THE FIRE

It’s nice to just sit in the garden, watching the flames dance before me. Especially on such a crisp and clear night such as this. I’ve always found comfort and peace seeing shapes in the hot embers, and I signed contently to myself as I poked at a piece of wood with my golfing iron. Life sure seemed too busy nowadays, and people spent too much time just rushing around that they forgot the reasons they’re running.

It was one of the reasons I’d bought the Chimneya in the first place. A chance to get out of the house and just be on my own for a moment. The old cow never liked it, and that had made it an even more pleasurable experience for me. Any chance I got to get away from her, I would readily accept.

Marriage had come quickly to us. I was only eighteen when she’d claimed to be pregnant and she left me with no other option but to marry her. After thirteen months of no weight gain or sign of any baby, she’d finally admitted she’d made it up to get the ball rolling. Something to do with not being the last one to get married out of her friends or something like that, she actually laughed when she told me.

That had been over thirty years ago now. Thirty years of trying to avoid each other, thirty years of me working all the hours god gave so she could buy what she wanted. It was easier to let her just get on with it than complain. The last time I did that I ended up in A&E while they stitched my forehead. I’d told them I slipped while doing some DIY. It didn’t seem worth causing a fuss.

I guess over the years I put up with a lot of crap from her. She went out with her friends and crawled back to the house in the morning, smelling of booze and other men and I just took it all, I took everything she threw at me, she called me a weak excuse for a man, she’d called me worse...

I move a larger piece of wood into the flames with the Iron and sit back to watch it as it starts to smoke. The fires getting hotter now, but it’s a nice contrast to the cold frozen evening outside and I take a swig from the bottle of Jack I brought outside with me.

I can’t remember what I first saw in the bitch now though. I think it came down to desperation. I just didn’t want to be left alone, you know? That thought of growing old alone scared me. All of my friends had got serious with someone, and a few had even got married and moved away.

It’s funny really, when I look back on it. To think I accepted the beatings and the abuse she gave me, rather than the option to be alone. I wonder what my life would have been like if I’d just not gone out that night, if I had just stayed at home. Would I have met someone better later on, or would I be alone now, sitting in a little flat somewhere watching football on TV?

God I hate her. I’m sorry, I just get angry sometimes. Its the way she flaunted her control over me over the years, the way she spent my money, leaving me with little option but to stay in when she went out. My only hobby, my golf, had fallen by the wayside when she broke my leg, another DIY accident I reported to the hospital.

I used to love my golf. My friends used to tell me I could have gone pro. I had a skill with the club that was amazing to watch, now it hurts if I stand for too long. The wood pops as the air trapped in it explodes in the heat and I jump. I have to learn to control my nerves, I have to stop myself being afraid of everything. Its time for me to change.

My head is sweating from the heat and I can feel my eyes starting to dry out. I guess I have to go and face the music.

I’ve put up with everything that cow threw at me, everything. But to come home and see her laughing as she burnt my golf clubs on the fire was the straw that push me over the edge. Its funny, even after all these years, It turns out I still have a good swing with the iron, shame the house caught fire but at least I wont have to worry about burying the bitch…