Brick by Brick by Brian Hesse (read after TXT) 📕

Make no mistake, despite the peculiar duality of its nature, revenge is the sweetest of all human emotion.  On the lower, most base, end of the spectrum, there is orgasmic satisfaction of which no comparison can be made. On the higher, most civilized, end of the spectrum, there resides the deep depression of guilty impotence. To kill someone out of a sense of revenge and in the passion of a fleeting moment, I surmise, will make one feel like a God on one hand, and a lowly criminal on the other once the passion of the moment is gone. But to stretch out life’s moments, passing the time with normal mundane concerns, until the final day of climax, is the main ingredient in the creation of something just right…not too sweet and not too bitter. But all this intellectualization means nothing in the end. The truth is that when your ego is bruised, or the comfy little universe we create is attacked by outside forces, the only natural reaction is to strike back, even when the damage is done. Like a wounded dog giving ferocious pursuit to its antogonizer, I too must strike back.

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Oh, I mentioned our little universes we create. For some, the lucky, or the talented, this may mean a six-figure salary, a beautiful home, an equally beautiful wife and kids, and that untarnished reputation in the community that must be maintained at all cost. Well I am not so lucky, or talented. I am middle aged, as easily recognized by a receding hair line and chubby mid-section. I make just enough money to pay my bills and repair just enough of my roof to keep the bedrooms dry but the bathroom ceiling quite moist every time it rains. My wife is quite ugly, and my five children are not…shall we say, products of good breeding. Ok, dumber than brick walls. Oh, accept Jasmine and Kelly, my two youngest. I think they may pass the third grade, for which I am most assuredly grateful. As for a reputation, well, I tarnished that in my youth. Never having the talent, looks, or money to leave my crap hole of a town, I have the dubious honor of being recognized every day by all the people I damaged in my carefree days of youth. There is Mr. Brooks, just down the street. I spray painted his cat blue and green when I was just ten years of age. There is Mrs. Crocker, who works as the oldest living librarian in the universe. I stole her only daughters’ virginity when I was seventeen. We were both of the same age, but she was like a rose brimming with tiny shiny drops of morning due, and I was like weed slowly rapping itself around her pristine stalk until her beautiful petals fell carelessly to the hard-cold ground. Neither one will ever forgive me for such an abuse. And of course, we cannot forget all the teachers, fellow classmates, and religious leaders of this small little community. Memories fade but I still have a sneaking suspicion that I caused just about everyone in this decaying town at least one sleepless night. How I came to marry Susan Grimes is beyond all worldly comprehension. Susan is my wife, and I cannot say honestly that I ever loved her. But something deep inside my mind, that place that constantly struggles to be heard. That place buried underneath all the rat-like scheming one does in life. That croaking voice buried and suffocating under so much self-abuse, that calls out and says, “this would be good for you.” Unfortunately, that voice is usually wrong. Not to say that I want to live alone. Even an ugly wife, ungrateful children, a leaky house, and a depressing job is still ones own. This is my broken universe, and it took me forty-seven years to build brick by brick.

#

Discovering that my wife was sleeping with my best friend was not the worst day in my life. I would be lying if I told you that I shed any tears, the day I found her other phone. In fact, the only thought on my mind for weeks prior to the discovery, concerned my broken employee of the month trophy. You see, to receive such a precious award and become a king for a month, I spent twenty grueling years of pouring boiling hot molten metal into cold rusty steel molds. They call me an extrusion technician, but the reality as always, does not match such an interesting title. The truth is that I am the guy with burn scared arms and the permanent wrinkled ruddy red face of a man with permanent steam burn. I am that guy that can wring the sweat from his clothes after an eight-hour shift like a beach-goer wringing out his towel he carelessly set too close to the incoming tide. So, the day I received that trophy was the day that I became king, even just king for a month.

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It was a grey overcast day I when learned from Susan that she accidentally knocked over my trophy. She handed my five uneven broken pieces of black and silver painted glass. Only one piece, the largest one, could I see the words, “of the month.” On the smallest jagged piece that scraped threateningly against the scar tissue of my calloused hands read the single word  …”employee.”

So as one could see, a cheating wife is a petty concern compared to such a fleeting moment of bliss like recognition, particularly for a nobody like me. Last Wednesday, the day I found about the true nature of the cause of my shattered trophy, was sunny with a pleasant breeze blowing gently from my open bedroom window. I was just sitting on the bed watching the white lace curtains blowing effortlessly in the air, like seductive nymphs beckoning me to come closer to the window and feel the caress of natures breath. So that’s what I did. I walked to the window and knelt with my elbows resting gently on the chipping wood of the sill. It was at that moment I heard a strange beep come somewhere from behind me. At first, with the breeze, the sunlight, and my subsequent immersion into nature, I thought maybe a baby bird got into the house. Determined not to allow such an innocent creature spend too much time in such a sad leaky house as this, I began my inspection. I crawled around the floor like an infant caught between the comfort of crawling and the anxiety of standing on two unsteady feet. I looked under the bed, and finding nothing but dust, Susan was not much of a cleanly person, I turned my attention to under the dresser. There it was. The cheap dollar store pay as you go flip phone. You know, the kind you can buy for twenty bucks and looks like something out of a cheesy Star Trek episode. I flipped the phone open and read the first message I could find just before the phone battery icon turned red, and the background of a tropical beach faded to black.

The message read, “Hey baby, I had a great time once again. When is your old man at work again? I can’t get enough of you. Oh, and I hope my clueless friend bought your excuse for breaking his prized trophy. I think I did him a favor by knocking it over.”

Love, your cuddle bear.

After my head returned from that place of surreal blood red clouds, the rancid smell of burning Sulphur, and the glowing pyres of the undead. You know that place we have all heard about where the guilty are tormented for all eternity, praying to a deaf God for salvation. Well this is the place I traveled to when I read those last words of the message. My best friend Billy Bailey broke my damn trophy. You can sleep with my wife, you can take my kids, you can even have my crummy house. “But don’t ever wreck my pride.” These were the words I found myself mumbling on that day. The day I decided to kill Billy Bailey, the guy who worked for twenty years next to me, Ted Bindle, employee of the F’ing month.

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“Hey Billy, can you come on over right away, I asked."  "I need a hand carrying some bricks down to my cellar,”

“What now, teddy old boy, I just got off working the late shift, I heard his dreary voice protest over the phone. I picked this time when I was fully aware of how tired he would feel. You see, I called of my shift knowing that Billy would have to work doubly hard on such short notice.

“Teddy are you there? Did you hear what I said. By the way, where were you last night. I had to work my tail off. I hope you really are sick and not just loafing around that empty house while the kids are at school and your wife is at work.”

I thought to myself, “he really knows a lot about Susan’s routine. The nerve of him to act so casually after killing my trophy. The weight of what I was about to do began to creep inside me, starting from my feet and working its way to the top of my head. I felt dizzy just for a moment as second thoughts reared their cowardly head. But this soon passed, as I realized once again that an invader must meet destruction. What kind of a man would I be if I allowed this injustice to go unpunished?

“Please my friend. I don’t have much time to get this project done. I am feeling under the weather, but you know. I am not one to sit around when feeling ill. Sweat it out, is what I always say. I promise, I will do the work for both of us tonight.”

I heard a very reluctant but guilt-ridden voice reply, “I will be there in ten minutes.”

#

There was no turning back at that point, and I was glad. I had seven hours to accomplish the task. The bricks were easy to come by, and all the required material was already present in  my basement. The standard brick is two and a quarter inches wide, and seven and half inches long. By quickly calculating an extra half inch on the length and thickness of each brick (to account for the mortar), I estimated that I needed 192 bricks and two bags of mortar to do the job. In my basement, one of the few rooms that leak, there is a depression in the Eastern wall that is approximately four feet deep, seven feet tall, and four feet wide. I am no mason, but confident that one hundred and ninety-two bricks will seal this space nicely. Within the depression I placed a large silver ring deeply imbedded and bolted into the top. Need I say more on the particulars of my lay estimations?

How I trapped my prey is not so relevant. Knowing how water to an “extrusion technician,” like myself and Billy, is like liquid gold, a few milligrams of Clonazepam in a glass of water worked very well.

“Where, where…where am I?”

I decided not to talk much as I proceeded with my work. In fact, I didn’t even want to look at him hanging there in the recess of my basement wall. A quick glance here and there was enough to satisfy my thirst for revenge. He looked like a deer recently shot by a glancing, yet fatal blow; just suspended in the dark void between carefree existence and impending blanking out forever. But he would suffer first. I read somewhere that a person can live without food for over