I swallowed thirteen pills. One for every year that I’d been alive. It seemed like a lucky number.

My mom made me shove my finger down my throat, which I did. She went back to sleep. I took thirteen more and added one of her muscle relaxers– for luck.

I woke her up. Off to Conway Medical Center we went.

It’s a blur between now and then. There are flashes of my mom lifting my legs into our 2001 Pontiac Montana, a blip of me stumbling through the emergency room parking lot, and fluorescent lights rail-roading above my head as scrubs-clad bodies moved frantically around the hospital bed.

A tube forces its way into my throat. I thought I felt it. But maybe not. The objects in the room melt into one another and the doctors and nurses became a singular entity barking orders and confirmations. Black sludge pushes itself into my body.

As my blinking slows, the images swirled into a void familiar, a listless dreamscape, the somber knowledge of the improvements to be found in my absence, that a loss is not truly a loss, that time heals all wounds– of all this, I am convinced. Across my vision comes a flurry of juvenile faces offering nothing more than bitter accusation, memories of the cuts along my arms, legs, and back made with the knife my mother had been trying to find for weeks, a lonely walk home, a move I never wanted to make, and a box in a little girl's closet filled with presents for when her hero returns.

The scene shifts, unnatural choreography formed within my lulling eye. I see my mother, first fresh faced and young, then weary, then worried, crying in a lonely waiting room, biting the brittle nails she’d worked so hard to grow. I remember, five years prior, when her cousin placed a barrel between his teeth, discovered later by his teenage son. My great-aunt threw herself across the closed coffin, wailing for her baby boy. There was a shrine of him in her home, an aging picture set atop a piano that would never be played again. Was this my fate– a picture hung in a living room, stared at often but discussed little, a too-taut heartstring never to be released?

Slingshot visions pulled me from maternal lamentations and propel me into a place I’d never seen, a place that feels like home, where tiny voices call for me and a calloused hand grazes the length of my cheekbone. I saw my mother’s wrinkled face wash over with peace, and one of the few smiles life allowed her creeping across her cracking lips.

Bright lights come into gentle focus. The medical staff is moving less frantically though the seriousness in their steps remains. The tube is pulled from my throat. I gag, cough, and drift off.

When I wake, my mother is by my side whispering a notion of unconditional love. The doctor comes, informs me of my stability. As discussed, he says, if you tried to do this again, we’d have to watch you for a few days.

Three hours later, two officers appear at my bedside. They clasp my hands and my wrists and escort me to a nearby elevator. As I walk, the metal twists around my ankles. One of the officers takes pity and releases the lower set of cuffs, warning me not to run off. The elevator reaches the bottom floor and the doors open. It is twilight, and there is a police car waiting on the other side of the glass entryway. I’m told to watch my head as I awkwardly shift my body into the backseat.

As the car pulls out of the lot, I think of what I’ve seen and wonder- am I truly to be fixed?

It was Monday. The machines that marked his breaths, his heart beats, slowed. An unrelieved hum filled the room when his lungs emptied, and his body deflated, motionless. He was no longer. His wife held his lifeless hand, her head upon her bent arm by his side. Nurses who had become friends during his final weeks stood vigil with her. Some cried; some hugged. One put a comforting hand on his wife’s shoulder.

Clearly, it was not with eyes that he saw this. He was dead. And yet, he was there, in the room, hovering, everywhere.

Where was his daughter?

Then, he knew, and in the moment that he knew, he was no longer in the room, but rather, where she was, heavy with child, happy, still ignorant of his passing.

He wondered that he was not elsewhere but gave thanks he could see his baby. If only he could see hers.

Then they were in the hospital and her husband was pale and sickly as he awaited the birth holding her hand and staring at the machine monitoring the baby’s heart, while she sang, loudly, with each contraction.

He watched, waited, till suddenly he felt another presence as incorporeal as his own. And he knew. His grandson.

And as he ceased to be himself and became one with all that is and ever shall be, his grandson took his first breath.

Dear God, what have I done?

This question, above all others, is the one echoing inside my heart, or soul, or whatever this is. I can see myself lying in the road, but worse, I can see Janice. She is half on the sidewalk, half in the roadway, and her neck is bent at an impossibly strange angle. I can only pray that she dies soon. I thought maybe she was dead already, until I saw a tear fall from her eye, and watch her drag in a strangled and tortured breath.

Sweet Jesus.

I follow her gaze, and realize she is staring at my body. I have no doubt I am dead, since the blood and brains that are leaking around my crushed skull are spreading out into the rain-wet street as the first sirens cry in the distance.

I'm suddenly transported backward through time to earlier this evening, like some twisted and cruel version of that Christmas story with the ghosts. I can't remember the fucking name now, but I remember every detail of the scene I am being forced to witness.

Worse than knowing what is going to happen at the end of the night, is my utter impotency to prevent any of it.

The office Christmas party was supposed to be a fun evening, to let our proverbial hair down. I see Janice, looking gorgeous in her red gown, and I watch myself pour a third vodka tonic. This was all my fault. I watch as I toss the drink back, without even batting an eye. I was always so proud of my ability to handle my liquor.

I watch as I weave slightly on my trip to the bathroom. Asshole!

In the bathroom, I take a piss, then turn and look at myself in the mirror. I pull out the small vial, and use the little spoon on my key ring to snort just enough coke to straighten my gait and put me back in control. I even winked at myself. I so wish I could stop what happens next, but I am stuck as an observer.

I leave the bathroom, and head back to the open bar. Janice scowls at me. No, I thought so then, but now I can see the look of concern in her eyes. That look is followed by pity, and then reluctant acceptance. At the bar, I was just pissed that she didn't trust me to know my own limit, so I poured a fourth drink, and when I catch her eye, I even take a swig from the bottle, before replacing the stopper.

The events after that are a little blurry, until we are getting ready to leave the party. I take a last trip to the bathroom, and finish off the stash in the vial. My eyes are a little red in my reflection, but I am once more in control, and the edges come back into focus. I grin at myself, never realizing the next time I would see my own face, it would be oddly squished from being run over by a car.

I must have pulled off the sober routine well, because no one tried to make sure she drove us home. How I wish someone had.

In the car, we started arguing. I was trying to convince her I was fine to drive, and she kept messing with her purse, and whining at me that she needed to talk to me. I yelled at her to shut up, that we would talk at home. I didn't notice the tears I am watching course down her cheeks, or see what she had taken out of her purse.

Oh God, no!

She is holding a pregnancy test stick, and I can see two pink lines.

I feel sick to my stomach, but I don't have an actual body, so I can only suffer through more pain and regret than humans were designed to endure.

I watch the bridge come into view, and Janice turns her face away from mine. I see myself looking at her, and I remember I was pissed that she was crying, and ruining my Christmas Eve. We start across the bridge doing 52. The limit is 55, so I am good in the old speed department.

I scream silently at myself not to look away from the road, but instead I see myself look over at Janice one last time. A small hiccup and a muscle spasm at just the wrong time, and the wheel jumps in my hand.

Time slows to a crawl, and I watch in slow motion as we careen headfirst into a semi coming the other way. I see us both fly through the windshield, which shatters into thousands of small fragments. I watch as Janice flips end over end, and hear the snap as she lands on the edge of the sidewalk, and I watch her head assume that strange, almost alien angle, bending in a place that was never meant to bend. I see myself land in the road, just as the car that was following the truck swerves around it, both of its passenger side tires lifting and bouncing as they run over my head. The popping noise sounds like a champagne bottle releasing its cork, and I suddenly find myself back above the scene watching it all.

The emergency vehicles are pulling up and blocking the road as the rain begins to fall in earnest.

Dear God, what have I done?

This question, above all others, is the one echoing inside my heart, or soul, or whatever this is. I can see myself lying in the road, but worse, I can see Janice, again, half on the sidewalk, half in the roadway, her neck still bent at that impossibly strange angle. I pray once again that she dies soon, and I once more watch a tear fall from her eye as she takes a strangled and tortured breath.

Sweet Jesus.

As I follow her gaze to where my body lay, broken, bleeding and all together dead, I once more hear the sirens crying in the distance.

No, God! Please, not again!

I'm suddenly transported backward through time to earlier this evening, like some twisted version of that fucking Christmas story with the ghosts, whatever it is called. I can't remember that, but I do remember I have done this before. Many times.

Maybe this is my punishment. Experiencing every second of the evening, over and over. I hope that mercy is also part of God's plan, even for assholes like me. These thoughts become fainter, as I watch myself weave slightly, on my trip to the bathroom, with the coke vial calling my name from my pocket...

-----------------------

© 2023 dustygrein

At first there was only sleep. Deep sleep. The deepest of sleeps. His heart rate slowed and slowed until his body, for all intents or purpose, lived no more. He saw the body there on the table. His body. Dead. He was dead. He watched the body as he drifted away, untethered from it. He watched it get smaller, and smaller. He watched it not because he cared what happened to it, but because he did not want to turn. He did not want to know what was behind him, what it was that awaited him next. He did not want to know what the answer was to the only real question.

But then he did turn. Slowly. Something far away called to him and he turned, something from the darkness. Deep inside that darkness was a pinpoint of light. It was unwillingly that he moved toward the pinpoint, but he did not walk, as there were no feet on no ground. There were no arms to swing, there was no voice to sing. There was nothing; a vacuum. He could still be analytical! It was a vacuum! He clung to that, clung desperately because he had thought of it. He had thought it!

“I think, therefore I am.”

Had there been a mouth, it would have smiled. He had remembered his Nietsche. He was still him. He could still remember!

The light was closer, only it was no longer light. It was colors now. Prismatic and bold colors. Rainbow colors wrapping around him, embracing him, touching every part of whatever it was that was him. Warm and wet were the colors, like lotion caressing, squeezing him inside, like vaginal walls pulling. Like wet, warm vaginal walls massaging, and squeezing him inside to a place that he did not even know that he could not have resisted.

Had he a mouth it would have kissed. Had he a dream, the dream would be this.

And then it was done. And then he was there, where the ears are music, and the eyes light. There, where the mind was wonder, and where, with the body gone, nothing else could ever matter.

Dr. Abel Cane had come full circle; born of the Mother, taught to suffer, and returned to the Father.

Dying, for me, was a beautiful experience.

I know that sounds crazy, blasphemous even, to describe such a tragic thing, a viscerally sad thing, in such a dissonant way. You might wonder if I was depressed. And truly, I wasn’t. In the end, despite everything, I was stupidly happy. Still, if I was being completely and truly honest, dying, the actual act of it, not the pain or the ragged breathing, no, the actual process of letting go… that part. That part was bliss.

Let me tell you about my life, before I ask you to celebrate in its ending.

It wasn’t a particularly spectacular existence, some might even call it boring, run of the mill. A life that could be mistaken for a thousand others. Of course, to me, at the time, it was everything, the only thing.

I was born in a small Midwestern town, raised in typical Midwestern niceness, by a father who was strict and distant but did his best, and a mother who was a tad too religious but who did all the mothering things with unmatched fervor. I was clothed in clean clothes, my feet adorned with shoes that were sensible and fit well. I was loved and scolded and hugged in all the typical ways. I had two sisters I constantly squabbled with, banging on the shared bathroom door, hastily getting ready for the day in a panic, somebody always holding up the one hairdryer, using up all the hot water.

I loved, oh yes, I loved. Roman, that was his name. I remember thinking his name had that unique way of rolling easily in the curl of my tongue, passing effortlessly through my lips, like I’ve said his name all my life, or that I’m meant to, for the rest of it.

He was brilliant, my Roman. I met him at university, studying astrophysics. He had grand ideas and even grander dreams. He loved life but at the same time was disillusioned by it. He said to me once, using his hands to gesture into space: “It’s not possible, you know, that this is it. There’s more to this, more to everything, we just can’t see it.”

You would think it would hurt, the way he said it, the way he longed for something more than us, more than what I could give him, but it didn’t. Because I knew what he meant, I felt it too.

There was something in between the empty spaces, he told me, between the tiniest of particles. An answer to everything.

I never found out what he meant, neither did he. He died shortly after his twenty-fifth birthday, before he was able to finish his research, before he got to meet his daughter, at that point still the tiniest clump of molecules gestating inside me.

I remember the pain of that moment. How the world became dull and gray. How I went to sleep too many nights hoping to never wake up again. But day after day I woke up, and I would go through the motions, and I would go to work and my prenatal appointments, smiling at my doctor, telling him yes, yes, I’m doing okay. It’s hard, but I’ve got my sisters, you know, and my mom…

Then I had my daughter, and at once the world had color again. She had Roman’s eyes, almond shaped and deeply brown, thick dark lashes swooping downwards at the sides. I swear she looked at me in the exact way Roman did, with that exact slight raise of the brows, the slight curl in the lips, and I remember weeping.

I named her: Aster. Star. The only one that mattered in my universe, my sun.

We had a simple life, our little family of two. We fought a lot, in the way all mothers and daughters do, Aster having the quick wit of her father, the stubbornness of her mother. She broke my heart a million times when she was a teenager, which we mended as we both grew older. Then as quickly as she came into my life, she left. I understood. She had to build a life of her own, having met her own star, her own universe.

And it was good.

“Mom?”

She’s finally here. My star. “Aster.”

Large dark eyes stared down at me. She was older now, my star, smile lines having formed at the corners of her eyes. Have those always been there? They must have. Aster always smiled with her eyes.

“Hey mom, it’s okay. We’re here.”

We. I couldn’t see well these days. She must have brought her little boy, my grandson. I squinted at the small blonde head on her lap. She named him… Roman.

I wanted so much to smile, but it hurt to even breathe. My chest muscles struggled to expand. I saw the nurse put a hand on my daughter’s shoulder, shaking her head.

Yes, there was pain, every single muscle hurt, the air caught uncomfortably in my chest, but there was also something else… something light. Suddenly I felt weightless. I knew then it was time to go.

Time at once contracted then expanded, and I could see everything, the future, the past, all possible choices and universes all at once. I finally saw it, what my Roman was talking about, the space in between the tiniest particles, the invisible energy that connects all of us together, in every universe, in every possible dimension. My universe, my stars.

I died then.

And it was beautiful.

Warn-In shoes, diamond earrings, old picture frames, bedding and clothes. Useful articles that are useless to me. Sealing the envelopes that contain pictures of my no-contact husband, Darrell. I think of the dress I wore at the wedding. Not that wedding, but my first one. We were young, I was barely in to my 20s. When he made the head strong decision of war, I knew it would be trouble. But his eyes, his heart, I wanted it all. We celebrated the last few days we had together with dinners. But the night he went away I wish I would have stopped him. Stalled him and popped the tires to his car. Flashing back to now, I know it’s coming soon. Some may fear, but I excite. I imagine seeing his eyes, feeling his heart. That’s nothing but comfort.

We do not go and look above a body. We look above a Life.

On our lips-- a Name.

It's a person, a place, a thing. Whatever the noun, if it is the outlier, it is the Anomaly.  The Word of whatever it was that remained Unresolved in the lifetime of the dying.

That is the Name that escapes upon the breath, upon the fading gasps-- The Rose Bud as it were. The final vying for resolution. Perhaps for restitution. Or redemption. The return to a moment. To an opportunity. In any case, a desired course of correction for whatever actions remained taken or untaken, words spoken or unspoken-- that which might have altered the trajectory of the ones who lie at the brink of life and death with limbs still outstretched. The Departing, looking over the shoulder, at all the deformity; the chips and burdens in the now distant bodily backpack that was being so unwittingly carried to who knows where, never reaching its imaginary destination.

And now it is too late. Everything is suddenly more real than real. The Finality, which contorts with hallucinations, phantom sensations, stupor, and then with the Equilibrium, which only Death can bring.

I have seen the Dying up close on several occasions, among animals, but only once with a human being. I will refer only to He, as Who, so that we can focus on the What, and that you might better understand the nature of the Outlier.

He was dying. He had known it for months, as a foreboding, through subtle signals of the body. The shortness of breath. The fatigue. The black stool. The way the circulation wasn't flowing, and extremities would alternately whiten or blacken from lack of oxygen. Rigorous massage by his beloved would revive the hands or feet, but the forced blankness of his face betrayed an understanding of what was coming.

And when the time came, he demanded vehemently that all the windows and doors be opened!! Then he insisted they all be shut, because it was terribly cold, and a persecutory They were coming. He spoke of his poor Mommy. He remembered fondly his Father. He hollered for Her who was not here!! Anger over shook him and distain that she was always too late in coming. Always. Never living up to Her potential. On Her arrival, he no longer recognized her.

Then he reminisced about She for whom he had done everything, Everything, whose love had dissipated and escaped him. He called this one by proper name. He did not chide that articulated She for not being there. She was called tenderly by secreted pet name, and then words failed him... breath became a rasp, slow and rhythmic, and then a death rattle. He was pale, sculptural, cool to the touch and an expression of bliss covered his face. His eyes shut; his lips parted. He rested like this a while; then as if suddenly, the Soul was gone. 

When I called the One, the She who had been his Everything, and told her, she asked, of course. She asked the pertinent question about the last word and received it with an unhidden pleasure. The private long obscured pet name cementing that all Significant personal Importance in a Life now ended.

Jealously, She wanted to know if he had called out my name as well? No. He did not. She didn't comprehend the converse significance: that we had No unresolved issues.

June 10th is the two-year anniversary of my dad’s death. He battled pancreatic cancer for 10 months before he died. I quit my job to act as his hospice nurse during his last weeks. It was an honor to take care of him, and this challenge came at the perfect time. My dad’s pre-death flashback is a memory I’ll always treasure, and it’s nice to write about it this week.

Road Trippin’

Lydia was the professional hospice nurse who helped me take care of my dad during his last few weeks. She was an amazing, kind soul, and she prepared me for my dad’s death with sincerity and honesty.

She told me, “When the human body is dying and your dad’s organs are failing, strange and scary things might happen. His body is poisoning itself, but his mind will protect him.”

Lydia explained how our mind and our brains are still medical mysteries. There’s so much we don’t understand, but we know our brain protects us from pain. It puts our body into shock so we don’t feel physical pain. It blocks and distorts painful emotional memories, and there’s countless testimonies of people flashing back to their most peaceful and happy moments right before they die.

My dad lost his ability to speak a couple days before he passed away. His hospice bed was in the living room, and my mom and I were mindlessly watching TV in silence with him. Dad couldn’t control his body anymore so his head, arms, hands, and legs jerked around seemingly aimlessly. I’m not sure what caught my attention, but I keyed into the rhythm of his body’s movements and noticed a pattern.

Left foot pressed down.

Right hand made a fist at his hip, and moved left to right.

Right foot pressed down.

Left hand made a circular motion.

Right hand grabbed something and came up to his face.

Left hand made a peace sign and came to his lips.

Repeat.

Over and over.

He was smiling. His lips were mouthing something.

I laughed out loud when I realized what was happening.

“Holy shit, MOM! Dad is drinking a beer and smoking a cigarette in the car right now.”

My mom said, “You can’t let him smoke, Bridgette.”

“No Mom! LOOK! He’s shifting gears, rolling down the window, drinking a beer, and smoking a cigarette. I think he’s singing too.”

And he was.

My dad was flashing back to his happiest moments. He was driving his family to the beach, visiting his construction worksites, singing in his truck, enjoying the sunshine, and blasting the oldies with the windows down.

I got to see my dad smile and sing one last time. He was enjoying a cold beer and a smoke. He was happy, doing something he loved. I’ll never forget that moment. I’m happy to share it with all of you today. Thank you for the prompt :)

One moment my thoughts and my body are as heavy as a stone pillar, and the next, weightlessness. I’m a cloud, a smoking barrel. I’m a prism of light, a thought, a whisper, a cold breeze, the goosebumps on your arms, an atom, a cell, rebirth, and death. I’m everything and nothing. I’m the mystery revealed.

And though I know I’m not seeing with my eyes, because there are no sockets, no flesh, or a head to hold them. There are visions. At first, it’s my body lying in a pool of blood. Flesh, bone, blood, and little pieces of what I suspect are my brain tissue scattered like a madman’s painting on a dirty linoleum floor. The man with the suit and the gun, and the latex gloves, is wiping the barrel and the grip of the .35. Cleaning it for fingerprints. He’s walking over to my body, and kneeling down next to my outstretched right arm, being careful not to place his knee, which is covered with a $3000 dollar suit, in the bodily fluids that moments ago were inside my head. He’s gently lifting my hand and placing the gun inside of it. I see this, or I feel it. I’m witness to it.

Then time begins to roll backwards with rapidly intensifying speed, all the way to the beginning. Then it stops, and goes forward. The world, like it’s spinning off its axis, begins playing my whole life. My whole existence. I’m inside of these moments, and outside.

I feel my birth. A brilliant white light followed by the sounds of a doctor announcing my arrival, and the tears of happiness, exhaustion, and relief pouring through my mother. I’m three years old, falling down the steps of our condo, splitting my head open. I’m six. My first day of school, taking the bus home and missing my exit. Trees are whizzing by as we hit the off ramp, and I’m crying. I’m ten, my father is at work. It’s my birthday, and the kitchen table is filled from end to end with my favourite comic books. A big red bow in the middle. I’m 17, kissing Jenny Fitzgerald, and eventually bringing her up to my room, where I’m awkwardly fumbling with a condom. Shaking hands, and a face as hot as the center core of the planet, while Jenny sits naked, as comfortable as a broken-in leather ball glove, softly giggling. Not making fun of me. Not a giggle that says she’s going to tell all her friends what an absolute nunce I am in the sack. Just a soft giggle, reminding me that it’s just sex. It’s just fun with someone I love. It doesn’t need to be made into something bigger than it is. It doesn’t have to be monumental, monolithic; it doesn’t need to scrape the sky with its grandiose. It can just be a secret. A small secret communion between two bodies. A ritual of flesh. A coming together. A magnetism. An act. And eventually I can see myself calming down. My heart returning to its regular BPMs. I can feel the heat fading, going into hibernation, and resting up for the next time that I feel myself ruining a good thing.

Jenny’s kissing my neck softly while rubbing my forearm. “Just relax. It’s okay. It’s just me. Relax, baby. Relax.” I’m closing my eyes. Breathing in and out. Concentrating on my breath. Clearing my head of the thousand unwarranted, and uninvited thoughts that always spread like fucking bacteria during those moments where you just want to be present. Where you need to be present. The moments where you’d give away every material possession that you own, just for a switch to appear on the side of your head, that could turn your brain off. Just shut it off, and let you live in the moment, and stop self-sabotaging every good thing that comes along. Because God knows in my life, those moments were few and far between.

I finally get the condom on, and without hesitation, Jenny climbs on top of me. It’s a revelation. I’ve entered into a world. A world that was as fantastical as the dreams of CS Lewis, or Roald Dahl, for the entirety of my life, until that moment. Jenny leans down and kisses me the whole time as my hands stay glued to the small of her back.

It wasn’t perfect. Hell, anyone who says the first time is perfect is a liar. But it was damn good. And we sure had a lot of time to perfect our art. Our Sistine Chapel would be created throughout the next two years. Both of us not being scared to ask about what the other wanted, or what the other needed to be engaged, to be fulfilled, to be celebratory in the act.

Jenny and I used to talk a lot about that. About the people that condemned their partners as selfish and shallow lovers. They begrudged them and ripped apart the flesh from their bones as their backs were turned. We’d say that these people weren’t communicating. These people weren’t caring. They weren’t letting themselves be known. Sex to these people was no more than masturbation with another body.

Now, Jenny and I were laying in my bed. Her head tucked tightly under my left arm, as my right was folded behind my head. The aftermath much more calming than the precursor. That switch not quite on my head, but about as close as it ever could be.

For Jenny, it must have been the same. Because the calm allowed her to reveal to me the deepest and darkest depth of her self. The person within the person. The imprisoned soul, who was only allowed out for moments like these. Or a moment like that. Maybe. Probably it was the only time. The words flowed out of her mouth smooth and relaxed, like there wasn’t a single doubt in her mind that now was the time, and I was the person to hear the stories about who she was. What she was, and then let me, let us, decide whether or not our love could withstand it.

Jenny is delivering her heart to me on a silver platter. She’s speaking about her father’s death. The unimaginable weight of it. The nights alone at a small gravestone, holding palaver with the dead. Writing down everything that she needed to say to him when he was alive, but that she never did. For whatever reason. Life is enough of a reason, I’m thinking.

She’s telling me how empty you feel. And how long it takes to cry. To truly wash yourself of the sinking feeling. The quicksand feeling that you’re going underground with them. For a while, you suffocate in silence. The numbness, initially, is the strongest feeling you own. It wrestles with sadness, anger, and even small traces of empathy, jealousy, and happiness. .

But then one day, your defence system is broken. Your Berlin wall, your great wall, your Edinburgh Castle, your impenetrable fortress is broken, and the floodgates fall. Then you’re a whimpering, anxiety ridden, grown child whose emotions are just as sporadic and unreachable.

She’s telling me all this as I continue to rub her between her shoulder blades, where she has a small Japanese tattoo that translates to strength in love. I don’t talk. I let her get it out. I don’t attempt to say I understand, or provide pseudo-solutions. This is her time. I let her have it. As much of it as she needs.

Then Jenny stops for a minute. Up to that point, she hasn’t cried or choked up. But now I can tell. I can feel it in her muscles as she tenses up. But she carries through. She tells me about her mother. Her mother, who handled the tragedy of her father’s premature death by nearly drinking herself into one. She completely loses touch with reality. The idea of reality is something that becomes so fractured that in order to draw another breath, the smell of vodka needs to be on it.

At that bar, drunk off her ass, she meets a soul more corroded than hers. This man tells little white lies until her cheekbones hurt from smiling and laughing. He’s charming, he’s handsome, but he’s the devil. Milton’s devil. The wordsmith, the charmer, the one who is so articulate, and confident that you fall in love with his words, though you have no idea what they mean. But you don’t care. You just want to see his lips move. His eyes look at you the way that no eyes have since you the days of high-hair, and Purple Rain. That’s enough to feel empowered. To feel special. To feel ready to give this world another try. No, not your young daughter at home, dealing with a grief as deep as yours, but from a stranger with kind words, and hard-strewn eyes.

Like a vampire, the man is invited into Jenny’s old Victorian home on Waterloo Road. He stakes the place out and instantly Jenny feels something off about him. Something wrong. She can’t tell if it’s the way he walks, or talks, the way he laughs, or the way he touches her mother, and the way he looks at her. But she thinks it closer to all the above, then it is to one specific trait.

And it isn’t long before he’s sitting next to her on the couch, while her mother is working. Wrapping his arm around her, smelling her hair, telling her how much of a grownup she is. She isn’t a little girl anymore. She’s a woman. That it’s time to start acting like one.

The gradual torment leads to the bedroom, like it so often does. Midnight visits from the monster in the suave skin mask. He holds his large right hand over her mouth, as his left arm goes prospecting underneath her covers. That same smile. That same laugh. The one that fills her mother with second-chance euphoria.

By this point, Jenny is crying. Not loud. Softly. As for me, my heart is beating like a jackhammer. At that moment. The moment that I’m being brought to. Is the moment that I decided to kill the king of Annandale. The moment I decided to kill myself.

After Jenny finishes her story. I simply tell her I love her. “I love you, Jenny. I love you so goddamn much. It hurts.”

She’s drifting off to sleep, still nuzzled on my chest. But that night I don’t sleep. Not a fucking wink. I stare at my ceiling. A young man who always lacked a certain passion. A young man good at a few things, but great at none. Great at none because I never took that next step. That steep inclined step that takes you from the land of the average, to the world of the greats. But in my head on that night, I’ve never felt a passion so deep. One that didn’t stem from vainglory, but from burning hatred.

Now, as I float in the ether between life and death, all I see is Jenny. Jenny lying on my chest. Breathing softly. And I look at the young man draped with anger and fear. And I want to yell at him. I want to tell him to just hold her. To just stay with her and take off somewhere. try to get the fucker arrested. Anything but what he did. What I did. The vigilante shit. The Hollywood movie shit. The stuff that doesn’t work in the real world. The world where the bad guys don’t always get what’s coming to them, but the stupid ones do. You can count on the stupid pricks, to always get what’s coming to em.

As I reach out to touch Jenny’s soft face, the world, again, begins to spin. This time forward. It takes me through the drunk meetings with my regicidal friends. How to kill the king. The king. The king. Death to the fucking king. It’s all we talk about for months. It’s spinning past every word. Every stakeout. Every fight with Jenny as she tells me to just let it go. To just leave it the hell alone, because I’ll only make things worse for her. And worse for me.

I’m screaming, I’m pointing in her face. I’m telling her how it has to be. Then it stops. And the king is leaning over my body. His face merely inches from mine. He’s smiling. Then he’s laughing.

He says, “You stupid, stupid, fucker. You got balls, kid. But come on, what chance did you have? A stupid ending for a stupid kid.”

Then he gets back up. Looks at the large man who cleaned the prints. Taps him on the shoulder, and tells him. “Jenny is going to be a mess. I’ll have to go and console her the best that I can.” Then he winks at him, and he lets out a deep, hearty laugh.

The king leaves the room.

Then nothingness.

In the darkness of the night, I lay in my bed, my mind racing, a million things in my head,  flashing back to moments of regret, wishing I could turn back time and forget.  But I know deep down, it's too late now,  I'm about to die. The memories flood my mind, a torrential wave, of laughter and tears, of hope and of grave, of moments that defined me, good and bad, as I lay here, alone and terribly sad. I wish I could go back, and make things right, to say the things I left unsaid, but it's too late now, the end is near, I can feel it, death is almost here. And as I take my final breath, I know, that the memories will stay with me, and grow, forever etched in my mind, my heart, and my whole. I wish I could say that I have grown,  but deep down inside, I'm all alone, there's something about it, maybe it's just all I've ever known, it doesn't matter, I'm about to turn the stone. So let this be a lesson to all, young and old, to live life to the fullest,  to take chances, and never fear, because life is short, and death is near.