The Tragedy of Tommy Autumns

The Tragedy of Tommy Autumns

Writing Course Assigment, p. 167-170
Please read the author's comments before reading the entirety of this work! It will help you understand things a lot more!


*****


"Off you go!"

Standing to his feet, a frail man of 28 watched his pre-schooler scuttle across the yard and disappear into the brightly colored playroom doors. Behind the glass, he could see the little boy already diving to the toybox-blue carpet and snatching blocks out of the other kids' hands. The little boy, named Reed, laughed and giggled as the other kids pouted. He then slobbered all over the blocks and handed them back with the sincerest of smiles.

"So much like his mother," his father said. With a wistful glance back at the doors to the daycare, he tore himself away and walked to his car. He opened the door and got in, then turned the key and cringed as his radio blasted shrill fragments of music and static at him. He fumbled with the switch and finally got it off, his shoulders sagging as his head rested on the steering wheel.

Reed.

He was Tommy Autumns, just a regular guy with a regular guy's name and appearance, and a regular guy's salary. Well, perhaps it was almost a regular guy's salary... He worked as a file clerk for one of the biggest legal firms in the city, WeLy & Yuwen. Having been around for over a hundred years, it had a very notable reputation, and also a very notable set of tall marble statues sitting on either side of its majestic doors. It even had a luxurious stone fountain sitting in the middle of a well-groomed lawn, complete with fancy sidewalks and wireless internet towers cleverly disguised as trees. Tommy had big dreams to get inside the main office of that company one day, and he knew exactly how he was going to do it.

By keeping a positive attitude and filing papers like a madman, he told himself while shifting the car from "park" to "drive".

It just had to work. So what if all the lawyers in the firm had fancy degrees? Tommy himself had come within weeks of finishing his college degree. However, trying to work as many hours at the office as he could and still make it to class had proven more difficult than he expected. Add in the necessity of supporting his new wife, Mehrissa, and things became monumentally impossible.
Tommy shook his head and put his mind back on his son, Reed. He was really a good kid at heart...wasn't he? Reed had inherited his mother's smile, her green eyes, her fair skin, and her selfish and mischievous temperament. The only thing he really got from his father was his chocolate hair. He was bigger than most of the other kids his age, having the athletic build of his uncle David. Quite often, the rest of the family would joke that Reed belonged to David instead of Tommy. It was a punch in the gut every time, but Tommy had slowly gotten used to it. After all, it only hurt when Mehrissa was around. She would secretly puff up and then save her anger until they were behind closed doors, then let it all out like the blustery winds of March. Tommy had learned not to buy breakable, easily-thrown items because of his darling Mehrissa. While it was painful for him to endure her shouting and shoving, replacing almost all of the flower vases and dishes with plastic had been the decision that guaranteed his survival.
Despite all that, Mehrissa had been everything to him. When she wasn't angry, she could be fun and adventurous, and sometimes, she could even be a very pleasant girl. Tommy helplessly bent to her will at every parting of her lips; he threw aside his needs with every flash of her eyes; he even emptied his shallow pockets on not just one, not two, but three engagement rings for her. It had baffled him at first, but after awhile, he began to understand Mehrissa's way of thinking. She was concerned about quality, and most certainly quantity; it reminded him that perhaps he should take a look at his own life and try to "raise the bar" for himself, in time.
The engagement ring ordeal ended well, all things considered. Mehrissa got her third ring, along with the other two, and Tommy only got a black eye and a few bruises out of it. He had to survive on ramen for the next month, but it was alright as long as his dear Mehrissa was happy. Sacrifices like that had to be made, he told himself; it was impossible to go through life without doing so. Still, something had always nagged at Tommy in the back of his mind. He felt guilty for sending Mehrissa away, but that wasn't it. She needed the time off, desperately...didn't she?
The blaring of a car horn snapped Tommy out of his daydreaming. When he looked around, he noticed that he was back in his home neighborhood and that his house was close by. Tommy stepped on the gas pedal and turned the corner, soon shifting his car back into park and making his way to the front door of his house.
The stairs groaned as Tommy stepped onto the porch. He frowned at the boards while fishing for his keys, noticing the musty smell of mold rising from the ground below him. The entire porch needed replaced, but Tommy knew he didn't have the time to fix it. More than that, his mechanical skills were so low that he probably couldn't even fix a toaster. It was just one of a hundred--no, maybe a thousand--repairs the house needed in order to be inhabitable. The front door would probably come first, Tommy told himself. The key turned in the lock smoothly enough, and the lock mechanism actually did unlock the door, but Tommy couldn't relax yet. The real battle was forcing the heavy slab of wood to let him into his own house. Tommy braced his shoulder against the door and shoved. The old door jerked open, and some of the faded white paint chipped off, landing at Tommy's feet.

"Aw dammit," Tommy huffed. He scraped the paint chippings with the toe of his shoe and walked into the door. The loud thud called a neighbor to the side of her yard.

"Y' alright, Tommy?" she said with mystified eyes. She held a pair of dirty gloves and a garden trowel in her aging hands, and even had a frilly frock to match them. "You orta get'tat fixed..."

Tommy hid his clenched teeth behind a forced smile and waved at her. "I know, thanks, Mrs. Beaumonic."

The elderly woman smiled, then hobbled off to dig up her cabbage seedlings. Tommy waited until she was out of earshot and rolled his eyes. She was a friend of a friend of a friend of Tommy's mother, and now, she was his landlady. It wasn't that he disliked the strange woman. Today was just a testy day, and it would pass. Tommy took a deep breath, uttered a curse upon the evil door, then kicked it open and stepped inside. His briefcase sent echoes throughout the entire first story as it fell onto the polished wooden floor, but Tommy made no effort to pick it up. His house was as empty as it was old, and since only he and his son Reed lived there, Tommy had no reason to care about loud noises. After securing the door, Tommy looked around and sighed.
The kitchen cabinets were open to vent the fumes of mold-killing chemicals. All of his dishes sat lifelessly in a box on the kitchen floor, waiting for dinner. He didn't have a dining set, and the only real pieces of furniture he had in the rest of his house were older than he was. There was a tacky orange couch that had probably been popular in the days of his parents' youth, a fuzzy-screened television that still had its rabbit ears, a bland tie-braided rug, and of course, a cheap bed with an even cheaper mattress. Tommy had only recently moved in, and due to his parents' rules, he wasn't allowed to take any major reminders of Mehrissa with him. For Tommy, those "major reminders" had been nearly everything in the house. Naturally, his mother put up a fight when he said he wanted to take his own furniture.

"Mehrissa..." Tommy sighed. Even the emptiness reminded him of his wife. He knew he wasn't supposed to think of her. Everyone told him not to, especially his parents. But, he reasoned, how would they know if he took some quiet time to think of her?

"Dinner first," he said. Tommy let his briefcase lay on the floor and headed for the refrigerator. He opened the freezer door and pulled out a child-sized frozen dinner, then headed for the microwave. He read the directions as he went, pulling the plastic tray out of the box and tearing off some of the cellophane wrapper with only half-hearted concentration.

"'Kid Cuisine', you are a life saver," he mumbled as he stuffed the TV dinner into the microwave. A couple of button presses later, Tommy's dinner was on its way to cooking. The dishes were even glaring at him for the fourth week in a row.

"Oh, get over it," he said, rolling his eyes. He turned back to the microwave to watch his mass of suspicious dark goo turn into a brownie, then jerked at the sound of a loud crash. He turned on his heel to see the dishes again, and a look of horror shot across his face. The top dish was cracked!

Tommy stopped panicking long enough to catch his breath. He gazed at the plate again, managed to swallow his fear and finally inched closer. On the top of the plate, near the rim, Tommy's eyes picked up the faint, yet unmistakable, traces of dried glue. His stomach turned. He knew that his mother had specifically picked out every single broken dish and plate and kept them. As tenacious as she was about certain things, there was no way that she could have missed it by accident. It would be like Reed playing nice with the other children; it just didn't happen.

"Calm down, Tommy, it's just a plate..." he mumbled, running a hand through his shaggy brown hair. "These are china plates--they break all the time. It's very easy to chip a..."

Tommy froze again. This time, his eyes widened in disbelief and he felt himself growing faint. Carefully, Tommy lifted the plate in his hands, then turned it over onto the back. The tiny insignia stopped his heart cold. His hands shook.

"It's...it's...it's..." Tommy threw the plate onto the floor. Even with the crack in it, the plate did not break. Tommy's pulse beat into his ears as his vision zoomed in on the spinning plate. Even when it finally came to rest on the hardwood floor, Tommy shouted at the top of his lungs, "It's corelle!"

Corelle, the best ceramic substitute that Tommy could think of--it was the strongest dishware material he knew of besides plastic, and also, the only material that he knew no one could break. He had been wrong.

"There's only one person I know of that can break Corelle with the strength of her throwing alone," Tommy whispered. His body broke out in a cold sweat and he trembled like a frightened dog as an ominous shadow began moving towards him from the outer hallway. The scent of perfume filled the air, and for the first time, Tommy resisted its intoxicating effects.

Then came the voice--the normally sweet and melodious voice that Tommy knew very well. Its sweetness had been replaced by anger and insanity, and, Tommy guessed, the need to break something. Tommy's breath caught in his throat as he realized that the thing this person wanted to break was probably his spine. The person stepped closer, and Tommy felt as if he could do nothing more.

"M-Mehrissa!"

The microwave sent a loud ping through the air, momentarily diverting Tommy's attention. Strong arms pulled him from behind, and the next thing he knew, he was on his back. The alluring face of his wife, Mehrissa, loomed over him, flashing green eyes and all. Then another face appeared; she was not alone. A vaguely familiar young man stared down at him, sneering as if he had just rigged the lottery.
Tommy's head swam from connecting with the floor. He struggled to recognize the man, even though Mehrissa was talking with him as if she herself knew him. The big jaw and scrunched-up nose, the way the bottom lip turned up in a permanent scowl, and the surprisingly squeaky voice; surely Tommy had seen him somewhere before.

"You...do I know you?" Tommy mumbled. He didn't expect the guy to hear him, but it seems he had.

"What's it to ya, you piece of garbage! I knew I shoulda canned you a long time ago. Then Mehrissa wouldn't have wasted her time on a wuss like you when she coulda been with me instead."

Tommy rolled the thoughts around in his head. The voice was definitely familiar, he just couldn't place it. That's when it hit him. Can. Garbage. Tommy's eyes widened as his memory finally cracked open. He knew who the guy was; he knew he hated him, too. Tommy felt a surge of strength. He grit his teeth and pushed himself off the floor.

"Toby Zaidi!" he shouted. "You're the prick that kept kicking over my garbage can!"

"I thought I'd make you feel more at home, Autumns. Don't want company?"

Tommy considered jumping him, but then he remembered Mehrissa. He turned to look over his shoulder, his anger subtly giving way to a pathetic look of confusion. "What's going on here, Mehrissa? Tell me this is some kind of mistake! You haven't been released from your anger management classes already, have you...?"

Mehrissa pursed her lips, pretending to be deep in thought. A couple of seconds went by, then she tilted her head and smiled at him. Here eyes were empty and dull, and her smile was forced and creepy--the kind that screamed "I'm insane". "Of course not, honey," she said, "I heard about you moving, so I thought I'd come and get Reed for you. He's tired of being with you."

Tommy's heart sank. "B-but Mehrissa, the court said..." He stopped short and immediately shot to the floor. A ceramic plate soared through the air and splintered into thousands of pieces on Toby's face. He grunted and fell to the floor clutching his nose. Through tiny pieces of dinner plate, Toby's eyes widened in shock. His nose oozed red.

Tommy got to his knees. Got the hots for my wife now, Toby? Tommy thought dryly. He glanced over his shoulder at Mehrissa. She was already stooping over to grab another plate, and Tommy saw no reason to stick around. He dashed into the living room and made a break for the laundry room. The back door is just through there, Tommy thought, I just have to make it out of the house!

Another loud crash, then angry screaming.

Tommy slipped on the straw rug leading into the laundry room. He could hear Mehrissa's cries of frustration starting as he slipped and tripped over his own hands and feet. The rug slipped out from underneath him every time he tried to touch it. To make things worse, some part of him became covered in crusty white powder every time he fell. The scent of laundry detergent filled his nose, and Tommy knew he'd found something. What he could do with it, even he didn't know, but he had to try, or his face would end up looking like Toby's.
Before Tommy could act, another plate crashed into the wall, this time just a few feet from his head. Mehrissa stood in the doorway to the living room, her arms loaded with heavy dishes. Tommy uttered every curse word he knew as he lifted his hands to shield himself from another flying plate. He scrambled into the laundry room and threw the door closed. Another plate shattered against the cheap wooden door.
I have to be quick, Tommy's thoughts raced. He slammed both hands on top of a box of powdered laundry detergent and dumped it all over the floor, then reached for another one. The scents of fresh mountain springs blended with those of sunny blossom hillsides, erupting into a big mess of fresh sunny mountain hillside springs all over Tommy's utility room floor.
Tommy backed up until he felt the outside door against his shoe. He could hear Mehrissa pounding on the door in front of him, and heavy footsteps indicated that Toby was coming next. They'd have the door open in a matter of seconds.
Tommy shot to his feet. He grabbed the handle of the outside door and turned it, satisfied with the small click he heard. A sly grin spread across his face, and just as Mehrissa and Toby broke the inner door down, Tommy regretted not escaping sooner. The doorknob broke off in his hands, leaving him to face the wrath of two slipping, sliding, wriggling people with bad attitudes.
Mountainous freshness filled the air as the three of them struggled to separate themselves from each other. Kicking and screaming, Toby landed a foot in Tommy's face, Mehrissa clawed Toby's already-bleeding nose, and Tommy flailed Mehrissa's ankle around with his free hand. Just as the yelling and screaming reached its loudest, the outer door gave way, sending Tommy tumbling down the back steps. Mehrissa and Toby followed, and all were shocked to see a very familiar face giving them the most evil glare known to man. Mehrissa crept forward.

"Is that my baby? Is that my little Reed?" A bright smile lit up on Mehrissa's face at the sight of the toddler. She walked over and scooped him up in her arms, her rage instantly disappearing. "Mommy has missed you so much! You don't need to pay attention to daddy anymore; let Mommy re-teach you how to walk and read and use the little potty we bought you for your fourth birthday..."
Toby and Tommy looked on as Mehrissa ceased her rattling. Her eyes shot open, her lips turned into a frown, and in the very next moment, she set Reed down in the grass and ran to the nearest water hose.
"Reed, what did you..." Tommy started. He stopped when he saw the evil grin on his son's face. What covered his cheeks and the front of his shirt could only have been the remains of his pre-school's afternoon snack. Toby grunted next to Tommy, and Tommy reached over and punched him in the face. "That was for knocking over my garbage can," he said.
"My nose!" Toby shouted. He clutched his face and fell back into the piles of laundry detergent, shrieking in agony as the soap got in his wounds. Tommy rolled his eyes and got up to take care of Reed.
"Don't touch him! I'll clean him up! I swear if you keep stealing my job, I'll..."
Tommy blinked, then slowly stepped away from Reed. Mehrissa was jogging back towards them, her shirt soaked from cleaning herself up with the neighbor's garden hose. She walked up to Reed and cleaned him up, then took him inside to change his shirt. Tommy stared in disbelief as a strangely familiar glow came over his wife. He watched her step over Toby Zaidi, her crush before Tommy and his rival, as if he wasn't even there. He watched Reed kick more soap powder in Toby's face, and from then on he was lost in his own world of reminiscence and daydreaming.
Only the shrill horn of a vehicle snapped Tommy out of his daze. He turned towards the street, his dazed and confused expression leveling with the equally confused gaze of a brightly colored bus's driver. The name of Reed's daycare was plastered on the side of the bus.
"So that's how he got here," Tommy muttered to himself as he waved to the driver. The bus started moving and disappeared from sight, leaving Tommy alone in the back yard. He listened closely, amazed that Mehrissa could be on the same property as he was without that sound being present. "I don't hear breaking dishes," Tommy said. He stood in the yard for a few more moments, completely dumbfounded, then walked inside the house. Mehrissa and Reed stood in the living room near the stairs.
"Tommy, I think I've been rather...irrational lately," Mehrissa said. Her tone of voice had grown sweet again, her glasses lay busted on the floor, and her dripping clothes had been exchanged for some of Tommy's freshly-washed work clothes. "There were certain things that I've been...unable to deal with, and I..."

Tommy stopped her. "Mehrissa, you don't have to explain," he said.

Mehrissa's eyes flashed vivid green. "Listen to me or I'll rip you a new one!"

Tommy shut his mouth and waited for her to continue.

"You took Reed from me," she said. Her voice broke and tears pooled in her eyes. "He was always running to you for things he needed, just because I couldn't get there before you did."

Tommy held his arms out to her. "Mehrissa, it wasn't that I wanted it that way."

"Get away from me!"

"O-okay," Tommy said, backing away slowly. Mehrissa sniffled and continued.

"I want to be a mother," she told him, "a really good mother who can take care of her own child before he has to go off to school for most of the day. But you. You care so much that you wake up in the middle of the night to check on him before he even needs anything!"

Tommy found himself with nothing to say. He couldn't think of a single way to counter her words, because she was actually right. Somehow, Mehrissa was right about his parenting style. Tommy tended to worry so much that he was well prepared for anything and everything that might happen with Reed. Mehrissa wasn't a bad parent, but she wasn't a stable woman, either. Still, Reed had enough of her attitude to slap her if they disagreed. Tommy had been slapped plenty of times.

"Alright, Mehrissa, I'm sorry. I just thought I was being a good father," Tommy explained, "but if you want me to back off a little so you can do something, I'll do that." He thought for a minute, then dared to ask her, "but will you at least get some medicine first?"

Mehrissa stared at him as if she wanted to break his neck. Then, all at once, her anger subsided. That same disturbing smile spread across her face again, and she tilted her head to look at him. "Of course, honey! The doctors already gave me a big supply!" Mehrissa pulled a bottle out of her pocket and tossed one of the pills into her mouth. Tommy peered at the bottle in horror and tried desperately to read the label before Mehrissa could jam it back into her pocket.

"It's a new brand. They call it 'Azucar' or something," Mehrissa explained.

Tommy felt his brain go numb. Sugar pills. The doctors had given her sugar pills.

The next thing he saw was Mehrissa taking Reed by the hand and leading him over to Tommy's cell phone. "Now Reed, what do you do when someone breaks into the house?" she said to the child. Reed grinned and pointed to the cell phone's key pad. "That's right, you dial 911."

Tommy's blood ran cold. Would she really...?

"Yes, we've had a break-in. Yes, he's still here. He's laying in a bunch of soap flakes and has a bloody nose. Thank you, we'll stay far away from him, officer."

Mehrissa hung up the phone. She smiled at Tommy again, a strange, half-wicked smile which was perfectly reflected in their son's grinning face. Tommy's stomach turned, and he absently pulled at his cheap tie. He had gotten his wish to see his darling wife again, but after the ordeal they had just gone through, he began to wonder if he had time to hide the divorce papers that were laying on top of his bed. Mehrissa turned around and flashed him a smile, and Tommy nervously smiled back. Just as flashing blue and red lights filled the house's windows, Tommy took a deep breath, then choked. Stuck to the bottom of Mehrissa's shoes, and also trailing along in spots behind her, were shreds of an important-looking paper--an important-looking divorce paper.