getting home (3)

It was something said to him when things were bad. He’d been in his regular after-work haunt and was showing a photo of Caitlin to this guy.
“Aye well, she’s sweet but don’t spend your time in here talkin' and showin' photos. The house is where you’re needed.”
Alexander grabbed him.
“Listen pal. I’ve just finished work right. I’ve been up since five o’fuckingclock right. If I want a drink I have a drink!”
He pushed him away.
“You’ve been in here every time that I have. I’m just trying to help. I was just like you talking about my great wee family but never with them. And now? Now the wife and wean are in fuckin' Johannesburg!”
Alexander picked up his pint.
“You’re nothing like me. You’re a fuckin' loser.”
“Aye, well: you said something there.”
The guy took out a little notebook and wrote something on a page and tore it out. He handed it to Alexander.
“A friend told me this years ago and I never listened. Don’t be a.. what am I again? ‘loser’.”
He’d written,
It’s not going home that’s difficult, it’s getting home.
Be sure to get home while you've a home to go to.

Alexander read it then made a big show of crumpling it up and throwing it behind the bar.
“Get to fuck home then, nobody’s stopping you.”
“Like I said: mine's is gone, I've just the bottom end of this pint glass now.”
 That night when he stumbled home himself was another of those times when the house walls rattled and squeezed at him till he couldn’t breathe and was punching plaster.
 In the morning, while the others slept, he shakily looked for a pencil and wrote down what he could remember of what the Johannesburg guy had written. Now he read it each day finishing work like a ritual and it got him home and had even kept him from the drink for a good month or so.
 
 He could hear some more loud voices coming from the pub, but he folded the paper up again, put it in his pocket and turned back the way he’d come. Those straining boats sounding like bedsprings out in the black water made him feel a bit wobbly as he walked back to Jess’.
He went straight to bed when he got back, turning off the hall light. He moved and tried to get comfortable. It was so quiet; every slight movement he made creaked and seemed to echo out around the loch. He finally found a position lying face up where his neck and back weren’t fighting each other. His eyelids started to close in lapping rhythms against the ceiling…

 Just as he was about to fall asleep he heard a child being tortured. That was his first thought. A slow exhausted cry that suddenly intensified into a sharp bowel-knotting scream that twisted and squeezed at his chest. Alexander pulled the duvet to his chin for protection. The sound died then came again. He could picture the livid tomato-red of its face; the gummy cavern of its  screaming, spitting mouth; his strong knotted hands straining to shut it up. He was panting.
The sound died  ..... then came again.