L Akers - Fight Like a Man

To hell with it.

He was done paying.

THE SOUND of silence spread over Grayson like a heavy blanket, nudging him awake.

All was quiet—too quiet. The first peek of sunrise squinted through the blinds, but the room was still dark enough to sleep for a while longer. He rolled over to put his arm around Olivia, expecting to find his wife still snuggled in beside him.

Instead, his hand brushed hair, where there shouldn’t have been hair. Lots of it. And not silky soft like his wife’s.

Coarse and dirty-feeling hair.

He jerked his hand back, but not before waking Ozzie. Too late, he attempted to cover his face for the attack he knew was coming.

Damn dog.

Ozzie was on him in a flash, licking his face to beg for breakfast.

“Get down, Ozzie!”

The dog whined.

“No, it’s not time. It’s too early.”

Grayson rolled over, giving him his back. He’d lay still a few minutes more, remembering that Olivia was gone on a trip to the beach with her sisters—and he was stuck home with her dog.

He sighed. He wasn’t looking forward to getting up to no wife again. Although he’d never admit it to Olivia, no wife meant no life for him.

He’d been in a funk since she’d been gone. Not only did he have a toothache and had to face the dentist later today, but he was dragging ass, feeling lazy and grouchy in general since Olivia had left. It wasn’t that he didn’t have projects he could do. And she’d left him her own honey-do list in case he got bored. He’d gruffly accepted it and shoved it into a pocket, acting as though he didn’t need it. He’d had plenty to do. Didn’t want her worrying about him.

Truth was, he’d finished the honey-do list the first day she was gone. And he’d been moping around since then. He’d bribed Ozzie into hanging out with him on the couch, binge-watching Netflix with cold beer and hot chili—and beef jerky and chips for the mutt; dog-farts be damned.

She’d be pissed if she knew he wasn’t taking care of himself—or Ozzie—and keeping busy.

His stomach rumbled thinking of all the good food he wasn’t eating. While he did most of the cooking for them, Olivia usually took care of breakfast. With her gone, he’d been getting his coffee and breakfast-sandwich from the local service station. He hadn’t felt like cooking for only himself. His stomach rumbled again and he vowed to get up and cook real food today. Maybe some bacon biscuits. Definitely coffee. No more canned food and junk.

But first, just one more hour of sleep.

He closed his eyes and lay still, trying to recapture his slumber, when he realized it was too quiet. That had to be what had awoken him.

The sound of silence.

What happened to the fan? He was sure it’d been on when he’d gone to bed last night. It irked him that he’d become such a creature of habit that he couldn’t sleep well without the low murmur of the white noise.

He crawled out of the bed and stumbled to the dresser. He turned the knob of the fan to the right, and then to the left.

Nothing.

Maybe it got unplugged somehow , he thought. Probably the dog…

He flicked on the lamp to give him some light.

Nothing.

What the—

He looked for the familiar green glow of the alarm clock. It should be beside the fan. Olivia kept moving it away from the bed because he had a tendency to slap the snooze button too much. It annoyed her to hear the alarm go off every seven minutes for an hour.

She gets annoyed too easy.

In the dim light, he found the clock and picked it up. No glowing numbers. It was off. He didn’t even know there was a way to turn it off . He’d never seen it not lit up before, unless it was unplugged. He pressed the buttons on the top, not sure of what he was pressing. He ran his hand down the power cord all the way to the wall. It was plugged in.

Power must be out.

Now he’d have to get up and find out how long it was going to be out for. It couldn’t be a weather thing; the weather in the Carolina’s had been beautiful this May. Either the power company was screwing around updating this or that, or someone had hit a pole, knocking out a transformer.

Too bad he was too far from his nearest neighbor to see if their power was out too. Crossing to the window, he raised the blinds to let in as much light as possible and picked up his cell phone to call it in to the power company; maybe if he called early enough, he’d get higher up on the list.

The cell phone lit up and he sighed in relief. He scrolled through his contacts, finding the number for the power company and dialed.

It didn’t ring.

No service.

Odd.

A scary thought slid into his mind and he pushed it back out. Can’t be. No way.

He hurried out of the bedroom, stalking through the house. Every room… no power. No little glowing lights on the TV system. No time showing on the microwave or stove. No hum of a refrigerator. Nothing .

He waved off his silly thoughts. Plenty of times that cell phone had failed him. Phone service was spotty at best way out here in the country.

He’d just use the iPad—or PooPad, as Olivia called it, since he took it with him to the bathroom every morning to read the news.

Time management, he’d told her a thousand times.

Sometimes it was easier to get online than it was to make a call. At least that’s what Olivia had always said. She was able to get on the internet with that new-fangled 3G or 4G or something, even when they had no power; as long as the tablet was charged.

The power company had an online-reporting site where he could be sure to get on the list for repair service, or maybe see if any news was posted as to why it was out.

Returning to the living room where he’d left the iPad, he told Ozzie to back off, he’d feed him in a minute. The dog was literally right on his heels. With the heavy curtains pulled closed, Grayson could barely see. The coffee table creeped up on him and he stubbed his toe.

The little one.

“Stupid son of a—” he screamed, sending Ozzie scurrying away in fright.

Forget it. That shit hurt like hell, but swarping and cussing didn’t have the same affect when he was alone; it wouldn’t make his toe feel better at all, and it just scared the dog. He hated doing that. Ozzie was his only company; he didn’t want him to be afraid. He clenched his teeth against the throbbing, and blew out his breath through his nose.

He’d be glad when Olivia came home.

“It’s alright, boy,” he said as he hopped the few steps to the couch, flopped down and grabbed the iPad from the coffee table. Ozzie returned, wagging his tail, always quick to forgive. He gave him a quick pat on the head and jabbed a finger on the home button of the iPad, expecting to feel silly when it lit up.

He was right.

It lit right up.

He sighed in relief.

Tapping the internet icon, his mind wandered. How long had the power been out? He’d gone to bed early so in all reality, it could’ve been off all night. He’d need to check to be sure their food wasn’t unthawed or warm. No telling how long it would be before the power company got to him, he might not have power all day and night.

He jumped up, and hurried to the kitchen and opened the freezer door.

An unspoken swear word exploded in his mind.

His penny was sitting in the bottom of a glass of water. A trick he’d learned a long time ago was to fill up a glass of water and freeze it, and then lay a penny atop the ice. If the power ever went out, you could estimate how long it’d been out by how much of the ice had melted and how far the penny had fallen. It was at the bottom. The power must’ve been out all night.