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John awoke to the sound of the dog snoring, and the pain in his side, and the shape of her absence.
“Fuck this,” he muttered blearily to himself, and rolled out of bed to make coffee.
The rolling-out-of-bed was a slower and more painful process than he’d anticipated, as was the descent downstairs, and John found that he had to stop midway down the staircase to take stock of the damage.
• Broken bones: 2+
• Stab wound: 1
• Extraneous injuries: 5+ (nonlethal)
• Car: 1 (of 2)
• Dog: 1 (of 2)
• Helen: 0
“Fuck this,” he said again. He said it louder this time - loud enough for an echo to bounce off the varnished floors and pale walls of the empty house.
The echo made John feel, for a moment, a little bit more solid. It made him feel almost real. He sat up a little straighter.
It was breakfast time.
. . .
John made it to the foot of the stairs to find that the dog had beat him to it, and was waiting patiently with its paws folded on the very last step. It wasn’t, he supposed, his dog. It was merely a dog, the dog. Just dog.
There was something comically relatable in that, wasn’t there? Just dog.
John extended a hand. “You n’ me both, huh buddy.”
Just Dog made no reply, but allowed the place behind its ears to be scratched.
John winced his way into the kitchen, winced his way around the French press, and winced his merry way through a first cup of coffee, and then a second. Then - and only then - did he allow himself to gingerly lift the hem of his shirt and inspect the gaping wound in his side.
He had applied a temporary seal, naturally, the previous night - sometime between sliding out of the backseat of an Uber and passing out in bed. It had been a very sticky ride home. John had made sure to tip the driver extra; removing dog hair from car upholstery was a chore, but removing bodily fluids of any variety was a tribulation.
“Is that a--dude, holy shit, are you bleeding out right now? Dude? ‘Cause it kinda looks like you’re bleeding out right now.”
The Uber driver had craned his neck around in an attempt to get a clearer look.
“Oh, this?” John gestured dazedly to the stab wound, from which he was most certainly bleeding out. “Not to worry. I have a…” John’s vocabulary was once again failing him, “...condition.”
“Oh?”
“It, uh, runs in the family.”
“Oh.”
I am not going to die in the back of this car, John had thought fiercely. The driver in question was listening to the Black Eyed Peas. John Wick, super-assassin and hitman extraordinaire, was not going to die listening to the Black Eyed Peas.
Upon arriving home, he’d sealed the wound using a method that, while being excruciatingly painful (not to mention illegal in twelve countries), purportedly had a 90% success rate. The exact step-by-step procedure has been redacted, but it involves duct tape, beeswax, a staple gun, and sometimes - depending on who you ask - chewing gum. The author of this fic advises you not to try it at home.
John grimaced, and very carefully removed duct tape, staples, and a wad of something pink and malleable in that order from his puckered flesh.
Gaping, as it turned out, had been a mild exaggeration. The wound sat slack-mouthed in the left side of the lateral lower quadrant of his abdomen. All things considered, it was not a bad place to be stabbed. John had been stabbed in worse places. This was his go-to reassurance: the thought that, no matter the current circumstances, he had been stabbed in worse places and lived.
Barista got his order wrong at Starbucks? He had been stabbed in worse places.
Failed to hail a taxi cab in the rain? He had been stabbed in worse places.
Beloved wife gone forever? John had yet to be stabbed in a worse place than his heart. Her loss was the wound he had expected to kill him, but it didn’t and it didn’t and it didn’t and it didn’t some more and he just kept living and it seemed there was nothing he could do to turn his life off.
At any rate: no organs, no major arteries. Practically a party.
John scrubbed his hands with soap. Then he fetched his favorite first-aid kit (it took too long to find, packed in with the camping gear, Helen must have put it there) and sat down on the couch to get to work.
He began to clean out the wound. Just Dog jumped up onto the couch to help.
“No,” John said, leaning away to avoid the enthusiastic onslaught of canine saliva. “Not right now. Down. Good boy.”
John scrabbled among the couch cushions for the remote. “What do you say we watch some TV?”
He wasn’t in the mood for a movie, didn’t think he had the energy to commit to a feature-length film but reckoned he could just about weather the storm that was daytime reality television.
Stitching up one’s own skin was not a pleasant task by any stretch of the imagination, but when accompanied by the dulcet tones of Alex Trebek’s voice, John found the task bearable.
“Most populous nation,” said Alex Trebek. “Portugal, Columbia, or Peru?”
“What is….” John paused, “Peru?”
“What is Peru?” asked the contestant onscreen.
“The correct answer was Columbia,” said Trebek.
In the safety and comfort of his own home, John Wick cursed softly under his breath. Onscreen, the next contestant requested a question in a new category for 400 points.
“With what weapon was Russian revolutionary and Soviet politician Leon Trotsky assassinated in Mexico?”
“Ice pick,” said John, perhaps too fast.
“What is a revolver?” inquired the contestant.
“Incorrect,” said Trebek, a mournful note to his voice. “The correct answer was: What is an ice pick.”
“Knew it.” John looked at Just Dog. “Do you think I should quit my day job?”
Just Dog laid its head on its paws and glanced balefully up at the shaggy, bruised man whose house it had somehow landed in. Just Dog did not endorse the idea.
“I’ll take History for 600,” said the next Jeopardy contestant.
John snipped the string and tucked the little pair of silver scissors back into the first-aid kit. He let himself slump into the couch cushions. None of the bones he suspected were broken could be fixed by the application of a cast, brace, or splint, which did not so much present a problem as it solved one. They would have to heal on their own.
Floating on a familiar backdrop of blue, Alex Trebek cleared his throat. “This individual was defeated by Octavian at the Battle of Actium: Vespian, Augustus, or Mark Anthony?”
John looked at Just Dog and mouthed the word “Augustus?”
Just Dog’s tongue lolled happily from its jaws.
“What is Vespian?” The contestant asked.
“Incorrect!” cried Trebek. “The correct answer was: Who is Mark Anthony!”
John let out a half-hearted string of curse words in several different languages. He pressed a button on the TV remote; the image on the screen flickered and died.
“Guess I won’t quit my day job quite yet,” he said to Just Dog.
Just Dog barked its approval.
John wasn’t even sure what his day job was anymore. He’d taken Helen to the Coney Island boardwalk for their first date. While they stood waiting in line to ride the Cyclone, she’d asked him what he did for a living. Her question had caused him to do something he hadn’t done in years: panic.
“I’m a small business owner,” he said quickly. “I make wicker baskets that I sell on the world wide web. My shop is called Something Wicker This Way Comes.”
Helen had laughed. “You’re serious?”
He was deadly serious. John had never been more serious about anything in his life. He knew, suddenly and with absolute certainty, that he was going to make the most impressive wicker baskets the tristate area had ever seen.
“Maybe next time I’ll show you around my, um. My wicker basket workshop that I use for making the wicker baskets that I make.”
Helen had smiled then. She had such a kind smile. “How do you know there’s going to be a next time?”
This was a fair question. They’d known each other for less than a week, but already John was planning their wedding. Already his head was full of lists: potential vacation destinations, the names of their children - provided she wanted them.
John Wick had shrugged. Smiled at his shoes and said, “I just know.”
. . .
There was plenty of kibble in the pantry, left over from Just Dog’s unfortunate predecessor. John poured the food into a stainless steel bowl and wandered off to examine the contents of his refrigerator.
In the horrifying, colorless hours that followed the funeral, clearing the spoiled vegetables and expired cartons out of the fridge had seemed a monumental undertaking: too hard, too difficult, no, absolutely not, it required too much of him. Now, it was simply necessary. Simply another household errand that needed tending to.
John dragged a garbage bin over and rifled through the clear plastic drawers, tossing out anything that smelled suspicious. He went at it with a merciless zeal, and once he was through the fridge was chilly and barren as the rest of the house.
“Groceries,” said John. “We need groceries.”
He could afford to get them delivered, but Just Dog needed some exercise.
John made his way back upstairs. He downed some Ibuprofin and painstakingly showered. The hot water was a blessing he hadn’t known he’d needed. John made his way back to bed to discover that he’d bled a bit during the night.
“Figures,” he muttered.
Just Dog whined in something that might have been sympathy.
Wearily, John stripped the stained sheets off the bedframe and tossed them into the laundry hamper. Then he proceeded to collapse onto the bare mattress, where he slept for upwards of six hours and only awoke when the pain meds wore off.
. . .
The light had changed.
“Groceries,” John gasped. That was what he’d been doing, wasn’t it? “We need groceries.”
In the morning, the light cut through the house like a knife, bright and pale and immediate. Now it pooled, warm and sickly, in the corners - poured in through slatted blinds.
His dreams had been confusing and vividly-colored. He’d been at Costco. He needed to pick up an item - waffles? Microwave dinners? He never ate that stuff when he was awake, but in the dream it had made perfect sense to pick some up. John had opened the fogged glass door of the freezer and stepped inside. He thought he saw curling fingers there among the bags of frozen peas, blue with cold and definitely human. He walked deeper into the freezer, and found himself at the concierge desk of the Continental. His breath clouded the hotel lobby, and he did not remember anything else and was glad of it.
John dressed himself, took another four tablets. He began to transfer the wet laundry from the washing machine to the dryer, but halted operations when he came across his ruined suit jacket, which after the previous day’s activities was really less of a suit jacket and more a charming use of negative space.
Why did I bother? John wondered as he slam-dunked the former article of clothing into the wastepaper bin.
Minutes later, he was limping down the street with Just Dog in tow. Both cars were out of commission at present, the first because there was a massive hole in its windshield, and the second because John had yet to kill the idiot scumbag bastard who had it at the moment.
This was ok, he reminded himself as he rounded a corner, This was fine. This was a problem for Next Week John.
The grocer nearest the house was a D’Agostino, the bright Italian colors of its neon logo shining like a beacon in the dusk. Once inside, John found himself unconsciously making his way to the frozen food section. When he got there, he shivered and turned on his heel. In the fresh produce aisle, Just Dog growled at an elderly woman with a shopping cart full of asparagus.
“I don’t like asparagus either,” said John.
Just Dog barked.
“Hush,” John told it.
Just Dog hushed.
A quarter of an hour later, the two were on their way out when they ran into Jerry the cop, who greeted them and asked after John’s health. Jerry seemed nervous. Jerry always seemed nervous. Numbly, John wondered why this might be.
“Hey, are you-- are you alright?”
John blinked.
“Oh, Jesus, sorry, I didn’t mean-- I mean, you’re limping. Did you know you’re limping? You look like you’re in pain. Physically, I mean.”
“Oh, right,” said John. “It’s because my collarbone is broken.”
Jerry did a double-take. “Your clavicle?”
“Yes,” said John. “I think so.”
“Goddamn.” Jerry the cop scrubbed a hand over his face. “You taken anything for the pain?
“Mhm.” John exhaled through his nose. “Couple’a Ibuprofin.”
Jerry the cop balked. “John, you really ought to get yourself to hospital. They can give you something stronger.”
“Uh-huh.” John ran a hand through his hair. “I try not to touch that stuff. Dangerous, in my line of work. Pain is a guarantee, comes with the terrain. You have to know how to handle it without developing a...dependence on anything.”
Jerry seemed to be sweating an awful lot, considering the cool breeze. He narrowed his eyes. “Right,” he said slowly. “I’m sure you encounter pain...pretty often...in the basket weaving business.”
“Yes.” John nodded, equally slowly. “The wicker pokes you...pretty hard sometimes.”
“That must be rough,” said Jerry, impassive and sweating profusely.
“Yes,” said John. “I appreciate your concern.”
. . .
There was a dog park on the way back to the house. Well. Not exactly. A slight detour may or may not have been taken.
Just Dog, funnily enough, was proving excellent at running and jumping and catching sticks. John was both very proud and very impressed.
He sat on a bench and watched the hound’s shadow dart to and fro in the long grass, a blur like an oil painting. Fireflies winked on the far side of the park, and residual midday heat radiated off the asphalt basketball court nearby.
That night, John was going to lie awake making lists in his head.
He was going to need to restock his ammo.
He was going to need his car back.
He was going to need a name for the dog.
But not today.
Today, John wasn’t ready. He wasn’t even sure he was ready to cook, despite having just purchased a veritable mountain of perishable food items.
“What do you say we head home, order takeout?” Ordering takeout was truly the sexiest thing a single man could do for himself. “How do you feel about Chinese?”
Just Dog made no reply, but allowed the spot behind its ears to be scratched.