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Some nights, Hank dreaded going home. On days where the clouds hung heavy over Detroit, blanketing the streets with rain, Hank would seek comfort far outside those four walls. Alcohol always dulled the pain that storms caused, and the more thunder that crashed outside, the more shots he took.
He was always refused drinks at one point or another, and he would find himself sobering up under the cold raindrops as he stumbled back home. He would return home every time, completely soaked to the bone and sober enough to know he needed to drink more.
Hank sat at his dining table, whiskey in hand. It was a new bottle, filled with the nectar of forgetfulness that he so longed for–that he so needed to get through the night. Thunder rumbled his bones, vibrating the glass bottle against his lips as he sought the burning release from his thoughts and from his memories.
He always kept his revolver close, just for times like this.
The rain beat down against his windows, echoes of droplets hitting the canal behind his house invading his ears. Lightning flashed, illuminating the house that was so void of light. Thunder shook the finger Hank had on the trigger, and he squeezed.
He burned his throat with Black Lamb, gaining his composure to test his luck again. Rain dripped from him onto his table and floor, mixing with his silent tears as the lightning begged him to pull the trigger once more, the thunder cheering him on with booming enthusiasm.
Another squeeze of the trigger, and no release.
Hank tossed the revolver half-heartedly, watching it fall from his hand and skid on the table before him. He ignored the call of the thunder, ignored its teasing words, and devoted himself to his alcohol.
Maybe he could drown out the thoughts that played so vividly in the back of his mind, but he knew it was fruitless. He would be doomed to watch the same memories unfold every time the clouds did, powerless to stop the flood of emotions that followed the torrential thoughts.
This place had never been a home, not for anyone. Cole hadn’t lived here, and yet he lingered everywhere. Hank hadn’t brought much from their home together, as most of it had been lost to the divorce.
Hank tilted his head back for a long drink, and as he did so a flash of lightning illuminated the house around him. Something caught his eye within the flash, and he was quick to put the bottle down, standing as the thunder rumbled the ground beneath him.
He moved slowly, deliberately, each step dripping more water onto his floor. He stood before his mantel, his head tilted up to view the unmoving clock that sat in the middle of it. A relic from a time long past, a piece that had once seen love, laughter and happiness but that now sat tainted with hate and self-loathing.
The lightning broke through the darkness, illuminating something Hank had never noticed before, just as he had thought.
On the clock, a single, small handprint stood out against the grain of the wood.
Maybe it was the rumbling of the thunder, maybe his thoughts or simply the sight of something so haunting that churned Hank’s stomach. He quickly fled to the bathroom, slipping on the puddles that he, himself, had made.
The room spun as he braced his forearms on the toilet seat, leaning his head down to ease his flipping stomach. Purging the alcohol from his system was an often occurrence, a hindrance in his plan to drown in the toxins but nothing he couldn’t recover from.
Splashing water on his face might’ve helped to quell the cold sweat that clung to him and churned his stomach even more, but he had only managed to turn the faucet on before something strange caught his eyes.
The thunder crashed somewhere far away from Hank as he stared at his reflection in the mirror, and as someone else stared back.
That someone was thinner, his hair a shimmering blonde that was short around his ears. He looked like he had just shaved, a gentle smile plastered on his lips and settling within the lines around his eyes.
His hand reached towards Hank, and Hank reached back. The noise of the rain was far from him, replaced with the rushing of water from the faucet. Their fingertips touched, the man in the mirror’s cold and smooth against his own.
Hank Anderson looked deep into his own eyes, lost in their warmth; refusing to believe that those eyes could have ever been his own. They glistened with life, with passion and with hope.
He watched the man in the mirror watch him, knowing how dull his eyes probably looked to him. There was no glint to them–there hadn’t been for years. Dull, pale blue eyes that held nothing but despair.
“Dad, dad!”
The man in the mirror was quick to look, but Hank knew he couldn’t. He closed his eyes as tears seeped through without permission, focusing on the changing shapes and colors behind his lids, as well as the sounds from the faucet, trying to lose himself within the noise. Anything but to hear that voice call to him again.
He felt himself tilt forward, dizziness settling over him. He placed weak hands on the basin before him, his arms trembling beneath them. Hank waited for the dizzy spell to pass, allowing his pants to slow into deep breaths before he chanced opening his eyes.
The man still stood straight in the mirror, staring intently back at Hank. Gone was the gentle smile and loving look to his eyes. As Hank stared back, he felt the contempt, the blame, the damning truth that everything he was now was nothing but what he deserved to be, nothing but the fruit from seeds he had sown. Water spilled forth from the sink, splattering onto the floor and running quickly to seep wherever it could.
The stranger in the mirror glared with a hatred so intense that Hank could feel it shoot straight through him. He couldn’t find the words to say to him in repentance, so he leaned harder on his hands and begged for forgiveness, begged for change, begged for a second chance and begged for Cole.
Hank cried over the rain and running water, his cries shaking the house alongside the thunder, raw and unrelenting. But the eyes in the mirror did not relent in their intense, blaming stare, nor in their hatred. The man that stood before him had everything, but knew he was soon to lose it all. His home, his wife, the light in his eyes and the drive to make the world a better place. But, and most importantly, the man knew he would soon lose the child who stood at his side, the one thing he couldn’t afford to.
Hank ignored the child in the mirror who tugged at the other man’s arm, as well as the fleeting and surely imaginary tug at his own. He closed his eyes, squeezing more tears from them in a desperate attempt to rid his house of these ghostly specters, these haunting images that had no reason to be here in the first place.
He stumbled away from the basin, leaving the sink to overflow. He ignored whatever voice he thought called out for him, blaming it and the ring in his ears on the all-encompassing thunder. Hank slipped again in the doorway, leaning on the doorframe for a moment as his heart raced in his chest.
The booze. He needed more, he needed not to think, he needed to drown himself in something and if it wasn’t his alcohol, there was a perfectly fine body of water just outside.
For now, he would focus on his bottle. He snatched it from the table, longing for the burn of each gulp, wanting only to numb the churning of his stomach and of his mind.
Panting, Hank placed the bottle down and leaned his heavy frame on his weak hands. Whiskey traced a maze through his beard, trailing from the corner of his mouth. The world, which had been spinning around him so rapidly, started to slow. He caught his breath and eased himself into his seat. The thunder shook the house around him as his heart calmed, the alcohol soothing him on impact.
The revolver shone before him, catching the light of the storm. He reached for it, picking it up and turning it in his hands. The object was cold to the touch, unknowing of the turmoil that lay before it. Unmoved by the life on the line, only doing the job it was created to do: shoot.
Hank held the gun against his temple, the cold metal quickly warming against his skin. He pressed to alleviate the shake in his hands, only bringing attention to the weakness that fought to consume him. The weight felt so grounding in his hand, and he closed his eyes to focus on it.
The lightning flashed, and he took in a breath.
The thunder crashed, and his finger twitched on the trigger.
“Dad, stop!”
Cole’s voice spoke to him with such clarity that Hank questioned if he was already dead. His stomach dropped and he dared not open his eyes at first, afraid of seeing the little boy he would give anything to see one more time.
As his hand trembled near his temple, he felt something touch him. The feeling overcame his own, feeling so much more real than the floor that stuttered under his feet. Firm fingertips reached for his arm, gripping him with the weight of consequence and tugging at him. His arm moved weakly against the persuasion of the icy touch, but he eventually gave in and laid it down on the table, allowing the revolver to slide from his open palm and onto the wood.
Hank opened his eyes and looked, despite his better judgment. Nobody was there, but he felt the lingering coolness of a child-sized hand against him, the cold spreading up his arm and down his spine.
It seemed that no matter how much he drank, the rain was going to haunt him tonight. The electricity was thick in the air, ringing heavily within his ears in place of the retreating thunder, as the storm moved overhead. The rain came down hard against the windows, but the light and the noise trailed off into the distance, leaving Hank with ringing ears and an empty darkness.
Bottle to his lips, Hank paused. The rushing of water was loud from his bathroom, overcoming the noise of the rain against the canal outside. He stood, his soul deep in his stomach and begging to be released, walking carefully through the puddles and into the bathroom.
This was a mess he would clean up later, he thought, turning off the faucet. He glanced at the mirror, a blue sticky note that read Keep Smiling catching his eye as he avoided the gaze of the ghost in the mirror.
Hank didn’t remember falling asleep, but he awoke in his bed with a chill to his bone. He ached in his joints and his head, and his bed was absolutely soaked from his wet clothes he hadn’t bothered to remove. Sumo sat at his side, no doubt worried about the husk of the man that laid before him. It took him a moment to coax his weary bones to move, but he had to change out of his clothes.
He burned his throat with Black Lamb as an ode to another day, cursing that the sun always rose and that steadily, life continued on. His skin prickled where the ghostly hand had grabbed him last night, and while most of it was a blur of drinking and tears, he remembered that feeling so vividly.
Quickly, Hank snapped his head up to look towards the clock on his mantel, stepping over wet puddles that might never disperse. In the filtering sunlight he could just make out the edges of the small handprint he first noticed the night before. He felt sick to his stomach the longer he looked at it, so Hank was quick to turn away and seek comfort from the bottle as his heart pounded within his head.
The world shifted under his feet as he sat at his table, not even tasting the alcohol as he drank it. Dizziness pounded in his head, the image of the clock burned into the back of his lids. Cole was still here, it seemed, in this house that he had never set foot in. There were traces of him even still, lingering in places Hank would never expect.
There was no escape. He was doomed to forever hear his voice in his ear, doomed to remember all the stormy nights he spent comforting his son, embracing him under a warm blanket as the lightning ignited Cole’s fear, and thunder shook his world. With every storm that blew in, Hank wished to hold the trembling form of his son once more, to feel him get lulled to sleep by his mere presence. It was a simple interaction all those years ago, sometimes an irritating one, but it's hardly the only memory that still haunts Hank.
Reaching for the revolver on the table, Hank remembers the voice that cried out for him to stop. A shiver crept from the gun to his hand and up his spine. It settled in his temple as he checked the chamber.
The single bullet rested within, lined fully with the barrel.
Fate had been on his side last night, it seemed. He would have finally been returned to his son’s side, where he knew he belonged, but fate had been so duly thwarted. Tears fell from Hank’s eyes as he thought of the little voice, so wrought with panic and worry. Surely his son’s spirit wasn’t tied down to him–-he only wished for Cole to be resting soundly and unable to see the nothing his father had become.
But would he have overlooked the print on the clock when he first unpacked it? He was sure he had wiped that thing down at least a few times since the move. Maybe not well enough to rid the face of it of any oily fingerprints, but he should have noticed them some day prior to last night.
And Cole’s voice, sweet and caring, had that just been a drunken delusion? It rang so clearly in his ear, even now. It seemed so fresh and so real, and he couldn’t remember hearing those particular words in that particular tone from Cole in the past.
He had spent the past years haunted by a ghost, yes, but he hadn’t assumed it to be Cole. The remnants of a decorated Lieutenant resided deep within his dulled eyes, watching and judging every choice as it whispered words of betrayal and words of hate. The ghost of his former self followed him, peeking from within his shadow and telling him how badly he fucked up every step along the way.
If Cole’s ghost haunted him now, too, what kind of awful words would he start to hear in his sweet tone? Would he have to deal with his son hissing words of hate, bemoaning the man that he couldn’t believe had once been his father? Hank would need more than alcohol to drown those words out–just imagining them made his heart ache within his chest.
He stood to leave, stooping to refill Sumo’s bowls on his way out. Hank would go about his day as normal, focusing on his paperwork and living vicariously through Chris’ newfound fatherhood. This was routine for Hank, but the dread of returning home that formed a pit deep within his stomach was stronger than ever before.
