Forgotten Fears Read Online Free Page A

under the sink wedged between two pans. He snatched it up and turned to his wife.
    “Well, either our son has grown tall enough to get this off the back of the basement door, or he’s been allowed to play with it.”
    “It’s not my fault if you left it where he can get it.”
    “Jesus, it’s always the same with you, it’s never your fault is it?”
    “This isn’t my fault!” She said, lighting a cigarette with shaking hands.
    “No, it never is, is it?” He replied, half glad he had said it, and regretful at the same time.
    His words had the desired effect, and he saw her   flinch as he walked past her.
    “I better go check these breakers,” He muttered, swinging open the basement door and descending, leaving his cutting words lingering in the kitchen with his wife.
    The basement was a long L-shaped room which was full of boxes of things they still hadn’t unpacked. The air down there was dry and musty, and particles of dust swirled in the torch beam as he made his way through the haphazardly stacked maze of bric-a-brac.  Although he wasn’t a man who was easily afraid, even he had to admit the basement had a certain eeriness when illuminated only by the beam of his flashlight. He made his way to the breaker box at the end of the room, and not for the first time, started to ask himself if they should have just parted ways after he found out about the affair.
    She had insisted it was a drunken one-time thing at the works Christmas party, but that didn’t make it any easier to swallow. His response, fuelled by anger, frustration, and betrayal was to return the favour. Rather than a satisfying act of revenge, his affair was an awkward fumbling thing with a woman he barely knew and even now, he couldn’t remember. Although he regretted it deeply now, at the time it made him feel better about what she had done.
    They had tried – mainly for Tyler’s sake – to stay together, but it was becoming clear they were papering over the cracks, and no matter how strong it is, the wallpaper will never be strong enough to hold up crumbling foundations.
    For his part, he had tried hard to forget what had happened and get things back to normal, but resentment was still there. Sure enough, it was buried deep, but that only helped it to grow and fester, spreading like cancer. He hoped one day to make the darkness within him dissolve. Right now, it wasn’t looking too good.
    Billy took a moment to look at the breaker box, then flipped open the panel. All of the switches were still in the upright position. He powered them all off and back on again anyway.
    “Anything?” He shouted over his shoulder.
    “No, still nothing.” Came Angeline’s muffled reply.
    “Great,” He muttered to himself as he closed the box and made his way back upstairs. She was waiting at the top of the steps, still unable to look him in the eye. Instead, she studied her shoes as she put the torch on the kitchen table and closed the basement door.
    “It’s not the breakers. I better give the power company a call and see if they can get someone out here.”
    “It will be getting dark soon, Tyler will need feeding, and we have no heat or...”
    “I know! I know!” He snapped, crossing the room towards the fridge.
    “Hey, did you move the card with the number of the power company on it?”
    “No. it was right there on the fridge the last time I saw it.”
    Billy looked at the front of the refrigerator. It was covered in magnetic letters Tyler often rearranged to make gibberish words. On the upper door were the magnetic photograph frames containing snapshots of a life before affairs and mistrust and bickering. And there, next to it was the Budweiser magnet behind which the card for the power company had been placed after the first power outage.
    “It’s not here,” He said, then glanced over at his son, who was busy making some kind of fort out of the sofa cushions.
    “Looks like our son, the architect has decided to relocate,” He said,