It Was Only a Matter of Time

This is a work of fiction. No real people, places or events were used. Copyright 2011 Plot Roach.

It Was Only a Matter of Time

By Plot Roach
　
“Seriously?” he asked her, his head leaning against the frame of the van’s window.

“Seriously.” she said, her face unreadable in the Autumn twilight. She sighed, latched the seatbelt closed over her, adjusted the mirror so that she could see the desolate landscape behind her and started the engine.

“When will I see you again?” he pleaded.

“Never again if I see you first.” she said and drove away without another word.

He watched the van dwindle away into the night. He stood on the road, his feet scuffing the asphalt amid crumbles of broken glass. It would be hard getting over Maria, but not impossible. At last, when the night’s chill wore down his reserve, he plodded back into the house, grabbing a cold bottle of beer from the refrigerator along the way. He threw a microwave dinner on to cook and turned on the television. His old hound, Jeb lifted his weary head from the couch, sniffed the air and barked a asthmatic “wuff” before settling back down onto the flowered and stained cushions.

“She’s gone, Jeb.” He said. The dog merely rolled his eyes in response before returning to slumber. With the woman gone, it only mattered who would now open his cans of dog food since the man-child he called a master seldom remembered on his own.

Still, Maria could be replaced. And would be soon, if left up to the hound. He sighed and farted, filling the room with a noxious stench that only an old hound dog or an intoxicated frat boy can do. Jeb smiled a doggy grin in his sleep and dreamed of soft hands scratching his head, of squirrels too fat to run out of his jaws and of finding an ever flowing river of beef gravy.

The human returned to the microwave, pushed the contents of the plastic dish around and tried a bite. What had not been burned was still partially frozen. And between beef cubes that were brick and broccoli that was rubber, he deemed it beneath his attention. He set it on the ground for the dog and whistled, but the old hound did not move from his post on the ruined couch. The dog knew that the food would still be waiting for him on the floor in the morning, and had no urge to break the last of his teeth on such a meal.

The man walked to the phone and dialed a number he had kept in his wallet. It was this slip of paper that had sent the woman with the soft hands and the loving heart fleeing from this house.

“Hello, Barbara?” the man asked over the phone. “Are you up to anything tonight. Because I thought that we could go out to dinner… Maybe a movie?” he asked.

The old hound smiled even deeper. Soon there would be another pair of soft hands to scratch his head, open the cans of dog food and maybe even find that damn flea that had been plaguing him for more than a week now. Yes, Maria would be replaced. It was only a matter of time.