Rent-To-Own

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1

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Undignified, abdicated, with a need for absolution, Mason knocked on his own front door, as if he were a stranger standing atop the WELCOME mat, hoping to be let in.

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Elisha, Mason's wife, opened the door.

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"God, I was out here in the cold, can I come in? All of this just isn't right."

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"Being outraged all the time isn't a personality," she snapped.

 

"So can I come in? I think a man should be able to enter his own house."

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"You're not principled," Elisha said. "You're just an asshole," she said before stepping aside.

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Mason followed his wife into the kitchen, watching as she resumed doing dishes.

 

"Babe, I'm sorry for being ugly," Mason said, watching as Elisha vigorously scrubbed , her back to him.

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2

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Mason shuffled towards the living room, un-tethered, umbilical severed, an echo, a reproduction without an original, all of this a million miles away.

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“Babe," he called to his wife. “Did you call about the leak?"

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In lieu of a spoken response, she flicked on the garbage disposal.

 

As he sunk into the couch, Mason noticed that even the cushions were scented with her perfume, a fragrance rising like smoke from a funeral pyre.

 

She was all around him, unseen, a particular kind of haunting.

 

3

 

Mason tried to focus on the TV: an ad for “The Hammer”, a personal injury attorney, who boasted, "we don’t get paid until you win."

 

Channel surfing, like treading water, the need for constant motion, something to keep him from going under.

 

"Babe, did you call the maintenance man about the leak," Mason called to his wife.

 

"Everything looks ugly when I'm with you," she screamed from the kitchen.

 

And maybe she was right.

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4

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They lived in this rental at the cost of  $1,600 a month.

 

Additionally, the couple had financed the furniture - even the very couch Mason sat on. They'd maxed out the MasterCard for the flat screen and the desktop computer that sat, mostly unused in the office, the pair preferred to scroll on their respective phones.

 

And, when he thought about it, the financing, the rental house and all the unpaid credit card debt, Mason came to the realization, that none of this - their hone, their belongings, actually belonged to them.

 

5

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The duct tape was so tight over her mouth and nose, that she suffocated, the TV newscaster said as if this were simply the cost of doing business.

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Sometimes, all of this, just felt too real.

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Mason felt that he was a crude diagram of an atom, his inner workings spinning, having been set into perpetual motion by some unseen hand.

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She was still in the kitchen.

 

And so, unsupervised, Mason floated through the house, opening drawers and opening closets just to see if anything had changed.

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"Babe," Mason called. "Babe," he said, his insides feeling like a neglected retention pond, full of water so cloudy that its surface offered no reflection.

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"I don't want talk to you right, now."

 

5

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He shuffled back into the living room and pulled open the sliding door, stepping out onto the concrete patio to take a smoke.

 

There he was, grandiose - and belligerent enough to insist that: "I can think for myself."

 

And this perhaps, he reasoned, that was part of the problem.

 

The tobacco crackled, the ritual of inhale.

 

Among the trees, among the clouds, a chorus of birds chattered endlessly.

 

Mason wondered what those particularly vocal birds were saying: Perhaps it was story about love. Perhaps it was a story of war;

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Either way, to an untrained ear, it was impossible to know, which was which.