Brian Keene: Entombed

I wrapped my arms around myself and lay down on the floor, curling into the fetal position. I was soaked with my own puke and cold and hungry and miserable, and I felt like crying, but that would have been a waste of valuable fluids. The remorse weighed heavily on me. I told myself that Krantz had left me no choice. No choice at all. If I hadn’t killed him, then Drew and I would be dead by now. Certainly I would be, at least, and that was reason enough to do what I’d done. It was pure survival. Nothing else. You do what you have to do to stay alive.

I repeated this to myself over and over again, but it didn’t really help. I’d done a lot of bad things in my life, but they all paled in comparison to committing murder. I’d just killed someone. Not someone who was already dead, but a living, breathing human being. That topped the bill of the list of things I’d done wrong in my life.

Thinking about those wrongs made me think about Alyssa, my ex-wife, which brought new pangs to my stomach—not of hunger and revulsion, but of guilt and regret. I lay there, wishing I could die and hating myself for fighting it when I’d had the opportunity to do so just moments before.

When I was five years old, my parents took my little sister and me on vacation to Virginia Beach. The hotel had a nice, outdoor swimming pool, and on our way from the hotel room down to the beach, as we were walking by the pool, I reached out and pushed my little sister in. It wasn’t a malicious act. There was no forethought. No planning. I don’t know why I did it then and I still don’t know today. She was just a toddler. She could barely walk, let alone swim. My father jumped in and pulled her out before the hotel’s lifeguard could even react. My sister was okay. She cried and sputtered and coughed water. I cried and sputtered and spent the rest of that day grounded in the hotel room, with a sore bottom, unable to watch TV or read comic books or do anything but wither under the angry, reproachful glare of my father. Looking back on it now, I suspect there were other emotions in his eyes other than just anger. I think he was scared—frightened by what his little boy had just done. Him and my mother both were. When her and my sister got back from the beach, they made me apologize. The next day, it was like nothing had ever happened, but I was aware, even at the age of five, that they watched me a little more carefully.

That’s the first bad thing I remember doing.

I did other bad things as a kid. I shoplifted a pack of bubble gum cards once. I cheated on a Social Studies test. I boxed Tom Schoen’s ears so hard in shop class that he had to miss a few days of school because of persistent ringing in them. I wasn’t some juvenile delinquent, nor was I a bully, but I did have a tendency, even back then, to put myself and my own needs first above others. I’d wanted the gum cards but didn’t have the money to buy them, so I’d justified my actions by telling myself that it was only once, and I didn’t get caught so it was okay. My mantra was always “Do whatever you have to do to survive.” That’s something that carried over into adulthood, though I never recognized that flaw in myself until after my wife had left me and I started going to counseling.

I met Alyssa when both of us were fresh out of college and working third shift together at the local convenience store. We used to laugh about that. She’d majored in secondary education at West Virginia University and I’d been a business major at North Carolina State—and yet we’d both ended up back here, working the graveyard shift in a convenience store because there weren’t any other jobs to be found. After a few weeks of working with her, I didn’t care. Alyssa was amazing. She was totally unlike any girl I’d ever met, even the ones from college. She was smart and clever and funny and an absolute knock-out. I’d always done okay when it came to women. I mean, I certainly wasn’t a virgin by any means. I’d had my fair share of girlfriends in high school and college. But I’d never been with a girl as beautiful as Alyssa was. And when we started dating, it was wild and weird and scary. I fell for her. Hard.

Alyssa suffered from chronic depression. As a result, she took a lot of antidepressants. I didn’t know much about the disease, at least, not then. I was young and stupid and concerned mostly with my own feelings and emotions. I simplified her condition in my mind, chalking her depression up to “She’s unhappy. I can make her happy.” So I tried. I tried like hell. I did everything I could think of. I bought her flowers not just on Valentine’s Day or her birthday, but in the middle of the week, not for any special occasion, but just because I loved her. I left her notes inside books she was reading. I took her on surprise picnics. Showed her things and places from my childhood and involved her in my life. I was nice to her friends and her parents. I called every night, just to tell her that I loved her. I made her laugh. Made her smile. Made her feel safe and wanted and important. And when the depression didn’t go away, I told myself it was because I wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t good enough to make her happy. It was my own insecurities talking, but again, I didn’t know that at the time. Another problem was that the anti-depressants impacted our sex life. Alyssa wasn’t in the mood very often, and on the rare occasions when she was, the medication prevented her from achieving orgasm. It was frustrating for her, but looking back, I was more concerned for my own feelings. I took it personally. I was the reason she couldn’t enjoy sex. It was me, not the meds. I wasn’t good enough. She told me again and again that this wasn’t so, that it wasn’t me, that it was just the antidepressants, but deep down inside, I never believed her.

Still, I figured if I hung in there, things would work out. I loved her, after all. It would get better in time. We moved in together, and began to argue about little things, same as what happens in all relationships at a certain point. We squabbled over money, mostly. I’d begin working at the hotel by then, and Alyssa had gotten an office job. She made more money than I did, and between the two of us, we did alright, but things were still tight. We wanted to save enough to get married, but we never seemed able to do so, because there were always other things I thought we needed—a flat-screen television, a trip to Cancun, a new truck when the transmission burned out in mine. I began hiding little purchases from her. I’d go out to a bar after work and hide the receipt. I’d buy a new video game or DVD and tell her someone gave it to me. Little lies, told with the best of intentions. I wanted to please her more than anything. I wanted her to be happy. I wanted her to stop worrying about finances. But because I was a self-centered prick, I didn’t want those concerns to impact my own happiness. I didn’t want to go without the things I needed, be they something as trivial as a video game or something as monumental as Alyssa’s love. So I lied in order to please her and keep her, and each time she found out about it, Alyssa pulled away a little bit more. The emotional distance between us grew wider. Back then, I told myself it was her depression, but I know now that it was because of me and my actions.

I grew close to Hannah, a girl who worked the hotel’s registration desk Monday through Friday. She was just a friend, but Alyssa resented the time I spent with her, and I resented Alyssa’s resentment. It wasn’t like I was having an affair or anything. All Hannah and I ever did was talk. Eventually, I found myself telling her things and sharing things with her that, for one reason or another, I couldn’t share with Alyssa. We began hanging out together, always in a group, with other friends, but sitting aside one another, laughing together, having fun. Alyssa confronted me about it, and I protested once more, assuring her that there was nothing going on. I told her she was being paranoid and jealous, and in my mind, I believed that to be so, because I hadn’t realized I was entering into an emotional affair with Hannah. I honestly saw her as just a friend—someone who could be emotionally intimate with me in ways that Alyssa could not. I didn’t want to lose Alyssa. I loved her. But she couldn’t give me what I needed, so I sought it elsewhere, and where was the harm in that? You do what you have to do to survive.