It Was Never About the Jacket
Fiction
I: “The Lights Went First”
The blackout came instantly. Just a click, a sigh, and the machines surrendering. Outside, rain tapped lightly against the window—an afterthought, polite and patient.
Inside, two old punks sat, their silhouettes dim against the jaundiced glow of a vending machine half-stocked with peach Snapple and expired soda. The light was reluctant, flickering like a dying heartbeat, throwing their shadows long and slack across the cracked tile floor.
One cracked open a beer. The hiss was soft, defeated—more sigh than celebration. It sounded like every door that had opened too easily: lawyer’s letters, drawers you thought were locked, mouths meant to stay shut. He handed it over like it didn’t matter—like they still lived in a world where two men could share a warm beer and call it even. But that world was gone. Those men were gone. Maybe forever. The aluminum crimped slightly in his grip, too thin to hold anything now.
A flicker of memory crossed the rim—drinking in vans, basements, alleyways now condos—and was gone.
“You still do that thing where you open the beer before you sit down?” one said, voice low.
“You still do that thing where you talk like a cop?” came the dry reply.
They hadn’t spoken in six, maybe seven years. The last time was thick with crying, bleeding, and the smell of vodka soaked into rubber upholstery—sticky and unavoidable.
“I didn’t know you’d be here,” the first said.
“I live here,” said the other. “Didn’t know you’d be here.”
“I don’t. Just laundry. Visiting my sister.”
“Still using your sister as a cover?”
The vending machine groaned—a wet, electric rasp that sounded less like a machine and more like a living thing clearing its throat, giving up. Its hum, once steady for hours, now collapsed into silence. The last of its light seeped away, dimming into a jaundiced orange that barely touched the worn tile. Their shadows stretched across the floor, slack, unwilling to move.
The laundromat sat dark around them. Fluorescents overhead dead and indifferent. Dryer glass reflected static absence. Wire chairs huddled like old men against walls cracked with age. Dust curled in the corners. Above the change machine, a laminated sign warned against loitering in three languages—none of which could stop time. The scent of burnt circuitry hung faintly, mixed with detergent and the metallic tang of clothes that would never dry. It didn’t feel abandoned—just resigned to invisibility.
“Still pretending you didn’t steal it?” one asked.
“Oh, Jesus.”
“No, not Jesus. The jacket.”
Rows of Cheetos and outdated drinks stared silently.
“You really wanna do this now?” the first said.
“I’ve been waiting fifteen years.”
“It wasn’t your jacket.”
“It was my back it got taken off of.”
“You passed out in the van. I took it so you wouldn’t puke on it.”
“Then you kept it. Six months, maybe. Then you show up to Jesse’s funeral wearing it like it was yours.”
“It fit.”
“It fit? That’s your logic? It fit?”
The beer can clicked softly against the molded plastic bench. He wasn’t laughing, but his shoulders twitched—like the memory of laughter, or its bitter twin.
“You know that was the last thing I owned that still smelled like her?”
“Don't start.”
“She gave it to me. She bought it.”
“She bought it for whoever didn’t disappear first.”
“She bought it for me.”
“She said I was the only one who ever made her laugh.”
“She said that to everyone.”
“Not to you.”
II: “What’s Left to Say?”
The rain picked up—not enough to matter, just louder. Like the sky was impatient, tapping a slow, steady beat against the glass.
Inside, silence settled again. The beer was half-gone but weightless, a ghost of warmth neither wanted to hold. The room smelled of detergent, wet concrete, and stale anger—a kind of anger that didn’t erupt but lingered, viscous and thick, folding into every shadowed corner.
Somewhere behind the dryers, a pipe groaned, then gave up, falling quiet like the rest of the place. The sound echoed briefly, swallowed immediately by dark.
Across the aisle, a pair of abandoned socks lay twisted and stiff from age or soap or regret. Neither man noticed. Neither cared.
Faded signs in half a dozen languages sagged on the walls—worn warnings against loitering. A cracked bench sagged under invisible weight. A flickering outlet sparked weakly, as if gasping for life.
He broke the quiet, voice rough and low.
“You know,” he said, “I didn’t go to the hospital that night.”
The other blinked slowly, unreadable. His knees creaked as he shifted.
“Which night?”
“The night she OD’d.”
A boot scraped the floor, digging at something buried.
“I was already out of town,” he said. “You knew that.”
“No. You said that.”
“You want a bus ticket? I still have it. Took a photo like an alibi.”
“You do that often? Photograph proof you’re innocent?”
A smile flickered. No warmth.
“I thought about turning around,” he said. “When Jesse called.”
“You didn’t.”
“I figured it’d be another episode. Thought she’d be fine in a day.”
“She wasn’t.”
“No,” he said. “She wasn’t.”
The vending machine gave a last, shuddering breath then fell silent. The orange glow faded until only shadows remained.
“She asked for you,” he said.
The air grew colder, heavier.
“She asked for you while we waited for the ambulance. Her lips were blue. She said your name.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“It meant something.”
“No,” he said, slower now. “It’s what people say later when they want the past to make sense.”
“You were the one she called.”
“I’m not proud of that. Surprised she remembered my number.”
He leaned forward, elbows on knees, like they were warming hands at a dying fire.
They laughed—brittle and broken, a sound no longer warm.
“You remember the night she lit your lyrics on fire?”
“In the bathtub, yeah.”
“She said they weren’t honest.”
“She said that a lot. About everyone. But never showed anyone hers.”
“She showed me.”
“She showed you because you never tried to fix her.”
“I didn’t have the energy.”
“Exactly.”
The words landed like a snapped wire inside ribs—sharp, undeniable, whispered.
“She was never gonna make it,” he said.
“Don’t say that.”
“You know it. She burned at both ends and found more ends to burn.”
“She needed someone to sit with her in the fire.”
“You think that was you?”
“I think I was the last one who tried.”
A fly buzzed, vanished. The empty can hit the floor—a tired punctuation. No one looked.
Silence returned, but different now—shaped, weighted. Something carried with two hands though nothing remained.
Outside, streetlights blinked back on. Inside, the laundromat stayed dark. A child cried two blocks away. A car passed like an apology for the moment.
He stood slowly. Back popped. Joints cracked like old wood. Not dramatic—just a man aged wrong.
“Gonna finish the load,” he said softly.
The other nodded—no mockery, no joke. Just a quiet knowing nod for truths too late to undo.
He turned toward the door, paused, then looked back.
“I kept the jacket,” he said. “Not because it was mine. Because when she disappeared, it was the only thing that still smelled like someone I didn’t want to lose.”
He waited.
No answer.
Just breath. Then—
“I still have the shoebox. With her photos.”
“I thought you burned that.”
“I thought so too.”
III: “Ghosts in The Drum”
The laundromat breathed around them, the quiet alive with the faint hum of machines cycling through their endless, indifferent rhythm. Outside, the rain slackened to a drizzle—soft taps against cracked windows like hesitant footsteps in a long-abandoned hallway.
He leaned back against the cool tile, fingers tracing invisible cracks along the wall. His eyes caught the shadows flickering in the weak light—ghosts of faces and voices folded into the corners, memories sharpened by time and neglect. Each breath he took felt thick with all they hadn’t said, with all that had been left to burn in silence.
“You ever think about that night at Jesse’s?” His voice was rough, low, barely disturbing the heavy air. “Not the overdose—the night before. The fight. The screams.”
“Before?” The other flicked a match, the flame a fleeting flare in the dark, then inhaled slowly. “You mean when everything went sideways?”
“Yeah. When she screamed your name, and I was locked outside.”
Smoke curled slow and thick, cutting through the space between them.
“She wasn’t good at asking for help,” the other said, voice cracked, softer now. “Or even accepting it. You know that better than anyone.”
“I was there,” the first said quickly, voice breaking. “I tried, God knows I tried.”
The words tumbled out unevenly, raw and ragged as an open wound. He swallowed hard, searching for steadiness.
“Did you ever think we were just playing with fire? Burning ourselves trying to save a ghost?”
“No,” the other whispered. “I thought we were building something—fragile, sure, but real. Even if it was just a house of cards.”
“Fragile,” he repeated. The word hung in the air, a brittle thing waiting to shatter.
They fell silent again. The machines hummed, one dryer spinning up, its steady mechanical pulse a heartbeat out of sync with their own faltering rhythm.
“I keep hearing that song she loved,” the first said, voice barely audible. “The one that goes, ‘Nothing gold can stay.’”
“Christ, you’re a poet now?” The other’s voice had a trace of humor, but the warmth behind it was gone.
“Maybe just a man chasing shadows,” the first said. “Trying to make sense of the smoke she left behind.”
The room seemed to shrink, the space between them charged with the weight of all they hadn’t done—the words that should have been said but were swallowed by time.
“I guess we never really left her,” the first said finally, voice soft but certain. “Not while we keep wearing her jacket.”
“No,” the other agreed. “Not while it still smells like her.”
The cigarette burned low between them, a dying ember caught in the quiet dark, its faint glow the last reminder of something lost.
IV: “Fragile Horizon”
He moved slowly, each step deliberate, almost like he was dragging some unseen anchor behind him. The laundromat’s stale air pressed against his skin—a clammy, relentless grasp. His fingertips grazed the cracked tile wall, seeking reassurance in its worn, gritty surface.
At the machines, he stood watching the dryer’s last revolutions, the drum turning like a tired wheel that had long lost its purpose. The metallic clangs and thuds echoed faintly, a weary soundtrack to a night worn thin by silence and old wounds.
The other slumped into the vinyl bench, shoulders sagging with exhaustion—not just physical. His hands rested limply on his thighs, fingers twitching ever so slightly—uncomfortably.
“Maybe it’s not the jacket,” he said quietly, voice rough and cracked, like a vinyl record skipping over a scratch. “Maybe it’s everything we tried to cover up with it. The silences we never broke. Like that party at Luca’s, where we thought it'd be funny to set off fireworks indoors and ended up torching the curtains. Remember the cops dragging us outside, laughing at us instead of arresting us? Or that night in Oshawa when the gig went south and I got so high I couldn't remember how to play, so I got blackout drunk just to hold the bass. She was screaming, trying to stop me, and I smashed her drums by accident—or maybe on purpose. I don't even know. I just remember her face. And those nights with her, blurry edges of pills and cheap vodka, her laughing until it turned to crying, telling me we were invincible. We weren’t, though. We were just terrified kids pretending we weren't.”
The first man nodded slowly, lips pressed thin. He pulled his hoodie tighter around his neck, the worn fabric a fragile shield against the chill that seeped from the concrete floor into his bones.
“You remember the cabin?” he finally asked, voice cautious, almost afraid of his own words. “She insisted on going swimming at midnight, middle of November. Said the cold would make us feel alive. We went along with it because we couldn't say no to her, couldn't say no to anything. She nearly drowned, Marcus. You pulled her out, shivering so badly you could barely speak. And we just sat there afterward, wrapped in blankets, drinking whiskey and laughing hysterically, pretending nothing had happened. Pretending it wasn't always her teetering on some edge, dragging us right there with her.”
Marcus looked up briefly, eyes dark and heavy, then back down. His voice was quiet, nearly inaudible. “I said I’d never see your face again.”
The hum of the machines softened, fading like the last remnants of a dream slipping from memory. Outside, the rain had finally stopped. The night held its breath, the city exhaling in slow, uneven rhythms—a restless giant breathing between restless nights.
He glanced over his shoulder once, catching the half-lit room in his peripheral vision. The machines continued their final tune, spinning away years of dirt, regret, and ghosts that clung stubbornly to the fabric of the night.
“Take care of yourself,” Marcus said without looking up, his voice low and surprisingly gentle.
“You too,” came the faint reply, barely more than a whisper.
They stepped toward the exit, feet dragging slightly, reluctant to leave the confessional—yes: “confessional,” he even felt—dark. Outside, the street was wet and shining under scattered lamps, the world both quiet and full of unspoken promises.
They walked away without looking back, dissolving into the murky night, shadows among shadows. Behind them, the laundromat lay like a spent shell, empty of echoes. Ahead was something vague and luminous, an uncertain promise or a veiled threat, blurred by all they'd never admitted, never confronted. They carried within them the weight of ruined days, hazy evenings lit by cigarettes and pills, whispers and laughter turning suddenly harsh. And beneath it all was the ache of something irreparable—too heavy to speak aloud, too permanent to erase.
This was brilliant. I feel like I’m swirling in the mens’ grief.
I love the way you bring the jacket to life as a character. It quietly holds onto memories, transforming a simple moment into something deeply touching.