Don't Do It

He couldn’t get his head around it. He just couldn’t understand. She had left him. Packed her bags and left. “I’m going on vacation, Lyle. I’ll be back in 10 days. Don’t burn the house down.”

What was he supposed to do for 10 days? She had been keeping house for the past 15 years. He made the money, she did the house work. It was a deal they had made before they got married. He always took her on his vacations. How could she go on a vacation without him? This is fine. I’m a grown man, he thought. He had lived without her once; he could certainly do it again.

The first few days were fine. He made it to work in his clothes, ate food and watched TV like normal. Granted the food he ate was all the leftovers she had told him to eat and the outfits he wore were the outfits she had hung for him in the closet but he was still managing on his own. He was able to wake up without her, get out the door. Maybe 10 days wasn’t that long after all.

It was on the 4th day that things began to go downhill. It began innocently enough. He no longer had any pre-prepared outfits to wear. Not disastrous. Though when he got to work his colleague pointed out the stain on his shirt, right there on his left peck. He had grabbed it from the hamper in a minor frenzy. Then when he got home there were only fruits and vegetables in the fridge. And they weren’t even cut up or mixed together! But he managed. Managed to eat everything in it. It was at this point that he turned to his old buddy Famous Grouse for support.

By day 6 he had called in sick to work and was living in a drunken stupor in his bathrobe. He had made an attempt to do laundry, stuffing all of his dirty clothes into the machine. He turned it on even though the machine wouldn’t fully close, full with so much dirty laundry. He left the room expecting it to do its magic of making his stuff clean again. He came back to find the room flooded and the machine inoperable. All of his clothes were soaking in dirty water.

On day 7 his neighbor dropped by having noticed that the newspapers had piled up outside and the mailbox was over flowing. When Lyle answered the door the neighbor took a step back. “What’s going on, Ralph,” he said biting into the celery stick in his left hand.

“Hey Neighbor,” Ralph said. “Just checking in. Seems you’ve been behind on your mail, huh?” Lyle looked over the lawn past Ralph at his engorged mailbox. “Look at that. Mail.” Ralph looked him up and down and said “Are you doing ok?”

“Oh, just fine. Sheila is out of town for a few days but I’m just fine.” He took a large gulp of the scotch in his right hand.

By day 9 the floor was covered in take out food boxes, dirty clothes and papers. At least he had brought in the mail and newspapers; discovered where the take out menus were. But he had been perpetually drunk for the past 4 days. He wasn’t sure what that rancid smell was or where it was coming from. He hadn’t eaten real food in two days and hadn’t slept in 3 because he was permanently glued to the home shopping network which he had pleasantly discovered.

He began having wild visions as his sleep and food deprivation took hold. He kept envisioning Sheila coming home, fire shooting out of her head with fury at the state of things. Other times he had thoughts of wild dogs coming in, wreaking havoc and eventually eating him. He couldn’t take much more mental strain.

At around 9pm on the 10th and final day he decided to get out of his doldrums. If Sheila could escape so could he. He got up, went into the kitchen and found his old cigarette lighter. Standing outside of his house he felt free at last. Like wiping away tears on your face he felt he was renewing himself, his independence, his manliness. As he took a deep breath in a taxi pulled up beside him. Breathing out he heard Sheila scream “Oh my God, Lyle! How did you burn the house down?!”