Free When We Join Jesus in Hell by Lee Thompson

One

    His old friends called him Fist because when he was younger he’d been a hell of a bruiser, winning fifteen of seventeen semi-professional fights via knockout. He’d quit when the going was good, determined not to let himself fall beyond his peak and plummet down the other side with no dignity left. His wife Karen had something to do with it. Back then she’d been supportive, as passionate as him, but also practical. If she was going to have a family she didn’t want it with a man who took too many blows to his head. The part of him that dreamed of being a father realized he’d be a better one if he quit, long before his brain became mush. And he was in the projects then, where he’d grown up, always feeling like an alien because his Irish blood and temperament stuck out like a sore thumb. He’d been starving then. For what he didn’t know. He had respect. He had passion. He had everything he wanted it seemed.
    But that was nearly a decade ago. He’s not that man anymore. He doesn’t know that he has a single friend left.
    He came home late this night, his stomach hurting, the stench of booze clinging to him like stale flowers. The only light burning was in their upstairs bedroom, while outside a quiet street shrouded with elms sighed, surrounded by so many similar houses bearing so many similar mundane lives. He’d been searching for a way out of it, to find something more, but he didn’t tell anyone because to search for any kind of meaning seemed unmanly, un-American. And he hated thinking he had to hide it from his wife because they used to share everything; they used to be best friends.
    That broke his heart most of all and he had no idea how to get back to the way things once were.
    He shut the door quietly. He took off his coat and hung it on the rack in the corner. Floorboards creaked upstairs. He didn’t know if it was his little girl, Bethany. She was eight, yellow-headed, bright blue eyes full of questions, thin as a reed; or if it was his Karen. Not the Karen he’d married—this vibrant and compassionate and understanding creature that had amazed him more than anything he’d ever experienced—but someone else. Ill-bred of temper, bored, more plump than she used to be, and always ready to blame him for that. He thought, and said, occasionally, that he did his best. And he meant it. And he wondered how much longer they could hold on for Bethany’s sake. The plan had been until she graduated high school, but that was still a long way off. Karen wasn’t all that bad, just had her days, and they felt like they flayed him, and sometimes, when he had some clarity, he hurt for her because he knew the pain and frustration she felt probably trumped his by a great deal. On the days he didn’t resent her, he wanted to ask her what frustrated her so much, how he could help fix it, and hope she would offer him the same like she used to. He missed their closeness, the way they used to support each other, and their honesty more and more each day. He didn’t know where their faith in each other or themselves went.
    He wiped his eyes and sighed.
    In the living room he went to Bianca’s terrarium and pulled a couple of crickets from a cup. He pulled the leopard gecko out and stared into her dark eyes. She’d been blind and skinny as a rail when somebody had brought her into the local animal shelter where Karen worked part-time. His wife had always had a soft spot for all kinds of creatures, and it was one of the things he loved most about her. Bianca was only about five inches long, the expression on her face showing more emotion and intelligence than Fist had seen from most people. He bumped a cricket against her snout and she licked it, then bit into it and gobbled it down. She licked her eyes to moisten them and he fed her another cricket, then placed her back in her little home inside his little home and smiled. He stayed with her a while, just watching her, thinking about how cruel life was