The Message Board
by Simon Wood

Tom stood and stared at the message on the whiteboard. In one hand, a damp cloth was poised over the writing. Suddenly, a sense of loss gripped him and he couldn’t shake it. How could something so mundane mean so much? It just seemed wrong to erase the message.

Tom,

Don’t forget to pick up some eggs and milk on the way home.

Susan

It was the last message she had ever left him.

Tom had buried Susan today. The burial had been a private affair, the way he wanted it. He wasn’t a showy kind of man.

The message board had been Susan’s idea, just after they had gotten married in ’89. Tom, the hunter-gatherer, had pinched a small twelve by ten whiteboard from the office and mounted it by the wall-phone in the kitchen. She never used it to note down telephone messages, as planned, but to leave personal messages for him.

The night after erecting the whiteboard, Tom found his first message:

Tom,

I love you.

Susan

XXXXX

The feeling of love swelled in Tom’s chest and he found it difficult to breathe. He rushed up stairs to find Susan waiting in the bedroom for him. He made love to her all night and ignored the meal burning in the oven.

How could he wipe off Susan’s last message? The board represented a form of communication that was known only to them, their own private language. Tom couldn’t do it and let his arm drop with the cloth in it. He would never remove Susan’s last message; it would be a lasting monument to her.

He tossed the cloth across the kitchen and it slapped the side of the sink. He had to tidy up. It was surprising how messy everything had become in the short time since Susan had died. She wouldn’t be pleased if she thought the place was going to wrack and ruin. Tom started straightening up--picking up things that had been dropped and cleaning up where stuff had been spilt.

Moving through the house, it all felt different. Cold, sterile, unfamiliar--it wasn’t his home. There were no children to fill the house with energy and light. It wasn’t that they couldn’t have children, or that they couldn’t afford them. Nevertheless, it had just never happened. How perfect the world would have been if he had just come home to find the message:

Tom,

I’m pregnant!

It could still happen, he supposed. He was still young enough to get married again and have kids. But that meant finding someone, getting to know her and falling in love. At the moment, he couldn’t see that happening. At the moment, he couldn’t see how he was going to make it through the week. Stop it, Tom! He couldn’t start thinking like that.

Tom bent down and picked up the marker pen that belonged with the whiteboard. It was the kind that had a sickly-sweet stink when the cap was removed and its odor clung to the air for several minutes after use. He removed the cap and inhaled its perfume. Somehow the smell was comforting but at the same time painful. How many times had he smelled that fragrance over the last ten years? He sighed.

Swiftly, Tom replaced the cap on the marker. He had taken too big a belt off the bloody thing and a spike of pain jabbed his brain. If he wasn’t careful, he’d get a headache. Tom dutifully replaced the pen in its penholder attached to the whiteboard.

Tom gazed at Susan’s message again and remembered all the messages they had scribbled on it. And if he looked really closely, he could see the faint scarring where each message had been written then not quite erased. Non-permanent pens weren’t totally non-permanent and the board’s pure whiteness was discolored. Only the corners were still virgin. Tom touched the tainted area, in order to magic back to life the messages of yesteryear.

But nothing happened and Tom’s flight of fancy was brought crashing back to earth. The messages hadn’t always been so loving. After the first year of marriage, fewer and fewer of the messages were of love than of routine. So many had started with, ‘Don’t forget…’ or ‘I need you to…’ and more latterly, ‘Do I have to repeat myself every time…’

Until today, he had almost forgotten the messages that began with, ‘I’m so glad you’re my husband.’ Or, ‘We can’t make love if you’re not here.’

In recent years the message board had become a drill sergeant that barked silent commands every time he went into the kitchen. God damn it! This board had fired off more messages of rebuke and disdain than it had ever sent of love. So, why the hell was he keeping this monster alive? Even with its last breath it had nothing nice to say, only a message requesting an errand to be run.

‘Sod you!’ Tom cursed the whiteboard.

He stormed back to the sink and retrieved the cloth he had thrown earlier. He shoved the cloth under the cold tap and wrung it out. He wanted to make damned sure that the cloth was wet enough to eradicate the order in a single wipe.

With vengeful thoughts, Tom raced back, armed with his weapon of mass destruction. How many times had he left an affectionate message only to find it replaced with an insult? How many times had he done what the message had asked only to find another saying he hadn’t performed well enough? How many times had a message been an anagram of ‘HATE,’ or ‘FAILURE.’

‘How many times, Susan?’ Tom said bitterly.

Tom threw back his arm with a fist packed with cloth. He had read his last foul, hateful message. His fist followed through and crashed into the wall next to the message board, missing it by an inch. He couldn’t do it.

If he destroyed that message, Tom destroyed himself. He had put up the message board out of love, born out of a loving request. The message board stood for much more than the lousy note recorded on it. ‘Don’t forget to pick up some eggs and milk on the way home.’ It might be a crappy epitaph but it shouldn’t be removed. Tom bandaged his throbbing hand with the cooling cloth as tears rolled down his face.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

Tom returned to the sink. He had a frying pan to scrub. He aimed a steady stream of warm water onto the pan and squirted a generous amount of washing-up liquid over the nonstick surface. Absently, without looking at the pan he was scouring, Tom studied the garden.

His gaze settled on the mound of freshly dug earth in the seclusion of the apple tree, up against the back fence where he had buried his wife this morning. He hadn’t meant to hit her so hard with the frying pan but she shouldn’t have gone on and on about forgetting the eggs and milk. Tom examined the frying pan and watery blood that trickled down the sink. After he finished cleaning the frying pan he had the floor to mop. After all, the message board had once demanded, ‘Don’t leave the kitchen in such a bloody mess.’

The End.

© Simon Wood

Simon Wood is British and living in the United States with his American wife. This year, he has been published in Millenium Science Fiction & Fantasy, The First Line, The Haunted and The Door to Worlds Imagined and have up coming publications in Goblin Muse, Writer's Hood, Parchment Symbols and Enigmatic Tales. He has had an honorable mention and a 3rd place, in two categories of the Sacramento Public Library's Writers' Contest '99.

This story was first published by 'The Door to Worlds Imagined' in March this year.