Interlude 3: Wrath

The man stumbled down the hall towards his apartment door. It wasn’t the most well lit hall, especially this time of night. He struggled to see the apartment numbers on the doors and decided that muscle memory was going to be enough to get him where he wanted to go.

He stumbled back and forth, left and right, the world far less solid than when he had begun drinking that afternoon. The half empty beer bottle he carried in one hand clanked to the ground and spilled some of its contents on a broken tile of the poorly lit hallway.

He leaned against the frame of what he was pretty sure was the door to his apartment and fished his keys from his pocket, not without some difficulty. He finagled with them a bit, trying to see with his disoriented gaze which one would let him finally crash onto his couch while drinking his pains away.

He walked into his living room and could not believe what he saw.

“That fucking bitch…”

It was completely and utterly decimated. His wooden furniture was smashed, his walls were cracked. Many of his keepsakes were destroyed.

He wasn’t going to take this lying down. He launched his fist against a framed picture with her face on it. He broke the glass with a single punch, except he didn’t stop. He kept punching, ripping the picture right through the middle and tearing yet another hole in the wall behind it.

Another ruined picture frame hit the floor, the picture inside now an unrecognizable tattered piece of paper. The man was tired and sweaty, he dragged his feet through broken furniture, wood splinters, and pieces of plaster on the dirty ground until he reached his couch, dropping his complete weight on it.

How had it all come to this? They had been happy, they had a good thing going, until she ran away. Someone had infected her head with lies, with stories about him, whatever they were. Now she was spouting nonsense and belonging to another guy. He just couldn’t take it. He grabbed a nightstand from beside the couch and chucked it at an already ruined shelf.

“Piece of shit…” He ran his hand over his eyes, as if that was going to wash all the tension away. “I need a fucking beer.”

He got up from the couch, walked through the rubble again, and made his way to the kitchen. The sink, still full of dishes, was ignored as always, as he went straight to the fridge and grabbed a beer can from inside. Not like there were many other options left in there. He zigzagged his way back to the couch and, as he was sitting, he murmured a complaint to nobody in particular, besides himself.

“If I had a little bit more control over her, this would never have been a problem in the first place. I wish I had control over all of them, fucking bitches.” He spat the word like it was venom. “I could have shown them all.”

“Control? Is that all you wish for?”

He turned in the direction of the voice. He thought he was alone in here. On his front door, open to the apartment hallway, a man stood. He was wearing a crisp but simple looking suit, leaning against the doorframe, and sporting a devilish looking smirk.

The man on the couch threw his beer can at the man in the suit. He got up in a flash, ready to pounce.

“Who the fuck are you and what do you want?”

The man in the suit dodged the beer can without much effort.

“That isn’t quite the right question. The right question is: what do you want? Because I can make your wish come true.”

A smile spread over Luke’s face.