The Way We Were - Short Story Excerpt Three

Everything around me feels fast and thoughtless. I'm thoughtless, too. I can’t feel my body anymore. I’m so grateful. When I can still feel my body I can still hear my keeper, and when I can still hear my keeper, I can't dance like this.

The Rolling Stones "Under My Thumb" is playing on the jukebox, and it's my favourite song forever from now on. My body that I can see beneath me, but that I can't feel, is moving with a harmonized surrender.    

My feet move in shuffles from side to side. My head goes up and down, back and forth. When I lift it up towards the ceiling, I can feel that my face doesn't look how it usually does. I'm not putting anything on. There is a rawness that surrounds me. I notice my hands floating all around. They surprise me every time because I'm not instructing them to go anywhere. They just move.

Everyone I know thinks I'm a good dancer, but I'm not. I'm just a good performer and I've always been very good at faking. Before this summer when I'd dance, I was moving how my keeper told me I should move, how she wanted other people to see me move. It wasn't fun at all, but I used to take comfort in following her orders.

That's my secret.

Well, that's our secret. Nobody knows she exists, except her and I. She's gone now. She’s far away. I told her and her liquid sounds to leave me alone this summer. At first I was worried that I wouldn't know what to do without her. That I'd keep talking to no one in particular, a parrot in sweat pants, asking "Will I be okay?"

Swelter - Short Story Excerpt

He died in the most badass and tragic way. He did a lot of grafitti, you know what I mean? Huge, badass murals all over the place. Normally he’d do them really late at night and he’d come wake you up at six in the morning and you’d have to bike over to wherever he’d worked the whole night before. It was really annoying but you’d forgive him because he’d have this huge, happy smile on his face. And it was worth it. Beautiful colours, weird shapes, funny words all sewn together on some wall in the middle of town. For some reason art is always more beautiful amongst ugliness. Totally fucking wasted in museums.

It was dawn when it happened. It was his stupid fault. He had his earphones in. Fucking idiot. A train came and he never even heard it. If he didn’t have his ears in, he would have moved. Instead, it was done, just like that.




I feel spilt up. Half of me thinks if he had to go, at least he went doing what he loved best. But then one morning in the middle of work after I’d been up all night thinking, I thought about how much it would have hurt to go like that. Sure, it was short, but it must have really hurt. I lost my shit, snot everywhere, and my boss at the deli counter let me leave early even though I never told him what happened.

Maybe he knew. It’s funny how word spreads when a kid dies.

Monster - Short Story Excerpt

The following is the beginning of a story called Monster.



I am a monster.
This is how I was born, and I can do no more to change it than an old dog can trade his worn, dirty fur for the clean feathers of a baby bird, solely because he dreams of taking flight. But the difference between myself and most others like me is that I don't wish to be any different. I know who I am, to an exacting degree, pitying not myself for being this way, but those whom are unaware of the truth in me, to whom I will never explain it.
My James.
I have never known true intimacy, and I have no desire to. I can only really breathe when I am alone, and the clear, hard blue sky goes beyond and above me to infinity, mirroring the lonely seas, and I can see as far as it can, which is nowhere and everywhere at once. Sometimes, in these nowhere and everywhere moments, I think of James, the man who loves me, the man who will marry me next month, and I feel cruel. He does not know that I was born wearing the blue uniform of a prisoner inside myself, and that everything else feels like a costume.
Especially that white dress.



I come from Texas. My accent, barbed with the softness only sharp-shooters can imitate, sounds different in my own head, when I am alive in thought, than it does when I speak to him, dead in conversation. I don't understand where the pretense comes from, but I am being dishonest with my voice when I speak, except within the confines of my own skull. My real drawl, is lower, has more gruffness, and a depth that I don't share with anyone, guarded like the jewels at Buckingham Palace.
My hair is golden, especially when the sun's hot rays press themselves upon it. My eyes are blue, very blue, like the hard sky, but haven't the vacancy, the emptiness, that many light eyes are cursed with. No, mine are soulful. Perhaps too soulful for a woman that has been so selfish with herself. James calls me his Angel, but I am not an Angel. I just look like one.
I am beautiful and I know that, and so since I was a small girl I have always attracted men like flies to honey. And I have never wanted or needed them; my aloofness making me even more a prize to be won. I have felt guilty, being pretty like this, when so many girls need this beauty more to get what they so desire; the love of a good man.
My James has loved me, intimately, since the moment he laid eyes on me. I have long wondered if that was because somewhere he knew, though not consciously thought, that I could never love him and attracted to that calamity, threw himself into me wholeheartedly.
It is not easy though. It is not easy being monstrous.



As of late there has been a magnetic conflict, newly born, and that I feel uncomfortable having within me. The pull being that I should keep my true nature a secret, the push being that I should not sentence another human being to a lifetime tied to a mutant. These thoughts have surfaced before. But the pull, my nature, would win over the repellant, collapsable space between, and the two sides would snap together, in connectivity, the contrition buried often for a long while.
But as the big day approaches, I find myself studying James when he is asleep. He looks so helpless. More helpless than I could ever be in the most dire of situations, and this helplessness radiates off him in his sleep; unconsciously. Looking at him, I feel like a monster in a fairy tale; hairy, yellow-eyed, mute, grotesque, blood-thirsty, and despicable. I imagine myself, with my new bone-crushing heaviness, sitting on him until he suffocates. Murdering him, the monster feels no regret, only victorious for having made the kill. When I wake from these spells I am horrified. The guilt I feel weighs so heavy upon me, but I am unable to stop these feelings. Some nights, I feel so guilty that I cannot share a bed with the helplessness and sleep alone on the wood floor beneath him.
I don't know that I can live a life haunted by such guilt; not for who I am but for who I earnestly promise to be.
He is taking me on a getaway this weekend, "some time alone before the wedding," he told me.
I have told myself that there, I will decide if I can be an impostor for the rest of my days.

Tragic Hero - Short Story Excerpt

“So, since...Rosemary? Was it Rosemary?”
“What’s she got to do with this?”
“No, nothing. Just since her, no serious women?”
“No...no, not really.”
“Wow.”
“Why are you always saying ‘wow’, kid? It makes you seem dumber than you are.”
“Oh, sorry. I mean...I find that hard to believe.”
“Why? I’ve never wanted to be committed.”
“Not to anyone? Not ever?”
“No. I get committed, goodbye freedom. Why would I want that?”

She looked away and I went back to eating my dinner. Then when I thought the conversation was over, she got back to talking.

“I was at Starbucks this one time, this reminds me of that. You know how Starbucks has those quote things on the back of their cups? Well, there was this one quote, and it went like....it went something like, ‘the irony - ’ irony... is that right?”
“Could be. I don’t know what you’re talking about yet.”
“Oh...okay, well, I think it’s irony... anyway, ‘the irony of commitment is that it’s ultimately freeing.”
I laughed real hard at that one. “That would be ironic, yes.”
“Don’t laugh, this is good! Just listen, okay?”

I nodded my head. I always did listen to her, more than I did other people. Don’t know why.

“It said like, ‘when you commit to something, it frees you of the doubts in your head’ and that, ‘all the doubts you have in your head are just your own critics that think you aren’t strong enough to be committed, so they shoot you in the foot by not letting you try in the first place. And commitment frees you of that, so it’s freeing...in the end.’ I don’t know, something like that. That always stuck with me. I think it’s true, maybe.”

When she gave me that spiel, she looked real hopeful. But it was this terrifying hope around her eyes. Really, it scared me. I hadn’t seen that kind of hope from anyone in so long that it really rattled me. I had to set her straight.

“You know why you only see shit like that written on Starbucks cups?”
“No, why?”
“Because the only people stupid enough to believe that bullshit are the same idiots who are willing to pay five dollars for a Goddamn coffee.”

She laughed real hard at that. But when she laughed it was a sad laugh. She looked like she’d been woken up from a dream.

“Yeah, yeah. You’re probably right.”
“I am right.”
“Yeah, you are.”
“That settles it.”

She smiled at me, with this sad smile. I wondered then if maybe she wanted to stay dreaming. 

“So you want to get the cheque, kid?” I asked her.
“Sure,” she said. “Sure.”

What Life Was For - Short Story Except

It was their first night in the house alone since Grandpa left. The remains of the man he used to be were scattered around them; a newspaper he could no longer read, a television he could no longer hear, shoes he’d never wear again. She wondered if that was the real cruelty of life; you could feel people leaving.

The tape played. Big, beautiful voices echoed. Piano and brass instruments filled the space around them. Glenn held her so close that she could feel his heartbeat.

And then for the first time in her life, time stood still. They swayed, gentle, for what could have been seconds or days, it didn’t matter. Finally, so small in his arms, with the old man’s music playing and time spinning madly on, she knew what life was for.

Gun Shy - Short Story Excerpt

Michael dreams of tall buildings.
He dreams of tall trees.
He dreams of tall ladders.
He falls, far, far down.

When he lands, he sees women dressed up like the olden days. They have big skirts and fancy hats. He can’t see their faces because they are veiled in lace. He asks the women to show him their faces but they won’t. He thinks one of the women is Caitlin, or an old relative of Caitlin, but he can’t be certain because she won’t show him her face. The lady walks like Caitlin, but when he taps her on the shoulder, she won’t turn around.

He stops by a river and watches an old man paint a picture of the scenery. The painting looks like a perfect photograph.
Everything looks exactly the same as what’s in front of him. Michael is impressed and in awe, and can’t believe anyone can paint like that. When he goes to compliment the artist, the man won’t turn around.

After a few tries, Michael decides he should leave the river. He walks down a dusty road. He sees people on horses, men in carriages, women in petticoats.

Then he falls again.
He falls far, far down.
His stomach drops, and he lands nowhere he’s even been before.
He doesn’t see numbers.
He just sees tall buildings.
Tall trees.
Tall ladders.

In a moment of lucidity, he tells himself to keep dreaming.

Sweetieface - Short Story Excerpt

The excerpts, divided by pictures, are from two different parts of the story and don't appear consecutively.




"Sam! I love this song!"

"Me too."

"Let's dance Sam!"

"I don't dance."

"Oh, come on, it's me, and you're drunk, and nobodies here."

Sam looks around the bar. It's empty. When did everyone leave? 

"Please, Sam? I love this song."

When she's standing there she looks so beautiful. Her hair has fallen, and she looks drunk, and happy, and finally relaxed enough to be herself. Sam is overcome with a furious desire to touch her, to hold her, to be against her. He wishes he could tell her how he feels in this moment. Because of the alcohol, he would, if he knew the words to describe it right. But words don't ever fit how he feels for her. He thinks then that maybe some things are meant only to be felt; forever unspoken and misunderstood, lonesome and unfair.

Then he looks at her again. He can't stop himself.

He grabs her, and pulls her close. She falls into him. Her hands find his shoulders, and he holds her waist. They sway together. They dance, closer than friends dance. No one is looking at them. They move with an intimacy usually saved for when they are alone. Grace rests her head on Sam.

He thinks a new Sam is born when he holds her. The brave Sam. The Sam he wants to be. The man who doesn't exist without her, who doesn't breath in him alone. They continue to sway, now cheek to cheek.

She feel so soft against him.



Sam sits slumped on his chair waiting for Grace. He can't feel his legs beneath him.

He’s going to tell her.

Be brave, Sam.

Forget Lilly, forget everything, forget everyone.

Be brave, Sam.

Tell her. Go on, love her.

Love her forever.

Grace comes back to the table. She sits down. She looks like she’s been crying.

For a few seconds, no one speaks.

Be brave, Sam.

"Grace, I - "

"Sam, I have to go."

"What?"

"Yeah, I'm just really fucked, and Luke just texted me back and apologized and I just have to go see him. I'm going to just take a cab home, I'm just really fucked. I need to go to bed, I'm really fucked. I don't feel well."

"Oh, okay. Sure."

She gets up, and so does he, but the sound is sucked out of the room.

All he can hear is his own voice in his head, saying, “Be brave, Sam.”

"Sam, tonight was really fun," says Grace, but she sounds like she’s under water.

"Yeah, it was really fun," he can feel himself say, but he’s surprised when it comes out of his mouth.

It echoes.

"It was really good to see you, I really missed you," she says.

And Grace leaves Sam just how she found him; alone at a table with half a drink left.

She walks out the door.

Be brave, Sam, he says to himself once more.

He doesn't stop her.

All he can hear is his heart beating; that human noise he sat there making, not daring to move, not even when the room went dark.

The Way We Were - Short Story Excerpt

This excerpt is from the middle of "The Way We Were" but can be read independently.




It's five o'clock in the afternoon but that really doesn't matter. Once I'm out of the shed, I feel like I can breathe again. I know the relief is fleeting. If I don't get to the corner as quickly as I can I will lose my breath, the rug will be pulled from under me and I'll free fall, deep and fast.

I am the youngest thing here this evening by decades, but that doesn't matter. I can breathe deeply and soon with abandon. I sit next to blonde Rita, who is always happy to see me, and tell myself that I should wait ten minutes before ordering. I will wait ten minutes before ordering.

Four days out of five, the regulars are the AA crowd; just trying to get sober. I see them some nights outside of local churches, smoking yellowed cigarettes together when their meetings end. I give them a quick wave and they just nod back. I don't want to talk to them so close to God. They know that they don't want to talk to me either. I would just remind them that they are still practising alcoholics.
   
This summer that O'Malley's has become a place of worship for me, too. There is no prayer though, only confession.

My relationship with these people was a kind of ultimate closeness coupled with an infinite distance. And it's that distance that allows us to be so close. They know things about me my best friend would never know, because there's no mask I have to wear here.

But we don't spend time together sober. There are no shared interests or people, there is no history between us. What would we talk about? I've come to realize that there's little difference between a young drunk and an old drunk.
As a young drunk, I'm so honest around them because I'm not constantly afraid I'm going to disappoint them. As old drunks, they are so honest around me because I'm one of the few people they haven't disappointed.

Sober, we don't really know each other, we just know things about each other. Drunk, we're best friends, because we know each other's secrets.

They're at those real churches though, four days out of five. Walking away from them I always marvel at the kind of courage it must take to go back to those meetings hung over. I wonder what kind of faith they must have in themselves to really believe that they can quit, one last time and for good. I don't think I could ever face my demons so naked four days out of five.

"How was your day Gracey?" Rita asks me.

"It was good Rita. It was good."

I smile at her, and she smiles back at me. She has a kindness in her eyes.

Rita is the type of woman who is so decent that she has always been good to people. Too good and to the wrong people, and I believe it destroyed her ultimately. I don't know how it would feel to have your defining characteristic as a person be what ruined you. It's a complicated kindness, I guess. I'm not able to be so good to people and maybe that's just fine.

"What do you want tonight Grace?" Tom yells at me from behind the bar.

"My usual." I holler back.

"It's been eight minutes." my keeper says.

"Make that a double."

I sit back in my chair. It'll be a few hours before my friends get here but that's fine. I like being here, alone, with these people.

There is no one watching.


"How's your summer been so far?" Dylan asks me.

"It's great." I smile at him. He's sitting close to me. His hand is on my leg, and it's moving up my thigh, which is strange because we don't talk in real life. His hand feels warm. I don't want him to move it.

"Ar-are you still at school?" I ask him.

I know the answer to that question, he isn't still at school. But it's late, and the room is spinning, and I'm not able to remember conversations I've already had. I try to force myself to think about times I've talked to Dylan before but I can't. My thoughts are shallow right now, and if I try to wade backwards through them I'll just hit a glass wall that hides the past, and bounce off of it, pushing me back into the forefront of my mind. All I'm able to think about is right now, this minute, this second.

The music is loud. I can feel that restlessness in my legs, and I want to move.

"I love this song Dylan, you should dance with me."

"I don't dance Grace."

"Oh really?"   

I can tell I'm still smiling at him, and I shift my body closer to his, filling what little space was left between us.

"Do you want another drink?" he asks me.

"I can't."

His body feels hard pressed next to mine. Seconds slip past us and I don't know what is supposed to happen next. He doesn't know either.

"Do you want to get out of here?" I whisper.




In my room looks bigger than he was just moments ago at the bar.

Things are very quiet between us. I don't know why they are so quiet and so quickly. Maybe there are no words that I should say and maybe there are no words he should say either.

The silence between us is ripe.

Soon there is no pretense anymore, and we aren't polite. He kisses me, and I kiss him back, harder. I want this. I really want this.   

He pushes me into a corner, and the surrounding darkness follows. I can't see in front of me, I can just feel him against me. He touches me, without premeditation. Without permission. Without thought.

"You never used to be this beautiful." he tells me.

I don't know what to say back.

"If you really should be doing this, you'd probably know what to say back" my keeper tells me. 

I pretend I didn't hear her, but I still don't have anything to say back.

Time is fragmented and lapses very quickly. I'm bare and he's bare and suddenly there is nothing actual between us.

It hurts at first, but I like the fullness inside me.

When we're finished, he holds me. In the darkness, he doesn't feel different than the one I was used to. His arms are wrapped around my waist just the same, we are sleeping close together just the same, our breathing is in sync; it's almost all just the same. I fall asleep believing it's the one I'm used to next to me. I'm too drunk to remind myself to notice the differences that separate the two.

I wake up hung over, alone, and next to the familiar ghost.    

Falling Action - Short Story Excerpt

The excerpts, divided by pictures, are from three different parts of the story and don't appear consecutively.




Things kept going as swimmingly as they did the first night. Kate stirred somethin so fuckin powerful in me that after I'd met her I found it near impossible to think o anything else. Which wasn't how I planned it, like, but once I had it, I sure as fuck didn't wanna change it.

Before I met Kate, I had a crap job and a crap life. After, I still had a crap job but it didn't matter anymore, because now I had a great life. An unbelievably great life! Soon we spent every minute together, and she was the first person I'd met that I never got sick of.

I thought long and hard about what made Kate so well different after havin met her folks. I think it was that she was a soul from the future, transported into the wrong time, which was lucky for me, but extremely unlucky for her. She had a certain consciousness to her that not many people here had. She could see all the bullshit and all the insanity. Most people just stood idly by for it, blinded by having seen no other way, and the others, like me, were responsible for it. You could really divide the lot of us into two worlds, like. But Kate, nah, like I said she was from the other world. Tha older world, tha smarter world, tha world that felt a sickening pity for it all. She was above us. She was above me, and why she loved me how she did I can'y tell you. World's biggest mystery.

Far more mysterious than Niagara fuckin' Falls, believe me.



"We are different."

Then she turned her head away from me, and out the window. Mad, like. I didn't know wha ta say. I was worried. Worried because now that she knew it was dangerous for her, and worried she'd leave me.

"The saddest thing is that you think you're fighting for a cause. We all think we're fighting for a cause, and trust me, Sean, I believe in it. I believe in us, and I hate that this place isn't ours, I hate what they're doing to us, but that's the hypocrisy, isn't it? I feel the cause like I feel the blood pumping through me veins, and I can see how insane it all is. You're just a foot soldier in a war that nobodies ever going to win."

"Yer wrong."

You know that thinking part? It was well back at this point. The thinking part that I had aborted was kicking and screaming it's way around my brain again.

"Kate, this is how it is. I can't stand by and do nothin' while our people are dying, while they're killing my brother. He died and he didn't do nothin, so fuck all this. Because there's the way it should be, and there's the way it is. And this being the way it is, I got no other choice."

"I know," she said. "I know." Then she lent her head back against the seat of the car, still crying, and like she was trying to get a clear view at God.

I remember feeling so utterly gutted at this point. I felt so fucked. Like Romeo and Juliet or other star cross'd lovers that were just fucked from the get go but it wasn't really their faults.

"So yer leaving me then?" I asked her, almost afraid to even fill the air around me with that thought.

"Sometimes...sometimes at night when yer sleeping I tell myself to get up and leave and never come back."

"Ya do?"

"Aye... but then I feel like my body is glued to yer sheets. I can't leave ya, Sean. I can't. I just want it to be different."

So did I, but it wasn't, like. So we both had scars on out heart that would never heal.

"Sean, I am going to stay faithful to ye until the day I die," she told me.

"Me longer darlin. This place and beyond."

We sat in that car, in silence, until the sun set and until the moon went to cresent. Then we started to kiss.

Now I'm dead, but I'm still dyin' to kiss her.



We had five months after that.

A lot changed. I gave her a ring, we were goin to be tryin' for babies, all that.

Ya know, I could fill every page in this book with happy memories of us, what happened when we got engaged, fuck, how she looked in the morning time when she'd just woken up, but I'll spare us that. It's just too fuckin' sad.

But if yer curious like, everything in those next five months unfolded naturally and perfectly. We fell more and more in love with each passing hour, each passing second, really. Every night before I went ta sleep she'd kiss me and tell me that she'd be faithful ta me for the rest fo her life. And in tha time we were together, the pain o my brother, the weight of the war, the sadness that was Northern Ireland, it faded a little each day. She was like an angel that came into my life and brought a whole lotta light with her, illuminating everythin' that mattered. She was my soul mate, we were two of a kind, and I know beyon a shadow of a doubt that we woulda been happy for the rest of our days. An I know that she loved the shit out of me, almost as much as I loved her.

But the more she loved the shit out of me, the more she worried, the more she made me promise to be honest with her. I still wasn't always honest, though.

So the last time I kissed her goodbye, she thought I was meetin' Couch at the pub. I still think it was best tha way.

I'd been asked ta do something real small, to just beat up some thug that was botherin' someone's wee brother, and I didn't think nothin' of it. I said yeah of course, and figured I'd be back before night time fell.

Didn' happen like that.

The irony is, that this wasn't even my own doin. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I was walkin' up Victoria Street on my way, and the air smelled of the sea and faintly rusting shipyards of Belfast Lough. It was half four but it was already dark. Night always falls early on winter's nights in Belfast and morning dawns slowly. The city was bathed in this yellow sulphur light, and I remember thinkin' tha I was cold and wishin' I was snug somewhere with Kate, my gorgeous Kate.

And those were my last living thoughts.

It all ended quickly. The sidewalk around me shook with enormous force, and a wave of searing air rushed over me. It lifted me from my feet, and for a second too long I could see it all around me; building comin' down, people catchin' fire, blood, people screamin', horrible screamin' everywhere. I'm not sure how I landed, I lost all sense of up and down. But soon I was coffin'd in debris like, and it crushed me, heavy. I opened my mouth to speak, to yell for Kate, but I only found more debris chokin' me.

And then my mouth filled with blood. And then it was over.

Ya wanna know the funny part? It was my side tha planted the bomb.

Mama - Short Story Excerpt

The excerpts, divided by pictures, are from four different parts of the story and don't appear consecutively.



When she goes home to pick up her bags, Ben's gone. No note. No nothing. She changes into a blouse that covers her chest piece. Since she feels like walking, she drags her bag behind her all the way to the station, the scraping sound loud behind her on the quiet morning streets.

On the way, Cheryl thinks about her father, and how much she wishes she could call him.

"Mom died," she'd say.

"I heard," he'd say.

"You get the same hysterical call from Lori?" she'd asked.

"Yeah," he'd say, raspy, slow, steady.

They'd be dates for the funeral, going for a farmer's breakfast after and order beer with it. They'd end up laughing at how morbid they look, dressed all in black.

She wonders what he would think if he could see her now; pregnant, aimless, in love with a ghost. If he knew about it all, what would he think? If he'd seen everything that happened since he'd gone, would he still love her?

Then she wonders if Daddy's waiting for Mama in heaven. They separated years ago, but maybe he's still waiting for her. She hopes he's waiting for her.

After, she's disgusted with herself for thinking like that, for being so sentimental.

"Grow up," she tells herself.

It doesn't work that way.




"I don't know if your father knew. If he did, he never spoke about it. I didn't like the whole thing. I didn't like David from the
beginning, I didn't think it was right. Your daddy was a good person and he loved Shannon. And in some ways, she did love
your Daddy but not..."

"But not how she loved David?"

"No. Never how she loved David. She loved David enormously. More than I think people should love. It was scary almost."

Every word goes through Cheryl like a bullet, the hot metal melting away her delicate skin, leaving her organs exposed.

"What happened?"

"They got together, you know, after meeting at work. At some bar in town. Your Mama didn't plan it. She told me once it was like she had no say, no control, no choice, and she was thrown into something head first, and before she could blink...they were heavily involved."

"Did she want to leave Daddy for him?"

Aunt Lori brings her hands to her face, sucks in her lips, tight, and doesn't move.

"Forgive me," she whispers.

She looks at Cheryl, and for the first time, Cheryl feels an honesty between them. It's as if the old Aunt Lori has melted away, and now they are just two adults, sharing the same space, confused and lonely but now together.

"She was torn. She was really torn up about it."

"What does that mean?"

"I think she would have. If he would be there for her. But she loved your father, she did. She was just complicated, you know. "

"And Daddy wasn't complicated."

"He put up with a lot from her. He didn't understand her, but he wanted to. He did love her. Your Mama wished that she could love him the same too, I know she did."

Cheryl loved her father because he wasn't complicated. He loved her back, but he never really knew her. They were like two differed breeds, existing in different parallels, but pretending they breathed the same air. Their differences were too great, Cheryl was too complicated for him to even begin to know. Her world existed in colors. He, colorblind, was unable to see anything but black and the white. But colors are not only brilliant, and sometimes the vibrancy is frightening. She longed for the simplicity of the starkness.

Was it the same with Mama?

"What was David like?"

"Handsome. Dynamic. Different from your father. I hated him from the moment I met him, but it wasn't easy."

"What did he look like?"

"Dark-haired. Very tall. He had a width to him, he was strong-looking. Blue eyes. He had soft features. He looked younger than he was. There's a picture of him, upstairs in the hall, with your Mama and I in it. Next to the bible verse. I keep it up because she looks so happy. It's so nice to see her so happy, even though I curse him."

That's the man who looks like Ben, thinks Cheryl. Her body suddenly cold, goose bumps grow all over her, her blood evaporating.

"I don't know what else to say, really. He was magnetic. Funny, smart, stubborn. He wanted bigger things than this town had to offer. He was strange though. There was something tragic that surrounded him. He was a lot like your Mama."

Lori looks down, a new sadness finds her features.

"He was lot like Shannon," she says privately.

"So what ended up happening?"

"Well, they were involved for a long time on and off. Two, three years or so. But when she married your Daddy, she stopped seeing him. I know she did, she changed after that. It was like a light was sucked out of her. She changed, altogether after she stopped seeing him. It was like she died in some ways, right then."

"Really?"

"Yes. The grief she carried around was heavy after they finished. He haunted her. He changed her. Some love is so powerful that it destroys you, I believe that. It destroyed her."

I don't want to be destroyed, thinks Cheryl. Please, don't let me be destroyed, she prays, hoping someone is listening.

"It was him that did it? You believe that?" asks Cheryl, feeling bound. She doesn't really want to know the answer.

"I think...I think she had a hand in it. But she was weak, your Mama, and I don't mean to speak ill of her. But I don't think she was equipped to handle loving someone that deep. I think it was just bad luck that they ever met. Because I don't think she could control it. I think it was almost forced on her, and it got so big, so heavy on her, that she could ever get out from under it. So yes. He did destroy her."

"But she did leave him? Eventually, she left him?"

"Physically, she left him. Yes. Physically she did. But if you want to know the truth, I think she loved him until her heart stopped."

And now, I'm loving someone just as hopelessly. That love didn't stop with her heartbeat. It's alive in me now. Mama's breathing in me, thinks Cheryl. The love, so powerful, so vital, so haunting, will exist beyond time.

"Do you know where I could find him?"

Lori looks winded.

"Why?"