The First of August

Lewis woke up already anticipating the brown package. Every year it comes on or around the first of August. It was a Saturday. He woke up and went through his day, drinking an entire pot of coffee before noon, letting the dog in and out a couple of times to play in the backyard, and reading through the daily news roll. Every day, Lewis looked longingly at the picture of he and his wife on their wedding day. She had been beautiful in a white lace tea-length dress, but Lewis could not remember a day when she had not been beautiful to him. Following this daily activity of reminiscence, Lewis spent time cleaning his Desert Eagle. It was an activity that hearkened back to his days overseas. Today he was distracted and spent the entire time wondering what the package would consist of this year.

Every year it was a different piece of his deceased wife. Last year he had gotten a lock of her hair. The year before, he had received all of her teeth in a crimson red muslin bag. He chose to never call the cops. She had gone missing while he was overseas and there was a large part of him that relished receiving the pieces of her. If he told the cops, the pieces would stop coming, and he would never feel her again. He knew the person who killed her would never be caught, and Lewis longed for the pieces of her more than he longed for arbitrary justice.

Every year around this time, he recalled the loneliness of coming home to an empty house, shadowed in the squashed hopes and dreams of a young American couple. They were in their twenties in his memories. Lewis was twenty-six when Juliana went missing. Juliana had been twenty-one. No children, but Juliana had always wanted a big family. Lewis had promised her they would start one when he came back from duty. The house had been so empty, so unlived in that it brought chills down his spine. Lewis had been excited to surprise her with his arrival back stateside. He had been very secretive about it and when he opened the door to the home they had bought right after getting married, and smelled the stale air of an unlived home, Lewis knew something had happened to the love of his life. Goosebumps made their way up his arms even in recollection. They had known each other seemingly their whole lives and for the length of about an hour, Lewis thought Juliana might have left him. After the hour had passed, Lewis had talked himself down from the ledge. Something had happened to her. Every year, Lewis recalled the creaking of floor boards as he walked room to room looking for Juliana. He never found her, but what he did find was a red-black stain, about ten inches in diameter, on the bed he had shared with his young wife. Lewis had known he would never see Juliana again and so, when the packages started coming, he was grateful for the ability to touch her. The first package had been sitting on the bed waiting for him. In it was a note typed onto a lined index card.

If you ever want to see pieces of your wife again, you won’t call the cops.

Along with the note was a mason jar containing two well maintained eyeballs. They were the same brilliant hue as Juliana’s emerald green eyes. The last thing Lewis ever felt was his own heart break at that moment. Every piece of her he received from that point on, he kept in an ornate box under their bed on the side he still slept on as if she were to return any day. A decade had passed between then and now. Lewis was thirty-six, but looked almost twenty years older. His shaggy mop of hair had gone from a deep brown to fully silver and his face, framed by a stiff bouquet of whiskers, was ahead of its time in terms of wrinkles. He rarely left the house. Juliana had been his only family and he had been hers. Following the ritualistic cleaning of his gun, Lewis had reassembled it, put it on the dining room table, and proceeded to pace around with his rough hands behind his back. He lived for this day. In the years when the brown package wasn’t delivered on August first, he would grow upset until the parcel appeared. He’d pace around almost for days at a time, avoiding food, only stopping for a momentary sit, or to try and sleep. Inevitably, when he wasn’t able to sleep he would get up and pace. The floors were run down, lacking a sheen, and splintered in places from his pacing. They were stained a rusty brown-red in the spots where his heels had snagged the jagged wood sticking up out of the floor. He never even winced, often allowing the splinters to make their way out of his feet naturally.

As the day wore on to early afternoon, he began to pace and that is what he would do for the next three hours. Finally, at four o’clock almost on the dot, there was a knock on the door. In a macabre way, it felt like Christmas day for him. Lewis gave it a moment, allowing whomever delivered the parcel to disappear before he opened the door to a brown box, the same shape and size as all the other brown packages, sitting on his doormat. His heart skipped a beat as he picked up the package, feeling at once that it was heavier than usual. Lewis brought the package to the dining room table and used his pocket knife to slit open the brown kraft paper that surrounded the box. He stared at the white box in its packaging for a moment, knowing at once he both did and did not want to see the contents. He opened it. On top of the skeletal remains of Juliana’s left hand, complete with her bridal set, was a note.

Lewis held his wife’s hand for a moment, trying to remember the last time he had held it when it was attached to her. He couldn’t remember and this fact made him very sad. He put the skeletal hand down after a moment and picked up the note. Another index card though this one had a longer message.

This game has become too sad for me and, perhaps, too boring. Thanks for not going to the cops. This is my last parcel post to you. You have everything you need.

Everything he needed? Lewis’s heart was pierced by a deep aching. What he needed was Juliana and he would never have her again. The wind left his body like a punch to the gut as grief overtook the shell of a man. Tears rolled down the prematurely aging man’s face. Lewis, clutching his midsection, went to his living room and took the picture of he and Juliana on their wedding day out of it’s picture frame. He headed back to the kitchen and sat down at the dining table once again. This time, he locked his eyes with those of his wife in the photo, and picked up the Desert Eagle that had been cleaned that morning.

What would she have done if he had been allowed to come home to her? Lewis tried to imagine his life with Juliana as it would have been if not interrupted by some black hole of a person. He stuck the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Blood splattered brilliantly across his shabby kitchen walls. A dark pool of it formed on the picture of he and Juliana on their wedding day. Lewis remembered the last time he had held his wife’s hand was the day he left for active duty.

“I wish I never left.” Lewis said as the world went black for good.