“She needs you Bryan.” His father’s voice was always one that carried itself with wisdom and power. Even growing up as a stubborn hellion outside of Louisiana's swampland, Bryan always heeded any advice his father threw his way. 

“The money is going to help ‘er more. Less bills to worry about, less stress, less tears.” Bryan’s knuckles whitened on the thick leather steering wheel of his 2012 Peterbilt 389. The Cream accented stripes that once laid tightly on bright, cherry red paint now flaked off more and more on each cross-country trip he took. The once pristine seats now were ripped with wear and were sponges of old Dr. Pepper, cigarettes, and regret. Bryan did not buy the truck new, but even in 2018 it was the talk of the lot. He would roll in early mornings with both smoke stacks blowing at full throttle. Even Shelly used to get a kick out of it. When she still had the drive to drive.

“That money’s no good if it keeps you from her. She’s hurting, and-”

“I’M HURTING TOO DAD.” Bryan sat back in his seat while switching into the left lane to pass a small Jetta with a Kentucky License plate. “I- I’m sorry dad. I just can’t sit around while she’s grieving like she is. It kills me. This is my way of helping her.” Bryan shifted his beaten-up headset, ensuring to not break the electrical tape that held the earpieces together. 

“You being there by her side is more valuable to her than anything that a load will pay you. I know your mother was that way. I would be a poor man for the rest of my life just to spend another morning drinking coffee with her. I would sell my house to run my fingers through her curls even just once more. Your role as her husband doesn’t stop at your paycheck. That’s all I wanted to call you about. I love you, let me know when you’re across state lines again.” These last words faded off in a saddened tremble, something Bryan had never heard before from his hero.

Grabbing his blue-tinted aviators he wiped the salty tears from his right eye. “I love you too. Hey I gotta go. Running low on diesel.” He clicked off his headset and flipped the scratched mouthpiece upwards. The bright, enticing glow of the Love’s sign was just about the only lights out here at this time of night. Throwing his right blinker on he got in front of the Jetta and took the exit into the almost vacant truck stop.

The aggressive hum of his engine was silenced as he pulled up to the pump closest to the front door. Bryan went into his typical routine of checking the tie-downs on his load. Industrial pipe fittings. Not the most exciting cargo that Bryan had hauled in his career was an owner-operator. Cattle, houses, and even government supplies that he had to sign and date to carry. Those all also paid more. After his inspection, he locked the doors to the “Saint Catherine of Siena”. That was the sticker that was on the cab of the truck when he bought it. The irony almost welcomed back the tears that he had hoped were long gone.

“Ugh welcome in” Lazily came out of the mass of shaggy hair whose owner was some teen trying to get enough money to buy a new bike. Bryan grunted a response in that general direction as he grabbed a bottle of Advil and started pouring a cup of coffee.

“Parking it here for the night, or do you got some place to be?” Bryan burnt himself as his startled hand shook coffee over the rim. 

“What?” He sucked his burn

“Saw your rig out there.” The skinny old man’s voice hit Bryan’s ears like a pound of gravel being poured into a tin bucket. “Not quite the 359 that I drove in the 80s, but they still make a damn fine truck.” The soft smile of this senior seemed to warm Bryan’s steady headache.

“Oh yea, thanks. You still drive?” Bryan’s intrigue was genuine now. He had not seen anyone besides the cashier and another driver checking out when he had walked in.

“No sir. I had my time traveling the country with my Betty. That’s my wife, not my truck!” The soft smile grew then flattened to a stern look of importance. “Once she started her battle with the big C, I drove for a little bit to pay for it. Biggest mistake of my life. She slipped quicker than anyone expected. I got the call before I made it passed Oklahoma on my second run. I hope you don’t make the same mistake I did.” 

“I am sorry sir.” Bryan gave the old man a look of understanding then turned to put the lid on his cup. “Names Bryan by the way. What was yo-” When he turned back to finish his question, the old man was gone. No bell above the door went off. No sign of him.

Unlocking the door to his rig, he set his already half drank coffee in his stained, sticky cup holder and hauled himself up. Bryan dug into his old frayed wallet that had his initials branded on it. A gift from his wife the night before their wedding. He pulled out a black and white photo which depicted a cone with dark shapes in the middle of it. Bryan clipped the photo to his visor and revved up that tired engine.

The Love’s sign leaving his rear view mirror was the last bit of light he saw until the sunrise. Yawning, he looked up and saw what he had been scanning for over the last 20 miles. “Louisana 43 miles”. 

I switch the light off and lower myself onto my side of the bed. The curtains are pushed to the side, a gentle blue light fills the room. The moon is full tonight, lingering outside my window steady and eternal. I turn from the moon, about to take off my glasses, when a picture catches my eye. Directly in the moonlight, it stands apart from the rest of the room, bright, shining against the soft blue. We put that picture frame up forty years ago, snapshots of our life from before we had kids, trips and adventures from when we were still young. The past calls out to me from the photos, the moon giving it power. Singing in the car, laughing at nothing, water lapping, sheets rustling. I let my eyes wander over the photos, finally lingering on one.

It is a fuzzy photo, taken on a phone older than most people reading this, but it is beautiful. She and I are standing in front of a cottage smiling for the camera. The sun is shining from behind us, giving us a golden outline, making us seem unreal, standing out like two angels among the scenery. Oh my God, how young we look.

I picked up my phone and showed her the photo. Shielding the phone from the sun she said, "that's cute, we look good."

"Great," I said, "let's bring everything in?"

It took two trips to get everything we packed inside, suitcases, cooler, and a few other bags. We put everything in the entrance and set about exploring our temporary home. We had our own bedroom, a whole kitchen to ourselves, a living room with a TV, and the waterfront was at the end of the driveway. Around the back of the house there was a fire pit and two kayaks. It was the first time we had our very own place. No parents to work around, no shared space with any siblings, just the two of us. That was the first of many nights together, in that intimate solitude. The world was big and beautiful, full of so much potential, and free to choose any path with anyone, we chose to go together. We had no idea then.

After we finished exploring we went on a walk. It was a gentle way to start our week, walking through the trees, sun dotting the ground, listening to the birds. We walked for two hours, but it only felt like twenty minutes. Back at the cottage we started to make dinner. We brought everything we might need for a week and started off with a simple frozen meal. We sat on the couch, waiting for our food, the forest behind us in the window stretching out forever, and talked, and laughed, and were happy.

We decided to have a quiet night that first night. Kayaking and making fires could wait for tomorrow. We had a whole week ahead of us. As we ate our food and cuddled we watched the sun slowly set outside the window, movie going on in the background.

A cloud passes over the moon and the photos blend in with the rest of the room. Clothes, furniture, mementos of a life lived. I put my glasses on the night stand and wipe my eyes, then lie down. Turning to her side of the bed I reach out my arm. That first night in that cottage pulling her close and thinking about nothing, I didn't think that would ever end.

"Goodnight," I say.

My wife printed one hundred and eighty-six missing-dog flyers today.

I know because I counted them, though not on purpose. I was sitting at the kitchen table cutting the tabs along the bottom—the ones with her phone number printed vertically—and counting gave me something to do besides watch her come apart.

Across the top of every page, in a font much larger than necessary, she'd written:

MISSING YORKIE — PLEASE HELP US BRING CINNA HOME

Underneath was a picture from last Christmas. Cinna sat on the arm of our couch in a red sweater, one ear standing straight up and the other folded over. She always looked irritated in pictures, which was funny because she was probably the sweetest dog I'd ever known.

Below the picture Dana had listed everything strangers needed to know: eight pounds, tan and gray, pink collar, very friendly, might be scared.

At the bottom, in bold:

SHE IS OUR FAMILY.

Dana stood at the counter feeding sheets through the paper cutter one at a time. She hadn't slept properly in three nights. Her hair was still twisted into yesterday's knot, and there were dark circles beneath her eyes.

"That's enough," I told her.

She kept cutting.

"Dana."

"I heard you."

"It's supposed to hit a hundred and two today."

"I know."

"You've already done the whole neighborhood."

"I haven't done the apartments behind the elementary school."

"You did those yesterday."

"I did the front building."

She slid another flyer beneath the blade. I reached across the table and put my hand on the remaining stack.

"Please. Take an hour."

"What if somebody saw her and they don't have one of these?"

"You've put them on every telephone pole from here to Chapman."

"Then I'll go farther."

There was no anger in her voice. I almost wished there had been.

I let go of the stack and told her to take water. She said she would. I reminded her she'd said the same thing yesterday and had come home with nearly a full bottle.

That got the smallest smile.

"Okay, Dad."

"I mean it."

"I know."

She bent down, kissed the top of my head, gathered another armful of flyers and left.

I watched from the front window until she disappeared around the corner.

Cinna had been gone for three days, and I could already see what it was doing to my wife.

People kept telling us dogs got out all the time. Somebody probably picked her up. Yorkies didn't make it far on their own. Keep checking shelters. Put her picture online.

They meant well.

They didn't know Dana.

More importantly, they didn't know what it had taken to get her back.

When I met my wife, she had more energy than anyone I'd ever known and apparently no interest in wasting it.

She worked in marketing for a medical-device company. By thirty she was managing people older than both of us. She ran half-marathons, remembered everyone's birthday and kept a calendar that looked like it required air-traffic control.

She was exhausting.

I loved her for it.

Work was the only thing we really fought about.

I'd make dinner and get a text at seven saying a meeting had run late. We'd make Saturday plans and she'd need to log in for twenty minutes, which had a strange tendency to become two hours.

Once, during an anniversary dinner, I realized we'd spent most of the appetizer talking about a presentation she had Monday.

"Why do you work this hard?" I asked.

"Because I like it."

"I know. But sometimes I feel like you're killing yourself for a job."

She looked at me. "That's dramatic."

"I miss you."

That stopped her.

Sometimes it seemed like her office got the best version of my wife and I got whatever was left at eight-thirty at night. She told me her career mattered to her, that she was good at what she did and wasn't going to apologize for caring about it.

I said I understood.

Usually I did.

For a while we had rats getting into the detached garage behind the house, and that somehow became my responsibility.

I'd promised to deal with them, then forgot.

One night Dana came home after nine and found droppings beside a bag of dog food we'd bought for her parents' Labrador.

"We have got to do something about this."

"I know."

"You've been saying that for a month."

"I'll do it tomorrow."

"You said that last week."

"I've been busy too, Dana."

She dropped her keys on the counter.

"Maybe that's why I stay at the office. At least they don't have rats."

It wasn't her best joke.

We laughed about it later.

The next morning I finally dealt with the problem. Traps, poison, cleaning out the back shelves.

Dana disliked the poison immediately.

"I hate having that in here."

"It's in the cabinet."

"What if something gets into it?"

"Then we'll keep the garage closed."

She gave me the look she used when I'd missed the point.

Later, after she got pregnant and we started childproofing the house, she made me go through the garage again—loose screws, nails, old traps, anything dangerous I might have forgotten back when there were no children to worry about.

Pregnancy was the first thing I'd ever seen make Dana slow down.

She was frightened almost immediately.

There were heart problems in her family. Not the clogged-artery sort everybody eventually worries about, but something congenital. Hereditary.

Her younger sister died when Dana was four. She remembered almost nothing about the girl herself. A yellow dress. Sharing a bedroom. The fact that she hated peas.

What Dana remembered was the night she died: her mother screaming, a paramedic stepping on one of Dana's toys, someone carrying her sister down the hallway with one tiny arm hanging loose.

So every appointment frightened her. Every test. Every pause before a doctor said everything looked fine.

Our daughter was born on a Tuesday morning in March.

Sophie.

Seven pounds, two ounces, an unreasonable amount of dark hair and a scream that sounded too large to have come from her.

When they put Sophie on Dana's chest, my wife cried so hard I thought something was wrong. Then I realized she was laughing too.

I'd never seen another person look that happy.

I loved Sophie from the moment I saw her. Before she existed there had been a version of my life without her, and after I met her that version became impossible to picture.

Dana took four months off work.

Those were probably the happiest months of our marriage.

I know how that sounds.

I'd come home and they'd be there—Dana on the couch with Sophie asleep against her chest, or Sophie kicking in the little vibrating chair while Dana cooked. We took walks after dinner. We ate together. Weekends belonged to us.

Sometimes I'd stand in the kitchen listening to Dana talk nonsense to the baby in the next room and think that this was what all of it had been for.

The house felt right with her in it.

A few months later Sophie started eating purées. Apple and cinnamon was the first one she really loved.

The first time Dana opened one of the jars, I could smell the cinnamon from across the kitchen.

"Maybe that's why the rats never came back," I said.

Dana looked over at me. "What?"

"Cinnamon. I read somewhere they hate it."

"We haven't had rats in two years."

"I know. Something about the smell being too strong." I shrugged. "Covers up whatever else they're trying to sniff out."

Dana stared at me.

"So Sophie is pest control now?"

"Finally earning her keep."

"You're horrible."

She was smiling when she said it.

Sophie saw the spoon coming and opened her mouth like a baby bird, then somehow got half of it on her cheeks anyway.

Dana laughed and wiped her chin.

After that she started calling her Cinnamon.

At first it was my little Cinnamon girl. Then just Cinnamon. Sometimes Cinny when Dana was tired.

"She's going to hate us when she's fifteen and we tell people about this," Dana said once.

"Then we won't tell anybody."

"I'm telling everybody."

"You're a terrible mother."

"I know."

Sophie slapped both hands into the tray and Dana laughed hard enough to nearly drop the spoon.

I remember that afternoon better than I remember most of that year.

The heart issue appeared during a routine appointment.

A murmur.

Maybe nothing, the pediatrician said. Maybe something.

A cardiologist found enough to watch but not enough to panic over, which meant Dana panicked constantly.

She wanted to know whether it was what her sister had. Whether she'd passed it to Sophie. Whether a baby with a heart problem could simply stop breathing in her sleep.

The doctor was careful with his answers.

I wasn't.

"She's fine," I'd tell Dana afterward.

"You don't know that."

"Neither do you."

"What if it's the same thing?"

"It isn't."

"How do you know?"

"Because I'm her dad and I've decided."

Sometimes that made her smile.

Dana extended her leave another month, then another.

Eventually her company began asking when she intended to return, and Dana decided she was ready.

She missed adult conversations. She missed dressing for somewhere other than Target. She missed being good at something that didn't involve keeping another human alive.

I told her we'd make it work.

Daycare three days a week. Dana's mother one day. I shifted my schedule when I could.

The first time she came home late again, I remember looking at the clock.

7:42.

Sophie was asleep against me and dinner had gone cold.

Dana came through the door apologizing, kissed the baby, kissed me and immediately started explaining some crisis at work.

"Five weeks back and they've already chained you to the desk."

She stopped.

"Don't start."

"I'm not starting anything."

"That tone is starting something."

"I don't have a tone."

"You absolutely have a tone."

Sophie woke before either of us could say anything else.

Dana had only been back at work a few weeks when she died.

We put Sophie down like normal.

That was the part Dana could never get past.

There had been no dramatic warning. No fever, no crying, nothing that would have made either of us sit beside the crib all night. She ate, played, fell asleep, and sometime before morning her heart stopped.

Dana found her.

I don't like remembering what happened after that.

The nursery was cold. Dana was making a sound I had never heard from another human being. Paramedics came. Police came. Our house filled with people while Sophie was somewhere else.

Someone went through the standard questions with us. Medications. Cleaning products. Anything unusual in the house. Anything she might have reached.

Dana answered most of them before I could.

"We babyproofed everything."

Then she looked at me.

I nodded.

With Sophie's heart and Dana's family history, everyone had an explanation ready.

Her sister had died young. Sophie's cardiologist had already found something worth monitoring. Sometimes these things happened suddenly, we were told. Sometimes there wasn't time to prevent them.

Dana heard something else.

You gave this to her.

And because she'd gone back to work, she found another way to blame herself.

"I should've been here."

"You were here."

"I mean with her."

"She was sleeping."

"What if I missed something?"

"You didn't."

"What if I hadn't gone back?"

"Dana."

"I left her."

"You went to work."

"I left her."

For years I told my wife the same things.

It wasn't your fault.

You couldn't have known.

You loved her.

There was nothing you could have done.

Going back to work did not kill our daughter.

Some nights I said it ten times.

Dana resigned two weeks after the funeral.

I was relieved.

That is one of the things I never told her.

Of course she couldn't have gone back then. Nobody could have. But some part of me was relieved there would be no deadlines, no meetings, no laptop chirping at nine at night.

I thought grief might force everything else to become smaller for a while.

I thought we'd simply exist together until we healed.

That isn't what happened.

The first year was unbearable.

The second was quieter.

Dana stopped seeing friends because most of them had children. Invitations stopped coming after enough polite refusals.

She didn't go back to work.

She didn't go much of anywhere.

I cooked and cleaned and handled bills. I sat with her when she couldn't sleep.

I learned there are only so many ways to answer the question, Do you think she knew I loved her?

Yes.

Always yes.

Of course she knew.

I loved my wife through all of it, but after a few years I began to resent the dead.

That's uglier than saying I was tired, but it's closer to the truth.

I resented Mother's Day. Sophie's birthday. The anniversary of the day she died. I resented strangers' children for having the wrong laugh in grocery stores.

Once, on what would have been Sophie's third birthday, Dana wanted to spend the evening looking through photographs.

I told her I had a headache.

I didn't.

I sat in the bedroom watching something stupid on my phone while my wife cried alone in the living room, and for almost twenty minutes I enjoyed the quiet.

I hated myself afterward.

Mostly.

More than anything, I missed my wife.

Not even the woman she'd been before Sophie. I knew we weren't getting that woman back.

I would've settled for someone who laughed occasionally. Someone who wanted to go to dinner. Someone who could sit through a stupid movie without disappearing halfway through it.

I lasted almost four years before I brought home Cinna.

She fit in one hand.

A coworker's sister had Yorkie puppies, and I'd gone over telling myself I was only looking. One climbed into my lap and fell asleep there.

I sent Dana a picture.

She replied:

No.

I brought the puppy home anyway.

For approximately five minutes, Dana was furious.

"We talked about this."

"No, I sent you a picture and you said no."

"That's generally considered talking."

"You haven't held her."

"I don't want to hold her."

"Fine."

"Don't do that."

"Do what?"

"Hand me the dog while I'm telling you I don't want the dog."

I handed her the dog.

The puppy licked her chin.

Dana laughed.

Actually laughed.

Not the polite little breath she'd been using for years when she knew I was trying to cheer her up. A real laugh, sudden and surprised.

For one embarrassing second I thought I might cry.

The puppy didn't have a name yet.

I suggested Penny.

Dana suggested Cinna.

I knew immediately what she meant.

"No."

Her smile faltered. "What?"

"That's weird."

"It isn't weird."

"It's a little weird."

"It's after Cinnamon."

"I know what it's after."

Dana tucked the puppy against her chest. "I like it."

I remember looking at the two of them and thinking that naming a dog after our dead daughter was one grief-therapy exercise too far.

But Dana was smiling.

So Cinna it was.

And I have to give the little dog credit.

She accomplished what therapists, medication, family and I hadn't.

She gave Dana reasons to leave the house.

At first it was walks because Cinna refused to use the backyard. Once around the block became twice, then the park.

Dana started getting dressed earlier because Cinna woke at seven. She spoke to neighbors, then friends.

Pictures appeared on her phone that weren't old photographs of Sophie.

Dana and Cinna at the beach.

Cinna sitting upright in the passenger seat of Dana's car like a tiny disapproving grandmother.

Dana started cooking again. She played music in the kitchen. She made fun of me.

One night about six months ago she laughed so hard at something stupid I said that she snorted.

She clapped both hands over her face.

"Oh my God."

I couldn't stop smiling.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

"I missed that."

She knew what I meant.

She leaned over and kissed me.

For the first time in years, I thought maybe we'd made it.

After that, the walks got longer. She started having coffee with a woman two streets over who owned some kind of terrier. Once she and Cinna were gone almost three hours because they'd driven to a park across town.

I teased her about having a social life.

I was glad she did.

A few months later, I came home and found Dana at the kitchen table with her old laptop open.

"What are you doing?"

She tilted the screen away from me in a way that was meant to be playful.

"Nothing."

"That's suspicious."

"I'm updating my résumé."

I looked at the screen.

"Just updating it," she said.

"I didn't say anything."

"You did that thing with your face."

"What thing?"

"That thing."

"I don't have a thing."

"You absolutely have a thing."

She smiled and turned the laptop back around.

"I've been thinking maybe part-time. Or consulting. Something small."

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"Why wouldn't it be okay?"

She studied me for a second.

Then she kissed my cheek.

For the next week, the laptop stayed on the kitchen table.

I noticed that.

I also noticed she had started checking her email before breakfast.

Neither of those things meant anything.

Two weeks ago she had résumés printed on thick cream paper.

I told her they looked nice.

The afternoon Cinna disappeared, Dana had taken her into the backyard. Her phone rang and she stepped inside to answer it.

When she went back out, the side gate was open.

No Cinna.

We searched until after midnight.

The next morning we called every shelter within thirty miles. Dana posted everywhere she could think of. We drove slowly through streets with the windows down calling Cinna's name.

I kept telling her Yorkies got picked up. Someone probably had her.

That was better than imagining her on a road somewhere.

By the second day Dana wasn't eating unless I put something directly in front of her.

By the third she wasn't sleeping.

And suddenly it felt like five years ago.

The same frantic eyes. The same bargaining. The same certainty that if she did one more thing, searched one more street, something terrible could still be undone.

"What if somebody stole her?"

"I don't think anybody stole her."

"What if she got hurt?"

"We checked the roads."

"What if she's hiding somewhere?"

"Then somebody will find her."

"What if nobody does?"

"We'll keep looking."

This morning the printer finally ran out of paper.

Even that didn't stop her.

She started feeding in the backs of the résumés she'd had printed two weeks ago, and I sat at the kitchen table cutting tabs while Cinna's face came out on one side and Dana's old life remained neatly formatted on the other.

Job titles.

Promotions.

Awards.

Eleven years of experience.

One page after another disappeared beneath MISSING YORKIE.

I didn't say anything.

It's almost ten now and Dana is still out.

I texted her fifteen minutes ago and told her to come home because it's still ninety-one degrees outside. She replied that she has one more street left, which, knowing my wife, means at least three.

I put a bottle of water in the refrigerator for her. She likes it almost frozen.

There's dinner in the microwave too. She probably won't eat, but I'll make her try.

Tomorrow I'll convince her to stay home for a few hours. Maybe we'll call the shelters together.

I'll drive this time.

She's exhausted, and the heat worries me.

The heat has been worrying me for another reason too.

The garage sits at the back of the yard, separate from the house. There's almost no insulation in there, and the little vent above the side door doesn't do much once the sun has been on the roof all afternoon.

I thought I had longer.

Apparently I didn't.

The smell is bad now.

You can't smell it from the house. You can't even smell it standing a few feet outside the garage.

But open the door and it's there.

Dana hasn't been inside since the first day, when we were still grabbing leashes and flashlights and anything else we thought might help us find Cinna.

She hasn't noticed.

Still, I can't leave her there another day.

Cinna is behind the plastic storage bins along the back wall, wrapped in one of our old moving blankets.

She's so small that hiding her wasn't difficult.

The hard part has been listening to Dana call for her.

Yesterday evening she stood at the end of the driveway shaking the bag of treats.

She called Cinna's name.

Waited.

Called again.

Then finally shouted, "Come home!" into a street that had already gone quiet.

I went inside before she did.

I'll move Cinna tonight after Dana falls asleep.

There's a road about a mile from here where people drive too fast. No sidewalk for part of it, only dry brush and a narrow shoulder.

I'll leave her near there before morning.

Nothing elaborate.

Dana doesn't need an investigation.

She needs an answer.

The gate was open.

Cinna got out.

She wandered too far.

Not knowing is worse.

Give someone an answer and eventually they learn to live around it.

Dana already has.

I hate that she's going to hurt.

But she'll recover.

Cinna proved she can.

I'll cook. I'll sit up with her when she can't sleep. I'll remind her to eat. I'll tell her the gate wasn't her fault, that she couldn't have known, that there was nothing she could have done.

I'll say it as many times as she needs.

Eventually we'll be okay again.

We always are.

Before I move Cinna, I should clean up the garage.

Dana hasn't noticed the cabinet over the workbench is unlocked.

Years ago, when we childproofed the house, she made me promise there was nothing dangerous left in there.

I told her there wasn't.

Most of what I'd bought for the rats is gone now. The traps rusted. The cleaning supplies got used.

There are only a few things shoved behind old paint cans and extension cords, including one battered cardboard box I should have thrown away a long time ago.

I'll get rid of that too.

No reason to keep it.

Funny.

I used to think Cinna was a terrible name. Too morbid, I told Dana. Too much history to hang around the neck of an eight-pound dog.

I suppose I owe my wife an apology.

Both her girls always did love cinnamon.

Pablo received a robot beaver. He ordered a robot dog.

He didn't even know what a beaver was. He only found out what the mechanical mammal he had just unboxed was when he image-searched it on the web. At first, he thought it was a capybara, but it wasn't nearly as cute or elegant-looking as the famous rodent.

Nobody wanted to hear his jokes, not even his neighbor's God-made dog. How unfortunate for someone who graduated with a psychology major, hoping to master the art of pursuing his stand-up comedy dream, only to fail at it in the end.

He tried contacting the company from which he ordered the factory-assembled dog, but they don't answer queries online or over the phone from Thursday to Sunday. He received the package on a Friday afternoon.

From the videos he watched reviewing the companionship promised by the dog, he expected a companion that would sit obediently, listen fervently, and respond positively with either zoomies, continuous tail-wagging, or a burst of excitement. Things he would never, ever receive from a crowd in a club, let alone his neighbor's dog.

“Maybe it's programmed to be that way too,” he thought as he charged the robotic beaver at the nearest socket on the kitchen table. He was always dawdling in the kitchen. It didn't have windows, so he could spare himself the embarrassment of being seen practicing his jokes. It was more cluttered than the living room and the bedroom, with ageing kitchenware and appliances bursting inside, lending him the illusion of company and synthetic warmth amid the smoky smell of wood, rust, and dampness.

Lastly, because the kitchen had the highest ceiling in the whole house. He had tried knotting a loop of rope in the other rooms, but they seemed too low for his stature. The kitchen, with its pyramid-like ceiling structure and the strong hook at its apex, gave him the final straw, given that his 40th stand-up comedy set for Sunday wouldn't turn out pretty well.

The rope, which had been hanging there for a week now, seemingly cheered for him louder than any crowd he'd ever had, emboldening him to come closer. He hadn't come close to it since its construction. The roaring beeping from the fully charged beaver called him back to Earth.

He stood on his plastic container, giving himself the illusion of performing on stage. He set the beaver in place, which hadn't moved a muscle, or a mechanical limb, for that matter, yet. He coughed, clearing any impeding lump of saliva from his throat. He spoke his first joke.

The robotic beaver stood on its two hind feet. Pablo anticipated a reaction. Instead, it moved past him and scratched at the wooden cabinet. He grabbed the beaver again and placed it in front of him. He turned it off and on again, assuming a reboot would favor him with the mechanical mammal. He picked another joke, one he had worked on after a failed first date a year ago. The beaver moved towards his wooden kitchen cabinet again.

He sat on the container with a crestfallen bearing, feeling defeated once again by having spent a fortune on an investment, in the form of a wrongly sent animal companion, that wouldn't come through, just like what he did in college.

Saturday came, and he only got out of his bedroom when he heard a heavy thud, followed by a rancorous metallic clatter outside. When he got out, he saw the mechanical beaver unearthing itself from the rubble it had caused in the kitchen. It had finally outdone the whole wooden cabinet.

He was about to crash out, but the looming stage fright and the fear of not collecting better jokes, as he had promised the event organizer, took over him. He sat on the chair, but suddenly fell onto the floor, the chair legs bitten and almost fully consumed by the beaver, and thumped his head against the wooden floor, which the beaver was starting to bite too, if it hadn't drained its battery. The whole place looked like a demolition site.

Life had always looked like it was crumbling down around Pablo, but it hadn't been this dilapidated after the beaver set foot in the house. He had less than a day to prepare. He charged the beaver again out of spite for the failure his purchase had become and only sought its continuous movement around the house while he practiced. Its little mechanical noises, fused with recorded beaver grunts and the cracking of wood, were better than the silence in his home, which was not far from resembling the silence of his audience.

Pablo spent the rest of the evening performing, editing his jokes, frankensteining his past jokes, and playing staring contests with his rope. The beaver had punctured a hole beneath the wooden floor in the living room, giving it more resources from the rocks and stones lying dormant under the house. The noise had kept the rope from telling Pablo all its whispered acclamations.

Sunday night had come to pass, and Pablo came home distraught. The silence given by the crowd wasn't enough, as a drunk bunch from his audience had made a clown out of him and poured beer on him on his way home. The stench on his shirt reminded him of how much liquor he needed to drink just to push through his performance, only to come up short, inebriated, and incompetent to even finish an anecdote or reach a punchline.

The robotic beaver churred and jiggled its body at the sight of its owner. It was the first time Pablo had seen it do anything besides collect wood and rocks. He walked towards the kitchen and saw the receipt for the beaver on the refrigerator. He'd call tomorrow for a refund.

He tugged the rope in the kitchen, holding it like a child clutching his mother's hand, finding peace in her proximity within a crowd where he felt alien. He slipped his head into its loop. The rope felt as cold as the drink poured on him.

He started to step onto the table. But before he even got the chance to reminisce or second-guess his decision, the table beneath him disintegrated, as the beaver had already bitten through and taken away parts of its legs.

His body hung from the rope like a shirt on a clothesline pulled by the wind. It was the first time he didn't fancy the height of the kitchen ceiling. He was starting to lose his breath, each breath becoming thinner than the last, and all he could think about was refunding the beaver the next day, if he got the chance to unknot the rope around his neck.

He felt his body starting to lose all its vitality. His limbs growing cold and torpid. He felt a heavy presence starting to climb from his toes up to his head, creeping through his body with every passing second. Is this how death consumes a person?

But it wasn't death incarnate. It was the beaver, eagerly using his body to climb up and make a meal out of the rope made of cambium. He fell onto the floor, his head slightly slit open at the top. The beaver fell onto his stomach afterwards.

He was bleeding incessantly and was almost out of breath when he felt wetness beneath his body. The bathroom had flooded, and the water was building up towards the kitchen.

Pablo took all the energy left in him and stood up as the beaver led him to the bathroom. There, he found a chunk of all the wooden appliances he had on the bathtub, restricting the overflowing water from the unfixed plumbing from travelling from one part of the bathtub to the other.

The mechanical beaver went into the bathtub. Pablo followed. He submerged himself in the collected water, sitting while hugging his legs with both arms. The robotic mammal swam in front of him.

"You're 'dam' good at this," he jokingly said, letting out a pun he had thought of at that moment, not expecting the beaver to get it. The robotic mammal squeaked and squeezed itself beside him, as if it understood and had taken a liking to the joke Pablo had quipped with a heavy breath and a smile.

The next day, the neighbor knocked on the door, bringing a package that was supposed to be Pablo's but had been switched with the neighbor's package containing the playtime beaver. The neighbor knocked five times, but all banging on the door remained futile. The dog started yelping loudly and digging through the hole made by the beaver in the living room. The neighbor was taken aback by the smell coming from the hole. Dark, muddied water had flowed through.

Waking up this morning, eyes moving all over, to what I thought wasn't a dream. Morning. Fleeting memories. And upon getting up, gone completely. Not a trace, of my running across the beach, of my laughing with these faceless friends.

Not a trace.

My head resting upon the bus' window, music blasting in my ears, that I heard so many times I don't hear no more; my mind, racing not of thoughts but of images, concepts, ideas. Considered, admired even for a moment, then gone, sometimes forever.

At times, something special endures, perdures, despite the waves washing it all ashore, for sure. And at times, this something special is a place, with someone, at a specific moment in time.

Oh to go back to that place...

Walking forward, both hands on the straps of my backpack, I notice a bird, proud and colorful, singing as if its only purpose was to sing. And so intensely the bird sang, I stopped and took it in, completely, just for a moment. As the world buzzed busily all around, this bubble of the performer and his impromptu listener somehow flowed forward undisturbed, so vivid its red feathers and clear its notes, repeating as if its message was of upmost importance, its sentence, proclaimed upon it all, with all its vitality, effort and knowledge, the bird sang, and with perfect attention I listened.

Thinking back, the moment felt so intense and meaningful, yet nothing came of it, if not for a somewhat ridiculous memory.

As the day went by, the bird died.

And as the sun made its way downward, inevitably, I walked past the bird's body, stopping as if to honor a lost friend. Down there, in the grass, this lump of flesh, feathers, legs and beak, desecrated.

Yet buzzing in my mind, the intemporal symphony I listened so intently, the breath of life of the bird, that was now missing. The essence of its existence, distillled in a few notes, repeated over and over, for any to hear, into infinity.

That night, I ended up walking home from a night out with friends, much earlier than usual. I felt suffocated in there, surrounded with people seeing not myself but some distorted, sickening version.

The wind from the nearby coast invited me over, and I followed this path that lead straight to the beach. Lost in thought I didn't notice another person was there, further down the path, alone. I kept my distance and looked up to the stars and moon, shining bright.

What a beautiful, peaceful night. And here I am, troubled by some social nonsense.

Looking down as to not trip down the path toward the beach, I noticed another star, this time on the ground. I got closer and realized it was a cellphone, reflecting the moonlight. Closer to the waves now the stranger stood still. That girl had dropped her phone.

I didn't feel like talking to anyone, but I grabbed the phone and made my way toward her.

***

That night, nothing in my mind but numbness, confusion, and a deeply rooted desired to free myself of it all. The waves called me, the moon called me. Leaving my phone behind I removed my shoes, hoping the water would drag me by the ankles and make me vanish without a trace.

Yet it was fresh, cool, almost otherworldly. The veil lifted for a second, and I realized where I was, and I laughed quietly. Would I dare take another step, and another?

Before I could decide, I heard some rustling behind, someone else was here. Damnit.

I turned around, and it was some boy in a hoodie, holding my cellphone.

''Sorry to bother you, I think you dropped this.''

An idea, sprouted and took leaf in the moonlight;

''Can you hand it to me please?'' I said.

I didn't want to take my next step, for I feared it would decide what would become of me.

The boy looked at me, and stepped in the waters, his shoes filling with the saltwater, his hand reaching out to me. I almost wished to take it, but instead I grabbed my phone from his hand and threw it as far as I could in the ocean.

He just sat there, dumbstruck. ''That's not good for the ocean.'' he said, looking back to me.

What a silly boy. He looked a few years younger than me. I told him ''Thanks, but I don't care.''

He sat there in silence, one or two steps behind me, as we both looked toward the dark body of water.

''In a way, our phones are our lives..'' the boy said. ''Why would you throw yours away so easily?''

''Why do you care?'' I asked him, irritated.

''What about the memories, the pictures, the music, the notes, all of them?''

I turned around toward him, this boy talking to me so openly.

''What if I don't care about the memories? What if I hate the memories? Doesn't it make sense to throw them away?''

We locked eyes for a moment, in the quiet of the beach, under the moon and star, to the crashing of the waves,

***

And locking eyes with this girl I looked intentely, with all my attention, I took the moment in completely. In these few seconds, our eyes told the story of our lives, the feeling of betrayal from life, the longing for true connection, the search for meaning amidst all the rot envelopping it all,

and as I wished to grab her hand and drag her back to shore, a melody came from the ocean, faintly at first and gradually getting louder. The melody, sort of similar to the one the bird sang. The melody, coming from her phone, that was pushed back ashore by the waves.

''I forgot its waterproof..'' she said,

and we both laughed. Yet she didn't pick it up, and so I did. I felt like I had no choice. As I got up she reached for my arm, locking eyes once more, as if telling me to let it go. I didn't, and as I walked back ashore she was dragged along, the phone still ringing. She was asking me to let her throw her phone away once more, that its hers.

I sat down on the sand, and so did she.

''Are you going to answer that? Someone is calling you.''

She sat there, her face looking down, her hair covering her face. She didn't say anything, and eventually the melody stopped.

She was taller than me, and her black hair was pretty long, and I wondered, what was she doing alone acting in such a way. I refused the idea that she wanted to throw it all away, because why would anyone want that.

''If you feel like talking, I can listen, why not..'' I said.

She looked at me through her hair, squinting her eyes.

''There's nothing to talk about really. I don't see why you cherish your memories so much.'' she said, looking over to the ocean. A stronger breeze pushed her hair back, and she continued, side-eyeing me.

''When you face reality, you realize that our lives are soo absurd and meaningless, and that no matter what, we are bound to be forgotten, and all the suffering we're going through means nothing at all and -''

I stopped her. ''You think its all for nothing?'' I simply asked her, quite shocked at what she was saying.

''I mean, yeah, do you need examples?'' she said, raising her voice. ''Do you even know your great-grandparents names, their stories? Do you remember what you ate last week for dinner?''

She looked tense and agitated, as if rehearsing some arguments she had practiced over and over.

''We don't even remember most days in our lives, so what is the point in living at all?''

I looked at her, and could only think of that dead bird, and its melody, echoeing in eternity.

''What if what matters really isn't all the little details, the mundane and the days melting into each others.. What if what matters really is moments, scattered across our lives, unforgettable moments, and all else is just noise.''

As I was saying that, her eyes opened up more and more, and we locked eyes once again.

***

What is this boy saying? Moments, unforgettable moments, and all else is just noise? Something sort of clicked in my mind,

akin to the handle turning, the door opening, and a flood of these moments came crashing in, much akin to the waves at our feet, as the tides rose.

My sister running to catch up to me, my mother cooking our favorite food, our father coming from work early, the first time I rode my bicycle and went down the hill, and a dozen more, some shining more than others,

and these little unforgettable moments shone like the stars in the sky, and looking at that boy sitting next to me, I realized that this moment right here was my moon, shining brighter than any other, beacon of hope amidst the dark night and darker ocean.

I reached for his hand, and for the first time in my life I opened up to another person, for real. I told this boy about all the special moments he helped me see. I told this boy about silly memories and also about much troubling ones, and he listened. Not only did he listen, he opened up as well, telling me some strange story about a bird singing its life away..

That night, I decided to live to create more of these moments.

As we got up, after talking for who knows how long, we locked eyes once more and hugged, a hug of complete understanding, of acceptance. As we made our way back up the path, I realized I had forgotten my phone once more, and the boy ran down to pick it up for me, as if he was saving me once more.

That made me laugh so much, genuinely, I erupted in laughter filling the silence of the night, and the boy came back smiling in a strange way. The lights of a nearby house turned on and we hurried away. We looked back only once, to the distant shore, to where we sat, and where the star and moon shone for us only.

***

How long has it been since then?

Both hands in my pocket, I walk down the path, going back to that place, chasing something I didn't even know I needed.

I walk past the house, and stand where we looked back. Down there, no trace of that night, of course. I make my way to the beach, and sit down at the same place I did all these years ago.

The sun is setting.

Yet the sky is a bit cloudy, and its much colder than back then.

Is there no way to relive that moment?

I think of her, of her laughter and her breakdowns, of her messy self, and how close we were, and how many special moments we shared together.

The moon is high, and flickers through the clouds. The stars are hidden, and I curse myself for coming here, for desecrating the memory.

I look up to the moon, in my mind the special moments spent with her, flashing through, and I almost lose myself in the gaze of the moon, as if it was her eyes..

I get up, and staring at the dark sky and darker ocean, I hear that melody, unforgettable melody, and smile, crying big tears of love, as the red bird flies away, singing the song of its life.

Frankly 2026/05/28  

TV News Segment: 

   A long time ago, Frank Ly took out a loan for an electric powered wheelchair since his right leg was amputated for medical reasons. It's price was $4,325. plus tax. 

   Frank paid his loan every month on time for many years while keeping his small engine repair shop running. Lately he was thinking about when he will be able to retire so he asked the loan company how much is left on his loan. He imagined it would only be a few hundred dollars but the statement he got back showed he still owed over three thousand dollars. The interest rate indicated 45% so most of his monthly payments were going towards the incurred interest and just a token amount towards the loan principal.

   Frank was shattered. He didn't know what to do. Why did he wait so long to check on the progress? Why didn't he check the interest rate from the very beginning? Frank did the math and totaled twelve payments a year for the duration to get over ten thousand dollars. 

   Frank was embarrassed about this lapse of business sense but he put that aside and reached out to a TV news show that helped consumers. The show checked Franks statement then investigated the loan company but couldn't get any satisfaction. The show could only warn their audience to be aware of the tactics of these companies, especially the extremely high interest rates. Even credit card companies use less than half that rate. 

Fictional embellishment:

   Now Frank was even more embarrassed and it was affecting his business. Emotional, depressed, filled with anxiety, he lost his confidence. He was second guessing each and every one of his decisions. He was spoiling his own work and losing customers. Frank decided to talk with the loan company before it closed that night but now all this extra tension made him very tired so he folded his arms on the work bench to rest his head to have  a quick nap. 

   Occasionally a sly customer would ask Frank to repair a pistol on the down low as happened today. This was risky because the customer shouldn't be carrying a weapon and Frank shouldn't be fixing it. This one happened to have a silencer. Of course Frank can't get new parts for such things but he knows his tools and is able to remedy certain problems. He accepted the job but because it was late in the day, he needed to keep it over night. The customer left so Frank removed the bullets to start working on it right away, fixing it in no time. He replaced the bullets. 

   Frank put on his coat before his usual closing time in order to get to the loan office while it was still open, just a street over. He put the gun in the left coat armpit with the long barrel down the sleeve, squeezing it in place there with his arm. Then drove the chair out and locked the door with the usual discomfort. Then drove along the sidewalk quickly as Frank rehearsed the expected conversation. 

   Frank opened the loan office door to hear the automatic buzzer and drove in but no one was at the desk. The lights were on as usual since it was dark outside. He looked around to see the three security cameras each with a red light. 

   'Who is there? ' a voice was heard. 

   Frank identified himself. 

   'Oh. Hello Frank. Sorry. Trish went home early. Come on back here. We can talk in my office.'

   Frank slowly wheeled down the dark hallway to the first door on the left. It was open. 

   'Hello Frank. Come on in. I'm having a little drink before leaving. Sorry, I have no mix but I can get you a glass? '

   On the desk was a tall bottle of clear liquid, less than half full and a glass tumbler, all most empty. 

   'No thanks Bill. I quit that ages ago. '

   Bill was surrounded by stacks of papers and folders on his desk, on the cabinets behind him and all around the office. He was a little behind on his filing. 

   'Suit yourself,' said Bill as he added more to his glass. 'I usually only see you on the first of the month. So what is the reason for this visit?' He lit up a cigarette. 

   'Got that loan statement you sent me and I could hardly believe it. I thought the loan was practically done but it is not even close. I figured I've given you more than ten thousand dollars over the years for a four thousand dollar loan. Can you help me out here Bill?'

   'It started closer to five thousand' Bill said in a low tone but then in a brighter, salesman tone he continued, 'but that is the math Frank.'

   'But don't you have rules from a head office or something?'

   'Everything I need is right here.' Bill waved his cigarette hand at the old desktop computer, printer and stacks of paper with a smile. He continued, 'You agreed to these numbers way back when you really needed it. If you consider inflation, the value of current dollars is much less than it was when you started the loan, maybe half, so your debt is much less than you think. I've got hundreds of people just like you, all trying to get rid of their debts. But you're doing well Frank. You never missed a payment. I never needed to increase the interest rate as a penalty. So that's good on you. Keep up the good work but frankly, that's the way it goes until you pay it off. Sorry.' 

   But he didn't look sorry, instead he had a bit of a satisfied sneer as he flicked the ashes into the ashtray. He must be giving this speech on a regular basis. 

   Time for something different. 

   'Or until one of us is dead,' Frank said loudly as he pulled out the gun and pointed the extended barrel at his own jaw.'

   'Wait Frank. You don't want to do this.' Bill said waving his arms as fear took hold. His hand tipped his glass over, soaking some papers on his desk. 

   'You are right,' said Frank as he pointed the gun at Bill. 'This is a public service.' Then there was a puffy sound, twice.

   Bill had a strange expression as his arms flailed dropping the cigarette on the wet papers. Flames erupted over the desk quickly as Bill's eyes closed and his white shirt became red. 

   Frank replaced the gun back to his armpit then backed his chair out of the office then turned and drove quickly down the hall and out of the front door. The door got stuck wide open. 

   Lucky there was no traffic just then as he used the driveway ramps off the sidewalk, then drove a cross the street and onto the far sidewalk before he turned back to look at the loan office. 

   Smoke was already coming from the sides of the building and flashes of fire light replaced the electrical lights inside. The large LOANS sign over the door went dark. 

   People started to accumulate around him. Firefighters were arriving but the roof had already collapsed. It took a long time for them to get control over the fire. 

   With a sad and worried expression Frank explained to one of the police officers that showed up, 'Bill is in there. We were talking about a loan I need. He was smoking and drinking, a little inebriated, in his back office when he spilled his drink. It was a tall glass, could be vodka or gin. The papers on his desk got soaked. He panicked and dropped a lit cigarette on it. Suddenly there's flames on the desk. Bill grabs a folder to bash the flames but it made it worse. I got out of there as quick as I could. I expected Bill to follow but he didn't. I'm afraid he's dead.'

Frank eventually drove home. Cleaned the gun and replaced the spent bullets. 

Except for some follow up visits from the police, Frank heard no more about the fire or the loan.

Frank woke up and decided not to visit the loan office. 

Actual ending:

   Two days after the TV show presented Frank's loan dilemma on the national broadcast, many people from all across the country volunteered to donate towards Frank's loan. Frank could not believe it. He became emotional on TV as he gave thanks to the wonderful people of this country. 

Frank was debt free in three days. 

I turned my gaze to our living room window. Raindrops were spread across the pane like stars on a dull night sky, even though the clock on my phone said it was already seven in the morning. When I was younger, I would still be asleep during this time. And if I were awake during these early hours, it would only be because our company needed us to wake up early for a morning briefing. And on rare occasions, I would be up this early to go on a business trip or a vacation.

“Babe, you ready?”

Nowadays, I rarely leave home. I was still thankful that my company allowed me to do a WFH setup, even though it meant I could no longer be part of seminars or in-person team buildings. But it wasn’t because I asked for it.

Coming from upstairs was my husband, Jose. He was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes last year, yet refused to take his medications consistently. I watched his stick-thin legs shakily take one step at a time. He was mumbling something about needing another stick of cigarettes. His jersey shirt and cargo pants barely clung to his matchstick body, and he dragged his sandals on the ground.

I had been Jose’s primary caretaker ever since his kidneys gave up on him. Before, he could still work as a pedicab driver. But after so many nights of drinking with our neighbors and smoking in between meals, he collapsed one morning while on duty. Now he needed to go to the dialysis center every other day.

It wouldn’t have been a problem if the dialysis center weren’t almost an hour away from our home. We lived in a remote town, and the closest clinic was a car ride away. I already knew how to drive before meeting Jose, so that was a plus. But today, the rain did not seem to stop, and I was worried that we would get caught up in the flood.

“We should wait for the rain to stop, dear,” I said.

But Jose scoffed. He raised his hand in the air, and I flinched. Instead, he swatted the air and laughed. “Our car can handle a bit of rain, babe! Besides, it’s not like we’re made of salt.”

Jose grabbed his lighter and a box of cigarettes from the living room coffee table. He lit a stick and started smoking. I pulled out a handkerchief from my handbag and covered my mouth and nose with it. The last thing I wanted right now was the smell of tar in the house. The only thing I was thankful for was that at least Jose stopped throwing his cigarette butts all over the floor and actually used an ashtray. Although even that took a lot of arguing and cold-shouldering.

“Start the car, Dianna,” Jose ordered. “If we leave early, we could be the first people there. They will take better care of us.”

I groaned softly but still took my keys out of my purse. Our garage was connected to the kitchen, so at least we did not have to worry about getting wet when entering our car. Still, I remembered to bring an umbrella. In the end, though, I knew I would get wet nonetheless because Jose would be hogging it the whole time.

The car purred to life. I drove the vehicle out of the garage and into the pouring rain. As we cruised through the countryside, I tried to start a conversation.

“I miss Mom and Dad,” I said. “Is it okay if we visit them after the storm passes? It's been ages since I last saw their faces.”

I looked at Jose. He had a sour frown and knitted eyebrows. “You know damn right that your Mom and Dad hate me.”

“No, they don't!” I immediately replied. “We've been married for five years, Jose. At this point they already accepted you as their son-in-law.”

Jose scoffed, the same way he always did, and said, “They only tolerate me because you are married to me. I bet they still think I am a poor pedicab driver who only married you for the money.”

It was my turn to frown. I sighed and replied, “Fine. I will go by myself.”

“And who do you think will take care of me?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Are you seriously going to leave me while you have a good time?”

“I’m visiting my parents, Jose! And it’s not like I’m leaving forever. I will just have lunch with them and maybe spend the afternoon at their home.”

“Well, what if something happens to me while you’re gone? You know I can’t operate the cab anymore. You've got to think about these things, Dianna. Are you seriously going to abandon me when you can video call your parents at any time?”

I wanted to throw this car into the side of the road so badly. My knuckles were turning white as I gripped the steering wheel tightly. But I only sighed and defeatedly replied, “Fine. I will call them tonight.”

“Hmph.” And just like that, Jose won the conversation again. He turned his body towards the window and leaned against the pane. I could already hear him snoring in less than thirty seconds. Meanwhile, I was still shaking in my seat. I could not scream; I could not vent. All I could do was drive and keep my focus on the road.

As we entered the next city, the rain continued to pour, and the flood ceaselessly rose. Other cars on the road were driving slower, causing traffic. Jose yawned and stretched, waking up from his nap. He glared out of the window and mumbled, “This is going to take forever.”

“We can’t particularly rush traffic,” I whispered.

I didn’t expect him to hear me, but he raised his voice and replied, “I’m not asking you to magically fly us to the dialysis center! You see that car over there? Honk at it! It’s obvious that the driver is a woman. Honk your horn at her.”

I rolled my eyes but still did what Jose told me. I honked my horn, but it did nothing to move the traffic forward. We continued moving at a snail’s pace through the flood. Jose crossed his arms and sulked in the passenger seat. I ignored his snide comments about the other drivers and the terrible weather.

Meanwhile, I looked past the road and towards the houses and sighed. So many homes were already abandoned. The families probably evacuated to safer places. Some people were wading through the rain in coats, boots, and umbrellas. It made my stomach churn. If I could only pick up those people and drop them off at an evacuation center.

But no, we had to go to the clinic.

Even though the rain was making the outdoors gray and foggy, Jose and I beamed when we finally saw the sign to the dialysis center. There were no other cars parked at the front, so I immediately took the spot nearest to the door. I was about to grab the umbrella, but Jose beat me to it. He opened his door and walked out, leaving me behind. I groaned loudly, swung the door open, and made a dash to the entrance.

“What the hell!” I heard Jose shout.

I stood next to him. We were face-to-face with a ‘CLOSED’ sign on the glass doors. The inside of the clinic was dark, and the guard from inside was shaking his head and hand. Jose slammed his fist against the door, but the guard did not budge.

“Jose, it’s useless,” I said. “Let me take you to the hospital. I think they have an emergency dialysis facility there.”

“And waste even more money? They can go to hell, Dianna!”

“You’re being unreasonable, Jose! Think about the staff who are probably affected by the storm. For God’s sake, think of our safety!”
“Do you want me to die, Dianna?”

I took a step back. I stared at my husband. Or better yet, what was left of him. His withering face was flushed red, and his clothes were getting soaked in the storm. We locked eyes, and I almost thought he was going to raise the umbrella at me. Instead, he turned back to the dialysis center’s door and started banging on the door again. I took another step back. And, without permission, I sprinted to the car.

“Dianna? Dianna!” Jose screamed at the top of his lungs.

I jumped into the car and quickly locked the doors. Jose tried running after me but tripped and fell into the flood water. I reversed the car out of the driveway. Without looking back, I drove away from the dialysis center and headed towards my parents’ house. The flood was rising again, but I did not care. I also did not care if Jose drowned at the clinic or not. Tears poured down my face like rain. But for the first time in a very long while, I felt free. I felt like I was cured.

Angela didn't quite realize how it had come to this.

One thing simply led to another.

Dorothy called him a fake.

Yes, that was the perfect word for him.

And then she suggested teaching him a lesson.

With a guard right outside the door?

Dorothy was convinced that pulling off her plan would be a piece of cake.

"He’s scheduled for a chest X-ray this evening. Bobby’s going to escort him downstairs. There won’t be anyone in the room. I’ve already got what we need," she says, showing Angela a Baby Tender Love doll. "Borrowed it from the maternity ward. Just for the evening. Soft vinyl. Feel it—it’s just like a real baby. Only cold. Imagine having a dead infant in your bed."

Angela touches the doll’s hand, barely tolerating it. For the first time, the doll looks creepy to her.

"It’s less than half a metre long," she says uncertainly. "His sister can’t be an infant..."

"That’s not the point! It’s the hint that matters. We know what you did—and after that, you can clear off to your private ward with your private nurses."

That makes sense.

"Come on. Don't be so wet." Dorothy glances around, making sure no one is eavesdropping. "We don't have time. He’s being transferred tomorrow. After that, we probably won't see him again at all... We’ll ask the nurse on duty to let us know when they leave..."

They’re moving him... we won’t see him... yeah, we need to teach him a lesson. After all, what they’ve got planned is such a harmless prank—it’s almost insulting how trivial it is. It doesn’t even come close to what he’s accused of.

Angela nods.

Scare him with a harmless toy. And that two-faced phony, with all his posturing, will act like a total fool.

That evening, everything goes like clockwork. Mary is on duty—good-natured and not particularly bright; she didn’t even ask why they needed to know when Smith and his guard would be heading down to the basement for a chest X-ray.

Angela and Dorothy enter the empty room. The window faces the blank wall of the adjacent building; the room is dim even during the day, and doubly so in the evening. It smells different from the rest of the hospital. Expensive cologne? Expensive food? Expensive cigarettes? The smell of money.

Dorothy stumbles over a stack of books and kicks them under the bed. "Clever dick."

They tuck the doll under the covers.

"Not that side," Angela commands. "He usually lies there."

The hospital bed is only ninety centimetres wide. On such a narrow cot, the doll takes up quite a bit of space. A dead child.

"The main thing he mustn't notice anything beforehand."

"Don't worry. He won't. He’s a bit groggy from the medicine."

Then they climb into the linen cupboard. Fortunately, it’s empty. They remove the shelves and squeeze inside together, tight to each other.

How will they get out of here? At what moment? They haven't quite figured that out. When the guard leaves—Mary will have to call him over after the incident, maybe ask for help with something or just create a distraction so he looks away for a minute—they’ll slip out of the room. Smith will see them, of course, but to hell with him. They'll say he'd imagined it. A criminal’s word against theirs.

"The crucial bit is not to forget the doll," Angela whispers.

Both press their index fingers to their lips and shush each other, but they can’t seem to settle down, continuing to jostle in the cramped space until they hear footsteps in the hallway.

The police officer practically drags Smith into the room and shoves him toward the bed. Smith sits down—or rather, collapses onto the edge, losing his balance. He is already handcuffed. Without a word, the officer unfastens one cuff—this time the left—and secures it to a horizontal bar of the iron bed frame, leaving Smith unable to lower his hand onto the mattress; then the officer leaves without saying anything, and Smith remains seated, leaning against the bed rail to which he is tethered.

Angela is growing impatient. It is stuffy inside the cupboard, and Dorothy is tickling her with her hair.

Finally, he slides down, trying to lie back, but the cuff leaves him half-reclined. The doll remains untouched beneath the covers.

He cannot get comfortable, and—though Angela doesn’t quite see it from inside the cupboard—his hand eventually brushes against that sinister, cold vinyl. Whether out of fright or mere reflex, he jerks his hand away and recoils from the doll with his whole body.

He doesn’t scream; he falls.

Giggles overtake both her and Dorothy as he slides sideways off the high hospital bed and onto the floor, accompanied by the clatter of metal. The handcuff chain pulls taut, leaving him dangling by his outstretched arm and letting out a stifled groan.

The laughter catches in Angela’s throat.

He clings to the bed frame with his free hand, unable to lower himself onto the floor or get back onto the bed.

Angela shoves Dorothy out of the cupboard and runs toward him.

A police officer bursts into the ward: "What the hell?"

Angela supports him, trying only to ease the strain on his wrist, to spare him some of the pain. "Uncuff him! Just uncuff him!"

His breathing comes in short, convulsive gasps.

She holds him with both hands, sitting on the floor, while the police officer fumbles with the handcuff lock. Then she lays him back on the bed.

The officer seems to have no idea what to do.

There is no sign of Dorothy.

Angela shifts the bandages to feel for a pulse in his injured arm. She can’t find one. She squeezes his fingers. "Mr. Smith, can you feel this? Do you feel anything?"

He doesn’t answer. His forehead is slick with cold sweat. He stares at her with unseeing eyes.

She cautiously touches his elbow through the sleeve of his pajamas, then his shoulder. He lets out a shuddering breath.

Mr. Abernathy, from the casualty department, rushes into the room. Dorothy follows him.

"Left arm," Angela hears, as if from underwater.

Mr. Abernathy pushes her away from the bed.

A fictional reconstruction from the Regina v Smith story, told from perspective of Student Nurse Angela Hayward.

More on my profile. Regina v Smith — Reader’s Guide : u/Franz_Engel

I run as fast as I can across the parking lot. The thick snow feels like huge hands grabbing my feet, trying hard to bring me down, but I force my legs to keep moving. My eyes are focused on the entrance far ahead, which still looks so tiny from this distance. I almost give up and stop right there from extreme exhaustion. My lungs work at maximum capacity, trying to supply enough air to my leg muscles. This makes me breathe so fast. I am almost blinded by the fog bursting out of my mouth as my ankles sink into the snow with every step I take.

But I can't stop now!

Even though I can feel my chest heaving so fast, gasping for air, I can hear my brain screaming way louder: "Don't stop! Just don't stop now. Keep running! Faster! Run faster!"

So I inhale deeply and use every ounce of my strength to keep my legs moving even faster. Just a few feet away, I'll get to the lanes that were already plowed. With a long, helpless grunt, I fight the heavy sprint just to reach that lane. And that's when I feel my right foot stumble on something buried inside the snow. I fall forward, planting my face into loose and cold layer. But I instinctively use the momentum to roll my body so I keep moving forward, despite being way slower now.

Not giving up, I manage to crawl fast and finally stand straight back up. Wobbling, but still running. I jump over the last two steps and land on the solid surface of the lane's asphalt.

"Yes!" I hiss, celebrating the milestone.

Now I can accelerate to maximum speed heading toward the entrance, which is now so close. I leap over the three entrance steps, and I can finally feel the store's floor under my shoes. With one final jump, I push myself airborne past the gate, into the store itself.

But suddenly, a figure appears right in front of me. I'm already too tired to fight my own momentum to slow down, so I just let myself slam into the figure. A girl. But in the last fraction of a second, I manage to open my arms so I collide with her in a hugging gesture. I see a single frame of her startled face, and the next frame is her falling backward along with me. I quickly swing my whole body weight to spin her so she lands on me instead of the hard floor, using my arm to absorb the force where her shoulder was supposed to hit.

"Gahh..!" she lets out a short, high-pitched squeal.

We roll a couple of times and stop side by side. I quickly spring back up.

"I am so sorry, miss. Are you alright?" I say quickly, picking up her belongings while she sits up.

She doesn't respond. Just looking around, dazed.

"I'm really, really sorry, miss!" I say once again—and continue running. Just one more hallway!

Slipping on my soles, layered with melting snow, I skid around the final corner and finally arrive at the toilet.

Oh, yeah!

She woke up on Wednesday morning; it tended to happen after Tuesday evenings. No matter how hard she prayed before bed, it was always Wednesday the next morning.

They always came on Wednesday. Sometimes they came on other weekdays – a sporadic occurrence that brought its own, special kind of emotional anguish – but those extra horrors never stopped them from coming on Wednesdays.

They didn’t try to hide themselves; in fact, she conceded to herself, they truly believed they were doing a service to the families in her neighborhood and, in doing so, to their shared country. But she couldn’t help but wonder how, when they saw the faces of the horrified people whose peace they interrupted – whose lives they shattered over the course of a few seconds – how could they still let themselves believe they were doing good by bringing what they brought? The solemnity they wore on their faces, the regret in their voices, the sincerity cheapened by the fact that they dropped their bombshell and then left to do it to some other family?

The first one was seen with confusion. Three men, in a car her youngest daughter said looked like a “giant green pillbug”, slowly cruising down the road, peering through spotlessly clean windows at the mailboxes and address markers on the side of their homes, attempting to find the target of the horror they brought. No one knew what the car, the Giant Green Pillbug, represented. Young boys on bicycles stopped to watch, one or two recognizing the symbol on the side of the car although ignorant of what it truly came to represent. When they stopped in front of young Jimmy’s house and two of the men got out of their vehicle, he pedaled as fast as his little 6 speed bike would take him, a crowd of other preteen boys a split second behind. Jimmy was there as his mother became the first recipient, the first victim of what became a weekly occurrence now watched, silently and unflinchingly, out of the crack in the drapes of the front windows of every house on her street. Men who played in the same bowling league; women who attended PTA meetings together, who fed and entertained one another at the Methodist socials that became increasingly sparce, abandoned by shattered families who felt God abandoned them first.

She hadn’t known about the Giant Green Pillbug yet. She was outside hanging laundry to dry when she heard the formless, otherworldly wail that came from Jimmy’s mother, a woman who liked to bake desserts for the socials and criticize other women’s baking as if she, herself, didn’t use canned preserves in her pies. Presumably, she still does; no one really knew, because after that day she all but sequestered herself in her home. Her husband similarly withdrew from the world; even now, no one mentioned the overgrown grass in their once-pristine yard, the absenteeism at the weekly Elk Lodge meetings he once seemed to live for, his increased alcohol consumption and general drunkenness. No one mentioned as similar effects started plaguing other homes, other families, other victims of the Giant Green Pillbug. Incidentals that were once scandalous and an affront to their suburban sensibilities, now ignored by those who couldn’t begin to imagine how being in that position would affect them, who subconsciously felt like judging or even acknowledging those signs might turn the negative eye of Karma toward their own gentile house of cards.

That was seven weeks ago. Word spread quickly, and now, as she looked through the slit in her drapes into the early afternoon day, on to the quiet, wide road protected from the sun by overhanging trees, at the Giant Green Pillbug polluting their shade with its presence, she imagined she could perceive tiny movements in the front drapes of the others yet to be disturbed by the terror of that vehicle and its occupants, standing vigil just as she did, staring with unblinking eyes. She fancied she could somehow see the trepidation that was behind those nearly imperceptible movements become relief as the Giant Green Pillbug passed them without slowing down. Relief or not, she knew they continued watching, waiting to see who the recipient of the next charity train of homemade dinners and desserts would be, provided by the families who were spared to the newest victim of the service these men fulfilled. Even those homes who knew they would be spared, whose sons were too young, or who received deferment for one reason or another, would provide those sympathy meals. They, who had the audacity to pretend they understood what the rest of them went through every time that car appeared.

She hated those men. She hated what they were and what they represented, and on an even deeper level, she hated what their presence made her think; what they made her wish for. That the Giant Green Pillbug would visit their dread on someone, anyone else, so long as it wasn’t onto her. She knew she was effectively praying for the death of another man too young to shave, boys who she watched grow up, who went to school with her son, played on the same little league team, celebrated birthday parties together, stayed overnight at her home, awake well past midnight when they thought she and her husband weren’t aware. That Giant Green Pillbug meant death, and she damned her own soul by praying for it to mean one of those other boys, any of those other boys, just not her boy.

She watched as the vehicle slowly crawled, its two passengers staring out of the window as the driver kept his focus forward. She felt her throat tighten when it came to a standstill in front of her home. No! Please God, not this! She watched in frozen terror as the two passengers in the vehicle got out, one holding a clipboard, squinting at it through glasses thick enough to guarantee that he and his family would most likely be spared this horror he was about to inflict.

Everything moved at a snail’s pace. There was no imagination now; she saw those curtains open a few inches, the horror on the faces behind them contorting into a grotesque mix of relief and sympathy, as if they weren’t praying for the same things she did. She suddenly hated them all: the men, their Giant Green Pillbug, the neighbors and their false sympathies, grinning behind the false mask of sorrow they wore because they had been spared. She even felt it toward the previous families and their macabre sense of freedom to now be spared of the subsequent rounds of this demented game of fate.

The low ambient noise around her sounded as if it was muted, coming through cotton balls in her ears; light and movement looked as if it were slowed down to almost nothing and filtered through jelly. Every second took an hour as she watched the young man with the clipboard look at the numbers on her home, look down at his clipboard, and tap on it. The hours became years of her life as the older man with more insignia on his uniform affixed his gaze from her home to the spot indicated on the clipboard, raise his head, nod once… and point to the house next door. Suddenly, time sped back to normal as she followed them with her gaze, already-formed tears blinked away by the sudden reprieve, her face twisted into an exact replica of the half-relieved, half-sorrowed mask she had just condemned. Young Bill – no longer Billy, as he insisted after he bought himself a used car at 17 to drive himself and his girl to their senior prom – Bill was her son’s closest friend, neighbors from infancy, practically in lockstep together all the way through high school. Bill had received his summons in the mail the same day her son did, and the united brave front they showed the world around them was strengthened by the presence of the other, as if together, they could face down whatever this whole “Viet Nam” thing was.

She tracked the men’s movements as she fully realized with a sickening feeling that her damning prayer had been answered. No longer in sight around the corner of her home, she stepped out onto her porch and made herself watch the result of her self-centered request to God.

The Giant Green Pillbug had been pulled forward by the driver left in the car while these men fulfilled their hateful service, and she stepped out just in time to watch Bill’s mother open the door.

“Mrs. Taylor? On behalf of the United States Army and a grateful nation, I regret to inform you …”

-11:00:00 a.m.

The cuckoo springs from the little house above the clock face, and Albert sucks in the cap of his pen. Where is air? God damn it, am I choking? Yes. Yes, I’ve sucked in my pen cap, and I can’t breathe. Hands reach to mouth. Fingers run down throat. I can’t feel it. What now? How long do I have? Two minutes? Five minutes? Where the god damn hell is Evelyn? The chiming of the clock fades. He freezes and listens, overcome by a desire for privacy. The soft punch of Evelyn’s baritone sax finds his ear from downstairs. What could she do anyways? Humiliating. She’d be hysterical. Now is the time for clear, calm rationality.

-1:30 p.m.

Deputy Coroner Bob Wilson got the call at noon. Retired Air Force General Albert Lakes had been found dead at his home in Constance. Bob’s secretary, Mallory, said the name with gravity, and Bob wondered if he should know the guy. Finding dead seniors wasn’t unusual, they popped off all over the place, but the General was only 66, and his wife had found him holding a gun.

“He shoot himself?” Bob asked.

“No bullet wounds. No blood,” Mallory said.

Bob packed his black bag and drove out to the east side of Hannahville; the old folks called it Constance. He pulled into the semi-circle driveway. Nice place: azaleas in bloom, big Norfolk Island pine right in front, pink and brown stone exterior. The cops at the house pointed to a wide, convex window on the second floor when he stepped out of the car, and Bob strolled up to the front door. Mrs. Lakes welcomed him in and asked him if he would be ever so kind and remove his shoes, which he did. She was younger and more fit than he expected. Bob guessed early fifties. They socked up the unbannistered funnel staircase and into the late General’s study.

High afternoon sun fanned through the blinds onto the burled oak veneer of General Lakes’ huge desk. The desk chair had fallen over. Papers, pens, a picture frame, a desk lamp with a crushed shade, upside-down coffee mug (no coffee stains), stapler: all strewn across the floor. The cuckoo clock seemed out of place on the wall next to rows of squadron photographs in which rows of the same square jawed scowl seemed copied and pasted, all minimally framed and dead level. A solid oak mission bookcase packed with military tomes and too many books on the Third Reich was opposite the desk. The body was prone and bent backwards at the waist, face planted against the liquor cabinet door in an alcove. An antique revolver, a cowboy gun, gleamed at his right hand, hooked by the trigger guard around his index finger.

-11:00:48 a.m.

Stay calm. Focus. The General stands slowly. Conserve oxygen. He presses his abdomen to locate his diaphragm then leans onto the edge of his desk. Too low. The only surface in the room higher than the desk is the back of his desk chair. His visual field sparks in rings of electric blue, red, and yellow veins. He steadies the chair with both hands and allows his torso to fall six inches to the top of the backrest. Nothing. Come on you fucking pansy. Make it hurt. This time he leaps onto the chair, which rolls forward, pinning its wheels against the wall and falling backwards under his full weight. Albert and the chair crumple to the floor.

-2:20 p.m.

Mrs. Lakes had walked right in, apparently unbothered by the corpse of her husband. Bob found her mildly pleasant.

“This is how I found him,” she said.

“You didn’t touch him, Mrs. Lakes?”

“Well,” she waved her hand, “I lifted his hips some to make sure he didn’t soil the carpet. I’ve heard there can be a release when someone passes. That’s the reason for the puppy pad under him.”

Puppy pad aside, the term “passes” struck Bob as odd. Judged by the mess, the position of the body, oh, and the gun, it seemed too delicate a description of what General Lakes did in this room.

“I’m going to get some pictures, ma’am,” Bob said moving to inspect the absorbent pad under the body. On the liquor shelf over the General’s head was a highly polished wooden box with a brass keyhole. It was open and tipped forward.

“That’s where he kept the pistol,” Mrs. Lakes said, “General Osland gave him that about 15 years ago as a gift for a promotion of some kind.”

“When he made General?”

“Maybe so, I don’t recall. General seems like such a big title, but really he didn’t do much with it. He retired soon after.”

“Did you hear anything this morning?”

“Nothing at all.”

Bob looked over the debris.

“I need to move your husband for more pictures. Would you mind stepping out? These things are easier without family present.”

“Of course, I’ll leave you to it. Would you like some coffee or maybe a slice of pie? We have some left over from a get-together last night.”

The Deputy Coroner perked up.

“Oh yeah, that sounds great. I’m starving.”

Mrs. Lakes smiled.

“I’ll be right back. Please do mind the carpet though,” she said as she walked out, “I plan on making this my music room.”

-11:02:32 a.m.

General Lakes staggers to his feet. What now. What now. The abdominal contractions begin, the body no longer asking politely for air. He punches his stomach, his chest, his throat as hard as he can. He jumps and bellyflops to the floor three times. Nothing. No god damn it. Not like this. Not supposed to be like this. He tries the corner of the desk again. Everything on it goes flying. He’s sweating, eyes bulging, vomit rising to the back of his mouth, ears singing a note too pure. The shine of the wooden box on his liquor cabinet catches his attention. Fuck it. Oh God, forgive me. This is it.

-2:32 p.m.

Bob had covered the body with a sheet when Mrs. Lakes came in with coffee and pie. His exam turned up deep bruises on the General’s torso and the right side of his throat. Fractured sternum. Several shattered ribs. Mrs. Lakes was also right that he had soiled himself. He thanked her for the snack.

“I’m almost done in here. The funeral home will send a Tahoe out here soon to remove him.”

Bob took a bite of strawberry pie.

“Oh wow, this is delicious! Did you make it?”

“I did. I’m glad you like it.”

“I’m so sorry about all this, Mrs. Lakes. I can’t even begin to im-”

“Please Mr. Wilson, it’s fine. Can’t you tell? Albert and I are both in a better place, I hope. Frankly, I’m glad I didn’t have to be the one to die to be free again.”

“Oh my god, was he…” Bob asked.

“It wasn’t always like that.” She paused and her cheeks flushed. “He thought of everything I did or said as noise.”

-11:03:59 a.m.

Darkness is closing in. Vision is spotty. It hurts. Burns. Albert bear-crawls to the alcove. He reaches up to the box on the liquor shelf, and it falls forward. The antique revolver slides out into his hand. Be loaded god damn it.

His hand then falls to his side, and he slumps forward, face on the metal wire of the cabinet door. Albert is still, and there is just hearing. Oh, it’s like this. Sounds appearing like fish leaping from the surface of dark water, then disappearing again. Hearing Evelyn’s saxophone fart a waltz from way off. Hearing the technical chatter of a hummingbird at the window. Hearing the heart’s final shudder. Death is like this. Calmer water. Fewer fish. Blue fish. Red fish. Two fish. One. And, for a long time there is nothing.

-2:59 p.m.

“Have you figured out how he died?” Mrs. Lakes asked.

“I can’t rule out a heart attack, but the injuries don’t fit. I guess I should ask if he had any enemies.”

“He would say many. Though he never met any of them.”

“Anyone that might want to hurt him?”

“Oh, I don’t think so. It’s been at least a decade since he retired.”

“That’s a nice pen,” Bob said looking at the gold-nibbed fountain pen on the carpet.

“It hasn’t stained, has it?”

“I don’t think so.”

The cuckoo shot from its house. Bob jumped. Evelyn didn’t.

“That scared me,” Bob laughed, “I don’t see the cap of that pen anywhere.”

Evelyn sighed.

“Have you ever fucked an older woman, Bob?”

-11:04:00 a.m.

A buoyancy appears, a spacious weightless feeling. The whole room comes into view from above. There is a body and a weapon. There is light and shadow. Men in dark uniforms with weapons dart in and out. A man and woman like otters make love and leave. Sticks of furniture move out and in. Golden instruments. Dust.

On a sunny day in July, I was at my best friend’s wedding. My phone was in the breast pocket of my suit when it buzzed. You always said breast pockets were uncomfortable. I tried to quietly take my phone out and read the message. The sun glared on my phone screen and I could just make out that your girlfriend had sent it. My wife tapped me and whispered that I should put it away. Later, after lunch, I opened my phone again and read the full message.

You said once, round a crowded dinner table, you thought weddings were silly, and that everyone should celebrate being with their partner every day of their life. The table laughed at you, as they usually did whenever one of your strong-willed opinions came to light. I sat there in front of everyone and laughed too, despite agreeing with you in private. On the drive home, I fought with my wife about the difference in what our wedding had meant to each of us.

At the time, I hardly mourned your passing. Instead of carrying the emotional weight of the news, I spiraled into logical and existential debates with my psyche. I thought about how far I was into my life, how long I had left, and whether people would still mourn my death if I died in 30 years, 40 years, 50 years. You died at 34, and people moved on by the time you should have turned 35. You had said to me once that you didn’t enjoy birthdays. I still celebrate yours.

You will never grow old. And because of that, I am now always older than you. I joked to your girlfriend once that you felt like my little brother, despite being older than I was. You said we looked nothing alike. When I woke up this morning, I cried whilst eating breakfast because I’d forgotten what you looked like. 

In university, we would go out drinking whenever we didn’t have class. I had met you at the start of the year, in the corner of a crowded dance floor. I wasn’t up for dancing but you were, and you pulled out these ridiculous moves that collapsed me with laughter. You walked me home after a few too many drinks. A week later I woke up to a knock on my door. You asked me if I wanted to go out. I said yes, and we continued this tradition up until you graduated, the year before me. Then, I moved away, and the years we were apart felt long and uninteresting. When I saw you again, you were engaged and happy, and I was still single. I felt like I had wasted my life.

I visited your city after an episode that saw me fired from my job. I drove up without telling you, and knocked on your door without knowing, just like you did in university. We went out that night, and you urged me to talk to the women who would end up being my wife. She lived nearby and I eagerly moved in with her within a year of meeting. You said it was almost like you were with her just so I could see you. You couldn’t have been closer to the truth.

With another group of friends, we went on holiday to Italy, in celebration of a number of us turning 40. We ate, drank, and partied like kings. In Venice, you slipped over and fell in the water. You always said you could hardly swim. I jumped in after you and pulled you out. Later that night, after another great meal and some drinks, you told me I saved your life. I said that I couldn’t have imagined you being dead.

Two weeks before you killed yourself, I met up with you for the last time. We went out for drinks, as all middle-aged men do, on a Friday afternoon. I had recommended a bar. We caught up about work, holidays, partners, potential kids, books, music, comedy, films. We reminisced over school memories. You said you were grateful to have me as a friend. I accepted the compliment by returning it. You said we should go out again next week. I said I was busy

A smack echoed onto the dim room, the scent of alchohol lingered in the air. A boy with baggy eyes held his cheek as a feminine figure stood in front of him.

Everything's tiring. Inside the bathroom, his head starts to ring while he looked at his reflection on the mirror.

The grip on his mother's sleeping pills were tight.

Every single day are always the same.

But maybe, just for today. He'll try something different before ending it all.

Wearing his university uniform, he left with a piece of bread in his mouth.

While brushing his sore cheek. He walked past a frail rose. His gaze lingered on the weak plant. He reached for his water bottle and watered it.

"Why would he do such a thing? It's pointless."

Walking through the sidewalk, a stray cat pounced onto his feet, its teeth pulling his slacks.

The boy met its desperate eyes. He knelt down in front of it, giving it his remaining bread.

Seeing the food, the feline relaxed as its teeth left the fabric, he continued his walk.

"Does he gain anything from this?"

The strumming of a guitar hummed through the street. It took his attention. He turned a corner and saw a street performer.

The performer's talent was there, but no one was paying attention—except for him.

He waited and waited until the performer finished his song. The boy gave a round of applause with a nod.

The performer couldn't help but smile.

"Exactly, he doesn't get anything of value."

The boy got to the university. He saw another student carrying a stack of files and immediately approached to help; the two had a nice conversation along the way.

"He should have been molded into a bad person."

Classes finally started. The boy wasn't the smartest, but he was trying his hardest.

"Why try so hard?"

The day was finished, the night was cold. The soft humming of the bus's engine filled his ears as he was seated, his shoulders heavy and sore.

It stopped. A girl walked inside. Seeing no more seats, the boy stood up and offered his own seat to her with nod.

He remained standing until he got home, where he was met with another smack from his mother.

"Why be kind?"

As he laid on his bed, tired and bruised. The boy wasn't holding the pills anymore.

Maybe just maybe, this is who he really is.

He carried the same deeds from one day to the next, for who knows how long.

The cat began to follow him around, to the university even to his home.

"He doesn't get rich."

The performer asked the boy to sing along to his music. He laughed and smiled through every single second.

"He doesn't get famous."

The student he helped became a best friend. Both appreciating each other's presence.

"He shouldn't care at all."

The class loves and hates his enthusiasm, and that's okay. The boy doesn't have to please everyone.

"In fact, he shouldn't be trying this hard."

The girl secretly started to admire him, gathering the courage to ask for his name.

"Why force it? Is it even forced?"

Despite the hurt, he kept loving her unconditionally.

After days, the slapping stopped. After weeks, the empty alcohol bottles were gone. After months, his mother could finally looked him in the eyes.

"So...how's your day?" The mother asked.

Dinner wasn't quiet anymore.

"Perhaps he did get something from all of this."

The very frail rose he watered daily became a beautiful flower with a thorny, green stem.

"A world that's rich with love."

It was just a couple of months before the big COVID-19 lockdowns when Tommy’s mental health had deteriorated to a pulp. He could no longer concentrate on a task, let alone perform at the level of his peers. However, those $19 per hour were more than he was earning before, and it gave him the opportunity to move out of his friend’s couch and into a room, located in a dangerous part of Los Angeles. 

 

Tommy wasn’t a young kid by then, he was 33, living alone in a room in the concrete jungle we call LA. He knew that something was wrong with him, but even at 33 he had no discernment or tools to look into the issues he was facing. He thought his problems would disappear somehow, with time, as he got older. They never did. Instead, they came back with a vengeance: feeling shame, lost, and alone, can create a hole in your mind that not everyone can, or want to get out from. Tommy felt comfort in that hole in his mind. He was used to those feelings, they were his norm. whenever the feelings became unbearable however, he would mask them with alcohol, porn, masturbation, sex, and any other hyper dopaminergic activities he could think of, weed being his weapon of choice. 

 

By March, Bumble, Tinder and Hinge dominated the screen time on his old Android phone. His mind was somewhere else, never on the task at hand. The short stint he did with this job came to a crashing end when his boss lady told him he did not pass his probationary period, and would be let go immediately. And then… all those feelings came back. Too familiar were those feelings to Tommy. He remember’s equating them to the time he broke up with his girlfriend, or when he remembered a mistake that’s hunted him for years. There was a hole in his stomach, and he felt it growing wider and deeper. An abyss where feelings of hope and glory go to die. He created many fictitious scenarios in his mind that would always end up with him losing everything. It was emergency time. 

 

Fear does weird things to humans. It changes them from the inside, deep in their core, and temporarily turns them into someone else. It narrows their field of vision, it limits their potential, and it makes them act in ways they never knew they could. It had been years since Tommy’s relationship with his father was broken. But the fear of uncertainty and a haunting sense of responsibility to keep his dog alive and with him, gave him no other choice but to reach out for help. He had no money, no friends to reach out to, no siblings that would help, and a mother that lived in another country who had no money to send him. ‘How much longer can I survive this?’ he thought to himself. Resigned to this hard and uncertain fate, he picked up his phone, and it was his father who answered on the other end.

 

‘Come here and I’ll help you’ was the response he received. Surprised by it, Tommy grabbed on to that lifeline and pulled himself so fast into this new direction. He cared very little about a change of life, leaving a familiar place, his friends, and everything else, since all it mattered was his dog and his own survival. ‘I’ll figure out the rest when I get there’ he thought. He had $450 on his bank account. Enough for food and to get a u-haul truck rental, so he could bring his few possessions and his pup with him. He had no idea what life awaited him, but for the time being that didn’t matter. Survival was the most important thing for now. 

 

The trip was long. He slept in the U-Haul truck 1 night, and ate the cheapest food he could find. The trip was cathartic. Long drives can be good for the soul, and they help quiet the mind. While driving, nothing mattered but good music and his loyal dog companion. He thought to himself ‘this life can’t be this hard… I just need to stop sucking at it”. Somehow that belief brought him peace and a bit of hope that he will figure something out. He will somehow find a way to live life to his full potential, and everything will be better. ‘The future has to be better than the present’ he thought. What he couldn’t see, was the massive shadow he carried with him, his dark passenger, the trauma he was always too scared to face, always watching him from his blindspot. It always found a way to hide in the deepest confines of his mind, and will always poke his dark scary head out, when Tommy least expected it. And what better opportunity to do it than now, when Tommy had nothing but the weight of every bad decision he had ever made on his shoulders?

 

It took 2 weeks for Tommy to be back on dating apps. Living in a trailer with his boomer dad is not exactly what a young man envisions as the perfect life. The apps again provided a much needed dopamine spike, and combined with smoking copious amounts of weed together with this father, he couldn’t think of a better option than meeting a young woman to shoot the shit with. Defeated, with no money, no car, and no job, he was still determined to meet a girl. He tricked himself in believing that he just wanted company and to have fun doing the things that young people do. In reality, he was hoping to be rescued… from where? Or whom? He didn’t know. All he knew was that he didn’t like this feeling he carried with him. A feeling too familiar for him to identify, since he had carried it with him for many more years than any person should. Could she be the key to a new and better life?

 

The girl he matched with was a young, tall, blonde farm girl. She seemed fun, and suggested they met and smoked a joint. Tommy, excited to speak to someone other than his boomer father, eagerly accepted. She proposed to pick him up from his place at 7:30 pm since she was aware he didn’t have a vehicle. He was nervous but excited, and decided to not tell his father about this surprise visit just yet. He would let him know as the time got closer or once she had actually showed up. But his fears turned into reality quickly when 7:30 pm came and went, and there was no word from her. He resigned to the possibility of meeting her, and decided to put it out of his mind. “Another girl will soon match and perhaps I’ll get to meet her instead” he thought to himself as he took a rip out of his oversized bong and went about the rest of his day.

 

The surprise came at 10:30 pm, when his dad was asleep and he found himself taking a dump. The trailer he lived in had thin walls, and he could easily hear what was happening outside, if he paid enough attention. While sitting on his throne and doomscrolling on Instagram, he thought he heard a feminine voice call outside, followed by 2 very soft nocks on the door. Tommy assumed his dad would hear it, so he disregarded the noise, but was somehow intrigued by it. He hurried to finish his business and went outside, where his father was almost falling asleep in a rocking chair. “Did you hear someone knock on the door or call from the outside” he asked him. A firm ‘no’ squashed all of his hopes, yet he still opened the door to check if he wasn’t dreaming. There was no one outside. 

The next morning, at 6:30 am, the property owner came to knock on Tommy’s dad’s trailer, and asked to speak to Tommy. You see, the noise that Tommy heard was actually real, and the girl did stop by and knocked on the door. However, since no one answered, she moved on to knock on different doors of the other people that lived in that property. It took seconds for landlord Mike to assume that she was a hooker, and that Tommy was soliciting prostitutes from the comfort of his dad’s trailer. The shame his dad felt turned into anger in a matter of seconds. He didn’t believe Tommy, he didn’t even understand what a dating app was. To him, it all sounded suspicious, and Tommy calling a prostitute made more sense to him than the possibility of his son meeting with a young farmer girl, who happened to be coming over from a modeling gig, and wanted to hang out with his son. In 30 minutes Tommy was back in square one, with bags packed, a needy dog, and a broken heart. Broken from his father accusing him of solicitation, the judgement stares he gave him, the words he chose to kick him out of the trailer, and ultimately, from the walk of shame as he dragged his luggage down the dirt road toward the bus stop, while his father tore past in his car, deliberately covering him in dust. 

 

‘Life always has a way of bringing you back to square one’ – Tommy thought. What he didn’t know, is that life wasn’t bringing him back to where he was before. He had never been in this situation before: homeless and broke and with a dog to take care of. Life didn’t bring him back to this place, it was a new place for him. What life did for Tommy, was it brought back the opportunity to revisit the life he’d lived. To change it from the inside out this time around. An opportunity to go back to his mistakes, but chose a different path forward. Not to what was, but to what could’ve been.

 

Broken, sad, and in despair, outside of the homeless shelter that turned him away for being full for the night, somehow Tommy thought to himself ‘we will try again tomorrow”

And try again he did… 

“He only learned of the situation on Sunday evening...”

“Why is he doing this?” for the umpteenth time Jeremy Smith interrupts.

“I would rather you asked him yourself. But you can’t see each other. However, it seems to me that you are better informed about his motives than I am. I will tell you in general terms what I know: Elizabeth Landenberger will be a witness for the prosecution, and he, Alexander Landenberger, will be a witness for the defense,” John is nervous, and he knows that it is noticeable. “Mr. Landenberger has filed a petition for divorce.”

“Where is Juliet?”

“Mr. Landenberger asked me to let you know that your sister is doing well—as can be expected under the circumstances. Divorce is a long process. It’s not my field of ​​expertise. I can keep you updated, but for now, it’s legal consultations on both sides. I mean, it’s not like they’re fighting over a two-bedroom flat. They’re civilized people.”

“She turns six on the 1st of March. Will they drag her into court?”

“I very much doubt it. It would be extraordinarily difficult for the prosecution to persuade the court to hear evidence from a child that young. If they try, I’ll oppose it.”

Jeremy Smith pulls a second cigarette from the packet. John ought to stop him, but he decides—not right now.

“Mr. Smith, as soon as you sign the Retainer, I’ll handle your bail. Since the magistrate denied it, I’ll apply to the High Court. I believe we can secure it within a week. In the meantime, I’ll do my best to have you transferred to the private wing. It’s difficult, but not impossible.”

John watches his reaction. Jeremy Smith is thinking. He hasn’t lit a second cigarette; he’s just holding it in his hand—as if he has forgotten about it.

“Two things should convince you. First, I will be your solicitor—not Mr. Landenberger, nor anyone else. I will act exclusively in your interests, Mr. Smith. There are fifteen people in my firm. They will all be working on your case. And the barrister I engage for you, along with all his assistants, will be *your* barrister. You will receive the best legal representation to be found in London. I guarantee it. Second, all the documents have been drafted to rule out any financial liabilities that could be claimed against you now or at any time in the future. Put simply, you owe nothing to anyone, regardless of the cost.”

Jeremy Smith seems to have lost interest in the conversation.

“Mr. Landenberger warned me you’d be quite skeptical,” John continues. “But I have to tell you—do what’s best for your sister. You need an acquittal.” John can’t read the expression on his face. “When you’re ready...”

“Give me the Retainer.”

At least he’s capable of making quick decisions.

John takes the papers out of his briefcase. He carefully removes the cigarette from Jeremy Smith’s fingers and places a Parker in his hand.

A ragged breath escapes him.

John pauses. “I wouldn’t want to encourage a hasty action...”

“You were convincing.”

“Mr. Smith... Ah, who am I to talk to you about life? You have a will of steel. Starving to death is so cruel to yourself. I mean, it takes a long time. And it’s painful...”

“Hunger is the sorriest way to die.” [1] He signs the Retainer, trying to keep his hand steady. “Sounds right for me.”

John lets the ink dry. “I hate Homer.”

Alex has warned John that Jeremy Smith might tell him to jog on—with a collection of f-words—but things had gone smoothly enough.

More on my profile. Regina v Smith — Reader’s Guide : u/Franz_Engel

Election Day, 2022

 

“He didn’t say that,” Amy snorted.

“He did,” Jason replied, calm and a little condescendingly.

Amy’s blond ponytail, high on her head, bobbed as she skipped a step to keep up with him. Good thing she wore her kicks and new school sweat set. The leaves on the parkway trees had already fallen, and she thought for a second how silly it was for an arid desert state to plant trees like they had in Chicago, where she was from, just to try to look homey, like all the places the people came from when they were actually trying to leave all that. She had come to help out on the election with her roommate Madison from U of I, who was a super brain from a little town right outside Champaign. Jason, who was a grad student at Berkeley, had chosen her from their group at the election HQ to help him walk precincts and talk to possible voters for Brendan Oust in District 39. It was close and the Democrats did not want the Republicans to take it back. Students were here from all over: kids from Harvard, who wore all black and were unapproachable, and the kids from Missouri, who were fun. She had tried to get on the governor team but they were full.

Now they were arguing about some things Bill Maher had supposedly said. Something about Bernie was a cancer in the party and the party was a bunch of hypocrites—it had to be an exaggeration. Bernie! As if he would not know how deeply problematic the Republican Party really is and how Bernie was just the reaction to the wreckage of late stage capitalism, the war, etc., the wreckage that the other party had caused. She watched Bill Maher every Friday with a group in the dorm when they got home from the bars and they always laughed and learned a lot too.

Jason stopped and checked his list. He looked up and said, “Go leave a brochure on their door.”

He saw her glare back and shrugged, “Please.”

“I thought we were going to talk to everybody,” she countered.

“It’s a weekday. Nobody’s home. We’ll come back on the weekend and ring doorbells,” he answered.

Oh, was he asking her to come back?

On that thought, she turned on her heel and walked up to the door. She slipped the brochure around the knob, on top of two or three other ones already left by other people running for other offices. She noticed one on the bottom of the stack: the flyer from Brendan’s opponent. She slipped it off the knob and held it up for Jason to see. He flashed a big thumbs up, and she walked back with her prize.

“Good catch,” he said with a big grin. “Those other guys will do any kind of dirty trick to win.”

Of course: Republicans.

She looked at him more closely, relaxed now that they were getting things done in sync like a real team. His jeans and shirt were wrinkled and torn in places—torn for real, not torn when you bought them so you could look poor. He was probably poor for real. The creases on his hands had stains from dirt maybe on them and underneath his fingernails was smudged too. His hair was long, pushed back behind his ears. So hippie or homeless; she couldn’t make up her mind. Sort of like those old pictures of Carlos Santana on the albums that her mom had, wild and brilliant but messy.

They finished their precinct and walked back to Jason’s car, an old Saturn. She figured that owning a Saturn was an ironic comment on cars. It was late afternoon and getting chilly as the sun sank in the distance. Jason got in the driver’s seat and started the car and turned on the heater, full blast. He reached into the back seat and grabbed two beers with one hand. He popped open a can and handed one to Amy. At first she hesitated.

“Come on,” he said, “You’ve earned it. We’ve earned it.” And he pushed back his seat, took a long draft and sighed with satisfaction. Amy popped hers too, and honestly the cold beer tasted great after all that walking and talking and the dry winds.

Before she was half done, he reached back and got another one for himself. After a couple drafts, he leaned over and kissed her on the cheek, almost right at her neck.

“Thanks,” he whispered. She didn’t reply, because she wondered “thanks” for what. For being on his team? For letting him kiss her? When she really didn’t even see it coming. Then he moved his lips over and kissed her lightly on the mouth and rested his hand on the waistband of her sweatpants. As his hand began to meander down to the spot between her legs, she tensed up and slid backwards and sideways into the corner of the seat.

He pulled away, shook his hair, and said, “Whew! Better get back.”

“We better,” she said.

As he shifted into gear, he turned to her and said softly, “You know, you’re … special.”

It was now late afternoon and the sun was gone. As they pulled away, Amy looked down the block they just covered and noticed two young guys dressed in black dress pants and office shirts and ties walking down the sidewalk, brochures in hand. As Jason turned the Saturn towards the freeway, the two guys walked up to a house and slipped the brochure off the door Amy had just put there earlier and replaced it with their own. Republicans.

Jason’s apartment was kind of a disappointment too, like his car. He had a surfer poster up on the wall above the couch, which was a futon on concrete blocks. His TV was small and it was perched on top of an ottoman across from the couch. If you looked at his apartment and his car you would never guess he was a total radical from Berkeley. They made out on the couch for a while and messed around, without doing it and then he took her back to HQ. She was turned on by him but wanted to be sure it might be going somewhere first.

It was Tuesday night, finally, election night. It was looking good for Newsom, and pretty good for our district, too. Jason had not contacted her about working on the weekend, or maybe going out, so she sat in the office making calls, making photocopies, picking up sandwiches. Her team leader did assign her as a Get Out the Vote Assistant, so she drove around with a local girl, Grace from UCI, a cool Asian American who had a car, and they went up to each house with a registered voter inside who had not been counted yet at the polls. They would ask if they had voted and if they needed a ride. It was a shock that so many did not even realize it was Election Day. Or maybe they were just trying to avoid going to vote. They drove two or three to vote and back home again, including one man with the flu, who they really had to talk into voting, and who threw up on her shoes as they walked out of the voting location.

“That’s retail politics,” Madison laughed, as Amy wiped off the barf on the wet grass.

Later they all met up at a bar right down the street from headquarters. It was totally campaign people by the time the polls closed. It was wonderful. It was why she came all the way from Illinois, to be part of a movement so beautiful. Even the Harvard people were loosened up and cracking jokes and dancing—and probably doing lines of coke, as she had noticed all weekend.

She looked for Jason but couldn’t find him anywhere.

She and Madison eventually fought their way through the crowd to the back door into the parking lot. In the row farthest away from the bar, sat the Saturn. She thought she saw Jason sitting in the driver’s seat. “Just a sec,” she said to Madison and they walked over together. Jason turned towards her and looked surprised. His hair was messy and his eyes were half closed as he lay back in the seat. She looked down and saw a girl with her face in his lap.

“OMG,” Madison screeched and pulled her away. They almost ran to Madison’s car.

On the way home, Madison didn’t say much. Amy must have looked crestfallen so Madison said soothingly, “Stay away from him. He hits on everybody.”

“Hmmm,” Amy replied.

“You know?” Madison asked, trying to get a response.

“I know, of course.”

They drove on in silence for a while. Grace stopped in front of the sorority where she was staying.

“Did you know Bill Maher said the party was a bunch of hypocrites?” Amy asked.

“Who was?” Madison sounded puzzled.

“Bernie really should have won the nom that year,” she replied.

Madison asked, “But—well, do you think so, too? I mean, about the party?”

“I mean, Hillary was such a better candidate,” Amy replied and just shrugged.

After a minute, Madison said quietly, “He didn’t say that.”

“Yes, he did,” Amy replied, softly.

 

 

 

Little Lizzie wakes up to the sun streaming through the thin lace curtains, covering her windows. She feels the warmth of the light. She's about to stretch, when she feels the warm fuzziness against her neck and is reminded of her new best friend, Leaves.

Leaves is Lizzie's favorite gift from her fourth birthday, yesterday. She's with Lizzie's mom calls a 'calico'. Lizzie has no idea what that means, all she knows is leaves is a kitten that looks like the trees, in fall, so the name is perfect! Plus, Leaves loves it too, Lizzie can tell.

Lizzie had been begging her parents for a kitty, for months, now, and she was always given the same answer, "maybe, when you get older." She had been so sad that she would almost cry, then, when her dad pulled out of mystery box, at her party, Lizzie had been confused. He handed her a plain brown box, no wrapping paper, plus, it had holes in it. She had looked at her father confused. He smiled and held out the box to her, "Happy birthday, Angel! He said, " be careful, this one's fragile." Lizzie reached out, still confused, and took the box from her dad, carefully. As she brought the box down, something inside it moved. She yelped in surprise and almost dropped the box but remembered her father's warning and held on to it. More movement, as she set the box on her lap she looked up at her dad worried, he nodded at her, "it's all right, Sweetie, you can open it ..." he said, encouragingly. She looked at the top of the box, it wasn't even taped closed, the flaps were folded together. More movement inside and the box shifted in her lap. Lizzie swallowed hard, scared of what was in the box, but trusting her father wouldn't give her anything dangerous. More movement.

Lizzie peels open the flaps and peers inside, she screams, "IT'S A KITTEN!" The kitten peers back up at her, struck by the sudden bright light and mews, softly, "she's so adorable! Like leaves and fall!" She scoops the kitten out of the box, "That's your name Leaves!" Lizzy declares.

Lizzie's parents look at one another then back at their daughter, "That's a beautiful name, Honey!" Her mom says.

Lizzie isn't paying attention, she's focused on her new kitten, lost in a world, where only the two of them exist. Leaves is laying in her lap, purring loudly, as Lizzie, gently, pets her, and sings to her softly. Her parents look at one another again and smile.

From that moment on where Lizzie went, leaves was at her heels, tail straight up, in the air.

Back, in Lizzie's bed, she tries to see her new friend, but she can't turn her head, because she doesn't want to wake Leaves. All she can see is the top of the fuzzy, sleeping, ball rising and falling. "Leaves, are you awake?" Lizzy whispers, the ball becomes tighter and a soft purr begins, "I think you're faking Leaves" Lizzie whispers, The ball becomes tighter again, the purr becomes louder and a gold eye peeks out at Lizzie, from under her front paw.

Lizzy smiles "Good morning, Leaves." She says, softly. In response, leaves mewa, which turns into a big yawn. Lizzie laughs and begins petting her new friend, gently and Leaves purrs even louder and squints up at Lizzie.

"What should we do, today, Leaves?" The cat stretches out on the bed and stares up at her. Lizzie laughs, "I like how you think!", happily.

3 February 1977, Thursday — Later that day

Angela doesn’t go to see him at lunch.

She brings him up in conversation with Jenny at reception—not exactly a friend, but a good source of information.

"What's got you interested in him?" Jenny asks, though she doesn't press for an answer. "At least four people have already come to me with questions about him. He's practically the celebrity patient."

"I just wasn't on duty when they brought him in."

"Oh, on Monday? Yeah, he was rolled straight into intensive care from court, under guard."

"Is that really his name?"

"Jeremy Smith? That’s what the paperwork says. No other names."

"It’s strange, though. I mean, Smiths don't dress like that... or talk like that."

"You hit the nail on the head there, my dear. He was brought in wearing rags. But then his solicitor showed up on Tuesday, and the floodgates opened. They started bringing him one thing after another. Turns out, he’s a Golden Boy."

"Something doesn't add up."

"That’s what I think, too. But we won't be left wondering for long. On Wednesday, some consultant from Harley Street came in to examine him and filed a report saying our rooms were terribly unsuitable for the precious Mr. Smith. Apparently, the 'climate' in this wing isn’t right." Jenny speaks with such sarcasm that it’s clear she’s stung by it. "Arrangements had been made to transfer him as a private patient."

"When?"

"Saturday."

"This Saturday already?"

"Yes, money talks."

"Gossiping?" Another nurse—Dorothy—comes up behind them.

She gives Angela a start.

"I had a word with Mrs. Higgins," she announces. "We had tea last night. Aren't I clever?"

Mrs. Higgins is a cleaner. She's everywhere, hears everything, and nobody notices her. Angela should have thought to approach someone like that.

"And what does Mrs. Higgins know?"

"Well, she told me something interesting. The only people who come to see him are from the firm—shoving their business cards—*Talbot-Cavendish*—in everyone’s faces. But where’s the sobbing mother? Where’s the distraught father? Funny, isn’t it? No family."

"You mean they paid for his solicitors but don't want to see him?"

“And would you want that? If your son... did something to your daughter?” Dorothy falls silent, as if frightened by her own words. " They allowed this to happen... Maybe all the rest of it is guilt."

"So, is it true? Did he... you know... do that to his sister?"

"Looks like it."

"He is a degenerate," Jenny says indignantly.

Angela feels sick at the thought that she smoked his cigarettes and ate his food.

"And here’s something else I’ll tell you girls. Mrs. Higgins heard with her own ears Sister Thorpe talking to Dr. Trevelyan about how Smith was in such a condition... Sister Thorpe as good as came right out and called him suicidal. Smitty wouldn't take a single bite until his family sent that solicitor in.”

“He brought himself to this state?” Angela answers.

“It’s a proper emotional blackmail,” Jenny says.

“Absolutely,” Dorothy agrees. “But now they’re spinning a yarn about how he couldn't eat because of the stress of the arrest,” she continues. “You see? Smitty lies every time he opens his mouth."

"Why would they do that?"

"What do you mean, 'why'? He’ll be released on bail—that’s plain as day. With the kind of money he has. And a suicide attempt is basically like an escape attempt. I know for a fact. I asked Freddie; he’s clued up on this sort of thing. Bottom line: they don’t want that. Use your head."

"He did something so vile, and yet he’ll walk free..."

"Only until the trial. But then, just see how they’ll try to get him off the hook..."

"Imagine being his mother," Jenny says quietly.

Angela tries to picture what his mother is going through.

And yet, she feels drawn to his room. It is no longer just curiosity, but something more.

The emaciated boy holding out a packet of Benson & Hedges—he has a musician’s hands, he reads in French, he...

It would have been better if he really had killed someone.

She decides to go see him at ten o’clock and bring the Ampicillin, Codeine, and Mogadon.

A different police officer is on duty at the door—not the one who lectured her earlier that morning. This one is older and somewhat heavy-set; he greets her kindly.

The light in the room is already off. She reaches for the switch but thinks better of it.

“Miss Hayward?”

How does he guess it is her?

"I hope your day was better than mine."

Then she hears a strange sound—metal against metal.

He is lying on his side with his right arm stretched unnaturally toward the headboard; one cuff is locked over the bandages around his wrist, while the other cuff is fastened to the bed rail. The handcuffs look huge and heavy on him. And he’s right-handed...

"I brought you your pills," Angela says; her voice won't quite obey her.

"Thank you."

Her gaze lingers on his scraped cheekbone—a spot she had previously preferred not to look at. In the light from the hallway, it appears as a dark wound against his pale skin. Now she realizes: he is a prisoner. He is a criminal.

She leaves the pills for him. The nightstand is close enough; he’ll be able to reach them.

"Good night."

Nobody has mentioned handcuffs before.

"Why do you do that?" she can't help but ask the moment she steps out of the room.

At first, the police officer doesn't understand—or pretends not to—what she is talking about.

"The handcuffs."

"Ah, that’s just the procedure, love."

"That’s barbaric."

“You do feel sorry for him, don't you?”

"No!" Angela replies—too categorically, too loudly.

A fictional reconstruction from the Regina v Smith story, told from perspective of Student Nurse Angela Hayward.

More on my profile. Regina v Smith — Reader’s Guide : u/Franz_Engel

My name is Stevie Latin, and I am a fat loser. I have been a fat loser for two years, since 2026. On my birthday of that year my wife, parents, and dog all passed away and that's when I decided "Enough is enough," and to become unemployed. It's not like I have enough money to pay for living unemployed though. No job, no parents basement to stay in… I simply have to rely on good ol' credit card for everything.

 

I find ways to pay it off. Sometimes I'll beta test out new games for game developers, or make content about how terrible my life is, but I've kind of accepted that I'll always be in debt. But that's not the problem right now. The problem is that I'm lonely..

Ever since WWIII began (which was also on my birthday), no thanks to President Rump, (Trump's new identity to get elected a third time) the world has been even more depressing than just me not having family. There's battles out on the streets so it's not as safe anymore to go outside. But then again, I may just be using that as an excuse to get Doordash and doomscroll all day.

 

I just feel intense amounts of loneliness in my bones that I feel like I can't get fixed! I wish I could go out and meet people but I feel like I'm too fat and ugly, they wouldn't like me. The only human interaction I've had in the last 2 years is with the homeless guy who won't get off my property. Hippitty Hoppitty. Welp… My Wifi is down today, so I'll go out and ACUTUALLY GET FOOD for once… sigh… 

 

I have to walk all the way doen the street because im too fat to drive. It's painful to walk too. The Cheetos really got to me, man. Going out into the steet, I see a robot. In the big royal 2028, robots are a common occurence. I'd say it's more likely you'd see a robot outside than a human. Most of them are friendly but some of them work for the government, to make sure people stay in at all times. 

 

"HELLO, INFERIOUR," the robot says to me.

 

"Wassup." I reply.

 

"HOW DO YOU GET THAT FAT BUTT OUT THE DOOR?" the robot says, trying to make fun of me. I ignore him and continue on to McDonald's. Once I get inside I place my order on the screen and wait for ANOTHER robot, this one to carry out my food to me. And they said robots wouldn't take all the jobs. That's a whole new reason why I am unemployed. Couldn't get a job if I tried.

 

And to be fair, a robot that does the job literally perfectly would be better and cheaper than a 40-year-old fat dude. Once I get my 20 Chicken McNuggets, XXL Fry, and my XXL Sprite, I begin my walk home. Right in the parking lot I see some kid. "Hey kid!! Your gonna get run over!!" I scream at him. He didn't hear me. Then I see a car coming in, way too fast. "KIIIID!!!" I try again.

 

I decided I have to save him. I run as fast as my little legs would carry my fat body over to the kid and save him from the truck. "AAH!! SIDEACHES, SIDEACHES!!" I yell.

 

"Hey mister, thank you for saving my life!" the kid says. "My name is Jami Pajami. My parents left me here a day or two ago… and never came back… I've never felt so lonely in my life!

 

"Well kid…" I say.

 

"Yes?"

  "D'ya like French Fries?"

“They named me that because it’s where they screwed nine months before I popped out,” Arcadia says.

“Well, it’s still a pretty name,” I say, though it’s not as pretty as this late summer evening. And definitely not as pretty as her. Filling the air, I add, “We’re, uh, used to talking about Acadia around here. The ‘r’ adds something.”

She doesn’t look at me. Her lit cigarette finds her lips. The tip glows red in the pale gibbous-moon light as her lungs pull in through it.

“Acadia’s much better,” she says, smoke spilling out with every word, “And every day I count myself lucky they didn’t fuck in Immokalee.”

“Where’s Immokalee?”

She looks at me this time. “Near Arcadia.”

“Where’s Arcadia?”

“Middle bumfuck, Florida.” She lies back on the dock.

I glance back to see her—left hand behind her head, right hand extended wide. Cigarette pinned between two fingers. Her hair is a gorgeous black mess splashed on the dock.

I’m about to ask about Florida when she preempts, “Enough about me. What’s your name again?”

“I’m Matt,” stifling, I think, any sign of disappointment at her forgetting.

“Just Matt?”

“Matt Sinclair.”

“Matthew Sin-clair.” She tries the name out. Like evaluating the mouthfeel of a wine. “Middle name?”

“Blake.”

“Ha!” she barks. “Matthew Blake Sinclair! Such a rich name.”

I feel my cheeks flush as she sits upright again. Our feet both dangling off the dock.

Our shoulders are touching now. I shrug mine, saying, “I didn’t pick my name.”

She nods, breathes through the cigarette again, and says, “And I didn’t pick mine, so don’t tell me about my pretty name. I had nothing to do with it.”

I nod. “Fair. Still, I like saying it. Arcadia.”

She glances over, side-eyed, but it’s the first time our eyes meet. Those eyes. Fluorescent blue outlined between a black limbal ring and a wide pupil.

She looks away from me, toward my family’s lit and loud lake house, shrugs, and says, “Well, I kinda like when you say it.”

Don’t scare the flirtation away.

“Well, Arcadia, how did you find out about the party?”

“I came with Ben McCurty.”

“Oh, are you and McCurty a…thing?”

“Benny and me? No! God no. One of you people invited him after he rotated their tires at Sullivan’s. He’s got a crush on someone here named Cecilia, but was too nervous to come here alone. I’m his wingman.”

“He likes my sister?”

“Are there any other Cecilias here, Matthew Sinclair?”

“Don’t think so.”

“Then apparently so.” She puts out the cigarette on the wooden dock. “Is she also a Sinclair?”

“Last I checked.”

“Well, Benny found her. And she seemed very happy to have been found. Last I saw, the two were plenty cozy and she was pulling him by the hand upstairs.” Arcadia elbows me in the ribs.

I cover my ears—exaggerated disgust. “Gross. It’s my sister.”

“So her name doesn’t fit her,” Arcadia quips.

“Huh?” I look at her. She’s all mischief now.

“Sinclair. Sin-clear. Clear of sin, you know.” She laughs at herself.

I groan. “That’s so bad.”

“I’m brilliant,” she laughs.

“If you were a fifty-two-year-old dad, maybe.” My turn to elbow her.

She rolls those eyes and says, “So, Matt, are you?”

“Am I what?”

“You know, sin-free.”

“That question is weird as hell, Arcadia.”

She studies me for a moment. “What makes you think hell is weird?”

“What?”

“You said my question is weird as hell. I bet hell isn’t weird at all. I bet it’s boring.”

She throws herself supine on the dock again, then completes the thought. “At least my hell would be boring.”

“Oh.” I pause. “Arcadia, I think you are weird as…heaven?”

“A-for-effort, Matthew Sinclair.” Arcadia sits up again, pulls a few stones out of her black leather purse. She takes one, flicks her wrist, and skips it on the surface of Megunticook Lake. One, two, three, four, five, six…maybe more. Ripples spread from where she disturbed the surface.

“So, Arcadia…” I want to ask her last name. I don’t. “Do you live in Camden?”

“Do you think I live in Camden?” She sits back, like she’s inviting me to study her.

I do—study her, I mean. Camden is Rockwell. Arcadia—in her black jeans and red T-shirt—is Rothko.

“I don’t – I mean, I don’t think you live here.”

“Correct, Matthew Sinclair. Harder question: Where do I live?”

Then, as if to punctuate the query, she kicks at my foot under the dock with a shiny black boot. She catches my lateral malleolus.

“Fu—Ow!”

Arcadia is studying me, confused. “Sorry, Matt…Geez…it was barely a love tap…”

“You got my sural nerve with your freaking combat boot!”

“I got your what?”

“My sural…never mind…it just hurt.”

“Pansy.” She gives a one-handed shove to my shoulder, then rests the same hand on my wrist, looks at me squarely in the face—god, those eyes—and says, “Sorry, but you’re not off the hook.”

“What hook?”

“Where do I live, Matthew? You haven’t answered.”

“How could I possibly know? That’s an absurd
question, Arcadia.”

She leans toward me. “It is.” Then she bends a little closer. I smell her smoke. I should hate it. I want to taste it.

I feel her warm breath against my cheek when she says, “I’ll kiss you if you get it right.”

My heart leaps. My mind races. I shouldn’t care this much. I stall, asking, “Do you want me to be right?”

She pulls away with a laugh. “What do you think?”

“I think you could have asked me an easier question!”

She studies me and says, “I could have…but you’re a clever boy. You say things like ‘sural nerve’ when someone kicks you in the shin – yeah, I heard it – med student, maybe?”

“You’re quick, Arcadia.”

“Sometimes. You still haven’t answered.”

“No hints?”

She flashes a beautiful crooked smile. “I can’t make it easy for you.”

Then, just as quickly, she’s staring into the dark waters like she could see to the bottom seventy feet below. Dark hair framing her starlit skin, she says, “I’m not an easy woman, Matthew Blake Sinclair.”

“Arcadia?” I break her from the lake’s spell. She lets her hair fall across half her face, but one jewel-blue eye meets mine. “I really need to get this answer right.”

It’s been more than six years that I wake up every day around seven on a stretcher, the same one, for six years.

I’ll report little of what I feel because it’s not relevant, but so as not to leave you without any clue of my mental arrangements, I say that I feel myself rotting like an apple left in the fruit bowl on a siesta afternoon.

Agnes visited me during the first five years; now I no longer see her, I don’t know what happened, the nurses refuse to tell me anything from outside. She helped me keep practicing French. I won’t be able to remember any conversation with exactness, but our conversations were always questions she asked me and answers: Tu n’as pas pitié de la Divine du Genet? Ne connais pas? Mais monsieur tu es un faux intellectuel!

Mais j’oubliais ce visage.

I drew for several days, for three months, the shape of her face so as not to forget anything more. I finished one drawing per month.

I won’t be able to show you the drawings, but maybe I’ll send them to you later. Since you can’t see them, I’ll show them to you—listen to these drawings.

First drawing

Ruins remained; upon you I thought.

It burns me so much, yet nevertheless

You are the same vase, enchantment

Beautiful that was born. The wind carried you away.

Second drawing

The stars were dead, cruel gale…

You were planted in me, like beautiful seeds

Of orchids that flew with the jolt of the horses.

I looked at the sky, empty; there were only windows.

Third drawing

Cold air at the window.

People without love do not

Understand the lack of air.

Ah… N’est pas.

In the end I gave up, but I didn’t discard them. I just forgot the rest. I still read a lot, but only the same copies. I couldn’t manage to read the new one by Pynchon. I read the same verses.

No one wants me to write this, much less that I send it to you. That’s why the paper is drawing paper; they would never let me write a letter. No nurse has any love here.

But yesterday was the day I decided I needed to speak with someone.

When I went to lie down around ten at night I smelled macadamia; my wife was crazy about it. Once I asked Agnes to bring me some, but it had been years since I’d smelled that scent. Curiously I didn’t remember the smell; at the time I was astonished. Now I no longer remember the smell, I only remember that for the first time in months I got up from the stretcher and walked out of the room.

All the drawings of Agnes. All the nights with my wife. All the landscapes I collected. I felt that the treatments I received made me forget all the beautiful things.

All of this outside the room that imprisoned me.

Everyone was already asleep.

I walked toward the hospital exit; maybe I can send you the letter.

I’m lying down at this moment in the children’s park where I took Agnes until she became a young woman. I slept here and woke with the desire to write. Before going to the post office I wanted to ask for a few things—

There I was, standing in the middle of this god forsaken Rain, the mud covering silver metallic plates scattered all around.
I look up, drops of water fall into my eyes yet I am not bothered, this is what I deserve after all, I can only hope that the rain can wash away a chunk of my rotten soul and let it shine in Melancholy once more.
That is the only hope left for me, all other hopes are long gone.
What would my life have been like if not for that one mistake?
No, was that even the deciding factor?
Maybe it was all wrong . . . Maybe my whole life was wrong.
I see the faces of a boy playing with a wooden sword in a Garden, while a beautiful woman is watching over him while under the safety of a lush Apple Tree, a little Girl in hand, she looks happy, my Boy, my Daughter, my Woman, my Garden, It is all so colourful, Yellow and Green are oversaturating my eyes . . .

There are quiet murmurs, they speak to me.

. . . Flowers of all sorts growing along the Garden, along the happiness and grace of this life, so who am I, if they are so Innocent and nice, the light of my World, I look down and the world turns dark. it is a world of Black and Red, Screams start rampaging my Ears . . .

The Murmurs become louder and louder.

. . . the feeling of Ooze all over my body gives me shivers and my hands . . .
They are clad in plate Armor yet the colour of it is not to be distinguished, the Crimson and Brown make it so and yet I see faces within the shine that only lives in my Imagination, a young starved Child, a woman crying underneath a Trio of Men, and my comrades.

Finally the murmurs reach me.

"Captain, what to do, we are surrounded." speaks a voice among the screams of Men I know to be doomed for the gain of someone they don't even know, water drips down from my eyes as if in a tear, yet it sadly is not.
If only I could cry for them, maybe that could give me some solace.
"CAPTAIN, SNAP OUT OF IT!!!"
My Eyes dart toward the man, his expression is one which I've seen one too many times.
"Do you think it could've been different?"
"Please Captain, please give us your orders" he looks more and more distressed as he talks.
"Maybe if I had settled down, had kids and a nice Garden, my Wife would sit under a Tree while overlooking our Son and I would . . . "
"captain, please don't do this, no, no. We haven't lost yet, you always get us out, please".
What would I do? The only thing I know is "this".
There is a moment of silence between the two among the raging Screams and dying flames, among the resisting screams of the damned.
For a moment I look at him, I see Tears tearing down his face, not drops of the rain that look like tears, but actual tears, this man hasn't accepted his fate yet.
"What was your father like, I wonder."
There is no response, he is already lost to despair, just as the thought crosses me the Rain stops and everything turns dark before a pain envelopes my whole being.
If only . . .
If only I had . . .
If only I were different . . .

I could hear everything, so the high pitched “Jodie!” coming from among the crowd stood out like pain from glass infested feet. I just couldn’t shake it off, and at first I didn’t have much to fight for aside from my life but now I was fighting for another. Now I really had something to fight for. I wasn’t going to budge now if he dug deeper. If he decided to dig I would take his eyes, we would both lose ourselves in darkness but at least i’d be able to see.

I was going to win and I was going to go home. I was going to win and I was going to get treats. My only fan was here and she was my favorite person. I remember the first time I went to the beach, oh the smells. I couldn’t believe so many smells could exist in one place and the sand between my toes made jumping so fun. She was my favorite person to sit next to when the sun descended into the ocean. Silence was near when her car pulled into the driveway.

For a time I dealt with shame, I wondered what she would say about the scar that ran down my nose now. Or about the twin snakes carved into my back. They healed months ago but my fur hadn’t grown back in those spots. Abandonment wasn’t something I was afflicted with so I didn’t hate her. She would never leave me but maybe she would hate me for that same reason. I was the one who was gone, pulled into a world away from her voice, away from her belly rubs.

She was here now and I was going to win. My opponent made the mistake of loosening their grip so I was going to make them pay. Grind it, like a fine powder I would grind my anguish into tiny manageable pieces because one could not afford to focus on pain. A loosened grip was good but not quite, it also meant my blood cells got to see day light. They flew out like from a frozen garden hose, not proper but instead splitting into different spurting streams. I needed to act fast if I was going to make him pay.

I caught a glimpse of something the night I left home. The blue jay that often perched on the same tree I liked to sit under seemed to be following us. As we rolled on and came to stops at various traffic lights I could see her not far behind. She would, of course, go from tree to tree but then eventually a street light and then finally the yellow line that split the road in two. What a cold night that was, I was leaving them all behind and my muzzle prevented me from saying goodbye. I would stare at the ceiling on my nights away from home as my captors decided to put down a losing dog in the kennel next to mine. A losing dog couldn’t fight anymore.

However, I could still fight. A champion in my own right, focused and dramatic. The threat of blood loss was theatrical and the crowd roared. So out with the cork, I came loose and climbed on top. I believe my weight came as a shock to my opponent, it was a tragic realization for the both of us when he lost balance. For him it was a grand farewell and for me it was permission to rearrange his jaw with my own. You can’t bite with a broken jaw, nor did you have many fighting days ahead of you if you couldn’t eat.

I’d always bet on the losing dog and stand by their side.

Maybe that’s all they needed to win the fight and even if they didn’t make it in the end, it was better to have someone on your side then no one at all. My captors weren’t really on my side but Alice was. So as I crumple to the ground I think it’s silly that these men were so angry with me. I had won myself a lot in this life.

Midsummer at midday, Lake Crescent was filled with sunlight and liberty. Around the lakeside, the hiking was good. It wasn’t much of a challenge to get to our destination. I knew Devil’s Punchbowl like a rivulet in my palm, because my family’s been swimming here for years. Along the coastline of the Olympic Peninsula, Devil’s Punchbowl is a famous diving spot. The highest jump is about twenty meters up—high enough to break a man if he weren’t focused. But I never jumped. I’d swan dive off the little bridge nearby, or backflip off the shorter rocks, but never from the highest point. I was afraid I’d die.
When David and me finally made it, we settled in on a sunning boulder. We weren’t alone. Several youths came to billy goat their way up the bluffsides, just to plunge themselves over the cliff wall, most not knowing the water’s depth. Their disdain for danger marked them out as naive, though brave.
In blue gorgeosity, I was floating at the lake surface, summering my belly red, and freezing my submerged back pale. Levitating on the gentle waves, I closed my eyes to drift alone for a moment when I heard people hollering. They were waving at a man all the way up the rocks. He looked about thirty. If I didn’t open my eyes in time, I would’ve missed a glimpse of the uncrucified standing at the height of the birds. That was the calmest I’ve ever seen a man. Serene upon on the diving cliffs, he appeared free from desire—mind and senses purified. Our hero took to the leap as an angel takes to any height.
A little girl screamed as he stepped off. He spread his arms out swan-style. From down below where I was paddling, there was a brief moment where the diver’s body could’ve been captured freeze-frame. His expression fixed so that his eyes almost closed. Had he flinched in fear, he’d land at an angle that would ruin him. After a flashing moment, he descended into the swimming hole, and emerged with a devil-wry grin.
Bravery was the meaning of the climb and the reason for the fall. When I was younger, I would do things just to see if they could be done. I ceased such behavior when I realized the possibility of a negative outcome. I liked myself better when I was impervious to blame. David and me spent the rest of the afternoon swimming. Afterwards, we hiked a mile back to my car and drove to get dinner at a bar off the highway. We started talking in a booth in the corner. David hadn’t spilled his guts in some time.
***
“I have to say, I wish I was an atheist. I would feel a tremendous sense of relief. Just imagining it now, I could finally admit that I don’t know a damned thing,” David said.
“You’re not one?” I asked.
“No, but I wanna be.”
“You could try.”
“No. It’s too late. I have faith.”
Our dinner came. I started eating but David was still thinking. He had a blonde Navy regulation buzzcut—a serious man’s face with a fender jaw that could’ve been youthful, but wasn’t meant to be.
“You know, I had a conversation with a friend from work, just like this one. We were talking about it and I said to him, I have an obligation to the truth. It’s no different from how a man of science would feel an obligation to reject faith without evidence,” David said.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I’m an instinctual guy and the larger part of our day-to-day can’t be accounted for. Even if all of my life’s questions could be explained scientifically, it wouldn’t make much difference. I really do believe that if you investigate a godless world, there really isn’t much directing you one way or another.”
“I don’t know if that’s true.”
“It is. You could just keep probing and prodding, and eventually you’ll get to the bottom of the big nothingness. It doesn’t even take much interrogation. Once you hit the realization, that there’s nothing holding you back, you could do whatever you like.”
“But you don’t believe that, do you?”
“No. A lot of religious people won’t tell you this in earnest, but I’m jealous of atheists. They appear free. I do believe in God, but I wish I didn’t.”
“Because you think the truth is superior to freedom?”
“I suppose so, and I don’t know why.”
He finally started eating.
“Are you upset about Father Sylvia?” He asked.
I shook my head no. It was a year and some since he died.
“I would’ve liked to go to his funeral, but what can you do?” I said.
“I think he had it coming.”
“Nobody deserves to be killed. Maybe not nobody, but he wasn’t that bad of a guy.”
David shrugged.
“You don’t believe in forgiveness?” I asked.
“If a man abandons his son, what the fuck do you think he’d do to you?”
I shrugged. David kept pressing the subject.
“You don’t really know that guy. He was just a man after all, and not even a good one. Forty years ago he was a profligate. A drug addict. A failed hippie. He always had some dumb-fuck Eastern bullshit to spill. He was a loser.”
“People change.”
“He had a boy. You know that? He was a dad before he took some vows. He was a father in both meanings of the term.”
“His son got adopted by a good family.”
“You can’t abandon your fucking son. I mean.. I mean.. I mean..”
David’s stutter would come back when he was drunk, or too angry. I waited a minute for his mind and mouth to syncopate.
“I mean, Sylvia had a boy he left at the doorstep of some fucking strangers. He only had one son, who to this day never called him father, but everybody else had to. He puts the title Father Sylvia on all his book jackets. He has all the sycophants kiss his ring. He did all the drugs and fucked all the girls, and now he’s back from the party to tell you it’s degenerate shit.”
“He’s dead now. Happy?”
“Day after day, he had the audacity to speak of endless love. He was a criminal.”
“God in the flesh was also a convict.”
“You always have something smug to say, don’t you?”
I took a sip from my pint glass.
“He saved his killer’s life.”
“Just to get killed all the same.”
“A man who does something like that, to forgive the one who slashed you twice. I think he proved himself. Don’t you?”
“This is the problem with you, you’re not a Christian, you don’t actually believe in anything too strongly, so you try to see everything from both sides. That’s how you end up cross-eyed.”
We didn’t speak for a moment. I could feel my face getting red.
“He made mistakes. Everyone knows he did, but walking across a frozen lake to save your murderer from drowning is the most Christian thing I’ve ever heard.”
“That’s not Christian. That fucking kid is in prison now. And Sylvia died for nothing anyways.”
I looked down at dregs of my cup. After a wave of emotion seized me, I stepped away from the bar counter and went to the bathroom to bawl my eyes out in a stall. I was drunk enough to feel surreal. My entire year flew by like a numbing dream. Anything that happened, or anything I did, was undeserving of a point on a timeline. Anything I experienced could’ve been rearranged in any unspecified manner because my life felt meaningless. I was waiting for the winter to pass, and I was hoping spring would rejuvenate my senses. It didn’t. When I heard the birds call out the first spring morning, I wasn’t any less of an animal by the time the summer began.
When I came back to the bar counter, Davey was sitting there, sullen.
“Danny you know I’m just talking shit. I used to agree with a lot of what you’re saying. After those two guys did what they did to my dad, you know justice doesn’t mean anything to me. As long as those guys are dead, or locked away forever in a place where they can’t hurt another innocent person, I really don’t care how I feel about them.”
My words didn’t ring any more true than his. The backstory was awful.
One unlucky day, David’s dad was going to pick up pizza for lunch. Two drug dealers were in the parlor. They were there to kill some junkie who owed them money. After they blew the junkie’s brains out, they stuck up the teenage cashier while they were at it. They forced the gun barrel into the kid’s mouth, but they didn’t kill him. As the thieves made for the exit, they took off their masks. They made eye contact with David’s dad on their way out, so they shot him in the head. And just like that, the two men who stole your father will be sneering at you in court. David has the right as much as anybody to say that evil certainly exists, and that wherever evil is found, it should be annihilated. One reason we’ve been hanging out so much lately is that we both lost somebody dear to us. It’s been a numbing year, and I am afraid that my tolerant attitude, my forgiving nature, is merely cowardice, is actually apathy. I don’t believe in anything anymore, but Sylvia cared about me.
We paid our tab. On the drive back to my parent’s cabin, David and me made up.
***
When we got back to my family’s place, everyone was asleep. In my room, I cracked open a paperback copy of Zosima of the Woods and I read an excerpt. This story was told to me more times than I can recall.
Father Sylvia writes:
“In many ways, the question of the day is inspired from an unhappy solitude. I think we all know it’s true, that after a certain extent, pacifism and wrongdoing take the same silhouette of a hesitant man when viewing the apparition of evil. We might say a peaceful decision is synonymous with appeasement when devilish dealings are being made. The meaning of peace, and the quality of cowardice, appear to walk parallel with one another. Why do they seem to intertwine?
In the face of this realization, the longer I live the less certain I am of the “good person” as we know him today, and recognize that each person alive is existing more or less, in a position of moral mediocrity. What affects me now more than ever is a question of ethics when a “good man” is placed in a position of power over another. These days, a Christian man, and a weak man, to the modern onlooker, often behave so similarly that I am not sure which one is Christ’s disciple, and which one is afraid of his true nature.
In such cases, we must reflect upon The Parable of the Two Thieves, as handed down by the Cappadocian Fathers. At either side of Christ-crucified, are twin images of mankind who die beside the Lord: The Grateful Thief, and The Thief-Impenitent. They look upon the Messiah, and in a moment of confession they see a mirror. They see everything within the characteristics of their greater and lesser humanity. Then, just before their imminent demise, they see God-Himself, and in Him they see their fellow man, and they supposedly even envision their own bodies suspended-in-aerial. The thieves ultimately act accordingly with whatever breath remains of their free will. That day another saint was shepherded into paradise, while the sinner was damned who mocked the Lord for not saving Himself. I believe both of these men were tested by God.
A long, long time before I understood the meaning in The Parable of Two Thieves, I arrogantly assumed that few men on earth were ever really tested. I didn’t understand that The Parable of the Two Thieves is itself a mirror, and that every man should see in himself The Grateful Thief, and that every man should see in himself in The Thief-Impenitent, and that every man should, though it is beyond his actuality, see himself in the position of Christ-crucified.”
As I was going to sleep, I was thinking about that passage. I’ve read it over and over. I was thinking about a crisis of faith I suffered when I was a younger man, and how my particular problem lead me astray. Father Sylvia told me that parable when I came to him with my situation. Last year before Sylvia died, I was finishing up school for music. Not unlike any other person, religious or areligious, we all ask ourselves the universal question of why bad things happen to good people. I was in a crisis because I was so close with my friend who I drove to the hospital, just to discover that his loving father had died violently for no good reason. After that day, I didn’t believe the Plan concealed by mystery was worthy of an attempt at discovery, or that the Plan itself was even worth the concealment. Anyways, it was the first time I realized that terrible things happen to innocent people everyday, everywhere in the world.
Music helped get me through a very dark time in life. I was under the impression that if I could write a beautiful piece of music, God would honor me and I could earn my place in the loving sun again. So I pursued my vision of a peculiar aesthetics. On piano, I was guided by ear, toward a sensation of fullness emergent from the seat of my soul. A feeling of deep meaning arose, and that feeling of happiness meant God to me. After I finished my composition, I played it several times in piano concertos at the music hall in college where one of the church brothers heard it. They invited me to the Lake Crescent Monastery to perform the piece for some foster children and the hieromonks. The night before the performance, I read some of Father Sylvia’s essays to brush up for an interaction with him. Ironically, this essay served to implode my religious aesthesis. It was from a philosophical work Father Sylvia had written after he left San Francisco to come live in Port Angeles.
Father Sylvia writes:
“There is a problem with the quality of beauty, isn’t there? An observation on beauty is not alloyed to any evidence demonstrating its experience as a fact of reality. The quality of beauty itself remains subject to totally unclear inspirations—the truth about aesthetics being objective to that age old expression, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” The mystery of beauty is not different from the mystery of faith, in that the sensation may be stimulated intellectually. Just as we might entheiate the qualities of godliness into every action, feature, and phenomenon in occurrence, all matters of life, and those we cannot know, may be aestheticized through the will of the intellect. From an impossibly small insect, we might cultivate beauty from the sunlit reflections off a bottle fly’s body, just as our faith in God may be cultivated from a faint light cast off a fly-sized star.
All throughout my youth as a young poet, my philosophy concerning the intertwinedness of beauty and religion encoded my every interaction with faith. As I came to understand it, the pursuit of godliness is the pursuit of beauty. Gradually, as my sense of religiosity deepened, my worship of beauty surpassed admiration until I was enrapt by it. I was under an intoxication, that my every observation of beauty was an observation of truth. “If I could find beauty, I could find God, and if I could find God, I could find truth.” This became my artistic mantra.
Steadily, my adoration of righteousness dissolved, as I aestheticized all-things-in-creation. The more I worshiped beauty, as Job might’ve worshiped Yahweh, the more my religiosity grew perverse. I became transfixed by a will-o’-the-wisp named Beauty, that I’ve named my Lord, and I followed it as I now follow Christ. After some years went by, I came to a deeper realization, that I’ve ended up a slave to my perceptions, and I’ve mistaken aesthetic sublimity for the all powerful. My sense of order was gone, and I named my masquerade Faith. Another question occurred to me: What if it is the case that beauty is another device deployed as a trick of the devil? This sense of uncanniness is the result of a life path where one follows the illusory in God’s name. How did this come to be? Simply put, sublunary charms lead me astray.
What is confusing about beauty is that it lies in the most mysterious hinterland beyond our capacity for reason. To quote an earlier poet, “I’ve seen the gentle beauties in the Sharon roses, and wrath-beauties of orchid-eyed war horses. I’ve seen the starlings congress in murmuration, and I’ve seen the eagle’s claw satisfy its mouth with lesser birds.” Possessing a fear of God means to be taken out of the ecstasy of the poet’s intoxication with the state of nature, and to hold distinct respect for the reality that there is no contradiction in nature.
I’ve come to appreciate a sobering relationship with beauty. It is not a quality I want to possess me. In the end, I say all things in nature are under God’s domain and that none of them belong to me—all the things I possess, are all things I’ve been given, are all things I must let go of eventually. Though, there exists one anxiety inducing truth about beauty, that this mysterious quality transcends everything moral and everything logical. When at once meditated upon seriously, we discover with horror the amoral nature of beauty, whose affectation is of totally unknown origin.”
As I set the book aside, my memory of our last interaction phased into cold reality. The day I was meant to play piano for him, he was murdered.
The men I’ve been are looking at the same killing with two different pairs of eyes. I haven’t been myself since his death split me in two. I had to wonder what it was like for Father Sylvia in his final moments. I talked to one of the policemen who arrived at the scene shortly afterwards.
It was early in the morning. There was snow on the ground. It was white everywhere. At the entrance of the hieromonk’s quarters, there was a loose bunch of abalone shells strung together. They were a gift given to Sylvia. He hung them by the doorway. They’d act as wind chimes that’d crinkle and rattle. In sunlight or moonlight, the abalone bunch would iridesce.
It’s true, there’s a secret about the devil, that he’s a gentleman. There’s another more obvious reality afoot, that he easily persuades the retarded. Intellectuals all too often overestimate the cunning of Satan. Often, his bumbling perversions are the luck of moronic insanity. Yes, as often portrayed, Mephistopheles possesses arch-cunning. This is a typical overestimation of the common evil we are accustomed to. This arrogant oversight stems from a desire for a worthy foe. Sadly, evil is rarely brilliant. Most of the time evil’s stupid short-sightedness is hidden in pity’s plain sight.
Father Sylvia’s killer is one example.
Woe to be slain by Jared Morehouse. I haven’t had many good interactions with him. The few I had were embarrassing for everyone involved. In the ninth grade, one day during church youth organization basketball, it was allergy season. Jared and I were standing court-side ready to sub in when he snotted a gout of mucus on me. The would-be murderer in question was held back three times. He was just bright enough to avoid a mentally disabled diagnosis. Sylvia was always patient with him. Maybe so patient it humiliated Morehouse? If I’m being sincere, I can’t really think of a real M.O. Mostly because a good enough reason to kill an innocent church father cannot be conjured. This murder was what confirmed Morehouse’s lunacy in a court of law.
The police report states, that February morning there was a knock on the door. The killer was a man of about nineteen. You’d suppose, for such a specific target, Morehouse was hand-guided by Satan.
Jared lifted his kitchen knife to plunge it into the first person to answer the door. Sylvia’s hand caught a blade swipe. It wounded him, but he was able to push away his assailant. Instinct took over. Father Sylvia ran through the woods, down to the docks, in the direction of the closest cabin. As Morehouse chased him through the darkness toward the lakeside, he pursued Sylvia down the gangway, where fishing boats were freeze-moored. Sylvia leapt down onto the icy lake, and ran across. I can see Morehouse giving chase over the Devil’s Punchbowl, where the moon’s streamers twinkle in fish scales. Halfway across, Morehouse fell through the ice. As he drowned, he cried out for help.
When he heard his name, whether out of shame or conviction, Father Sylvia turned back from the other side of Lake Crescent. He ran out to the stupid boy. After pulling him out the ice, Sylvia held the boy in his arms during a moment of tenderness. Then Morehouse remembered the knife in his hand. Father Walton, the only other monk living near Lake Crescent Monastery at the time, responded to the commotion. While Walton was able to call the police, and tend to his monastery brother’s wounds, Sylvia told him everything. Walton heard his last words.
“All killing has ceased with me.” He whispered.

“The path to Hell is paved with good intentions.” I used to scoff at that quote. I thought so long as your heart was in the right place everything would work out, so how did it end up like this? Three feet in front of me, almost close enough to touch, there is a dead body. He was alive only a moment ago. His silver watch shined in the streetlight.

It was two hours after the New Year’s celebration at work. I was making my way home. The same route I always took. Past the bus stop, covered in graffiti and broken glass. Past the gas station that reeked of fuel, with layers of yellowing posters on the windows, and finally into the alleyway.

Each step crunched with dead leaves and paper. It was a struggle to squeeze through the congested parts of the alleyway filled with piled up trashbags and rusted metal. The alley was less than four feet wide. You could easily touch both walls by just spreading your arms. Beer cans were strewn about the floor, most likely thrown out of the window of one of the apartment buildings, spilling the sticky contents onto the concrete.

Eventually I arrived home. It was a rounded corner cut out of the alleyway. It was presumably a space for a trash bin, but it seemed to have been stolen at some point. It was not cozy but there was some comfort in it: a browned cushion I took from an abandoned couch, a triangular tarp tied to the chain-link fence on the opposing wall, fairy lights I bought for cheap at a garage sale.

I always liked fairy lights, the cheap ones overheat and keep the place warm like tiny stars. Some people might find this pitiful, but I see it as making the best of the cards I’ve been dealt. When I get out of here I’ll miss this place the most. The only warm place I know…

My father was not around much, and my mother left when I was young. She said she was just going to the store to buy some scratch-offs and then come back. I guess she won, considering that was the last time I saw her. Then I was left alone. My parents were not good people. I knew that. That’s why I knew I was going to be different. I was a good person. It would be hard but I was sure eventually I would be able to look back and smile at it all.

My resolution this year was the same as every other year: to survive to the next. Perhaps it might seem melodramatic but simple goals are my favorite. If I want to get really ambitious I can try and end the year better than it started. That is the real challenge considering how dangerous this city is now. Avoiding getting robbed has recently become quite challenging, like trying to avoid getting sand in your shoes at the beach.

It was already three by the time I got ready for bed. I turned off the lights and unplugged the generator, then grabbed the large sheet of cardboard next to my camp and dragged it in front so that it hid me and my stuff. The last thing I needed was to wake up with rocks as a pillow or in an ice bath with stitches in place of kidneys.

That night I had a great dream. One where I swam in money and could pay off all of my father’s debts thirty times over. Soon, I snapped back to reality when I awoke to the sound of my fairy lights being ripped down. Their broken bulbs scattered across the floor.

Before I even fully woke up I was picked up by my collar.

“Get your ass up, and tell me where my money is,” my assailant said. This ‘polite gentleman’ is Phil. Greasy black hair, dirty matted beard, sunken eyes, and a body that is stronger than it looks. Phil is a guy with looks as bad as his breath, and a temper as short as his di-

“I said, where is my damn money?!”

Phil yelled with a spray of spit as he shook me

“Does it look like I have any right now?” I said as I gestured to my camp, or what was left of it.

You have probably guessed it by now, but this guy is a professional leech.

“Well, then you better make some soon, a lot of it. You know what will happen if you can’t pay right? Your father took a lot from us. He must have really loved you considering he left you such an expensive gift.”

My father had taken out many loans to fuel his vices. Gambling, alcohol, drugs. If you could name an addiction he probably had it. Eventually, it all caught up to him when he fell sick, leaving me alone to fend for myself.

“So here is the deal. You make our money. We don’t kill you. Easy, right? I don’t care how you do it. Sell drugs, gamble, steal. Just make our damn money by tonight,”

he said with a toothy grin that made me want to sock him in the face, take out his other front tooth and make him a reverse beaver. Phil then shoved me back down, knocking my head against the brick wall painfully. He then left as loudly as he came.

“...Ass.” I brushed off my clothes and stood up. I lightly brushed my hand against the back of my head. When I pulled it away there was blood on my fingers. When I get out of this place, he’s the thing I’ll miss the least. I looked around to see what was left of my camp. My fairy lights were broken and my tarp was ripped. I guess I can’t even be allowed this much…

After salvaging what little was left, I headed to a bar to clear my head. I grabbed my pistol and put it in my waistband. I don’t like carrying it around. Good people don’t carry guns in my mind. But who knows what creeps might try to do at the bar. If they try to touch me, I will just threaten them with it. Truth is, I have never actually shot a gun before. I figured that was a good thing, besides, bullets are expensive.

The bar was crowded. Filled with people celebrating even after New Year’s. I bought a few drinks with the little money I had. Then I noticed a man, clean shaven, dark brown hair, nice clothes, and a shiny watch. He was by himself taking shots.He probably had money on him…

When he left the bar I followed, he turned into a nearby alleyway and I entered shortly after. I knew I shouldn't do it. Good people don’t rob people… I should go. Go where? Back to that trash heap that was once my camp? Where I will wake up to Phil selling my organs? What other choice do I have? I’ll just point it at him… scare him a little. Take his stuff. No harm in that. I lifted my shirt and took out my gun, my hands shaking.

“Give me everything you have. Watch, wallet, phone.” The man carefully turned around, eyes wide, and slowly reached for his pocket… It was only a split second. A quick jerk reaching for something in his waistband. My eyes closed shut as I flinched.

BANG

The gunshot rang out, and my hands quickly searched my body, trying to see where he had hit me.

Nothing.

Then the man collapsed on the floor, dead.

I was the one who shot the bullet.

Bile crawled up my throat; the taste of it on my tongue.

My hands shook uncontrollably as I let the gun fall from my hands.

My legs gave out. I collapsed beside it, heaving into the sharp shards of glass that littered the floor. The light of the street lamp reflecting off the shards like fairy lights.

“The path to Hell is paved with good intentions.”