapted, taking on the affect of his contemporaries. Sanding down his edges. Disowning his past.