If you could go back and fix one mistake in your life, what would it be?
The following story touches many ideas and could be categorized in many topics, but I feel it is a Loving Wife story at heart. I like the ideas in this enough that I hope I can revisit it for additional parts. This clearly a stand-alone story, but I feel the universe of the title characters is rich enough for similar tales of mistakes and alternate takes, of fixing the past without time travel.
All characters are over 18. No new parts of the Collective were spawned from this. Comment if you choose to. Enjoy, otherwise.
*****
When Brian's eyes snapped open, it was still dark outside. The house was still and there was nothing in the air to cause his wakefulness. His exposed skin told him the air was cool and comfortable, a typical early summer morning in the northeast.
No sense in waiting, he thought. The bedside clock said it was 5:11 a.m. Well, there were things to do.
He flipped the covers back and swung his feet out. The wooden floor was cool against his feet, but not uncomfortably so. A momentary pause and then he stood. The sensation of rising, brought him a sense of nostalgia. Odd, that something like getting out of bed would give such a thing, but this was a new day, and with it, a change in his life. Off to the pisser.
Completing the morning ablutions, similar ideas and expectations of 'what's going to change for me after this?' were forefront in his mind, while the body just moved through its paces, performing all of the activities via muscle memory and inertia.
Do I dress up? Brian decided to put on a decent shirt and some slacks, but nothing too fancy. It was typical of what he'd wear to work. Professional, but since he often had a lab coat or different personal protective equipment on, a suit never made sense.
Once dressed, he went downstairs and went to the kitchen to put on the kettle. He didn't know if he had tea. Closer to six a.m., he took the last of the eggs from the fridge and scrambled them. The refrigerator of a solitary man is often a barren place, and Brian's was no exception; however, he had intentionally not restocked, simply based on the uncertainty of the journey he was about to embark upon. No sense in getting a bunch of food he may not need. There was just so much damn uncertainty about it all. But his guests weren't very forth coming with details.
It was only about another hour or so before they were scheduled to arrive.
The business card sat on the table, black with the name in white Gothic on the front,
Corax and Grum
He fingered the edges of the card, before turning it over. The writing hurt his eyes. The back mirrored the front, all white with black Gothic font
Writing Wrongs
Very odd. He swore that it said something else the last time he looked at it. But the misspelling made him chuckle.
There was no contact information. There was no address or any other information about the group. In fact, the card itself was probably the least weird part of how this whole chain of events even started.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
At nine p.m. on a Wednesday a few months prior, Brian sat in the Yardarm Pub, down near the waterfront, with a longneck beer in hand. Not to say he was a regular, but other regulars in the Yard could tell the day of the week by what Brian's drink of choice was. Domestic longneck beer was the sign for Wednesday. Bourbon neat with a water chaser was Friday. A full glass of Shiraz for Saturday. It was a little affectation for him to break up the monotony of drinking too much. If he drank the same thing every night, it would be too easy to call him a drunk. This way, he was just eccentric.
It's not like he had any place else to be, or person to be with. No, Kristen had seen to that, and seen to it very effectively. So, it was either the Yardarm and Mitch behind the bar, and whomever was in that night, or it was home staring at the walls and drinking to even worse excess. He figured if he was going insane, then he may as well do it with some company.
Bar staff are used to the lonely heart's pleadings, their sob stories as if they were prosecuting to a jury. Most times, the teller of the story was the aggrieved party and just wanted their complaints to be heard and validated. Sometimes, they were the guilty ones, looking for absolution. Brian's story was unknown. He just politely declined to talk about why he was there so often. The closest anyone got was a "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all" response about his past.
He was polite and cordial to the Yard's staff, and they looked to him warmly, with affection but also a bit of sadness. He didn't shy from conversation with anyone, but didn't go out of his way to start any.
But over the almost three years he had been coming to the Yard, it was the odd look in his eye at times was the tell for the Yard's staff that he was hurting. Nothing in conversation or demeanor, but in the way he looked or focused his attention at certain times. Something about a sense of longing in a glance that could be identified as once having something and then losing it. Any staff working in dive bars for any period of time have seen that look - it's someone drinking themselves to death because they have nothing else to live for.
That night the Yard was moderately busy; most of the tables were taken, but there was no band and a reasonable conversation volume was possible, if there was someone to talk to. Brian sat alone nursing his fourth beer. He had planned on two more before he'd walk the three blocks to his second-floor apartment. He was looking across the bar, off in the mid-distance, not at anyone or anything.
"Is this seat taken?" a dry creaky voice to the right of him sounded. There was an accent to it, something vaguely European but not wholly identifiable. Broken from his reverie, he turned and was chest level with a man in a black suit and overcoat. Looking up, the face towering over him was quite long and lean. Gaunt was the word that came to mind. A pronounced Roman nose sat between high cheekbones with hollow cheeks hanging from them; all above a thin almost lipless mouth. Dark and deep-set eyes, almost entirely pupil, stared down at him. Long stringy hair, probably in need of a shower, parted over a high forehead framed the man's face down to the jawline. Atop that, a dark scally cap sat on his head. The man peered intently at Brian, as if the answer was vitally important, yet he was very still.
"Hmmm? Ah, no. Help yourself." Brian suddenly needed to be looking away from that face, so he looked back at his mid-distance focus point, and moved his bar stool slightly away from the empty chair targeted by the stranger. The stool squawked as it moved.
"Thank you kindly."
Brian casually nodded towards the man, but didn't meet those dark eyes again. For such a tall man, he slid into the seat quite easily, bringing his knees up to sitting just below the overhang of the bar top. The posture reminded Brian of an eager school child leaning forward in a chair. The hat came off and was placed on the other side of the man.
The man ordered a hot tea from Mitch, and retrieved a small coin purse from inside the dark overcoat. The coat fabric rustled softly.
Brian was looking away but found his focus was completely on his companion. From his peripheral vision, Brian saw long, bony fingers delicately pluck the cup off the saucer and brought it to the mouth. A quick slurp and the cup was returned.
This was repeated a few times until he couldn't stand it any longer. "Funny. Why come to a pub for a cup of tea?" Brian asked, looking straight ahead.
"Why indeed!"
Brian could feel the man's lips pull back on his face. He turned his head and confirmed the grin. The man had the same focus as Brian, straight ahead, mid-distance. Large teeth, yellowed and even like tombstones in a church yard were framed by the thin pale lips. The man then turned to survey Brian, with a slight cock of the head, and the smile got bigger, lips pulling back around the curve of the skull. It seemed there were too many teeth in his mouth.
"I suppose it's the company," he continued, holding Brian's gaze while raising the tea cup back for another sip. "Maybe the conversation. If a conversation were to occur." Mitch came by with a refresher for the tea. "Thank you, sir!" the man cheerfully added. He produced a rough bronze coin with a funny design from the coin purse and slid it along the bar. The movement was graceful and sly, as if performing a sleight of hand.
