[WP] You're one of those dads that went to the gas station for a pack of cigarettes and never came back, but you had a damn good reason.

The smell of gasoline permeated his nasal passages and he had to chide himself internally for his desire to open his nostrils wide and take a big sniff. Fuck, why did something so toxic smell so damn good? Well, I’m no stranger to toxic inhalations, he thought sardonically as he took a drag on a cigarette. From inside the gas station kiosk a dark-skinned man with a baseball cap waved his finger at him, gesturing for him to put the cigarette out. Yeah, smoking in a gas station, probably not the smartest, he agreed mentally. He dropped the cigarette on the ground, and stamped out the embers.  

He glanced at his watch. 10:33. She’d be in bed by now, or so he hoped. She’d been staying up later and later, her eyes seeming to glow with each passing hour. Shit, man, he thought, almost laughing. Her eyes don’t glow. Are you going fucking crazy? 

It wasn’t just the late night activity, though, that bothered him. He’d found things, strange things, that made him wonder if he really was going fucking crazy. The pen drawer had scraps of crumbled paper, dozens of them, and when he went to throw them out, he saw a blot of red on the edge of one. He flattened it out and there was his name, written in a dark, sloppy red, a red that was too reminiscent of blood. Hell, it couldn’t be blood, he thought, running a nervous hand through a greasy head of hair that hadn’t been groomed in far too long. Where would that blood even come from? 

He kept an eye on her, for signs of self-abuse, anywhere from which the blood could have originated. But then he realized one night when he was changing that there was a small, almost imperceptible cut on his own body, just under his left breast. A ding, really. A cut so small that its making probably wouldn’t even wake him, but too deliberate and neat to be an accidental bang up. 

And then the doll—he didn’t believe in witchcraft or any of that crap, but the doll was weird. It was creepy as fuck. It was a little homemade thing of old cloth—cloth he recognized, he realized with horror, as he saw remnants of the old, faded outline of his college crest on the tattered grey material. On top of the doll’s head were a few locks of hair—his hair. Instead of two eyes, a pair of his wife’s sewing pins was thrust symmetrically through the forehead. 

She’d always been odd. An odd duck, his mother used to say, but a lovely girl in spite of it.  Damn, he missed his momma. He used to escape there instead of buying cancer sticks at the gas station. Now there was nothing to do but to pretend to get gas, buy a pack of Marbolo lights and watch the disapproving gas attendant stare him down. He was here too often; he knew it, and the attendant knew it. 

An attractive woman in her late 30’s with big earrings stood next to the car to his right, and he made eye contact with her for the briefest of moments. He smiled at her, hoping it came out as a smile and not a leer. He wasn’t successful. She stared at him blankly, then with an almost imperceptible twitch of the mouth looked downward as though the pump in her hand was very interesting.

He sighed outwardly, then pulled out his cell phone, a good old boredom-killing standby. He began to mindlessly scroll through Facebook, through pictures of his friends’ babies and dogs and magical trips to Iceland. He didn’t even remember the last time he and Katie had taken a trip together. Oh, that thing to Pennsylvania, he remembered suddenly. He continued to scroll and almost scrolled past Katie’s latest status when suddenly something like a bolt of lightening struck him through the chest. 

His wife’s status had 300 likes and 231 comments. It was because of the content, and the sympathy it was garnering. He stared it, disbelieving, but there the words were, clear as day. 

It is with great sadness I announce the passing of my husband, Jared McKinney due to a shocking and devastating heart attack. Please send your prayers at this time of sorrow. 

Comments like “Oh my God! I’m so sorry!” and “How did this happen?? So shocked… so sorry for your loss, Katie…” were strewn up and down the feed. He clicked on “more comments” maniacally, reading dozens of memories of his life and the sorrow their online acquaintances felt towards his passing. His hand trembled, and the phone dropped with a thud. He picked it up and the screen was shattered. Little shards of glass obscured the online funeral he was trying to attend. 

His head whipped around to look at his car. Fuck. This. He didn’t know what was happening, or what his wife had planned, but fuck this. He threw himself through the driver side door, stuck the keys in the ignition, and took off towards the highway. He was never going home. He was never going home again, and if he did, it would be to his own death. 

The dark-skinned gas attendant watched him drive off and shook his head. Hope that poor bastard isn’t back tomorrow night, he thought. 
/r/WritingPrompts Thread