The Beach House
Jesse Bennett couldn't even remember that woman's name. He glanced out the window, looking out at the crowded beach.
So many families running around with their young children, laughing and playing around. He wanted to warn them, tell them not to let their kids inside the little white house on the beach. But he knew it was too late.
"I can't undo this." He felt his voice bounce off the house's walls. Even though he knew about the fact he had no company, Jesse's own voice made him feel less alone.
He felt a strange tapping noise against his window. Out of pure curiosity, Jesse decided to check what it was.
A little girl stared back at him, hardly even blinking. She still had on her swimming trunks and bathing suit, and her chestnut hair was tied into a tight braid.
"What's your name, kid?" Jesse asked. No response. Maybe she didn't hear me through the window, he thought. He cracked open the window, trying his hardest not to make noise.
Then he heard the clacking of shoes, and eventually the door to the cramped room he'd spent the past three days stuck in was flung open.
A woman had kept him hidden. She called herself Dolores Bennett, and she insisted Jesse was her husband. But he couldn't recognize her. Jesse's wife was younger, with lighter hair and eyes than Dolores. But no amount of talking could convince her otherwise.
"Jesse, what's going on?"
"Nothing." Dolores raised her eyebrows, kneeling down to look out the window.
"He's a little...how do I say this politely...crazy?" Dolores told the young girl. "Go back to playing."
"But he looks lonely. Maybe he needs a friend," the girl said, reaching out to touch Jesse's hand. Right as he went to extend out his arm, Dolores aggressively shut the window, her lips curling into a frown.
"I told you not to talk to them," she grumbled, nearly walking out of Jesse's room.
"Wait," he cried. "Why are you doing this, Dolores?"
"For your own good. You know that." Jesse didn't want to believe that Dolores had done anything good for him.
Only three days ago, he was able to walk across the beach and feel the sand against his feet. He'd talk to all the visitors and even order himself an occasional cocktail.
But the moment he came inside that tiny white house to grab one of his buddies a drink, Dolores grabbed him by the collar and sighed.
"Where have you been, Jesse?" she screamed. "You know how worried I was for you?" How could she have been worried for a person she hadn't even met, Jesse thought to himself.
"Who are you?"
"Your wife, silly. Dolores Bennett." That name didn't ring any bells in Jesse's mind. The moment he shrugged his shoulders and tried to leave the house again, she shoved him into the cramped bedroom where he'd spent every moment sense.
Jesse remembered his wife. Those blonde curls that fell to her waist, those blue eyes he could get himself lost in. Yet he couldn't think of her name.
Marjorie, was it? No, couldn't be Marjorie. That was the name of his aunt. But one thing was for sure, and it was that Jesse's wife couldn't have had the name Dolores.
Jesse rose to his feet, nearly feeling himself fall.
"Jesse?" he heard Dolores shout from outside the room.
"That's not my name, lady."
"Yes it is, Jesse! Don't be like this, will you?" He scowled, sitting himself down on the mattress in the room's center. It felt like lying on a row of boulders, and Jesse couldn't imagine at all how being treated like a hamster would fix this problem Dolores insisted he had.
When Dolores came back inside the room, which Jesse had coined 'the hole', she held an orange bottle in her hands.
"Not this again," he mumbled, his face in his palms. Now Dolores would try to shove capsules filled with medications Jesse couldn't even remember the names of. Anything to make Dolores happy, he supposed.
"This one's for the hallucinations..." Jesse heard her whisper to herself. Strange, Jesse thought. Maybe she's the one with the hallucinations, because I'm as healthy as a horse.
"You know," Jesse began. "If you'll help me find my wife, I might not call the cops on you."
"She's standing right in front of you." He rolled his eyes, getting up from the mattress.
"Look, have you got a few screws loose in your head? Because I'm not your husband. I've got a wife of my own that I've got to-"
"Enough!" Dolores had tears forming in her eyes as she handed Jesse the pill and a glass of water.
He'd gotten lost in his own thoughts to keep himself from saying something to upset Dolores. Now that he thought about it, the name Dolores did ring a bell. Not a very recent one, though.
Jesse opened up the closet inside the room and pulled out a yearbook. Class of 1992, the front read. Perfect, that was the year he'd graduated high school.
He'd flipped a few pages until he spotted the face he was looking for. Dolores Hansen, senior. Yearbook quote: "Treat your enemy nicely. Then slip them a poisoned cake."
Now, Jesse thought that she must've just been having a phase, because there was no way a teenage girl who hardly passed calculus would drop quotes like that and seriously mean them.
"Take the pills already," Dolores muttered, snatching the book out of his hands. "Why are you looking at that?"
"Is that not you?" Jesse pointed to the photo of a younger version of Dolores.
"That doesn't concern you." She grabbed him by his jaw and forced open his mouth, placing the pill at the back of his tongue. Then she poured some water down, making it fall to the back of Jesse's throat.
It left a faint metallic taste in his mouth, and his stomach began to feel queasy. Jesse wanted to vomit back up the pill and taunt Dolores, making her look like an idiot who couldn't even give the man she swore to be her husband his medicine.
She made her way over to a hanger in corner of the room with a coat on it, slipping it onto her body and zipping it up.
"You live on a beach," Jesse mumbled.
"Not anymore." She grabbed her purse, along with some other items she'd placed in the pocket of her coat and locked the door behind her.
"Goodnight, my love," she whispered faintly right before leaving the home.
Then Jesse felt the nausea get worse, crawling up his esophagus with every movement he made.
Only thirty minutes later, he felt his joints lock and his vision go blurry. He'd fallen for a weapon unlike a knife or gun. Something both efficient and tricky at the same time.
Poison capsules.
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