Chapter 8

Kelly woke up earlier than normal and was making waffles. He woke up his normal five am time, shocked to see Kelly awake, and out of bed. The first thing that she did, was shove him. So he did the thing that he did, and grabbed her butt so hard that she nearly hit the ceiling. It was one of the many ways that they played rough with each other. He loved his wife, and her silly ridiculous behavior. She pulled the frozen waffle from the toaster and placed it on a plate for them. Then she dumped some syrup on top. “I thought you’d be hungry.”

“Why are you even awake?” He said scarfing bits of waffle between putting on his shoes and socks.

“I wanted today to start off well.” She said, hesitantly.

And he knew, before she even said the next sentence. He knew there was some big trouble. “Tell me.” He said short, and sharp. “I have to go to work soon, blurted out.”

“Well you know how Emily is.” And Kelly paused.

Kelly had this infuriating way of starting in the middle of the story. And Mark had no time for that, both because he had to leave for work any minute now, and on top of that, Emily was her boss. “Shit. Don’t tell me.” The waffle was no longer edible. He couldn’t even force the frozen half warm waffle down with even of waterfall of syrup.

“Fine I won’t,” said Kelly and she slammed her dishes in the sink.

“The truck, its brakes are squealing! The engine is probably gonna blow any minute now. And you,” he pointed with his fork, “you lost your job! How could you do that! We need that money.”

“I don’t even believe that dollhouse cost only five dollars. I think you’re a liar. Maybe if you stop spending money on ridiculous toys for children because you’re all caught up in ‘am I a good dad’ all the time. We don’t even need two incomes. You make fine money.” She said furiously. But she was lying, and they both knew it.

But he didn’t want to fight to stood up and he stomped out.

 

******

There was no drumming on this steering wheel today, his nightmare would have probably given him a foul mood no matter what happened this morning, but Kelly losing her job was no joke. And now! She would get to stay home all day with Coralina and Beth. And he would have to go to his shitty job, and build shitty walls, for stupid houses that he never got to live in.

This time, he remembered to grab the broken table leaf and the wrong size one, so at least he could show the crazy old man which kind he needed. It wasn’t until lunch time when he sat down and ate his peanut butter and jelly sandwich, that he wondered how he had climbed on the roof. He wasn’t naturally a sleepwalker. It seemed so surreal and so strange, that he probably would’ve forgotten it entirely and dismissed it all as dream – except that it took him forty-five minutes to figure out how to get off the roof. He still had no idea how he got up there in the first place.

Surely he only dreamt about the dollhouse being haunted because Mr. Vladimir was acting so weird about it the whole time they talked yesterday. Then again – he’d never sleep walked before.

Kelly would have another job in a couple of days, she was usually pretty quick to apply for a new job. Plus the job it sucked, and they both knew it. She’d been doing hotel maid work for a while. So she was constantly covered in blood and semen and who knows what else from other people. It was disgusting, and he didn’t like Kelly working disgusting, shady jobs.

But he couldn’t just let her stay at home and play with kids. That wasn’t good for either of them.

Especially not their finances, and he wasn’t kidding when he thought that that truck was going to be undrivable soon. Sure he could drive Kelly’s minivan around a little bit – but they were still making payments on the minivan, and it was a piece of shit too. What were they going to do?

He didn’t know, he didn’t know at all. But, he was definitely going to drive down and see if he could get Mr. Vladimir to give them the correct table leaf. Then at least that horrible feeling of a splinter stuck in his hand would go away.