Dog Days

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Dog Days

Vitriosk

The Umbra
Inner Sanctum Nobility
Local time
Today 10:02 AM
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365
Location
Michigan USA
Cameron hated summer: Almost as much as he hated people, or animals, or happy-go-lucky ignorance. Actually, Cameron hated everything. Everything except money. Which sadly, he never seemed to have any of. So when the days grew unbearably long, and the temperatures climbed, his mood soured. He locked himself away from the world, in the basement workshop of his small house, and toiled away on whatever endeavor he could think of. Small ornate treasure chests, medieval themed chairs or cabinets, and even a few clockworkd creations he had been fighting to master. All to buy time, and to draw him away from the teenagers and college students alike, who now clogged the streets of his hometown, and ran about without a care. Their lives perfect in comparison to his.

Yet even in the cool interior of his home, set away from the neighbors and their noisy lives, he found no peace in the long drawn out days. His job lent him no solace either: As a glorified mail-man, who was forced to drive all over and put on a fake smile for those people he despised. Each day was a waking hell, that he lived through with the sole purpose of making money, and getting back to his hobby. A hobby that, while boring and tedious, held a place in his cold heart. A place once reserved for many of those things he now detested. Now filled with sawdust, and the sound of hammered nails. He hadn't always been a miserable shut-in who abhorred everything and everyone. Once upon a time, he was a young man, free of worry, in love, and with the world in the palm of his hands. Once upon a time ---as if in a fairy tale--- Cameron had been happy.

Too bad fairy tales... aren't real...

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32 years ago
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When summer break rolled around, Cameron was already lost to his latest creation: Buried in ankle deep wood shavings and odds-and-ends pieces of equipment in his father's shed. Toiling away on another gift for his girlfriend. Yet another of the many dozens of jewelry boxes he had already given her since the ninth grade. He carved it by hand, sanded and treated it, spent days, even weeks engraving it, and in all that time, he never seemed to notice the days passing by. He skipped out on the last day of school before break, and had been holed up in the dusty woodworking shed almost every waking hour since. So when his girlfriend of nearly seven years called him, he answered in a coughing fit and stepped outside to clear his lungs. The other end of the line was cold and distant: a silence that frightened Cameron hung in his hands as he said "hello" over and over into the reciever. He moved the phone away, checked the number, the signal, and still there was no reply from the other end.

It seemed like hours that he hung onto the phone, calling out into the nothingness, before finally breathing, and a whispered voice made its way through. It was his girlfriend... but something was wrong... Her voice was shallow, a pain lingering beyond words hung in the light static between them, as Cameron paced the small yard outside the shed. He could barely hear her, and yet he heard those words so loud that it nearly tore the phone from his hand. "Im leaving you" So icy, so deadly-serious, and so emotionless. He couldn't help but panic, and react in stages that shifted with the still drifting daylight. First in confusion and a disbelief at them. Preferring to ask again and again if he heard correctly, before turning to a sort of denial. Shaking his head as inevitable tears began to fall, and his mind recoiled into itself. Locking a door to which there was no key.

In a daze; stricken by the malady that was heartbreak and red-hot hatred: For anything within sight, within reach, within earshot, he yelled into the phone. All the venemous and vile things he could think of. Words like acid coated his soul and piled up atop him in layer after layer of rising guilt and regret. Each guttural insult and lie was fueled by the coursing tears that stretched dirty lines down his cheeks, and reddened his pale blue eyes. He let them fall, as he too fell to the ground: Grasping with one hand at the thin grass, and dirt where he knelt, all while holding the phone to his ear, and listening to the silent return of his own words. The breaths came shallow and fast as Cameron stayed there in that garden of torment, and long after the call disconnected he stayed as an ornament amongst the gathering demons. Staring with a blank expression out across a happiness he once knew: Shattering and collapsing before his eyes.

He had loved her as long as he could remember. Dating through high-school, into college, and he had never failed to stay true to her. Even when they fought, he had always found ways to apologize, and make amends for whatever folly he committed. He just couldnt understand, and she hadn't so much as given him a why. There was only that static, that silence, and those few simple words left ringing in his ears. Beating against the inside of his skull in rhythm with his pounding heart. The blood-shot blue eyes fell to the ground, as the last tears fell, and the summer sun finally dipped beyond the horizon. The cold of night, and the darkness that followed, held Cameron there in that statuesque state, until even the stars were not enough to grant him sight. The pitch-black that swallowed his mind, wrapped him in its arms, as he found his only escape in sleep. In the brief dreams of the past, and future, that would quickly become nightmares.

Waking with a startled gasp, and a boot to his ribs, Cameron rose with groggy, heavy lids opening to the sight of his father standing over him. A man he had always respected, and always obeyed. The kind of father that seemed too strict to care one minute, and forgiving the next. The kind of man that Cameron had always hoped he would be. As he lifted his head and rose from the ground to greet the confused look on his dad's face with a mere shake of his head, Cameron brushed the dirt from his clothes, and began the walk inside. There the silence waited again, between the two men as no words were spoken, and meaningful looks from father to son were unseen. Cameron had lost his mother many years ago, a mere two years after he was born, and his father bore all of those struggles upon over-worked shoulders without complaint. This silence though... was different...

Inside the small house littered with hand-crafted furniture, and assorted creations, Cameron quickly made his way to his room, and closed the door behind him. Ignorant of his father's stare, and the sunken look on the man's face. There inside the room, he found no escape from the tormenting thoughts he clung to, as each facet of it was a reminder of what he had, and what had been lost. The photos of him and his girlfriend, the bed where they slept together for the first time, and even the shoddy jewelry box he kept there for her, were shades of his anger. Twisting and malicious demons that rose up to claw at his heart and soul over and over again. The tears fell once more as he sat with closed eyes at the edge of his bed: Holding tight a photo of the two together, a happy first date back in a summer before tenth grade.

He fought back the fear and confusion long enough to pull his cellphone out and stare blindly into the lock-screen. The all too familiar face of his now-ex smiling back at him: It crushed his thoughts and broke his heart even more, as he let it fall from his hands, and fell back onto the bed. There he lay as the footsteps of his father approached his door, and a loud knock rattled the handle. "Ive left the keys to the corvette on the table, and some money... if you want to go out. I wont be home til late tonight, so have some fun" His father spoke through the door: His voice low and raspy "Remember son... I love you" With the final words spoken, his father's footsteps faded away, and again Cameron was left to fend off that silence. The threatening, maddening silence.

Cameron could never remember a time when his father had simply told him he loved him. Not when his grandfather passed away. Not when he graduated high school. Not when he was accepted into college. Not even when they spoke of his mother. Cameron brushed aside the curious thoughts: chalking it up to a mere illusion, or trick of his mind, as he took some time to find an out. An escape from the silence. A way to let the broken pieces of his heart be forgotten for a time. He sat back up, and placed his phone back into his pocket, before he headed downstairs and found the keys to his father's car on the table. He had driven it before, as a reward once, and when his father had gotten too drunk to drive home from the bar: But never had he been given the keys and been told to have fun. He figured his dad understood better than most, just what was needed to mend a broken heart. To heal when no time had yet passed. So he picked up the keys, grabbed his coat, and locked the door to the house when he left.

He drove around town for hours on end: Aimlessly distracting himself with the sights and sounds of the many people who wandered about. Watching them as they smiled and laughed. Played in parks, left restauraunts, or enjoyed the beach nearby. They were all so unsightly, so annoyingly happy on the surface, and Cameron wondered if any of them felt as he did. Felt the gut-wrenching sadness that consumed him. He wondered if any of them knew just how loud the silence could be. The distractions of the day were no match for the glaring sun, happy smiles, and the noise that filled Cameron's mind though, and he couldnt take them. He had no patience anymore for idly hoping and dreaming. For the beauty and warmth of the dog days of summer.

Taking the fastest route he could back home, but pulling the car around to the back and up to the shed, Cameron was greeted by the calming scent of wood, and the dark interior of his workshop. The place he felt most alive in, and the most comfortable. He stepped inside, closed the doors behind him, and began a new project as the day carried into the eve. He had given up on the jewelry box, and anything that reminded him of his ex. Of Jessica. He shuddered even at the thought of her name; such a simple word bringing a flood of emotions and images with it, as he laid wood to metal, and built tirelessly. Not a gift for a woman, nor one for himself, but something else. Something different. A piece of artwork, a sign of his acceptance, of his control over himself. He hewned and carved, sanded and chiseled for hours on the new piece.

When he had finished the small chest: A miniature tombstone that opened to a leather-coated interior, he finally smiled for the first time that day. It was no masterpiece, and yet in his eyes, it was the best thing he had ever made. A perfect replica of his mom's grave-marker, and a safe place to hide his thoughts under lock and key. He had to share it with someone: Normally turning to Jessica for her thoughts, but ignoring the desire to ask her opinion, he figured he could at least seek out his dad's view of it. He shut off the lights and closed up the shed; walking with the chest in shaky hands across the backyard, and through the sliding door at the patio's end. His blue eyes were choked with sawdust, and his clothing was a mess, but his face held the small hope he had mustered while working.

A hope... That did not last

When the patio door slid shut behind him, and his eyes bright with anticipation rose to meet the interior of the attached kitchen, all color drifted from him. All thoughts melted away into muddled blackness. All life went out of those light blue eyes. He stared in awestruck confusion across a silent home, at the only two people he cared for. The only two people he had ever loved. He stared with the fury of the sun, as the world went black, and the boiling rage of betrayal shattered the silence with a scream. Livid wrath coiled like a snake within him, and once shaky hands became white knuckled vices. There was no hope, no happiness, no fairy tale ending. Cameron hated everything. He hated it all, and even when the silence had been broken, it would return again and again. Between the swings of that tombstone chest, and the whispered tears of hatred. --Between the splintering of wood, and the quiet cries for help. --Between the siren call and the final goodbye ... It would always return.

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30 years later
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The large gates of iron topped by barb wire rolled back on their rails, as the prison entrance opened, and Cameron stepped out into the world he had once known. His faded grey eyes, wrinkled brow, and greying hair all catching the horrid gleam of the summer sun...
 
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