arrested development referance and language?! tsk. tsk. tsk.

Beth walked into a corridor filled with cold metal bars and soul-sucking fluorescents which lined the cream colored ceiling. She walked past a few large empty cells until she got to a solitary one that seemed determined to suppress the scant light present in that dingy corner. Inside the cell was a solitary figure sitting deathly still on the sparse bench. His face was covered by shadow, but Beth recognized the figure as her husband.

“Ten minutes. Stay away from the bars, no touching, no raising your voice, no passing anything into the cell,” continued the heavy-set guard who waddled a few paces back to appear less obtrusive.

Beth sat on the obscenely orange plastic chair provided for her. She didn’t speak, she had too many things to say but she couldn’t verbalize them. Instead she sat there in the cold plastic and watched her husband’s hand clench the other.

I had better say something, she thought, just let him know you still love him, or at the very least you don’t hate him. “Ben, I…” She felt a tap on her shoulder. She looked up to see the girth of the guard staring her in the face.

“All right lady, time’s up,” said the guard.

“I’ll be back when I can,” she finally stammered out before she left with the guard.

Beth dropped Jordan off at her mother’s house and after a brief and obtuse explanation, drove home. She sat in the living room with only the slight ambiance from the streetlights to keep her company. She mulled the events of the day over and over in her head until she wasn’t sure what was true, or what was in her imagination. She re-invisioned her "conversation" with Ben in the prison over and over. She envisioned scenarios where she had burst into tears and blubbered out how much she still loved him, and still others where she reamed him out for doing this at a time when they were finally getting ahead. She tried to get up and get a glass of wine, but was too tired to do it. She sat alone until her thoughts became darker and more surreal. She began to see Ben beating the man senseless. She was haunted by that still image of the man her husband had killed. Slowly, the thoughts became dreams, and the dreams; nightmares.

Beth woke drenched in sweat. She looked around frantically for a second to recover her bearings. Slowly, reality made its presence known. She meandered wearily up to her room and promptly drew a bath. She looked at the clock and the dial read 3:56. The full impact of the time hit her full force. She decided against the bath and collapsed on the bed. Lying there exhausted but unable to sleep, she could not forget her dream. She tossed and turned but that horrid image refused to leave her psyche. She finally sat up and turned on the lamp, and her eyes focused on a clunky olive colored box in the corner of the room. Ben had kept all his old army documents in there, and refused to let anyone see them. It was probably nothing, but Beth couldn’t combat the encroaching feeling that she needed to check the box’s contents. She kneeled by the drab cube and saw the small combination lock. She didn’t know the combination and the prospect of wasting away the few hours of sleep she had left by figuring out a combination seemed less than appealing.

“Well, I’ll give it one try,” she spoke to the air. She was surprised to hear a click when she tried the handle; Ben never left it unlocked. She opened the case and saw a stack of papers, some various odds and ends, and some sort of metallic pin. Among the myriad of papers, she found nothing useful. She almost closed it until she came across a notebook wedged in the very back. It was a small but dense notebook, heavily discolored and water marked from years of harsh conditions. She had picked it up for a song some years ago and had given it to Ben before he left for the war. She told him to put her picture in it, so she would always be with him. She had forgotten about it. She opened it and began to skim through the entries. Ben had drawn little illustrations of what looked like birds, other animals, and various portraits. Beth smiled as a tear rolled down her cheek. Ben had always fancied himself an artist, but he was never any good. Beth never had the heart to tell him how poorly he drew. She kept reading, but the journals were singularly uneventful. Suddenly, the journal ended. A block of time encompassing who knows how may days in the span of a page. The journal resumed on the next page, but these pages were crudely penciled and unsettlingly peculiar; Ben’s sentences clipped and bitter. His illustrations grew darker and more grotesque; one in particular caught her eye. It was a picture of a man holding a dead boy, red ink was splotched liberally over the page and the words, “My Fucking Fault” were scrawled all over. Then Beth saw the dragon. The swirling mass of red and black began to take shape in a faint but unmistakable serpentine pattern. The arms and legs and wove themselves into the boy’s wounds and the soldiers own face replaced the draconic figure.

Beth shot awake, sweat beading on her forehead. She had fallen asleep, again. As reality filtered back in, the dream became fainter and fainter. Beth labouringly got to her feet to turn off the light when her eye focused on the open journal. She made it to the sink before she vomited. She stayed by the sink for several minutes looking down at the stained porcelain, watching the foul mixture snake its way down the drain. The picture wasn’t a dream. She made her way downstairs; her steps heavy and labored. She half-heartedly fixed herself a glass of grocery store chardonnay, resisting the urge to continue reading. Three empty glasses later, as the sky went from black to a hazy grey, she re-opened the book. She found that Ben had continued writing since his seizure. The entries were hidden away after several pages of emphatic emptiness. Beth stared at the words on the last written page; her face registering her shock. Beth had studied literature in college, but Ben never understood why she loved books so much. He used to make fun of her for liking characters more than real people.

“Characters are less messy,” she would quip back as she fixed his hair. Beth didn’t consider herself an academic, but she did retain her reading well. After a decade of intellectually flaccid suburban life, she still remembered reading “Beowulf.” She remembered the mail Ben received from one of his army buddies, addressed to Ben “Beowulf” Olson. Even more frighteningly, she recalled the words Ben spoke at the hospital. Here on the last entry, Ben’s words gave Beth irrefutable proof of the severity of Ben's condition.