Chapter 1

His arm was burning from the sun as he leaned out through the open window of his truck.
His tan skin was used to the heat, but the metal door was becoming unbearably hot. He parked
earlier in front of his old house on Magnolia Nbr.47. When he got out his truck, long legs carried
him easily with an old small spring of joy he has not felt in months. His heart easy again fluttered
like a teenager gain. The lights were on in the house.
He smiled. Maybe it was going to be better than he thought. It was Thanksgiving after all.
The rental he moved in after she left him, allowing her to have the house and all in it to herself
was behind him now, miles down the dusty road, on the back streets of the city. The hard
mattress was forgotten too. The pillow ripped to feathers on the side of the floor. He smiled
again, when the lights turned on and off and back on, downstairs in the house they shared before.
The house they bought together. The house he bought for her.
He saw her running upstairs. She was waiting for him. He wanted to cry of the intensity of
emotions, he felt in his chest. He laughed, and crossing the street, jumped on the two front steps.
He pushed through the open door.

It smelled like home. It smelled like her hair shampoo, and her perfume and fresh cut
flowers.
The drapes were all open, the lights on downstairs, and some of her clothes thrown on the small
entry bench. The floors, dark cherry wood, he laid with his hands, polished fresh. Vases of
peonies were spread out through the house on small tables, as she always did on Sundays after
church. He laughed and plucked a small round flower, breaking it away from the other. The fresh
pink, crushed on his fingers filling his nostrils. He kissed it. Running up the stairs, skipping two
at a time.
He turned on the dim lit hallway and froze. The silence was interrupted by low sounds
and his heart rushed the blood to his face. What if she passed out and hit herself on the tub? She
used to take long hot baths until the steam would melt her, weak, and almost pass out. He
thought of the times he rushed her out of the tub, trembling of fear for her. Small frail, slippery,
purple around the mouth and shriveled in unconsciousness. His heart would hurt, holding her
after she would fall asleep in his arms, still shivering.

1 | Page
 He rushed to the bathroom. Empty. The tub was steaming but she wasn’t in it. His
clenched fists hurt painfully. Then he turned, his breath stalling in his chest, like after a strong
kick. The hallway crushed down around him, the soft carpet absorbing his steps. His instinct
brought awareness before his eyes. He almost crumbled down. Is this what was about, a last
humiliation, a joke. A… The white frame of the door, open in front of him, like a hellish grin.

He stopped thinking, holding the air in his lungs until he couldn’t hold it any longer.
Choked and gasped for air.
He felt anger rising in him, draining the blood from his face, his eyes burning dark, hateful, his
fists balled up, his knuckles hurting the side of his legs, his nails tearing the inside of his pals.
Between their moans, the sound of his cold harsh gasp, sounded like a piece of iron falling on
concrete, night shattered. She was there, her white thighs parted around her lover’s back, her
hand trapped between them. The other one wrapped around the back of the man she held in her
embrace. A link of gold shivered in the light, on her finger.

Her lips opened in ecstasy, head tilted back, hair, her rich long black hair falling over them both.
The man’s mouth on hers, as he drove inside of her, holding her on top of the clothes dryer. The
sound of Tom’s gasp registered with them late. He turned looking around and grabbed the iron
stick stuck in the bucket of sand he left behind since he raised the wall to the small room. She
opened her eyes, and looked at him, straight in the eyes, blind first, fogged up by lust, not really
seeing him. A latent registration of his presence pulling her out of her state.
“James!”
She screamed his name and the man in her arms stopped moving. He turned his eyes back to the
unwelcome guest, pulling away from her, pushing her away from him, at the same time, almost
behind him in a protective attempt, looking ridiculous with his pants down.
Vulnerable. John’s hand raised and struck, hitting the man in the ribs, over his shoulder and over
the raised hands. Hitting as hard as he could, blinded by the rage that burned in his chest. Again,
and again.
Blood spurted everywhere. The man turned, trying to grab him, reaching for the madman’s arm
in between strokes. He tried to grab the rod, but the contact made his fingers crack with a loud
dry noise. He screamed, a blood curdling scream at the unexpected hit, as the road made contact

2 | Page
again, on the side of the knee, throwing him off balance, breaking the joint. He dropped to the
floor, muted by pain.
James turned. The woman sat in a corner. His wife. Almost naked. Her face lowered behind her
legs, held tight to her chest, shaking. The wounded man screamed, helpless, angry and threw the
iron away from him. The metal hit a window, as his screams filled the air, glass shattered all over
the floor, in the small pools of blood in the woman’s tangled hair grazing her ear and her cheek.
“Why woman, why did you call me here?” The glass shattered all over the floor, little
shards glistening dark red and silver in the pooled blood. He turned to her as she was curled
down on the floor. Aware of the cold hair, on his skin, and his face in his hands, wet with his
own sweet and someone else’s blood.
Blood on his hands and face, making him look like a savage. A grimace on his face,
James looked down at the other man’s as he stood tall, suddenly shivering. The other man was
shaking, his face already bruised, beaten to a pulp on the floor. James turned to the woman, and
pulled her up by the arms, bringing her to her feet. The cold air, and her fear made her nipples
stiffen. He saw that and despite his anger, he felt a spike of desire.

Fast, intense, he threw her back on the dryer and pulled her legs open just like she was
minutes ago. Her legs now stiff in fear, refused to open to him. He pushed against her and
grabbed her hair, hard, wiping her wet face, with his big hands. Between his right thumb and
finger a deep cut oozed red blood. He barely noticed the deep cut, the movement pushing small
rivulets of blood down to his elbow. He traced the tears down on her check, to her mouth, mixing
the water into a bloodied tear, he leaned and kissed crying. He grunted and began to unzip his
pants. His face changed from tears to a crude grin, his eyes now poisonous.
“I am not going to waste you all wet.” his voice ice in her ears. For a brief second, he
backed away seeming to change his mind about fucking her.
“Is this why you wanted a divorce?” Bitter mean words, he slammed her legs forcefully,
back together and peel her clenched fingers off the side of the machine she was sitting on.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hands, then whipped his eyes. Tears, cold on his
face.

3 | Page
 “You won’t get a divorce, but you deserve this much!” Bringing her fingers to his mouth,
he sucked her ring finger hard, teeth scraping her soft skin, pulling her wedding band off of it.
Spitting it in his palm and grabbing her cheeks he forced her mouth open making her swallow it.
“This is the only divorce you will ever get from me. Now call the cops or get the fuck out
of my house.” Then he walked out of the house, leaving an empty cold behind him. Trying to get
off the machine she fell on her face, then crawled on her bruised knees, pushing her bleeding,
palms out on the floor. Her arms were shaking so bad it took her a full minute to move a spit of
the distance.
She bent over her lover, shaking, caressing not knowing where to touch him, afraid of the
trembling wounded raw body. Afraid to hurt him more, listening for his breath. She reached in
his pocket touching his chest trembling, grabbing his phone, with blue shaking fingers. She
scrolled through the numbers and found what she was looking for. “Dad”. She pressed the bright
line. Two rings and someone answered.
“I am so sorry, she whispered, you were right, I was so bad for him. Please come fast,
help him. I am so sorry.”
She dropped the phone next to him, without even hanging up. Tried to get up, managing to move
slowly away from him. She got up and she got out of the house, forcing her body to move
towards the car. She sat there trying to start the engine, shaking. She sat there feeling like she
was going to faint for a long time. And then she heard the door of her car closing carefully.

4 | Page
 ***

He was driving fast, not realizing his headlights were off. His chest still hurting, his head
pounding, salty sweat dripping down from his forehead. Wiped his hand on his jeans, his hands
too slick on the steering wheel. He looked down and couldn’t see anything in the dark, his foot
pressing harder on the gas. His ears were ringing and the dark around him was making things
musky, distant. He curbed the truck a little too late, hitting the wall at full speed, and everything
went darker than the dark.
Crackling fire, smoke and pain, more pain, just pain until he felt the wetness trickling on his face
before he became senseless.
He passed out.
Laid there, unconscious in his own blood covered by ashes from somewhere and smoke.
Someone’s boot made contact with his painfully raw, shoulder blade. He felt the burn as a wake
up, wrapped in smoke coming from the burning car. Red lights flash around him and his eyes
twitch bloodied, hurt blurred, he moved his head, barely trying to get away. Unable, broken,
bent, like melted fire dripping in his head around on the road. Kicked him in the head, the boot
really close to his face. The world around went black.

5 | Page
 Chapter 2

Campi Ya Kanzi Forest

I sat low in the tall yellow grass. The rainy season far away, animals are drawn to the small lake.
So were the people.

I did not remember the first time I hunted.

My memory is blind, it must have been fear, anxiety. Perhaps none of those emotions. There was
a numbness that wouldn’t let me remember with clarity that very first time no matter how hard I
tried. What I did remember was that I always mourned the hunt the times after. But before I
pulled the trigger for the first time, I did not understand the meaning of it all.

The way it made one feel and the way it dissolved the fear. The rush, the spin of every licking,
clicking tongue over the blank space of a clock. Waiting. All or none of those. Or maybe it was
just the numbness. Before, during and after the hunt. Before, during and after breathing. Like a
pain, softly exhaled releasing your soul through crushed lips.
That is what I like to remember more than anything. The rush followed by the slowdown of the
pulse before the ears rang deaf. The tongue scratched with my teeth for a bit of moisture to
soothe the dry throat. The hunger and the release after. In that memory, there was always a taste.
A hunger, and a satiating taste, warm and heavy on the memory. Dry crumbs of bread and blood.
My father’s words resonate in my ears.
“What else to do but wait. You are not running from death, they are.” His chin pointed
towards the forest. “And then we stop their run, with one lonely click, bringing them closer to
nothing and to it all.”

6 | Page
 ***

I remembered the innocence, the purity of the morning before it turned bloody. Cold by the earth
I walked on, bare feet inside my rubber boots. Clean, drops of iced light, the same light that
shined in my sister’s eyes, as she anticipated the beast to move somewhere in the opening to the
left. Hers bright with excitement, mine lowered ashamed in the powerful intensity of emotions,
crushed by the terminality of the killing act.
I was hungry now, but I learned to contain it just like my emotions. I learned to squint to
keep my eyes from giving away my position. The taste I remembered, the taste of bread. The
memory of sweet corn flour dusted warm breadcrumbs filling my hunger like the richest meal.
Peaceful. On the taste buds of my memory, it lingers like the sweetest taste. Like childhood, like
hunger, imperious, immediate, happy and so clueless. A piece of bread would terminate all the
hunger and would sweeten the wait. Then remembered the taste of water, wiping off the beaten
bloodied lips, the fear, the ease reaching an outcome when the tip of the finger inched on the
trigger and my cheek smelled like gunpowder ashy, bloody metallic.

Dry throats from waiting, from the cold outside, parched and knotted, thirsty as we drank.
Cold, sweetness washing away our fears. We shared the water from the plastic bottle like a
communion in front of the sky in front of gods. If there were any. The sky that gave its offering,
wrapped in a rug stretched in front of the cabin overnight. The taste of rain. We shared the rain.
That is all I needed back then, crumbs and water.

It was a long time ago. After I left the country, my sister’s letters kept us close. The
memories we shared, the talks we had, they all continued. Distance didn’t break us apart. Time
didn’t dilute the strength of our blood bond. Every week I would get my three pieces of mail
with the many stamps and the US Postal Service marking and I would be back home for a little
while. Until the letters slowed down and one day they just stopped. The days before I got the
news, I would eat like starved, greedy but the hurt inside would not go away. The wine, the
liqueur, any brew that would come my way, it would not clear the taste of tears from the back of
my throat. Salt and blood mixed on my lips, and in the back of the memory, like the remnants of
the first hunt. I didn’t have anyone to call to check things out.

7 | Page
 Those days before, I kept my worries to myself since I would have had to confess to
those close to me I had here the desire for that rush the hunt gave me. The fear I felt and how the
wounds of a gun made it go away. I went to Church once for Sunday's Mass but I couldn’t
confess as much as I wanted, I wasn’t confused enough to confess.
“Confession is negotiating friendship with God, for the sole purpose of gaining entry in
the Kingdom. I am not that good at making friends.” I told the priest that morning, which also
happened to be the only time I ever entered a church.
“I don’t know if I want to go there, it would be lonely and sad.”
I stood in front of the mirror with my shoulders hunched and my eyes large hollow,
dusted. I poked my cheeks, my pointed nose, and my lips. Yes, that woman was me. Before this
the only thing I ever built were graves. Dry empires out and in the earth. Leaving behind bones
powdered by time, dust that forgot itself and settled in the shallow holes without forgiveness. We
didn’t bury the bodies left out for the animals to feed, for the other poachers to fear and curse.
I re-read the last letter I received and under fear I found meanings and more fear. Some things
frightened me terribly and I knew them instinctually before my mind acknowledged the result. I
knew I needed the change, so I did the best I knew. I ran towards it. Or flew, rather.

8 | Page
 Chapter 3
Magnolia Nbr.47
He was bleeding out, when the three men entered the house. They followed the shaky
squeaks of breath and the splinters of shattered glass.
“Bloody mess, that man is an animal.
“At least the cat is gone. She was a wild one too. But is Easter and miracles have happened,” said
the man, mockingly reaching for the pulse, then cleaning the hair out of the man’s face.
“We need the bird down here, really fast man. If you want the kid to make it.”
“He will, he is stronger than he looks, but damn, he is crushed to a pulp.”
He leaned in close to the wheezing man, rubbing his fingertips on the white foamy blood at the
corner of his mouth.
“Make it faster than fast,” he called over his shoulder and then he pulled out a small leather bag
from his pocket.
The kid behind him jumped up grabbing his arm.
“Is that for the pain? Is it alright? Hey…what the hell are you doing?” He stopped short of
touching him seeing the fierce look in the older man’s eyes.
“Is cocaine, fool, it will keep him ticking. We did a lot of this once. You do anything when you
want to live.

And then this shit won’t let you live. It will take the edge off the pain. He is gonna pass out, but
he will be alright.”
“You won’t believe what we found outside,” said the third man walking back in the house.
“A pretty little bunny.”
Eyes closed she exhaled suddenly when outside the window someone’s frame lowered through
the window. A hand grabbed her jaw turning her head to the side.

“Hold on there, honey, is going to be ok.” The voice she couldn’t attribute reached over her
slipping a small needle in the curb of her shoulder. Releasing it slowly.

9 | Page
“Go now,” her eyes frightened wide in horror and shock, meeting the eyes of the man in the
rearview mirror.

“The mayor thanks you kindly for the call. He regrets that you won’t be his daughter in law as
you wanted in the springtime.” He patted her shoulder, caressing her cheek and got out of the
car. “Drive safe.”

10 | Page
 Chapter 4

Miami Midnight Midtown

I was a thin shape slithering between the low branches of the cherry trees. I stopped a few
times, listening to the little noises around me, my heart rushing for so many reasons. I just left a
man’s house after breaking the law. Breaking and entering. Stealing. Burglary by any other
name. The laws were slightly different around here. At least no one cut your hand off and fed it
to the rhinos in front of you as you bleed. The engine started softly, and I pulled out from the
back alley in complete darkness with my lights off.
I turned the lights back on after I took the corner on the 8th St. No one around, but certain
someone could have been.
Only in front of the club I removed the short spiky wig and the brown jacket that I had
on. The sounds overwhelmed me through the doors that closed me in. My heels clicking on the
smooth floors off I walked towards the glittered smoky walls. Lying. The dim light dried my eyes
and made me blink often to clear my eyes of darkness. Destroying. Or at least not yet. It felt
good stretching my toes on the cold floors, with my feet so used to being naked in the dry dust.
I sensed him before I saw him, and I knew he saw me too. Watched with the corner of
my eyes how the tall man locked his eyes on me following every move until I disappeared
behind the drapes of the next room, covered in darkness.
He wasn’t alone, there was a woman with him. I caught a glimpse of her in passing. No different
than the other ones around. Beautiful, tall, elegant.
He was holding her elbow as they stood near the bar. Protective, authoritative. I hated her
without knowing her name. I hoped the drinks would be strong.
When he couldn’t see me any longer, he relaxed a little. But something in the pit of my
stomach tied up in a nervous knot mixed with anxiety and excitement. The music must have
stretched his nerves, tense already, it sure did that to mine.
A strange sensual, almost erotic tune, vibrated on, on his lips as he sipped the liquid
sugar. He craved a dark, bitter ale, not the syrupy drink his wife ordered.
He closed his eyes and sighed deeply, opening them in a forced smile when he felt a
small hand on his chest. It was his wife, Gemma trying to get his attention. He could see her lips
moving but her whispers were not reaching his ears. Her touch may make him shiver a bit in

11 | Page
anticipation of what was to come. There was nothing erotic about it, just a simple caress, a
formality, a comforting, reassuring gesture. But he shivered.
It wasn’t the touch.
It was the place. He walked around; his supple body strung with tension.
From my dark corner I shivered watching him shiver.

***
The music was seductive, low, nothing of the mad clubs he was used to. Sensuous, erotic
on senses. The women around him were beautiful, dressed in ways that invited desire. The men
were good looking, a certain polite possessiveness in their attitude as if each one of them ruled
the place. Confident and handsome. He felt slightly uncomfortable when measured by them.
Wanted to giggle, silly, wanted to scream to dance, to blow something up.
Energy releasing actions. Fuck hard. He shook his head, as if measuring his words. Even
in his own head, there was no space for chaos, even more so there.
He tried to think but could not. This wasn’t like him.
Calculated, calm, composed. Shocked, surprised. His breathing rushed still. Why was she
here tonight of all nights? Coincidence? He rarely believed in that.
Completely lost in the middle of the crowd, lost outside himself. But he wasn’t going to
turn around and walk out, not giving in to that impulse that grabbed him, the first time he stepped
in this place. If minutes ago, he wanted to run, now he wanted to run even more. But he was
going to get what he came here for. No turning back.
When, what, had it changed? Pushed aside the unsettling thoughts. It didn’t matter. Not now. He
looked at his wife who walked a small step ahead of him. He followed her surprised by her
assertiveness. She seemed to enjoy the music, the crowd around her, the heads that turned
shamelessly after her beautiful body.
Damn the lights in here. The near night. It made it hard to see. Mirrors stretched on the
walls reflected them both walking. A smoky warmth entered his nostrils as he inhaled. The
music changed just as smooth as the lights did and a dark purple light made him even dizzier. He

12 | Page
left his drink on a corner table. The thing was strong despite its sweetness, he felt the alcohol
going to his head, making him unsteady. It was going to be a good night.
He almost wanted to rub his hands together in anticipation but was afraid to jinx it. He
was afraid he would look childish.
He was afraid to lock out of place out of control. Mostly out of control. He gave them a
different name for the reservation. The old name of a long-buried man. James. Obscured by
anonymity he felt empowered.
He sighed again. Aware again. Her eyes, such dark eyes, burned him inside. She wasn’t
here alone. There was a man with her, he remembered.
Unless. He shifted behind his wife nudging her in the couple’s direction. The man she came with
was almost as tall as he was, with dark hair and olive skin making him look dark and dangerous.
Full lips arched with the arrogance of a God and the greed of a wolf.

Seeing them approaching he smiled a sideways smile with perfect teeth and eyes
gleaming pleased as he measured them both. His eyes finally settled on the thin blond woman
walking in his direction. James could swear he saw the wolf licking his lips. The couple stopped
in front of the other one, the men acknowledging each other with a small nod. The blond barely
looked at the brunette. He felt a second of unsettling until his eyes returned to the black hair
woman that was now watching him. He forgot about his wife about the place, he inhaled sharply
and moistened his lips surprised by the sweetness he found.

The black-haired woman looked at his mouth then back to his eyes. She walked up to him
and he stopped breathing. She looked intense, everything about her small frame was intense and
overwhelming. Such closeness, he could smell her, he could taste her perfume on his lips. Sweet,
subtle, rich. Her long dark hair, tied in a knot on the side of her head a long strand falling over
her check. He reached out to touch it. It was soft just as it looked, elastic, soft, silky to the touch.
He rubbed his fingers on it, reaching up to the knot pulling on it. Her hair fell out like a drape all
over her face. He realized she was holding his breath when he saw her chest moving.
She bit her lip and smiled a small sideway smile. He felt his chest tighten. She touched
his hand which was still caressing her cheek. His fingers warm and strong, almost too hard on
her face.

13 | Page
“Hi,” he said half smiling. He glanced over to see his wife now sitting on the couch smiling.
Gemma looked at him appreciatively, content, slightly impressed before focusing on the man
next to her.
Whatever that meant.
Entertained fully. Only then he reached out and grabbed the dark-haired woman’s hand pulling
her close, lowering himself on the cushions with her in his arms.

***
Lightheaded, I fell against his body. Feeling him strong against me through the thin layer of
clothes.
Heavy, solid, calm yet trembling. He was subtle and intense. His body moved so slightly as if it
whispered to mine and mine back to his. The strangest memory, softest remembrance under his
fingertips.
His face came close to mine and I couldn’t help myself but reach out to touch his skin. His lips
moved away before I could feel them.
“I like to imagine sometimes…,” he said, and I could feel his breath on mine, as his words
dripped maddening on my senses, “that I am driving fast on the highway and you are there in my
lap, straddling me. And I barely keep us from crashing.”
His words come out hard, labored, himself surprised by them. So, I did just that, moved in
closer, straddling his lap. We laughed remembering the same words some other time some other
place.
“It feels so fucking good.” His eyes closed in agonizing torture, as I leaned in, touching my lips
to his, the tip of my tongue reaching out touching his lower lip.
He could feel me warm and could feel his strength melting.
I could see it in his blue eyes, so deep, so warm, so filled with lust. I inhaled and held my
breath to stop myself from shaking and inched my body away from his. His hands pulled me
back down on him. Under his touch, tight waves of honey fire burned, beyond everything and
anything I knew. I was shivering in his arms; my entire body was shivering under his palms.
Shaking badly himself, his hands pinning me against him. A strange doubt in his eyes quickly
blinked away by need.

14 | Page
I looked behind us. The other two were kissing already, Dominic’s hands hidden under the
woman’s clothes, one caressing her breast. I looked at her, she was pretty with a strange paleness
that made her look delicate and perfect. Something you wanted to protect and worship. James’s
voice drew me back in.
“Eva, I cannot do it here, like this. Let me take you outside, please,” he pleaded. I denied him
shaking my head silently. I wanted to see his eyes in the light, to see her eyes watching him with
me.

“I just don’t think I can do this here,” he said, looking around.

“Anywhere else, but not here. I need to taste you, to feel you around me. To taste you,” he said
again, almost angry, his lips lowered lingering in front of mine. He licked his, and I reached out,
licking the spot on his lips still moist by his own touch. The heat of his skin dried it before I felt
them under mine. His body tensed, his breathing labored, struggling hard to maintain his
composure.
I sensed him hold on to his control and leaned in licking his lips again, on the same spot,
which he bit, raw now, moistened. That must have done it. He grabbed my head closer to his and
he touched his lips to mine, tracing my mouth with his breath. His lips, touched slow,
maddening, drawing me in a sweet melting, embrace, erotic and tantalizing.
Letting go, slowly biting lips, teeth grazing the skin of the lips, soft mouth. Then hard suddenly
like a blow to the gut. Hard mouth biting mine taking my soul away.

I moaned and his lips absorbed the sound, responding greedy, hard, brutishly hungry, as
his hands reached down lower from my neck on my back, to my hips, forcing me to mold closer
to him, as if wanting to feel and memorize with every touch.
He couldn’t talk, his lips red, hard, tasting like desire.
I felt his strengths as I could only guess it before. Feeling the buttons, almost crying with need,
so hungry inside, my body aching pitiful, my hips moving on him in slow rotating circles, harder,
and harder.
“For once, at the right place, at the right time, aren’t I.” His words caressed my mouth and I
buckled down on him.

15 | Page
“Take me inside you,” he groaned demanding, as my legs parted more, and hands hit against
each other. James pulled at my dress, and I rushed him with my hips.
The fire of it all burning, ached.
“Don’t move.” Shivers, stronger now, my mind numb, wanting to move my hips around him.
Forgetting about everything. In a moment of lucidity, I put my hand in his pocket slipping in the
sliver of silver I had burning in my hand the entire night.

***
James
He moved his head back, unable to see, unwilling to listen, barely breathing, sliding slowly out
and pushing back in, fire, madness. He felt as if he was dying. Yet all he could think was that her
lips tasted like apples.
“Don’t move he groaned, don’t move yet, beg you, don’t move.” The hard smile strained and so
different from the calmness in his voice.
He bit his own lips bloodied. She smelled the blood on his lips, and it drove her mad. Circling
again. He cursed and raised her body, turning her under his own. Unable to let go, pushing inside
hard, in control, biting his moans in with hers, with hurt lips, as his open shirt slipped open under
her greedy hands. Touching his mouth, his skin, as they have both craved for a while, their eyes
locked, but out of awareness.

His body rushing hers, to meet his. Forgetting what he just said, denying his own words as he
pushed inside again and again, sliding out slowly maddening, as she pushed her hips up to grab
him, back in hard and long. James felt in control still for a split second before falling out of
himself.
***

Before I fell out of myself.

16 | Page
I inhaled his scent, my lips on his neck. Broken, re-pieced together. Like melted rubber on a hot
roof, stretched to the point of breaking. I looked at him, my eyes dry.
There is nothing between us, nor will ever be. I wished I could spit the words in his face. I
wished I clawed his eyes out. The softness between us, nothing but a pact of shamelessness and
desire. How long will it last before…?
“How much more I want you, right now!” Words dragged.
“So help me God...”
“So help us both.” He answered, locking his eyes deep into mine.
“Help us both.” I moaned under his mouth. I moved off his body and walked away, my dress
falling, silent silk over my naked skin as I walked away.

17 | Page
 Chapter 5

I was lying on my bed, alone, wrapped in the silence outside as it slithered through the
open windows. It was unusual for Miami for this time of the morning. But a cold rain threw
everyone off it seemed. It smelled like a lush summer night from long ago, ambrosia for my
mind of memories.
Just like when I was a small child. The trees would lean slowly over the windows sills
and flowers and sticks would fall through the drapes on the floor.
Leaves of fall and blossoms of spring darkening with moist the wooden floors dried in
between by scrubbing with gasoline and ashes. The air smelled faintly like that.
Eyes wide open. The last drops of rain are slowing down, dripping on the windows open. I liked
to hear the rain’s few drops, dripping inside the windowsill on the glass, on the floor, absorbed
by the stringed rug.
I touched the alarm clock right before it rang. It clicked under my fingertips. Silence.
We end up places, and we don’t know how we got there.
We end up mountains and oceans away and the road is forgotten, yet here we are in the new
surroundings, a different person in a different world.
Sometimes trying to forget ourselves, sometimes trying to revive ourselves. Sometimes trying to
bring that self-back, hold on to it helplessly, but the place we left behind is always there a right
corner away from reach. Inside us. With all the dark and the light. With all our love and fear of
losing and all our little demons. Usually, some bits of innocence tag along, lost, confused. I
think when we cry is their coming to awareness.
Fell how it felt before, missing what they had before. That small child inside that doesn’t know
how he got there. I figured Hansel and Gretel is just that, the stray from innocence. The walk
away from our core and our peace and safety. The choices we make when we don’t know better.
Choices from innocence that break us and kill whatever we once were.
There is nothing wrong with growing, with becoming, but is so harsh and so dirty in some ways,
it pieces away our own selves. It ruins the beauty of simple being in innocence.

18 | Page
 It smelled like wet earth and coffee and the sunrise was barely happening.
I moved, fully awake for the last 4 hours, unable to fully get up and do something around the
house, unwilling to fight going back to sleep. Time passes so much faster at night, asleep, but
now it dragged. I had to get on top of the sheets to cool her body down a little. Next to me
suddenly aware of another's heat, another naked body, long and lean, wearing but the signs of a
wild night, marked on his back in thin red lines. Muscular tights tangled between the cotton
sheets. Damian.
I smirked and got out of the bed. The hot shower made my skin red, steam rising,
perfumed by a shampoo, sweet, delicate intense. I have obsessions I admit, beyond the ones
where I fell like hurting those that hurt me deeply. I am a sweet babe that loves perfumes.
Coffee was within reach, yet so far away, down the carpeted gray stairwell. Downstairs walking
through the living room which smelled vaguely like German Shepherd caught in the rain, like
faint leaves of crushed basil.

The sunlight melted something inside of me. Made me miss the pale greens stretched as far as
eyes could see heated in a dizzy yellow by the African sun. I inhaled the scent which entered
through the windows and grinded my teeth out of habit.

This time there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. No salty sands, no bits of pollen, no traces of
anything else but vague bitterness and the North American sun warming up my face.
I never hunted in the morning knowing that the rush of my blood would make my scent stronger,
easier to spot by animals and men altogether. But sometimes when I wanted the prey to find me,
that was a good thing.
The open window reflects me back and I stop and stare. I am not a tall woman, not very thin, nor
extremely pretty. There is a wilderness in my eyes, I was told, that drew people, all weak and
feeble to me.
A man once told me, and I remembered the words for a while without really understanding their
meaning.
“If I look in your eyes, I can see the pulse of your blood, I can see your heartbeat behind
every dark, long, blink of your eyelashes, and the most fearful thing is that my heart slows down

19 | Page
to match it, to match yours, and then I think I could die and won’t even know it.” His fists hit his
chest fast then slower and slower.
“You see, like this, ta-ta, ta-ta, fast and then slower and I would die empty, my veins
empty and I wouldn’t know when it happened. Your eyes have a witching thick to them. They
can kill a man. And maybe they will one day.”
The water calms me down, cools me down, slows down my pulse.
I look around naked on the bathroom tile. He moved the towels again, It frustrates me. And the
cold makes me shiver. Upset to have things out of their usual place. I can see the sleeping man
through the open door, steam from the shower rising slowly, reaching him naked on top of the
sheets we wrinkled together last night.
There is something erotic, delicious in the pleasure of washing my body with the hottest water
my skin can bare in the coldness of the room.

Except when I can’t find the towels. It takes away some of the pleasure and it irks me. I want to
walk to the bed and kick Damian.
I instead hit the bottles on the shelves next to me. Treasures collected from markets and street
sales I walked through, from Brasov, Warsaw, India, Cashmere. I liked souvenirs. A dark ruby,
thin-necked, double, smooth crystal, filled with cinnamon and vanilla mix, another container
with a bit of powder bought in a French village, a rouge, dark and red like sins lips painted
would seal. The margins of the sink are also filled with small boxes of lotions and oils, tiny
perfume bottles and some very distinctive shades of lipstick clutter the tight space.
I dab my fingers in a round container tracing the light oil on my neck, behind my ears. The few
that fell on the floor broke in tiny shards. One sliced my skin bringing out droplets of bright red
blood. Funny how our own blood’s smell doesn’t’ change over time.

“Perfumes are for those who like to impress crowds, perfumed oils are for those that zoom in on
the kill.” A beautiful ageless woman on the streets of Ankara smiled the words. I was still a
woman.

20 | Page
 Chapter 6

When I left home, I was a little girl. I was scared unsure of where steps would take me. Back
then I wasn’t alone, I had a sister, and a mother and a great aunt somewhere in the Appalachians.
I had the sweetness of a young woman, never hurt, never broken.

The day I graduated; I sold my dad's old car. The day after, I left.
Some of my rush had to do with the incident in the forest during our last hunt. It was no accident
but covered as so, they were happy I left, and they didn’t have to give any explanations anymore.
Dad said he shot himself cleaning the barrel. In mom’s eyes I saw a regret that shook me. She
was going to give me up before giving up on him.

So, I was set to see the world before coming back home to continue school. Trains and buses,
even a couple of horse drawn carriages and nights under skies like I have never seen before.
Walked in search of Dacian ruins and some other damaged pieces buried deep inside me.
I left.

Settled here and there for a little while then the traveler blood in me rushed me out of those
places late at night. I had midnight dances and drinks and fires and memories crammed for a
lifetime. Such an easy life I didn’t know was possible.
My beat-up brown leather bag, the only thing left of my grandfather from the war, became
shinier and thinner on the benches of a train to Istanbul. Then an airplane to Cairo. Then a small
caravan through the pungent smell of piles of burned camel crap, south, more south than I ever
thought I would go, all the way to Kenya.
“Where is your ticket miss?” The voice brought me back to the small dusty wagon which shook
the room fiercely on the tracks. Hours later I was delivered.
The one room train station was also the receiving hall, and served as a city hall, medical clinic
and a chicken coop on the side took me out of the train.

21 | Page
 ***

“Looking for a job,” I repeated, stretching thin and taller than the desk in front of him by barely a
head. The man stared at the paper I held towards him unmoved. It was a cutout of a newspaper
offering strong patriotic African men, who loved their country and its beauty to come and protect
the reservation from poachers.
A rifle was going to be delivered upon processing and you were to be shadowed by a trusting
agent for a long while before left alone to roam and protect. He shook his head in denial and I
stretched my tired hand once again attempting a smile. He denied it again.

We stood in front of the other for a long while measuring and insisting both to their own. I
became more determined as my hunger got the best of the silence between us and growled loudly
over the exchange. Someone’s laughter erupted over the sound.
“Just take it Saul,” the way it goes we will have to pay her retirement and you’ll both get arthritic
legs if she continues to stand there.”

I looked at white sheet of paper of the handwritten contract in my brand new room in the house I
was to share with one of the widows of the village until other arrangements were to be made.
On the small wooden table, I also had my sister’s letters and a small medallion on a piece of yarn
from home. I lowered my eyes, a bit sad touching my pocket, and then the man smiled back,
encouraging, curious, measuring my clean hands, my worn, clean clothes. I smiled back and
tasted the strawberry chap stick on my lips. By the end of the summer, I came to know the taste
of all types of dirt.

22 | Page
 ****
That was two years ago. Everything so alive in my mind.
I rubbed some oil on my neck, some at the corners of my eyes, some between my breasts. I
touched my wrists together, and dropped the container on the towels folded at the foot of the tub.
The smell of its content was a sweet memory, the kind that stays with you through death and
attaches to the particles of dust that revives you as someone else in another lifetime. I dropped
the towels on which I was going to trip on later, in a rush, cursing.
I sprayed my hair. Basil leaves, crushed basil and orange, roses, and some other sweet aroma I
didn’t know filled the room.
Right now mattered. Perhaps this very moment.

I tried to focus my mind. A temporary new beginning, ease into a new self, for a while, like a
new fragrance or like no fragrance at all. No need to leave traces. It was going to be different,
just unsure how different. I needed a sweet security blanket. Maybe a new haircut.
I tossed my long brown locks off my eyes and squinted, baring my teeth, wrinkling my nose,
inhaling the mist still lingering in the air.
Damian was still asleep when I left the house.
Streets already loud in the early morning and around it smelled like putrid leaves, the earth
coming out of the winter, the ones that melted for months under the layers of snow, making the
ground slippery.
My tires crunched a bunch of them, sliding on the muddied mess. I drove away, my heart tight in
a strange, sweet stirring I could not pinpoint.
It didn’t help, going through the lengthy list of possible worries.
None triggered awareness of what may be. The sensation in my chest is pestering and consistent.
Drove through the city, purposely getting lost, drawn by the slow movement of cars. Blinking
lights diminishing their power as daylight fell around them, becoming blurry soft lines.

Boring and monotone shifting the eyes to the trees on the sides of the road, taking in soft buds
and bright greens.
But there was also a softness in the air that smelled like spring, and possibilities. It rained earlier
that morning. Everything but the trees had a silent gray and soft brown tint to them. On the

23 | Page
corner of a street as I turned, an ocean jumped at me. A tall painting on the side of the building.
It made me smile. Blue, cold, distant, behind the hot city. A sort of peace behind the trouble. The
oceans inside us. And then my thoughts return to the same troubling feeling, driving away, radio
volume higher.

I barely pulled into the driveway when I spotted a tall, blond woman waving my way.
She didn’t look at all like the voice that greeted me earlier over the phone. Older and much
thinner, her skin almost leathery, stretched over high cheekbones.
Beautiful in a strange way with bright blue captivating eyes. The phone in her pocket and she
looked at it displeased, her face turning wrinkled, dry, irritated, almost angry for a split second
the same beautiful smile reappearing.
She started walking fast towards my car and I almost hit her. She doesn’t even flinch just smiling
with her arms stretched my way.
That smile was so unsettling. Could not find my ease in it.
“Welcome Eva, my goodness we’ve been waiting for you.”
“So pleased to finally meet you in person,” I answer, shaking the bony hand.
“James wanted to greet you but couldn’t leave the office. I will take you upstairs to meet him,
and the rest of the guys in a short minute.”

My mind raced, not wanting to make a fool of myself so I narrowed my eyes looking away.
Would he recognize me. Curious.

“That is how you hide your soul. Animals can read you easily if they see your wide eyes staring
at them. You look down in submission, to hide fear, to recover, then you look again, calm your
head clear. Slow down your breathing, it slows down your heart beat. Relax.”
I exhaled and looked back up at the woman’s ever frowning face.
“Oh no, my pleasure, to finally have you with us,” she said with a strange need to please.
She spoke loud, quick smirking as if amused at her own wittiness, smiling after every word, a
bitter smile with eyes reflecting a strange pain and longing which didn’t match her tone or
words.

24 | Page
Once we turned in the entry, disappointing carpets dusted by the reconstruction work and an out
of shape guardian, blocked her view.
She pressed a number on the elevator’s pad. It rang once before stopping on the floor.
She sounded so kind and wonderful, just like in all those times we spoke over the phone these
past days. She offered to help me move if I need it to do so. She talked and talked and barely
took a breath in between.
I thanked her as I was already settled in. She offered to take me out to dinner. I told her I disliked
going out. A small ring got us to the right floor.
So we walked, glass walls around us, polished floors, pale marbles, and tall vases with red
silvery globes.

“Call me Kath dear. Some call me Ms. Katherine, but I don’t look that old, do I. I don’t look it,
right?” Insisted the woman.
“Although I could have been your mother if I tried harder,” a strange laugh, “couldn’t I. How old
are you dear? I am sure not that much of a difference, but anyhow.”

There was something so insincere and painful about the woman topped off by a wounded look
that inspired sadness. I felt a strange need to caress her and tell her everything will be alright. But
there was something else about it too that made me hold back.
We crossed the office meeting people, she would smile as we approached them, then roll her
eyes as we walked away. We stopped by her office and she gave me a seat. So I sat for a while
listening to her talk, and with the corner of my eye, I saw a white flutter.

A tall man walked in, without even looking our way. He just nodded, and walked in the office
behind us. One of the women in the excited group that swirled around her, called him back.
Reluctant, he turned around, his eyes still pealed to the papers in his hand.
A half-mouthed greeting reached me in a low tone, and he shook my hand in an indifferent rush.
Cold eyes, indifferent, busy.
“Welcome. We were waiting for you for a while. Do you need help settling in?”
“No, I am good, thank you, I have already found a place. I am all settled.”
He watched me for a second, lips forming a strange smile, nodding before answering.

25 | Page
“Good.”
The perfectly ironed shirt shifted a little on his body. A big man with deliberate gestures and
piercing blue eyes. Unsettling.
I shook his hand, regretting the softness of my gesture in the brake of the shake. Then he
dismissed us both, walking in his office.
I looked back at Kath, who sat transfixed watching the back of his steps.
Hungry eyes over his body.
“That is his office,” said Kath, fixing me with her cold eyes. Observing my look, taking in my
notice of her own longing look.
“The other one's his deputy’s. Well, it was,” she said nodding her head towards the closed door.
“He just got fired. He will be back on Friday to pick up his belongings, you will meet him then,
briefly. Maybe. If you care.”
She turned, cutting off the conversation.
I nodded back and I noticed as she walked away that she peaked in the man’s office. I peaked
too. He was on the phone, laughing. His face changed in a soothing way, lines softened, his eyes
happy, relaxed. Sensing me he looked up. Meeting my eyes, his face hardened again with the
same distant coldness from before. As if he closed the door on his emotions with no regard for
hurting a stranger’s feelings.

26 | Page
 Chapter 7

Where am I now? In a far-away city far away from my soul. There is a strange feeling of being
here. A dream like quality in the air I breathe.
Strangers walk by. Is not home. Is a passing through.
A seductive, luring, boxing of buildings, lights and rushing madness that smelled like power and
greed. This place will never be home but I was willing to do things that I wasn’t comfortable
with, because I needed to belong here for a while.
I had to become this place, be accepted by these people. Without letting the place take over me
entirely. So easily seductive, So easy to be and become this.
Back here, in this city of lights and noise, something woke me up in me. Lazy, comfortable,
refined. Something I never really had. Tempting. Perhaps too tempting.

When I first got back to the city I walked around aimlessly trying to reconnect, to remember to
find the familiar in the civilized world. I stopped in some park by the water. The rocks in the
uneven ground, the steel horse in the middle of the forced green waves of the fountain drew me
to it. It’s silence. I stayed there until the dark kicked me out on city rules.

***

How I missed the wild places. Now the wild is becoming a bitter-sweet memory while the city is
slowly dripping in my veins in such addicting ways.
Freedom should not lock you outside the beautiful places, the peaceful ones but help you
withdraw into them.
The magic lasted until on my way-out pf the building I almost got run over by a pedaling mob of
angry silicone, clad men.
There was no civility left in this civilized wonder, the walls only stand still and a bunch of rude
indifferent people roam around. Back in my car, I dialed the long-distance number that I
memorized by heart before I left Africa.
“Dear one!”

27 | Page
“How is it going over there, breaking it good”? My one friend in the world, his voice so distant
at the end of the line, at the end of the world.
“I haven’t even started.”
“Scared?”
“More unsure of how to begin.”
“You already started, foolish child, you just need to stop moving backward. We miss you here.
Had a beautiful morning yesterday and Samir wept you were not there to rejoice with us.”
“What was it?”
My heart hurt a little thinking of missing treasured moments.
“Remember the rock we found, the one that looked like a cornerstone. It curbed down and we
found a nest. There were two newborns there, the herd trying to keep us away. We placed a
watchman at the top of the cliff and one by the forest line.

With all the joy, there was sadness as they saw movement and steps not of animals. Hard to
discern, the prints were trampled, and the wind blew over as well. We guard it day and night and
no one is allowed to go to the water that way, least it pushes them out away from site and care.
We only got the top of the wall for now, and we established the age. About a week old. Rushed
birth but blessed.”
“Even if I am not there, I can still be happy with you, and worried for them.
“My dear, you should be here so that we could celebrate with you.” She could hear the smile in
his voice.
“Mshale, that’s me, a dreamer, never finding my place traveling between worlds. I cannot find
the magic in any of them.
“You will.” In his simple answer I struggled to find a message, some supernatural hopeful
answer, something solid, confident. There was nothing but Like I have been doing these last
weeks, hungry reading useless horoscopes, drawing the tarot, hoping for an answer, some
guidance.
“You think? I am not feeling like magic at all. Just worries and anxiety.”
“I ‘ll kiss your eyes tonight, in my dreams babe.”
“And I’ll kiss yours.”

28 | Page
 Chapter 8

Morning. Another morning to get used to this city. The sun, sudden and hot early in the morning.
Loud streets. Coffee shops. People holding paper cups steaming with hot liquid walk by each
other on the sidewalks ignoring one another. I walk as if invisible on the street from the parking
garage, up to the elevators. Everybody is walking in a dream.
I came in earlier and sat alone shuffling some papers until doors began opening. I sat hidden
behind a stack of files looking across the room at the man sitting behind his desk. James.
Same name, same face. Some other story.
Trying to find some humanity in him. If he had any. He caught my eyes once and chose to ignore
me for the rest of the time, frowning. That one look took me by surprise. It was honest, clear,
humble. Almost kind.

Felt anger at my own weakness, getting too close would not be a good idea. But there was such a
strange emotion seeing him here. It changes my approach. Kindness throws me off. There is a
kindness in his eyes that softens me. Very few people have been kind to me in my life, those
kind of looks make me hungry for more, I am an addict to nice emotions and to that warmth they
create in my chest.
I find it amusing to see the eclectic crowd adoring the boss at the beginning of the day.
“Candy, sir? Drinks later? Wife is well?”

I am yet to hear; may I rub your feet although the other day I walked in on him with shoes off
rubbing his own. The humanity of it made me burst out laughing. Because what demon or God
walks around in soft linen socks. I wonder if he has kids that paint his toenails or if he has a foot
fetish in general. I laugh at myself. None that I knew of.

“What are you smirking about?” His voice brings my eyes up from his feet.
“You, your feet.” He laughs, a warm laugh that surprises me further and grabs at something in
my chest. Are these the toes of a mad man? Of a criminal? They seem so innocent.

29 | Page
We all turn, I mumble to myself as he walks around his desk leaving his shoes behind on the
floor.
Moment of softness broken by someone screaming outside the door.

Two voices melt into each other, one shrill and cruel the other one humble and soft. I see Kath,
in a rage of fury spitting out words her hands on her hips. The line between her eyebrows, deep
and dark. The receiving party, a short, stocky man with a thick mustache and coveralls holding
on to a ladder, looked as he was shrinking under her screams while her victorious laughter lashed
him with cruelty. Some people watched trying to be discreet.
“You did or didn’t? Never mind, I know you did. I was here last time you were here.”
She continued to talk about the light fixtures she swore he broke, as he moved his head in
disagreement. Thomas put his shoes on while listening. Kath looked at him waiting for support,
but he remained silent.
“I told him; I know it was him the one who broke it last time, but he denies it. I remember. I
remember everything!”
She pointed a sharp finger at her forehead, tapping her skull continuing to insult the man. He
lowered his eyes, upset, hurt and embarrassed more than anything.
“Maybe you should go now,” I tell him softly, in broken Arabic, testing the waters. His eyes
light up looking at me.
“Oh, I am going. This woman scares me.”
I smiled, he nodded and did an about face, getting out of there fast.
Kath stares them down, eyes darting from him to the woman and back full of spite.
“What did you tell him, what did he say? He knows he is guilty? He broke it.”
“He says his back hurts and he will leave now to drop the equipment.”
“But I am not done with him!” I shrugged as the man is now out of sight in a safe zone. I wish I
followed him as well. I sense I got Thomas’s attention. He smiles at me, a curious look in his
eyes.
“What was that?”
“What?”
“What did you say? You speak Arabic?”
“No.”

30 | Page
“I heard you.”
Kath is moving behind him getting closer to me. I walk away from both, because if I had learned
anything so far, in these last few weeks, is that a wise one would fear a mad woman with a rake
more than a sane one armed with a gun. And while we all hold a gun, few of us hold on tight to
their rake, and don’t you try to grab it away from them. Unless you are the bigger fool of the
story.

***

I drove home in silence. All I could remember at the end of the day driving back was the drive
in. I was tired and hungry. Home empty when I got there.
I could sense the silence in the empty nest during a hunt and it was the same way here now.
There was no one home as I took off my clothes.
I wished I asked Damián to stay instead of telling him not to forget his toothbrush again. He
knows not to linger around if he is not wanted. I fear he feels mostly that way these days.

He is more important to me than he knows. He has a feeling that my craves are more than the
broken silence of a body dried up in the desert for the past years. He understands my hunger
more than he says. He also knows I do not like talking much about anything else before this
moment, and this place.
His company is bread to my hunger. That is why he is a good man, a man I like around and a
man I trust. More or less.
A man I feel comfortable around. Walking to the kitchen I leave a trail up the hall and the living
room until I reach the door.
When I left, things were different, I would dig in the drawers looking for a small pot, let the
water run for a while to cool down a bit, set the fire and bring out the coffee jar. A soft shush
reminds me I left the water running, back to it, my fingers run under the steady flow that warms
my skin. The smell would be earthy, crude, erotic in the peeling of the metal tin can. Before the
coffee even brewed, I could taste it, feel the crushed powder in between my fingertips letting it
fall against the table top.

31 | Page
Now it was a more detached, easy process. A click and the water heats up in seconds and the
only time you smell the coffee is on your tongue, burning.
I am shaking a small cylinder, a tiny pod of coffee and there is nothing inside, but a shadow
tightly wrapped near the top. I crave the crushed powder and the smell of dried green coffee.
This will have to do for now.

I grabbed a knife and cut it open, curious. Inside there is some brownish powder that vaguely
smells like coffee. There are not enough trash cans in the house to spread this weakness in.
I press another one in, and the black liquid drops, I can taste it as it falls in my cup. Something is
missing.
Mental note to buy real coffee and a small pot. These last few days since I moved here Damián
made everything, brought everything, cared for everything, now I am by myself and I really need
to find myself here.

In the middle of the living room sits my clay table still unwrapped, arrived today. I rip the box
open. The papers that wrapped it dusted by the familiar, pale brown sand. I kiss the papers
inhaling its scent. Like distance and openness and vast spaces beyond imagination, dusted secrets
and dreams. A thing I got into, over there. From the thick clay rich of minerals. My fingers ache
molding the creation. I reach under the round wood, and I find the taped treasure. A good luck
talisman sent by Sam.

The table as I move it drips to the ground from a pocket in the bottom a handful of sand. It sank
into the carpet, taking me back to some other night on the outskirts of Cairo.
“Your damn obsession with this cursed dust.” Sam’s voice laughing behind me as I sat on top of
the rocks with my eyes closed to fend off the evening wind.
The scarf around his face is more a fashion statement than to protect his mouth and nose from
the small dancing whirlwinds that turn in devilish dances striking you in the face and eyes at any
second. Right now, the wind is nowhere to be felt.
It smells dry and bare, and our camp is right outside Cairo. But the evening makes everything
look lush and rich and the stars distract from the land’s emptiness.
“Is magic, can you feel it, is true potent magic.”

32 | Page
My lips are dry from the day’s winds and from the short breaks I took for water. Sometimes in
my explorations digging, my fingers pull my mind in, and I forget anything but the beautiful
pieces trapped in time under my feet.
“Magic.”
“There isn’t such a thing, you silly fool.”
“Yeah? Then what is this?” His fingers point at my face and the warm air feels suddenly cold on
my skin.
The wind softens his laughter and takes away the sound leaving his lips and his movements
silent. Shadows in the falling night.
Is almost night outside when I look out. Where does time go?
The many things ahead of me, wrapped in unknown.

**

There is a funny feeling being back in the city. I am more awake than I have ever been. More
purposeful, more intense in my walks.
The parks bother me more than the streets, I like the rush, the madness, the screams, the smoke
and the intensity. I craved it. It misses me by the way it rushes to me. I miss the sand fires. The
mad dances in the night, the lights stretching long far away towards the pyramids. Towards the
hills.

The pickup truck that rushed by me, angered me, cutting me off stealing my parking spot. I was
ready to scream when I realized who the driver was. I tried not to seem too much of a sore loser.
After all, I found that when life throws you a bone you can make gelatin or preserve it for
generations to come.
I pushed my sunglasses back on my nose and backed my car right next to the truck, blocking its
exit.

33 | Page
“What are you doing?” he screamed, his car reaching me right as the driver’s eyes leveled with
mine. I sit there with a short smile on my face as his beautiful anger turns to despair and
then turns into recognition.
“You...” James’s face flushes red.
“Ashamed a little?”
“I didn’t know it was you”, he said.
“Did it matter?
“I am in a rush, and I swear I haven’ t done this since I was a teenager.
“Are you regressing to puberty?”
“Mock me if you will, park there and I will pay for it, plus I will buy you coffee if you let me.
Emphasis on plus,” he laughed.
“Generous, I smile, why not.”
“When did you move up here,” he asks me.
“Moved up, assuming I am from out of town. Maybe I am from here.”
“No, you are not”, his eyes measure me.” Your skin makes you stand out like a sore thumb.
Your tan, you know. When I came back from overseas, I looked like that too.”
“Last month.” I say irked by the giveaway and his easy catch.
“And you applied to our firm because?”
“I needed a job.”
Keep it simple. Simple is clean and leaves room for turning around. I also knew someone who
knew what I needed.
“Black?”
“Hhmm?”
“I take my coffee black; you want it the same or you want stuff in it.”
“No. Not for me, I love it but black hurts my stomach. I want something sweet with it.” I smile
seeing his confused look. “Sugar maybe.”
“I always drink it this way,” he says looking at his cup steaming with black liquid.
“Your lips must be so bitter.” I frown looking at his lips, imagining the bitterness.
“I do not understand why someone would hurt themselves on purpose.” He does not say anything
taken aback by my comment.

34 | Page
“My wife doesn’t complain,” he throws the comment my way a short second later as if fearing an
attack of sorts, as if bringing her up some invisible barrier would lift against him. Yet he is still
holding my eyes.
Cocky again beyond arrogance, comfortable in his skin as he dismisses my words as an
unwanted probing in his life. As if the silly imaginary wall worked.
But it has not, he clears his throat and looks at his feet for a long second trying to clear his eyes
of that dark fog that crept in them.
“Very good woman.” He senses the sarcasm; I see him wanting to add something else but
changed his mind. I wanted to know what the words held back were, but he clenched his jaw as
if he swallowed the last one of them. So I didn’t ask anything. There will be more time in the
months to come.
He is locked back in his shell, not even looking at me anymore.
“I don’t really like to talk about my family,” he says. And although my reaction is subtle he
reads my surprise, he sees right through me.
“I understand, I don’t either,” but I ask before I can check my words, “brothers or sisters?”
His serious face with a raised eyebrow makes me laugh and I don’t hold back. He exhales
relieved at my previous agreement, turning away from me laughing. I cannot see his face
anymore as he walks ahead holding the cup in his right hand. A drop of coffee drips over the lid
down over the thin white scars on his hand.
“That family I can talk about, I guess. No. None. Maybe somewhere I do not know about you?”
“Nah, still don’t like to talk about it,” I say, and he suddenly laughs, a hearty laugh, surprised
and it warms up something inside of me.
There is a calmness in his voice.

35 | Page
 ***

I can still hear him laughing that laugh, later in the evening, as I arrange my clay pots in their
doomed straight line on the fence, for my target practice. Looking at them from far away makes
me less prideful of my own hand’s work, and more willing to proceed destroying them,
cautiously one at a time.
There is nothing left in them, just small seeds and one dried lavender which I planted three
months ago after I moved in my place. I inhale, exhale and shoot. The pots crash with a loud
thud and shards of orange clay.
The clay that is not worthy of history books.
I took archery for a while but after I received that letter that broke my heart I switched to pistol.
An old rusted one, unlike the ones we had in our childhood. It was hard to find anything, shiny
and new, and shiny and new was not going to do justice to my pain. Back then, I had to clean
my shotgun every day, I had to clean the knives and oil every piece of equipment after work. I
cleaned and shined the old piece until the rust fell off the shiny metal.

***
The farm meant nothing anymore. He gave up his old position as the mayor years ago and those
few people that stuck around were the same few old friends from the war. He remembered
everything painfully fresh.
How he kicked the broken man in the ribs. That feeling of power as he pushed his foot on the
bloodied face.
The memory made him feel good for a little bit. It made him feel as if he got his power back for
those few seconds just like then. when he felt the puddle of blood oozing under the tip of his
boot. The heat of it warming his own skin up through the leather.
“Get the hell out of here. If you ever stop and settle somewhere, I will find you and cut you in
small pieces. Keep on running and maybe I will let you live. You piece of shit. After what you did
to my son.”
The thin, white haired man sat in front of the window. Remembering.

36 | Page
Now he wished he didn’t let the son of a bitch get out of there alive. His son never recovered.
The doctors and the nurses called it a fucking good partial recovery. He called it a handicap. His
son was forever handicapped. He said the words through clenched teeth, his son’s face paler than
paper at the sound. Insulting instead of a protecting father.
It still hurt him like a twisted rusty nail pushed in his own ribs remembering the last breakfast
they had on the ranch.
It was his son’s wedding morning.
Everything was pristine white, pricey as the cost to get into heavens, but worth every penny he
spent for his only son.

Then that damned boy pulled a mad stint and told his soon to be wife about his affair with the
woman he thought he loved, right there over the muffins and the croissants, over the pink
peonies plucked from the garden to the one he was supposed to marry, right there in front of
them all. He had all pink flowers plucked from the garden and burned by the back gate and he
hasn’t had a bite of bread ever since. He didn’t care about the bride's feelings, but he did care an
awful lot about her father’s feelings and the dissolved contract. They worked a deal. And a deal
between men is a deal. It was bad enough that his son had the lack of luster to deal with a crazy
woman from the mountains. A hot head that had a temper and a husband. He got her pregnant
when there was no talk about a divorce and as his own wedding plans were unfolding. He
wondered now if Maddox his soon to be in law would have gone through with the wedding had
Trent not walked away from the table.
Someone cleared his throat.
He turned to the voice. His guest must have been there for a while. Tall, thin, with a white
moustache, he sat in silence watching him intensely.

“Why did you let him live?” When he spoke his lips barely moved only his mustache vibrating
slightly.
“I was cocky and greedy. I wanted to hurt him more. I thought it would be a better punishment.
Make him run, scurry. Scared. But I underestimated the fool, and his madness. Found him now.
He locked roots in the city, about 1200 miles towards the east on the coast. My own son on the
other hand.”

37 | Page
He sighed. “He turned into a root.”
“But somebody else found him too. Maybe we should let her finish things off for us.”
“Her?”
“Kin of the God damned wrecker. I have been feeding her bits of pieces of the story. I told you
about it a few months back. I think she will get him nicely. I hear what she does for a living in
that cursed end of the world. Why not let her do the dirty work for us.”
They nodded in silence. Eyes locked still talking.

**

“Whenever you think you can relax and stop somewhere, I will find you and break your bones
again. I want to see you run, and if you care for your life you will run. Dead you mean nothing to
me, I need you alive so I can feel alive whenever I think of you scared, broken, pieced up trash.
Keep running like a rat or the water will rise to your nose and drown you.”

James sat down at his desk.

Memories kept coming back, clouding his mind as he sat crumbled with his face in his hands. He
remembered it all too well, he still felt it sometimes in his bones when the cold of the night
settled. He still remembered the piercing heels crushing his ribs. The feeling he had seeing his
wife in someone else's arms.
Sometimes he felt like he was dreaming.
It felt like only days ago when he sat in a high chair in some bar, his right arm still wrapped
around his chest, the scars on his face reddish white, thin markings of blood. One thin line on his
chin almost reaching his lips. The air was a soft red. The pool tables were crowded.
A basket of fries in front of him stopped steaming a while ago, the beer flat and whatever the
thing was that was wrapped like a hamburger, looked dead three times over.
Don’t ever settle, there is no place for you. His thoughts rushed back again. Someone dragged
him in the back of a truck and the world went dark again.

38 | Page
When he sneaked out of the hospital, he left his wallet in the pocket of some coat he found
hanging. He started new. A new life. There was something shaky about it all now. He didn’t feel
he had the courage to do it again. He was tempted to swallow all the pills he had in his hand that
morning before running out the door trying to bring himself back to his senses.
He settled in his ways, and he got used to the easy things, the easy life. A new beginning when
he slammed the motel open shut behind him.
Since then, he gripped control so tightly. Until now, and now he could feel it slip out of his grip
so fast. Terrifyingly fast.

They should have killed him then and there, when they had him crumbled under their boots.
Instead, he rolled out of death and went back. Days after sneaking out of the hospital he burned
down the barn of the mayor’s old house. The barn fire spread out to the old Victorian house, to
the vineyards, to the garages filled with luxury cars and to the stables. He opened the doors
earlier and horses ran out kicking wildly over the green fields.

He walked back through the low river bed, his feet wet and cold by the other end all the way to
the small forest in the back to where he parked the gray sedan he bought for a couple of hundred
dollars. He wished they were all in so they could burn straight to hell.
Some piece of rationality had made him wait until they left the house. Maybe they were workers
in the fields. Not his problem. He pissed on the grass before he lit the matches and watched for a
minute as the flames, red fast, licked the swirls of the wines bloomed white, like funeral flowers
on the front arches of the building stretching to the room through open summer windows.

White flowers like the delicate polish she had on her fingernails on their wedding day, like the
ones she had one when he walked in on her scratching the back of her lover in the house he built
for her.

39 | Page
 ***
That was a lifetime ago.
It wasn’t bad working in an office, working with people who didn’t care about anything else but
their drunk Friday nights. He drank too, but he did it alone, afraid to open up in front of anyone,
by accident. Death by whiskey. When you bleed words and you can’t tourniquet the damned
mouth no matter what. He got up to leave. He could hear everyone in the hallway dragging,
getting their coats.

People shuffled coats and words outside his door. Purposely delaying, hoping he would come
out. Heels digging small holes in the thin carpet. When he did they all stopped looking surprised.
The fakeness was so obvious it made him smile.
A small, tanned woman, puckering her already painted mouth, kept applying ruby red lipstick on
her plump lips. He hated makeup. Pig grease and other dead fat. He frowned his disgust towards
his own toes. She turned to him.
“Go with us,” a sultry low voice smiled the words out.
“Yes, go with us,” mixed voices of the group of men and women teased him. You never do.
What else do you have to do at this time?”
“Seriously said one of them.”
“Aren’t you guys tired of asking?” He laughed but there was no humor in his voice, he sounded
just like he felt. Shaky.
“Come,” added someone else, this time a courtesy call.
“I am tired. I am going home.”
“No, please, not this time. Give in this time, you never do.” They laughed. He shrugged them off,
throwing his coat over on. His fists through the coat. “Is always good to go home.”
He did a quick introspect on the insanity of his decision, looking at the woman’s lips, still pursed
his way. The coat settled on top on his wide shoulders.
“I won’t. Good night.” They all left separate ways. They already forgot about him, indifferent of
his distancing, yet not so much that he would not be mentioned, over and again over a cup of
wine or a shot of something spicy that would warm up their mouth and eyes making them
merciless and cruel in their comments and observations of him.

40 | Page
He would have driven home with the same detachment he did every day if he wouldn’t have
gotten angry at a white truck crossing him recklessly. He would have driven by quietly. But he
held his breath for a second, and something in him stirred in frustration, then frustration stirred
into a fiery acid burn that spread in his chest and made his eyes fog up with fury.

He slammed on acceleration, his body responding strangely to his increased heartbeat. He cursed
out-loud and the anguish turned into a joyful release.
Pressed both his hands on the horn, deafening himself already blinded by the intensity of the
sweet madness rushing through his veins. His foot slammed harder on the accelerator and as he
locked eyes with the other driver he rushed like a madman on a still gray spiral of death towards
the white truck. The other driver shrunk in sudden fear, with eyes large beyond any possible
largeness on a human face. Mouth tight in a weak grimace and body shriveled over his own
steering wheel, unable to move, stuck, suspended like a specter almost vanishing in its own fear,
in his exit lane stuck between the other cars, trap of death. Unable to move, turning pale with his
breath strangled in his throat.
From somewhere something rang, maybe an alarm, or a phone, or the radio.
James realized his own ears were ringing loud, as his eyes registered the bird crashed against his
windshield, neck broken, beak open just a tiny bit for a river of life, red and thin to transpire out
like a seal of life broken. His windshield untouched but by the final trickle emanating from the
bird’s lifeless body.

 He blinked, fast and hard, forcing his eyes to open, and his throat parched, all of a sudden aware
of it all, aware of the speed, of the furious mass of the truck around him sliding forward and his
foot slammed on the brakes unconsciously. Hard, skidding, massive, melted tire screeching noise
barely stopping from hitting the spot in front, a slither of white from which a tiny figured
slammed the door open running away fighting to move as if pushing through a heavy thick snow
his face still turned looking at him with painted horror dripping from his disfigured features.
His own truck stopped inches from the white one.

41 | Page
The gulps of air diminishing to insufficiency, the space inside, he opened the door, the freezing
cold slapping him awake. As if coming up from deep waters, with the pressure still pushing
crushing on his lungs, but without pain, in a way that excited him that made him want to laugh,
scream in laughter, and jump around.

 He drove around the still scene as if nothing happened. He hasn’t felt that light in years. He
pulled over on the side of the road miles up on the highway. Grabbed a cup of coffee. Sat by the
dirty dusted windows looking out at the evening’s dimming light. The forest a fogging dream,
darkened by the short days, welcoming the night in slurps of cold, sucked by the frozen ground
dreaming already a mist of white.
I should have gone with them for a drink.
He grinned in the steam of the cup burning his lips.

42 | Page
 Chapter 9
He made it home after the dust settled. His wife was already there. Her car parked in the
driveway away from the main entrance had one of the doors still open. He leaned in looking for
the keys before shutting the metallic blue door. A small silver chain was on the floor, he picked it
up and threw it in the cupboard for her to see later.
It smelled vaguely like perfume and cigarettes. He inhaled again. Cigarettes.
She wasn’t smoking, he dismissed the thought.
So health conscious she made him give up his Tobacco chewing before they even got married.
His fingers lingered on the door before slamming it close. Yet the smell lingered in his nostrils
reminding him how he once enjoyed it.
He walked in fighting the wind pushing the solid door behind him. He enjoyed many things
before giving them up for her. A bitter smile touched his lips.
His life was perfect now.
Everything under control everything calculated and measured. He liked this way versus another
time before when he rushed around in madness and uncertainty.
The night he left his hometown was the night he swore to change everything if he only had a
chance. Once chance he asked for when he lay curled broken in the back of a truck filled with
haystacks, his wounds infected, the cuts on his hands filled with dust and dirt.
His eyes cried; his mind numb at the pain burning his entire body.

With her, he fell in love. He laughed. He did with all his heart. She looked so virginal, so sweet
but he was the virgin, he fell for her big blue eyes.

43 | Page
 ***

Sam was in the house, his wife, the mother of his future children.

She was indeed in the house, holding a large white pearl covered photo album. He peaked over
her shoulder and saw she was looking at their wedding pictures. Her expression was sweet and
innocent. He felt a bit out of place. It felt like a strange setup he shouldn’t have interrupted.
For some reason it also felt like a trap, like she staged it for some reason. But why?
What reason? He looked around then back at her face. Her long eyelashes throwing a small
delicate shadow on her perfect porcelain skin, her eyelids shut tight.
Tears were streaming down her cheek. He felt a pang of guilt. She looked at him suddenly, her
big blue eyes open with love and adoration.

“Hi baby. It took you awhile.” He exhaled slowly, still weary, feeling guilty. Like walking on
eggshells.
“Yes.” He suddenly didn’t feel like talking to her. Wanted to backtrack his footsteps and wall
out of there. Like a fly by the beak of a hungry bird who waited and watched. He leaned
forward still clutching his bag and coat and kissed the top of her head, patted her shoulder and
walked by.
Guilt kicked in as he reached the top of the stairs and turned around looking at her.
One leg bent under her, the other one hanging loose on the white carpet, with polished trimmed
nails. The gesture unnerved him, reminding him strangely of the woman at the office who often
sat like that at her desk. Often? How many times he watched her he thought to himself.

The red wine color of her nails made him thirsty, upset, reminding him of the forbidden drink
which was not allowed in his own perfectly white living room.
Like a strange cat, she sensed him and turned around fixing her dark lined eyes on him, bright
fluorescent almost blue of her irises unnerving him even more. With the contentment of a greasy
cat stretching out of her intentional demure posture she threw the album she had on her lap on
the glass table in front of her.

44 | Page
“Isn’t it beautiful?” She didn’t ask. Her affirmation made him flinch. He broke her steady eye
contact and bit his tongue until the sharp pain gave in to the taste of blood. His eyes on the white
carpets, he childishly wished to punish her somehow and destroy the space. He had the strangest
thought now. How happy it would make him if his heart would burst open and bleed all over the
place. Staining all her white perfection, seeing her face sulky.

If it was the last thing to see, her pretty face grimacing in displeasure. More guilt. He couldn’t
remember when he became discontent with it. He helped her choose this furniture, the large
silver vases with strange fichus plants made of gold and silver tresses. He tried to smile. But
couldn’t force himself so he kept his head down avoiding her eyes. So he turned away from her.

“Things will change when we have kids,” he told her in a forced kind voice that hurt his throat,
turning back to her.
“When we have kids,” she said, picking up a glass off the table. The clear liquid sparkled. Tonic
water and vodka.
“I guess we will have to worry about that then. Meanwhile do not spill that,” she pointed, raising
her eyebrows and tilting her head towards the plate she had ready for him on the table. White
fish and rice salad. His appetite disappeared suddenly, and he stood there looking at her for a
while. Sensing him, she looked back up and smiled sweetly.
“Are you alright? You don’t look like it. Shoes.”
He ignored her words and walked across the room, his shoes on. Her eyes widened in disbelief,
angry sparks in her almost controlled voice.
“Fine.”
He clenched his jaw and walked away unsure what to answer. Feeling the need to release the
pressure building in his head and in his chest, to avoid exploding.
Although the thought of something popping in his brain, a blood vessel or something to drip and
drop on her impeccable carpets. Something messy and disgusting to get a real reaction. She
didn’t do anything after all.
He was the one pushing her buttons.

45 | Page
He placed his plate down on the kitchen counter, hunger gone, irritation reaching a high top.
Walking out of the room, he turned, changing his mind, and turned around automatically
counting the thirteen cold steps that lead to the basement.
He bent his head to avoid hitting the low ceiling and stepped in the dark, cold room. The shirt on
his back felt thin making him shiver.
This room was his only touch to the house. Everything else was from her father. Every little
thing, purchased, modeled, designed, paid for, under a different name than his.
He hated every little moment, he wanted to provide himself, to build himself to make this place
their own. These last years he fought for his family, for his wife and for being on their own,
independent from her dad’s money. Money won.
Blood thicker than a wedding band alliance, won as well.
In this place alone they sat on the stairs. He remembered holding her, talking about the children
they would have.
She would laugh sweetly, how she melted his heart with that laugh and say it will happen.
Month after month, year after year.
He asked, they tried, until she became distant whenever he opened up the subject, and he became
more indifferent. She stopped coming to the basement for a drink of brandy with him. Then
forbid him from bringing it upstairs after she changed the carpets.

Thirteen steps between them. Thirteen cold, solid slabs of rock. And indifference these days.
Many layers of indifference.
One thing he knew for sure. He wasn’t going to give up. He was going to try more. He loved this
woman and he wasn’t going to lose her too. He accepted too much but he wasn’t going to accept
being pushed out of her life.
He inhaled the musky air.
Cold, solid walls reminded him of his own father’s house. The cellar they had with thick wooden
ceilings and the walls were painted white.
Oak shelves lined the walls. Shelves he built with his own hands, slow and careful.
He caressed and cut each bar, smoothing the sharp edges, mending it with hard fingers touching
it like a lover. With kindness like a friend. He nailed them with wooden nails and sharp steel
taking his time to inhale the saw dust’s smell and the resin on his fingers.

46 | Page
It smelled like cold old air and wood and grapes, and lemons and spilled wine. The bottles all
neatly stacked against the walls gave glossy sparks when the eyes moved over as they were live
coral shining under moonlight. He felt the urge to grab bottles out of their shelves and break
them right there on the floor. He wanted to spill the white wines which filled the place, and
crash the bottles. Instead, he reached behind one of the shelves probing. His long arms scratched
when he pulled his arm out, on a thin splinter stuck behind the panels of wood. Did he move it?
He probed another spot.

A wedding gift for her that wasn’t entirely finished. The slight darkness made him blink,
refusing to turn on the light, he squinted in the semi-dark.
His feet cold on the crème tiled floors, he curled his toes.
Blowing away a dusted spider web he stretched his arms again behind one of the wood panels
bringing out a bottle with dark amber liquid in it. He twisted the top open and brought the
smooth glass neck close to his lips, resting the cold glass on his skin, smelling the biting whiskey
flavor. A small sip.
He changed his mind and spit it down, out of spite, out of anger, just because. He looked at the
red spat on the floor.
Like stains of wine rubbed lips on a white napkin. For whatever reason, it brought back
memories of their wedding’s white dinner, where no red colored drinks were allowed. That
should have been a warning.

He thought for a second of taking the drink upstairs and drinking it in front of her, casually, on
her precious white sofa. Just because. He swallowed the bitter dark and closed the lid leaving the
bottle on top of the shelves, purposely, no attempt to hide it.
Let her find it, maybe she would get mad enough to get an argument out of it.
To get her to fuck him. Like in the beginning. She had no emotions these days, flat as a pale
China.
And he hated China, too delicate to handle, too fragile, too easy to break.
When he went back upstairs, she was gone. Her white Porsche was still parked in the driveway.
He heard her slam the door, but instead he pretended he didn’t hear a thing.

47 | Page
There was a time when he would have gone outside. Ran after her, brought her back, held her
against him, caressed her tears away until everything was all right between them.
It was another him, times were different.
Heck, another woman entirely and a different lifetime altogether.

**

I wonder what kind of man he really is?

What kind a person would run and leave everything behind. Hide and run. Run and hide until
there is nothing left of his old being but stringing memories.
I wonder what kind a man would kill the woman he loved. I guess I am looking at him. A
monster.
Sometimes it is not the sins of the past but the sins we cannot stop thinking of that don’t let us
be.
My sins.
His own.
Yet I want him in a physical, hard way that I cannot shake off.
I am the wave, I am the up and down, the reason I get angry derives from my own thoughts. My
own lack of control is the reason my head is bursting right now with anger.
I took a pistol out and aimed it at the microwave, reconsidered, aimed it at the trash can,
reconsidered again. Silencer off, saved them all.
Dropped it on the counter and reached out for the baseball bat I had in the umbrella basket by the
door. Or maybe not.
I swirled and smashed the plates on the small kitchen table. Swirled again and the bat made
contact with the kitchen’s cabinets. White shards flew up in the air, glowing under the gold
light. A cup of water smashed hard on the floor, drops spraying my feet.
Wood splinters from a half open door, flew around my face, one scratched my cheek, I could
smell the blood.
Then smashed the water pipe in the sink. Soaked, I hit it again and again until my arms tired,
before I dropped it. Cursed and kicked the wet hand towels that fell off the side of the sink,

48 | Page
tripping on them and crashing face forward on the punishing cabinets. It hurt like a bitch. Damn
it. Damian.

Chapter 10

James left when she fell asleep. His head was heavy, unable to breathe in that house. He drove
for a while until he thought he turned the corner on a familiar memory. Was this the bar he
wondered about?
It looked like it could have been. The night he met Sam, he barely paid attention, the night he
came about, entering it, his body shaking with pain. When he left even less.
The same one, or was it another?
He stopped in the door remembering her face the first time he had seen her.
Softer, kinder.
Carrying. Somewhat. Or pretending well.
It was the same place, after all.

He sat down at the bar just like that night, all those years ago when he was new to this place.
Two weeks in the city and he felt exhausted. He parked his truck at the motel in the back, his
wallet lighter by a few hundred dollars from the cost of the room, and from the junkyard who
took his blue sedan giving him another junky piece just as dusted by rust.
Tired of potato chips and cheap beer which helped him swallow the triple doses of pain
medication he stole from a convenience store. The few women he met at the bar did not make
him forget anything. Cheap lipstick and dyed blond hair cured nothing. His body still hurt
everywhere. Especially deep in his chest. He pushed that feeling aside. Better not dwell in it. He
wondered sometimes where she went? What happened to her? And as it would start to hurt , he’d
block it all.
He thought about going back about facing them no matter the outcome. Wanted to see her eyes
as she stood by the side of her lover and hear her say something. Anything. He may have broken

49 | Page
them both this time. He may have cried and dropped at her feet. Time cures most things, but
fear. He wasn’t insane to put himself back in the hands of those blood hungry, doped up men.

It took him longer to heal these days. He sat down on a corner chair, his right arm wrapped stiff
across his body. The bandage gray and painfully pressed on his burned flesh and broken bones.
He looked miserable, like he got expelled from a camel’s bottom somewhere in the middle of the
desert. He felt like that too.
The bruises along his jawline were paling, the scars on his hands and the one on his lips stood
out, thin white lines striking on his dark tanned face. His eyes were glossy and his hair a mess.
His body ached the whole night as it had for the last months.

That night, bruised and crushed, he tossed and turned, unable to find peace until he walked out
the hotel he stayed at.
A burned scar on his leg tinged painfully from his calf to his hip. Eyeing the tall chair, he sighted
turning his body to position himself for the less painful contact with the cold metal. He
anticipated the slight discomfort as he sat. Just then a woman’s large bag hit him, making him
lose balance and crash against the tall table of the bar.
He cried out loud in pain and closed his eyes, suddenly dizzy. She sat next to him chatting on the
phone unaware of his presence or the hurt inflicted.
Only when she hung up she turned and saw the tall man, bent over the counter. Her thin light
eyebrows raised as she leaned towards him with little interest ready to spring out of her chair. He
looked like a drunk man slumped in his stupor, eyes closed and red cheeks.
Her hand reached for her bag, ready to dart out of her seat. In the split second she measured
him, and noticed a thin line of blood oozing through his pants leg down on his knee.  His hand
gripping the chair's entire body twisted painfully, with scars almost healed down his wrist.
“Are you ok?”
The moan he let out made her cringe. It sounded like pain instead of the mad drunkenness she
expected.

50 | Page
“Let me help you.” Her hand grabbed his arm forcing him, pushing him almost, down on the
chair.
He exhaled at the forced twist and let himself be maneuvered to sit on the same stool she pushed
him in earlier and was still lodged in his lower leg. He sat and nodded a thank you accepting the
water she handed him. Then the whiskey shot she passed him.
“Did you not see me?” Reproachful, still in pain.
“Not really,” she wasn’t apologizing he guessed from her tone. Her eyes piercing, strange blue,
almost empty of emotion, cold and calculated. I thought you were drunk anyway. You look
pretty lit.”
“Fucking great. Well, I am not.”
“I can see it now. Drink.” She pushed the glass his way again. Then another, and another.
They talked, the few drinks numbing his pain. Or maybe it was his brain fogged up by the
whiskey binging forgetfulness. Didn’t remember when he got in her car, when he got home,
when he got anywhere but out of there.

Chapter 11

He woke up feeling like a tiny frog stretched under tiny needles. He was being dissected in a
surgical petri dish, but this petri dish had two thousand dollars sheets on it.
It was morning and he was in her house. He remembered talking to her. He had a funny,
unpleasant feeling he may have said too much.
Looked around. Nice house. He stood up, his naked soles on the floors of the apartment feeling
the smooth dark cherry wood. The windows to the balcony were wide open, small thin white
drapes floating through the house. There were no dark drapes in the entire place, the entire light
of the morning lighting up the place. He remembered last night when the lights of the street filled
the room.
He had a hard time falling asleep, his head spinning, pain shooting through his body in the
whirlwind of drunkenness. He stirred in his sleep sometimes in the morning annoyed by the heat
of the body next to him, dangling on the side of the bed.
She helped him change the bandage on his arm and she was kind. Then she fucked him like a
mad woman, right before passing out on his arm. He woke up to nothing but light.

51 | Page
The apartment smelled sterile, no coffee, nothing, no breakfast, nothing. She didn’t have a cat, a
flower nothing green or alive as he walked around in the morning towards the open windows. It
smelled like a vacuum, empty sterile. The breeze brought a warm air, too warm for the early
morning. The only smell, some drifting pollen. He sneezed and the floors creaked. She opened
an eye watching him walk her way.
“How did you sleep”, she said, half mouthed, barely moving her lips.
“Good, did I talk too much?”
“A little, you did”, she chuckled.
“What did I say?”
“Nonsense for a while, then you liked how my hair smelled, then you asked me to kiss you good
night and other stuff like this.”
“Anything else?”
“Nothing else. Nah.”

“Ok. I just,” he hesitated.

“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Ok.”
“Do you have coffee.”
“No.”
“Aspirin at least?”
“No.”
“Do you have anything at all to eat in this house?”
She smiled. She had a bottle of white wine.
He disliked white wine. It gave him headaches. He also hated suits and yet he ended up wearing
one every day, since the day they married.

52 | Page
He drank white wine to please her and he cursed it because it gave him headaches and made him
miserable unwilling and incapable to have sex on their wedding night. Angry for not being able
to stand for himself and his damned head.
It wasn’t even about sex now; it was about her frustrating capacity to minimize him as a man.
Her and her father as well. He disliked that man so much, he almost hated him. Now he was
living in his house, which he once called his own. Kike corrected him laughing.

“It is Sam’s house, you're just a passerby.” The unexpected marriage left Kike angrier than ever
before.
It felt like that in the last months when it was easier to stay at work longer hours than anyone
else, returning home when it was getting dark outside. It was easier to keep his mind busy, to
stay clear from the anger he felt against the woman he once hoped would give him a child,
maybe a son. It was keeping him busy enough to keep him from going crazy.

Chapter 12

When I drove in this morning, the cold outside made me shiver walking through the parking lot.
My coat seemed so warm on the store’s rack, yet such a small, helpless barrier against the wind.
I imagined it would be warmer now as I was getting ready to leave for the day. I took my shoes
off behind the cubicle’s separator. James walked by, calling it a day.
Out of my shoes, my toes stretched painfully and I laughed. He stopped in front of me. Still. His
eyes from above the tall wall, caught mine.

He chuckled amused by my laughter, and then his words melted on his lips. I could not see his
mouth, his chin, his laughter. I could only hear it and fell silent. We both did. Suspended in the
space between us. I felt my chest hurting. I could see myself through his eyes, my lips red, my
cheeks burning, eyes wide. A strange creature caught in between heart beats, in the pulsing blood
in my temples.
The strangest, sweetest feeling, his eyes pulling me into him, piercing my entire being with a
honeyed velvety spike of desire. Drawing me in the arms of a long lost and refound lover.

53 | Page
I shivered, exquisitely, erotic, like a dance, where the other body is so close you can guess it, yet
you cannot touch it. It killed the nerves. I could sense him through the wall and I crumbled
wanting to get closer. His lips so close, yet unable to taste them, my chests rising in rushed
breaths, burning dry lips, moistened by a craving tongue, wishing it was the other one’s tongue
on my lips. Craving him so suddenly and so intense, locked in his dark blue eyes, my fingers
grabbed the side of my desk until my knuckles whitened, tightness of my fists pushing against
the desk in front of me. The intensity so overpowering, his eyes, melted steel, dripping heat
inside of me.

A darkness so heavy and so erotically delicious that my knees buckled. He laughed, a nervous
laugh.
Then silence broke when someone said something outside of that touchless grip, releasing us
from it. Look away, a little voice in my head. Actually a screaming voice but covered by this
cloud.

I could barely breathe, my chest heavy, my body trembling so turned on, I could barely make
myself turn and walk out of the cubical to face him as he moved to her side. Still out of reach
still intensely intoxicating. When I spoke, I heard my own voice heavy, low, barely articulat. I
cleared my throat dazed still, he caught off guard too, as he moved around the wall positioning
himself in front of me.
Kath asked him something and he answered the woman’s question but still looking at me, eyes
locked, curious and just as visibly turned on.
His eyes danced on my body for a brief second before turning around and walking out of the
room.
It was the appetizer, I craved the whole meal, and starved watching it walk away. It was as if
lightning hit and turned me into a burning lusting tree.
Suddenly there was more to us than us. Kath was there watching silent from between half closed
eyelids.
I wasn’t sure why, he turned back to say something. No words came out.

54 | Page
The days that followed became a challenge an infuriating erotic silent game to which he did not
seemed willing to give a resolution. There were no words outside the files, and then he would
avoid my eyes, search for my eyes, lean into my eyes, probing.
He would look at my face curiously, trying to read something. Language that got painfully erotic.
One of us would always take the turn of the tormentor, the one who probed deepest, longest,
making the other one shiver in anticipation then break the spell silently and ignore the torment
for the rest of the day or days. Tantalizing with hungry eyes and with a smirk when the other one
would tremble.
Biting lips looking down away, uncertain of the game. So much to lose but unwilling to give up
the hot delicious dance of sense when minds would go at it angry needy. I was scared for a little
while that my face gave away something. That he recognized in me someone else.
The air was hot between us. Trying to break the spell asking random nerving questions.
“Wife is well?”
“Yes she is.”

“I don’t know what you are trying to do,” he whispered, words dragged out slowly, his voice
raspy low close to my face, one day.
I raised my eyebrows, tilting my head.
“Not sure what I am doing, is pretty confusing if you are asking me.”
“Quite a bit confusing, ahem.”
“Confusing?” I repeated, my eyes locked to his mouth. Watching him lick his lips, nervous, fast
as he watched my eyes.
I looked away trying to keep myself from biting his mouth, or touching his chest, rubbing my
hands on it, as he sat there in front of me clueless, lost, ready to grab me himself, so clueless and
so intense.
“I would have said so...”
I looked back at him as he shifted to indifference, his eyes slipping down to my mouth.
“You know, I said giving him time to focus on my words if for a brief second, “
“I imagine you and I, driving really fast on the highway, is dark outside and I am in your lap,
straddling you, and it feels”….a little moan escaped me, making us both shiver.

55 | Page
His own, mad, angry, aware of incapability of touching me right there right now, my words
making his own images pop in his head, come to his head, blurring his vision.
“So good to feel you inside of me, as the car moves us and your leg tightens pushing on the
acceleration...”
I looked at him, smirking, daring.
What was he going to do?
He closed his eyes, and moaned backing away from me, his fists tight along his body so tight his
knuckles turned white. I wanted to say more, something else to break him. But somehow he
gained the upper hand, back to his control. His eyes tight shut h, he pushed me away.

“What is that smirk about?” he threw his body against the back of the chair he sat down in
earlier.
“Why do you always ask that? You know very well..”
Groaning, turned on to the point of madness, his cheeks flushed, mouth red and nostrils flaring
He began walking towards me fast, stopping inches from my body from my face. I stepped aside,
scared by the intensity between us.
Did I push it too far?
His chest was moving slowly close to my face, his jaw clenched and a threatening look in his
eyes.
No words came out, just a slow laborious breath. So I turned around and walked out letting him
stand there.
Oh it was addictive. It was such delicious pleasure to break him down like that. It was terrifying
as well.
His phone rang behind me. His answer was anything but sweet, or even pleasant.
Through the speaker phone I can hear both of them, so I slow down my steps, listening,
shameless.
A soft and almost strange I love you, habitude more than anything else it sounded like. There is
no madness in the sweet protectiveness he is showing her. There is no anger, in his frustration,
and her tone somewhat muffled by the phone seems to reciprocate.

56 | Page
Maybe a bit monotone. Maybe a bit less wild than what I imagine. The wildness in my words
has no place at the office, the one in my eyes can do plenty of damage. I will not add anything
else to the pot.
“Did you remember to take my clothes from the cleaner? Of course not. Why would you.” Then
a fake laughter to sooth her wound.
“I will be late tonight, honey.” It dripped with coldness.
“Tonight? We had dinner plans.”
“Change it please, I won’t make it. Just postpone it. You are good at sweet talking them, or just
do it without me.”
Mad on the other line she broke things, kicked a chair, then reaching in the trash can she
retrieved a white box lined up with colored anticonceptional pills. Putting it back in her pocket.
After all.
He hung up after a short while, holding the phone for a second longer, his finger pressed on the
dial. He dialed again.
“I am on for tonight.”
I wondered what it meant. One simple way to find out.

**

I drove behind him to the downtown area where most people didn’t have the courage to get out
of the car alone. He parked his truck in front of a brick construction with tall metal doors, a
bouncer nodding him in.
Hookers, probably, I thought to myself, tucked down in my car, across the street.

I made a point of bumping into him the next day. It took me by surprise seeing him driving an
old, beat down jeep instead of his truck. Little light blinked in my head and I blurted out before I
could reconsider it.
“Lost your truck betting on something good?”
His jaw dropped.
“It could be in the shop, somewhere you know?”
“I bet..”

57 | Page
“Why would you say that? Just don’t yell it out loud in the office!”
“You gave in easily!”
“I am pissed, I never lose. That’s how I got it in the first place!” The arrogant laughter I
remembered.
“Gambling?”
“Sort of…”
“No, you either gamble or you don’t!”
He didn’t answer and slammed the rusty door of the jeep.
“Lucky it came with doors. Surprisingly they still stay up. Beat up and old. It suits you,” I told
him as I walked away.

There is no limit in madness, no limit in despair or in desire. Desire is the only thing that after
you burn you have a brief second to reborn before breaking again, the only one that makes you
want to break again and again until reaching madness, thinking you will reach your peace. But
never do.
I sat in front of him holding his eyes, not afraid of an angry man, never been. Although this
sabotage may cost me a job. Distance me from my goal.
“Won’t have anything to do with you.” I tell him in the same even tone.
“I don’t know what you are trying to do.” His words dragged out slow heavy, his voice raspy and
low close to my face.
“This will not look good at all.” He frowns and there is something ugly in his features when he
does that. Something irritating that makes me anxious.

“Nothing, what am I doing, I being nice, funny, silly, do not read anything in this.”
“I am talking about the project.”
Of course you are talking about the project, I say to myself. I hope it all burns down with you
inside.
“I was thinking more of seduction,” I tell him instead. “Don’t think that!”
“I am not.” His voice strained. I smirked. He looked away. “I am thinking about how much is
going to burn us to lose.”

58 | Page
“You are the boss, deal with it.” I answered him icily and I walked out. I know how much it
angers him, but for him it only lasts a moment and the anger vanishes. Too calm and controlled
cannot stand to feel anything else. I want him to remain angry, to make that crushing feeling last
a long time, enough to make him jump up and break things, enough to make him crash and burn.
Maybe in my arms. Maybe not.

Chapter 13

I got home angry at myself for letting my emotions get the best of me. The anger and hate I had
for so many years melted away around him. I despised myself for becoming weak, for forgetting
about the desperations and sadness at the loss without return.
My addictive nature allowed me to stick to the past, but now, dropping that heaviness down for a
little bit made me not want to pick it up again. She felt for so many years. I felt I broke inside
even more.

I sat on top of my bed clutching the box with photos I carried to the other side of the world. The
photo of the man that looked like James. A younger man, a thinner man. No worries on his
handsome face. Squinting didn’t change much of the image as I brought it closer to my face.
In another he is in his teens, a soldier in Desert Storm,the photo wrapped in a yellow paper. The
love letter in my sister’s hand smudged by time and kisses.

I thought it was the desert and the desert around me that made me think of wars and dream of
revenge.
When I ran away I never thought about coming back home to trace down a man that I used to
want. The anticipation was exquisitely delightful, play with the hunt before offing it.
But here, face to face with the man I used to crave, a lifetime ago. The man which I desired,
ashamed in emotions secretly hidden from my sister who was dating him and loved him, to later
marry him, the man which I knew to have been guilty of her death all these years ago. My desire
for him returned. Shame of wanting him gone,while hating myself a little, a different hunger
released.

59 | Page
I felt good thinking about crushing him. I felt even better imagining him under me as I tasted his
lips.
A little scratch rather than a knock outside the door. Damian is waiting to be let in, like a faithful,
obedient pup. He wants to know more although he promised he would never ask. He wants to
know. His eyes show thoughts, fragments of emotions, his imagination in overdrive. Oh, how
badly he wants to know everything. His mouth is asking quietly. His eyes are piercing questions.
His hand was wrapped round the handle of the door as if unsure about walking in or walking
away. His eyes taking all in as if he walked in on some sacred ceremony.
“Don’t…,” I tell him.
“Why not?”
“You promised.”
“I can change my mind.” His voice was low.
“You promised you won’t change your mind,” I told him.
“I need to.”
“No you don’t, mostly nonsense.”
This time I was ready, and I pointed to the walnut desk.
“There is a drawer with letters from my sister. Read if you want.”
I point with a weak defeated gesture to the open drawer. His eyes searching the photos and the
box on the bed.
“That too,” I say.
“I read some of the letters many times. I just didn’t want to share them with anyone. I tried to
figure out what happened.”

I stopped talking and watched his greedy eyes taking in the crumpled papers. What is behind
words? Words are so damaging, so impossible to retract, and if you write them down, it is like
writing a check with sad memories and truths for everybody to know forever.
Sharing them would have broken the spell, the lie, would have screamed the truth in my brain,
terminal, irreversible, damaging.
No sharing policy in place, reached out and touched his face instead. Promising more of other
things. Distracting.

60 | Page
I passed him a bottle. “Drink and let’s read.”
He laughs looking at the label. Bourbon.“Remember this?”
“I don’t remember much of anything.”
I laughed.
“Silly man.” Of course not. He drank himself into a stupor then he buried himself between my
legs.
Chapter 14

The thin, blond woman signed the credit card statement, handing it back to the seller, who took it
smirking from the overdressed woman in her slick, silver dress. Red blood nails exchange the
form, hand and grab like small claws the helpless piece of white paper. Before anybody changed
their mind.

Kath looked in the little bag again, before walking out of the store.
A small pistol was now nested between her wallet and her hair brush, in the large purse on the
passenger seat. She felt jittery, anxious, curious what it felt like using it. She bought it just in
case things got out of hand. Perhaps the piece was useless but she didn’t see it that way. She
could taste blood. She bit her lip so hard, the taste of it dripped from her tongue on her senses.
She spent the last hour looking at the little piece which looked a lot like jewelry. Encrusted with
a small pearl on the trigger ignoring the smirking vendor’s looks. She knew better than to engage
the ignorant woman who pretended to know it all. Less conversation, less information.
“Self-defense.”
“Every woman needs one,” the other one answered, convinced she scored an impressive sale.”
Then she turned and picked the black .380 sitting in the back of the case. It looked like it could
do some damage, and it probably did. So at least one of them was ready. She smiled sweetly,
passing the receipt while the seller’s jaw tightened in a displeased surprise.

Chapter 15

61 | Page
Another day in this ridiculous pretense I decided to remain. Why? I figured it was beyond
punishing.
“You can leave if you want too but it would help me if you stay,” his voice low, a tightness in his
chest, his breath held waiting for my answer. I wanted to help. But not really. I did want to stay.
So I just walked out as he talked.
I don’t want to answer. My whole body is aching. I am angry at myself for being so weak.
I turned half way and he searched my eyes. Found God knows what in them, found my heartbeat
perhaps, my eyes fixated on his face, burning, cheeks flushed. He stood up and walked my way
fast then stopped right in front and crashed, falling back against the wall and remaining there, his
eyes full of fire, his body pinned against the wall. His hand on his chest pressing down on his
heart as if that would render him some control.
I wondered if he could smell my skin, like I could smell his. Warmed up by his own heart bit,
hotter than the seconds before.
It made me think of summers of long ago. Of the carless and sweet smile that I saw in the picture
I held folded in my pocket all these months.
I know for a fact I am not falling for him, but I am falling for my own vice.
In his mind I looked small, I looked shy, I looked frail, small and cowered.

He was bothered by my expression, an in between an orgasm, and a faint, aroused and ashamed,
bothered lustful.
He could smell my skin, a hot sweet smell like some strange Swedish candy, he and I once had
at a fair, in a summer, happy sunny day of laughter and happiness many, many years ago, that
stuck, a sweet simple, innocent, to be craved forever.

Deep the plunged erotic dance of pupils of biting lips of trembling fingers, hushed words, his
voice low.
“If you stay and help me...” Manipulation. He wants me to stay but he doesn’t have the courage
to be direct.He doesn’t have the courage to make a decision, to ask. Coward. I have to be the one
taking the blame.

62 | Page
“A primitive instinct. Desire is a primitive instinct.” He said days ago, laughing”, but I know
that manipulation is even more primal, and he was doing it right then. I laughed now
remembering his words, he laughed in recognition of what he saw in my eyes.
I probe deep into his eyes. Lust. He sees me as I imagine his mouth on mine, his body against
mine, the wall hard behind me, licking his tongue…

Is good to wait on things, it gets more complicated once you get them. The same thing with
people.
The nothing you want, you crave, messes you up pretty bad once you get close to it. If you wait
long enough you realize you may not need them after all, that they are useless.
It is easier to let go before touching.
Before having.
Is easier before the first bite.
I left the streets behind me after I ran from the building to the parking lot. There was no one
there but the guards and some strange decorations that made me think of Asian holidays. The red
silks adorned the elevator door.

I held one of the letters worn around the edges.

“Everything I breathe, I feel him like a touch inside of me, like the touch of a thousand thoughts,
a thousand fingers, caressing.”
I felt the same now. How can that change so easily? How can that crave, that crushing desire turn
to “he makes me feel safe. He is offering me everything.”
I would have never given up on the first one.

The idea is that the journey changes you, that you walk away from the brutish simplicity of youth
into a refined form of adulthood. That experience aligns your emotions sufficient, to turn a man
into an emotionally driven, disarticulated individual. But it is a lie, it rarely happens.
The changes turn most men into disarticulated, cowardly beings to concern with menial thoughts
or refutation of sexual desires that turns them idiotic.

63 | Page
I never understood the difference between wanting and holding the things you want. For me the
difference, melts, I want it, I get it, I don’t want it anymore and I drop it.

Chapter 16

Kate sat her bony fingers fisted in her lap. They were both seated in Kikeb ’s car on the side of
the road somewhere between Alexandria and Fort Hunt.
“Do you think he still has the papers?
The woman’s blond hair was set around her face. Her face where one would usually guess a stern
look was now looked softened by a smile, as she sat looking at the man seated in front of her at
the table.
Tenderness almost in her eyes, she rarely touched the food on her plate while he devoured his
pieces of meat and potatoes.

“Have you ever eaten a meal with him? Watch him eat a piece of steak?” Calculated bastard,
slices everything meticulously and deliberately chews every damn bite until you want to punch
him in the face.” He cut away at his own steak, chewing the other pieces, angry. Fast.

She had, in fact, but found it delightful. His meticulous, slow attack of the platter only made her
imagine his strategic approaches to other things. Sex for example, while she rumbled about her
lack of interest in anything sexual she took note of her boss’s formidable persona and the way he
moved about. She wasn’t immune and she also noticed Eva’s eyes probing about as well.

“I can’t stand him or the idea of him giving me a grandchild! The sooner all comes out the
better.”
he coughed and almost choked on the sip of water he washed the last bite with. “A kid from him
would allow him to inherit the family money until the child is of age!”
She nodded, listening.
“The damn problem is, that there is no money left!” “ Not a damn penny. Ok, maybe a couple
hundred dollars to keep the account open. If.”

64 | Page
She knew him to have spent the funds on his daughter's inheritance. It was to come to her with
her first born and fall in her husband’s and her care until the child was old enough.
“What happened to all of it?” He merely took her on a vacation to the Keys many years ago. He
drank in moderation, he never really bought his wife anything expensive, definitely not for her.
What did it escape her?
He pretended he didn’t hear her.
“The way it looks he lost interest in Sam and is more interested in the new hire. If these two get
together there is less of a chance he will make you a grandpa. Don’t you adore me?”
She laughs trying to get a reaction from him.
“Have they got together so far?” Only a little frown.
“Not that I’ve known of, not by the way they look at eachother. But it is about time they are.”

Chapter 17

I am sitting at the desk, across from me, Kath.

Her bity, dead blue eyes pierce my forehead while I pretend not to see her staring. My fingers are
curled around the papers.
The saddest part about this is that there is no one home to wait for her when she walks back. SHe
has no shame in sharing her entire life story with all to hear. It is a desolate retreat, rich in
objects, poor souls. She looks at me with big cow-ish eyes expecting a verbal bow at the majestic
sight she feels she displays.  I never thought I would lower myself so much, but I do. Partly
because I need her on my side, to trust me a little, partly because I need someone else on my side
than myself. To validate my insanity, my search, my need for revenge.

It resembles a poorly made alliance made by two indifferent creatures who despise each other
and more than a little. She thinks me weak, I think she's mad.
She smiles at the glaze of gratitude. I smear the light of my eyes. Strange how even the lowest
creatures can read the truth in your eyes.

65 | Page
You can fake your smile, your lips to turn in gracious kindness, force your skin to wrinkle
around your nose and at the corners of your eyelids. But if your eyes don't reflect the true
emotion of the fake portrayal of your skin, these creatures will eat you alive.

They smell you, they sense you are not one of them. How, I never figured it out. At a church
gathering, in a college auditorium, during a hunt. It was always easier to be out in the fields,
walk around with a shotgun in my hands. Let the tall grass touch my face, push it behind my
ears. Dreaming on the warm ground than acknowledging this house of snakes is even more
terrifying.

I never figured out, and why, I mostly, never cared. When it hurt a little more, I closed my eyes,
letting tears slide down in the dark, on the side of my round cheeks and sip in the yellow-brown
sand I layed on. But I would never share my secrets with anyone.

I do not understand the need to explore your own sadness in front of others. I do not understand
why you would share your most intimate depths to the scrutinizing, crude eyes of strangers.
Once, before all this, I may have talked, when Sarah was here, and we would talk about us, about
life.
She was the one that chose to smile more, to dance more, to love more. Burn with more intensity.
I never judged her love affair. Something broke between her and James. Something that unites a
husband and a wife didn’t make it. She fell in love again. Broke wows and in turn it broke them
both.
Her journals turned into hearts. Sweet, simple words on lined pages turned into heartbreaks of
flesh.
"Spring always makes life come out with such tenderness that the earth is shaking in laughter at
the magic." She was like a spring to me. I was the rigid, serious one. The one afraid to make
mistakes. The one that held everything inside like a secret, when there was no one around to hear
the words anyway.
"Do you see these?” she would crush white pink perfumed cherry blossoms between her tiny
fingertips.

66 | Page
“They do not cry, crushed, they don’t care when their smell comes out, they just are”bringing her
fingertips to her face she smacked the little wounded bodies to her face, her lips licking the petal
tips in. 
“They never cry. Why do you cry?” She would hold my face with both hands, close to hers,
looking at me with so much love, touching her fingertips to the corners of my eyes, dusting off
soft, sandy brown sand, from my cry under the stars the night before.

***
Before Africa, I had the mountains. The crystal ice rivers where deer lost their trace. Where I lost
myself entirely.
How fake people are, how small and violent in their crude greed. Before Africa I considered so
many other options that had nothing to do with healing, nor saving myself, but crushing into
darkness. Before Africa there was a different me.

Inside of Africa I became a different me. And when I came out of Africa I was brand new again,
like out of a death. I stopped hunting animals a long time ago. Thin with skin dark from the sun
of hot summers, from walks over endless paths, and now I blend in with the jungle. My new
animal has consciousness and is intelligent and cruel enough to disregard the humanity it was
born into.
It is easier when I lay on the dry grass or dangle my feet off the thick arbores in the middle of a
Kenyan park. The sun hot and heavy melts away any rushing of your blood, of your heart,
inspiring a somnolence heavy as dirt, yet enduringly awake like the dry white light of the moon.

I remember laying in the grass for hours. Eyes closed, eyelids red orange on the inside, filling my
brain of hot light.
Silence all around before the strange grass bird’s songs irritated my ears into awareness. They
were there. The men and their greed which I could almost smell in the sweat of their hard bodies.

I could hear voices trembling with excitement and the grass whistle deviated from normality into
a high pitch. That told me that our scout, hiding up in the forest line, saw them carrying weapons,
solid, heavy weapons.

67 | Page
One whistle, two whistles, dotted. Two men, three men, one truck. I lined up and waited. They
thought themselves alone, just like the animals they were watching.

The small group of elephants that gathered by the water. Or what was left of it. The murky
sanded holes rounded by the careful hoofs. Over and over until the circle diminished in the heat
and by the smaller strengths of the underground river. The rain kept it alive and everyone else as
well.
The mud now swamped with thin worms and some frogs, the last that survive in this dry heat.

A while back so thirsty, I let my lips touch it. I wanted to taste the soul of this world, and I
imagined my thirst would bond us. Foolish.
My body agonized for days after I drank out of it. Night sweats and fever, my soul came out
through my pores, bent over a tin bucket. I vomited, until my guts, convulsed in excruciating
pain, ready to leave my body. My bowels, pits of fire and pain. I died a little.
Lots of death in Africa, lots of rebirths.

I wrote my sister, proud, foolish, relieved to be alive weeks later.

“What was I thinking?” Her words off the page, in return.
Nothing really, feeling mostly, thirst, a power of invincibility, supreme. Having just lost my skin
of water running away from bullets.
Happy to be alive.
Careless.
I laid on my cot for days, in feverish delirium.
Staring at my hands, staring at the top of the tent, the small strings hanging from its tarp moving
like the warm water worms I saw in the murk. Every now and then a bird would flap in, hushed
out by disembodied hands, holding rags of colored textures.

Someone would touch something cold to my face and I would laugh at the touch, small relief
then vomit air and blood, what was left of me, after the effort of laughter, then cry and vomit
again.

68 | Page
Days in I could turn my head and the cooling, flapping rags and the floating hands would begin
to associate themselves with thin, wiry bodies of the villagers.
More days in and I could move my eyes without the pain that shut through my orbits into my
brain.
Even more and I would find myself sitting up by myself holding pieces of paper from another
land. A world and a lifetime way.

"Remember when you shot father?” The letter took away some of the hurt but brought back
some strange pain. And joy. I fell in her words and I laughed a bit more. 
I remembered well.

My innocent revenge turned into a miserable punishment. We were back home, all together like
in rare occasions throughout the hunting season.
We, the girls, were in our teens. Small, but strong. Father was as big as a mountain, with kind
eyes, and a soft voice.
When he angered, his chest spat thunder all the way to the house on the hill. The roosters
silenced.
We laughed at that.
We pretty much laughed at everything. But we loved him and we listened too. Everybody around
knew his temper and feared him with this incredible awe on their faces.
A few days before, my father made me clean the skin off a deer, a small delicate lifeless creature
with white and gray hoofs and soft delicate ears.
I couldn't look away from its eyes as it lay there on the wooden table. Round glass in which the
clouds above reflected strangely broken pieces. My twisted face reflected too.
I couldn't do it and he said the crude words of my weak insignificance in a joke, pushing my
gloved hand with the bone knife, deeper into the flesh of the carcass.
I tried not to cry but my tight shut eyes didn't prevent the tears from falling all over the flesh
diluting the dry blood droplets with salty water. It wasn’t like him to do that. It wasn’t like me to
cry.

69 | Page
He laughed mean, the first time he was ever mean out of spite and the only time he was ever
mean to me. The last too. For I remembered.
"Remember when you shot father”? The letter held in its words the entirety of me. My essence of
a vengeful child.
A vengeful woman!
The week that followed in an early morning, a grey sky above us, as we walked the paths the
herded animals walked, behind the wind, behind their sharp ears.
Quiet, soft steps muddled by the thick grass of green moss.
Up to the river.
I could feel the rifle heavy under my fingers as it pressed heavy on my shoulder. An adapted
rifle with .22 small bullets for frail arms fights with the recoil.
This morning's cold barrel was moist and warm under my fingers, sweaty and dirty with face
camouflaged.

I looked at my nails, chipped, and dirty and then I looked down past them at my boots, heavy
rubber, carrying the dirt of the steps we left behind. 
Four of us. Father, his helper Jon, my sister Sarah, and me. I, the small child looking foolish in
the clothes too large, too long, tucked in everywhere, wrapped and knotted everywhere else.

A bundle of knots and shivers, my stomach a knot of anger and anxiety.

My father saw the buck before the two of us did. His rifle up and ready before I blinked once. In
the grass next to me, father in his quest to toughen me up, turned slowly and smiled at me. It
was my turn to shoot.
He turned his rifle towards the small creature in the grass eating a few feet behind him. A tiny
doe.
Careless, happy, innocent. Dad’s fingers moved slightly.

I could see him grinning pushing my knife in the soft fur of the animal, blood dripping, later on
just like the other day.
I swallowed hard and I raised my rifle.
Fast, so fast, I got dizzy for a moment, my ears ringing from the proximity of the shot.

70 | Page
Black powder blinding me, bitter on my lips. My father hauled like a madman. The buck and the
doe got away. Father cursing high heavens dropped to the ground. His hand a bloody mess, palm
intact fingers shattered in a thousand small splinters. I was damn good, and badly insane to have
done that.

Blinded by pain he walked himself back, hand wrapped tight under his own armpit.
I didn’t have to skin the doe that evening. I slept outside in the rain and chewed my own nails
wondering what was going to happen.
The summer passed without him saying a word to me. His eyes drifted away while his chump of
hand stood there between us. I stared at it at him, fix, waiting for forgiveness, or a curse, for
anger, anything. Just stared. No word came out for days.
His eyes spoke before his lips moved.
“Damned child, I guess it could have been my head.” He pulled me in his embrace with his good
arm.
I never skinned a deer again or any other animal and they never took me out for hunting. But
something was never fully healed. There was this guilt I carried with me. So I left.

Chapter 18
City-outside awareness
Sometimes over the years he convinced his wife to change the drapes. It was night and dark, and
the sleep was sweeter with the thick long velvety drapes over the large frames of glass.
It bugged him to see the two flaps not completely overlapped. The same exasperation as waiting
for the dealer’s hand while holding a full house in his hands.
A string of light entered between the black fabric. He didn’t want to get out of the bed. His body
relaxed, in a sweet state in between awareness and sleep. Next to him, he could see with the
corner of his eyes, his wife.

She made sure he could also hear her, rushed movements of magazine pages being turned with
emphasised gestures.
Every night she read some fancy house style magazine while he read his books before falling
asleep.

71 | Page
But tonight, besides the drapes that annoyed him, his thoughts added to misery. Slivers of
memories from the office came to his mind.
He wanted them to stop at first, annoyed. Until he came to the conclusion that the annoyance
wasn’t from the thoughts but from his opposition to them. He shifted his body, irritated and
closed his eyes.

Her lips burned his imagination and he squinted, jumping out of the bed, rushing to the
windows.
Love doesn’t come around from the shuffle of a perfumed skirt or a lush but waiving by his face.
Only trouble does that.
His body responded and his hands jerked the drapes open letting the city light flood the room.
Surprised at his own reaction he opened the window. His face gets plastered in the bug screen
and he pushes it out with his palm reaching over the window sill. Behind him, his wife watches
him for a second before returning to her magazine.
Fresh, cold air, woke him up completely.
“Mosquitos.” One word verdict reached him from the bed. Down in the street, a blinking light
made him see movement and stretch his neck towards the moving shadows. Just an illusion.
Noone moved.

Chapter 19

I know it's just lust. There are no emotions but strong desire. Madness, lust, obsession.
When eyes meet it is hard to keep breathing. Is hard to remember anything but hunger.
But what if, and does it ever? Does lust turn into falling in love. A weakness he hates yet craves
madly.

Is not love, is the obsession that hurts. We think we have fallen into something rich and
beautiful but is just maddening and simple. Primitive. The emotions are nothing but one, need,
desire, want. No matter how much you cover them, or shine them. We spin on them like cocaine
addicted rats. We crave and we walk until we bleed our tiny limbs in exhaustion. We crave more
and more until our brains set on fire with the incessant hunger. Then we take other drugs to break

72 | Page
away that addiction, then another and another until we dull our senses entirely and we are dead
inside. But it is such a beautiful thing to begin with.
So perfect and pure and delicate and impossibly inoffensive. That’s love for you. The first,
primal most addictive drug recreated over and over in orgasmic lice on glass tables, of white
powders niffs on sharp edges, on falling in abysmal holes of the earth and flying higher than
known birds just to drop again.

He had that long ago, a lifetime ago. When he was someone else. This pulls him back to then to
much.. Beautiful and terrifying. The difference between hitting a boxing bag and fighting in a
rink with a worthy opponent. The feel of his knuckles crushing in your face, smashing your
skull, breaking your ribs. Taking the air out of your lungs before you crush him bloody.

But falling in love. He knew better. Is easy to fall for lies. To destruction to instability. The life
he carefully chose for himself the correct, clean organized structure slipping out of his grasp. He
could see it in her eyes everytime he got closer. There was such warmth in them yet such
distance. Familiarity and spite. Sometimes he swore he saw anger and a cold dead look.
He was losing his control and reverting to something he carefully folded away forever. But
nothing is forever after all.

Chapter 20

James turned the lights on in his office. On his desk neatly organized two envelopes. He broke
the seal with his fingers to find a pair of tickets to a hockey game. He smiled. Something better
yet.

The game was this Saturday. His thoughts rushed imagining the cold ice, the mad rush of the
crowds. He knew exactly where they came from.
He called his wife excited.
“You remembered!”
Silence at the other end of the phone.
“I remembered...”

73 | Page
“The game”
“The game..?” repeated the woman.
He inhaled having sudden realization as she stepped into the room. She looked amused as if she
listened to the entire thing.
His eyes got wide and awareness registered.
“You!” mouthed his lips.
She smiled back and she walked away.
His phone rang just as she moved and he punched the desk making it jump.

Chapter 21

Is turning more than a game for myself. Damian was in my arms, yet he wasn’t. It was James’s
face I was kissing. His shoulder caressed under my palm.
I watch him. He is falling in love.

Desire is a powerful thing, eats you alive, eats what you hold true, takes away from the solidity
of your emotions, your feelings, your stability. Brings in all the what ifs and the I want to and
only a little bits, out. It makes you a different person, inside and out.
“The right place at the wrong time,” he told me the other day. I am losing my orgasm, what the
hell. Focus!
Confusing lust for love, they drink it foolish and end up in marriages that last less than a summer
long.
Orgasm gone. Damian looks at me just as confused.

***
He dropped the phone
Angry, upset, he wants to punch someone. Everything they’ve done for the last three months,
was for nothing. The book was pulled back. They weren’t going to publish it. He knows how
hard they all worked, how much time they invested. He was so sure they were going to get it and

74 | Page
they were too, while no one said a thing to avoid ruining it they all sensed it as a victory. And
they all were going to find out the disappointment tomorrow morning

He goes for a run and he does something nice. There is a kid that lost his kite, he climbs up to get
it but he breaks a rib.

**

“Come over, better yet we’ll pick you up at work and drop you back to your car after the game.”
He was waiting on the corner, his fists balled up in his pockets, the jacket warming enough to
dull some of the wind’s aches on his body, yet not warm enough to keep away the shivering of
the 30 degrees.
The truck pulled over and a few hands came out waving him in through the rolled windows, he
got in laughing as one whistled. He felt his heart light and forgot about deadlines and about
having to be anywhere else but there with the men.

The cold got less harsh in the warmth of the car where while the ac was on, the fast words, the
smell of Tobacco and the excitement of the reunion made everything bearable. He drank, could
not remember how much. He wanted the numbness and the ecstasy that comes with the fogging
of senses.
“Let me have another,” he asked and his slurred tone was not completed with the angst and the
harshness in his eyes.
“Let me have another.” They all laughed and they all had another as they passed around the
small glasses filled with the darkness of molasses that burned the throat.
It burned so good, his tongue on fire, his mouth numb, his throat tight. It hurt like hell.
” Another he screamed his voice strangled by laughter and pain, and another.
When they got on the ice, he was done, he could barely stand up on the skates, he could barely
walk from the podium over. The sliding movement made him dizzy and he closed his eyes for a
freaking split second when he felt the hit.

75 | Page
 **
Who we are and who we pretend to be is a battle. More than good and evil is the fake and reality.
And we try really hard to lie ourselves. The others. Then we forget our truths and our lies
become them.
Craving the things, we are inside we could have we never stop wanting
The blond woman at the office is waiting for money from her dad. She is psychotic, mad. She
seems nice. She acts like a friend and speaks loud nice carrying, but she is infatuated with the
boss.

There are souls that you cannot tie down, you just cannot keep tied down in one place. There is a
wandering strike, a gypsy’s lust, a morning breeze gone by the first shift of the sun in the
morning.
Lust is a maddening wind that would blow you hot and bother you until there is nothing but a
raw emotion left of you, beating to the pulse of a crave, insatiable, never fulfilled, never fully
satiated.
I am not there, but I am somewhere inside.
I am watching it all with large hungry brown eyes. Windows to the soul, windows to me, to the
deepest me, that some parts of the world has never seen that some God didn’t even created nor
imagined.

I see them greedy, they see me indifferent, and I am everything but indifferent. I am raw on the
inside. Waves of emotions that suffocate and are hard to control sometimes. Kath laughs
accusatory at my condescending tone when in fact I am bursting with insecurity.

This devious woman. I am the one to label. She sneaked into James’s office. Her stealthy moves,
ridiculous and exaggerated.
I could hear her opening drawers, hitting the chair by accident, tripping on something. When he
came in I walked behind him to see the scene.
She turned around masking surprise as James walked in the office behind her.

76 | Page
He looked around, at her and sat in his chair with an amused expression on his lips. Stretching
his feet, long tall, delicious. I walked in, standing by the door, her arms crossed. Pretending not
to see his eyes drifting on my body.

***
Stirred, bothered, hot. Wanting to grab my body and pull me on him right there on the desk. He
could sense my thoughts and shifted in his chair. I felt my cheeks flushed, my lips, red and
swollen, from biting them, our eyes locked.
**
Turned on so much he felt maddening, needed to yell then other woman out of the office and just
undress her on his desk. He could imagine she was wet, she had to be when she looked at him
with those eyes and her body trembling like it did. She was leaning against the door. To hold
herself up, away from him. He coughed and excused himself walking right by.Only seconds
passed. Kath’s breathing dangling on us as she tried to move out of sight.
“ Follow me, Katherine!” She stiffened, pale at his words. I wanted to follow him too. I wanted
to hear the conversation.

**

Remember, it says? Remember you? The emotions call, and no matter how you say it, how you
look at it, is still lust, that need to become, to return, to hold, to comprehend to forget or piece
apart.
The rain is falling outside of me right now, nothing delicious of it this time, a rhythmic, click on
the windmill like a bomb ready to go off. And when an explosion happens, there is no saying in
what they will tear down.
More often the walls we built inside us, more often the core of us.
The rain stopped eventually, as she sat on the bed, awake for the last 4 hours, unable to fully get
up and do something around.
***

77 | Page
This morning I walked into his office. We clashed. it wasn’t pretty. I told him the facts and the
facts are that he is soft and meek. I didn't actually feel that way but I said it to get a reaction. Any
reaction. I closed the door when I realised everyone was bunched outside. I kicked it rather shut.
He merely blinked. I shut it again on the way out. I think he fears me in some strange way none
of us understand.I think I fear myself around him.

**
I dropped the ticket on his desk that morning before anyone else came in. I wanted him to find
them when alone. I knew he’d like them and anticipated the surprise. Hockey tickets. I know he
loves it and his wife hates it with equal passion. Is easy to read his expression when he talks
about the games. Passionate about the games, the power of it, the freedom to crash.

The crash, the rush, the cold ice on his skin reminds him of going to war. Of the days when half
naked, burned by the sun they had boxing matches on the hot sand.
The taste of blood and rush and sand. Heart beat is so intense it can make your head explode
from the pressure of the blood.

It is not you that I miss when I look at you, is that innocence, is the soul underneath the scars, is
the illusion that everything will be forever just a flawless stuck in unmoving time. Is not your
smile or your eyes, nor your lips I dreamed of, is how they all made me feel in the innocence I
had, how they made me grow and become more out of that innocence.

“I really know what I want for my birthday.” His wife’s eyes sparkled.
He held her close. He knew what he wanted too. He married this woman wanting to give her
everything. He knew love would come slowly, but the tenderness he had for her made him feel
he could love again and trust again. They talked, kids. He wanted three, she didn’t want to ruin
her body. They agreed on one, perhaps two.
There were things she didn’t need to know, no one needed too. Secrets that melted in his past.

78 | Page
He cried Sarah. He cried for her and for himself. Back was only death. Sam was his new
beginning and he was going to make it work at any price. Unreasonable as it was. Even lying
about having ever been married.

**
Who we are and who we pretend to be is a battle.
Craving the things we are deep inside, to show them to share them to have them, because that
need is us one cannot ever stop wanting them.
There are souls that you cannot tie down, you just cannot keep tied down in one place. There is a
wandering strike about them, a gypsy lust and they become a morning breeze gone at the first
shift of the sun in the morning.
Lust is a maddening breeze that would blow you hot and bother you until there is nothing but a
raw emotion left of you. A beating to the pulse of craving, insatiable, never fulfilled, never fully
satiated.

I am not there, but I am somewhere inside. I am watching it all with large hungry brown eyes.
Windows to the soul, windows to me, to the deepest me that the world has never seen that some
God doesn’t remember creating. Greedy and raw. That’s what people dislike. I figured after
years of wondering. When you don’t fit in and you are not willing to humble at the fact you are
not wanted you are marginalized. Is alright to fail and be a fuckup as long as you are willing to
cower yourself and follow the crowds with lowered eyes and laughter of appreciation. If you can
make it yourself something must be wrong with you or you are connected. Even in Africa the
married women watched me with big brown eyes, some pity clear behind their bewilderment at
this strange white woman who wears boots and carries a rifle. Ironic with the same eyes I
watched my sister falling in love and losing her head over some lanky blue eyed man back in
Appalachians. Someone’s cough draws me back to the present. I typed a lot of nonsense. I see
Lauren’s pale face squinting at the screen in front of her sneaking looks towards Tom’s door.
I get mad at this woman just by being near her at this desk. Straight, stiff, pretentious when there
is nothing to be pretentious about. I pity her and I despise her at the same time. She was here
when I arrived and she will probably be here long after I leave this office.

79 | Page
Some meaningless little nothing, but for now she scares me. Because if I had learned anything so
far, If I learned anything in these last few weeks is that a wise one would fear a mad man with a
rake more than a sane one armed with a gun. And we are all holding a gun, a few of us hold on
tight to their rake, and don’t you try to grab them from them.
The rain is falling outside of me right now, nothing delicious of it this time, a rhythmic, click on
the window sill like a bomb ready to go off.

“you are so little”

Chapter 22

It was strange facing each other after the night before. It was troubling in many ways.
“Do you want me to show you?”
He hesitated, “No.” Is all right. I can find it myself.
“It would be so much easier, we could just do it in your office if you want, at your desk may be
better, at your computer?” He swallowed hard staring at his computer?

He got hit by a blinding image of her, stretched on that couch, her legs tight around him, her
sweet scent in his mouth in his nose, on his skin. He felt his throat dry and unable to speak
another word, did the best thing he could do.

He could taste it now next to her, so close, he shook his head and stood up suddenly. Kath
walked in the office just then.
The woman wanted to speak. Her eyebrows were twitching, her cheekbones were raised, her
cheeks puffed up and out, like she swallowed two fat sparrows. 
Her eyes were bulging in her face. Little veins on the side of her temples purple and pulsating.
Her chest was raising and lowering and her throat tightened by the amount of saliva she was
swallowing as her words could not make their way out, but down her thin long pasty neck
wrapped loosely by a flimsy scarf.  I could almost see her jumping up and down like some
strange yo-yo unraveling herself. In front of my eyes,

80 | Page
I could see her squinting her eyes trying to read the lines on his screen, on the papers on his desk
anything, her eyes were sliding, snaillish across everything, that I could almost see the trail of
her gaze leaving slimy marks. To touch or not to touch.
She finally spoke. She erupted impossible to stop, spitting everything she had heard earlier. With
the memory of an electronic document, and the precision of a hammer.  She remembered to
breathe and then her tone sweetened seeing the four eyebrows in front of her raising.

I wanted to laugh. A loud bitter laugh because of her smallness and her miserable turning of
everything that perspired earlier. Although there was truth in it, I was shocked by her courage to
bring it up. James’s face was emotionless.
She mentioned other instances of us making fools of ourselves. She felt it made her look good, if
not admirable. She turned from one to the other, the pitiful, understanding smile she had for
James was poison for me. Cold, dead, fishy blue, biddy eyes pinning my soul. I smiled and she
pursed her lips in venomous spite. The smile even more snaillish than her eyes earlier, blurred up
in exasperation not obtaining the desired effect.
I smiled even sweeter.
"You look sick! You want a trash can or something to puke in?"
She rolled her eyes.
“I don’t know what just happened, but it just happened with you two. Is a terrible thing for this
company, for your family James. I was suddenly invisible.
“I am sure I would like crack too, if I were to try it, that doesn’t mean it’s good for me, is it?”
She spit the words my way.
James, who was quiet this entire time, turned in between from red to pink then to white.

**

He knew her father despised him, just didn’t know when his wife began to do it as well. The
father despised him for choosing to stick to his own choices, his own decisions, without asking

81 | Page
for advice. Their eyes seem to blame him for his wife's inability to conceive. Was it his? He
tried conceiving with Sarah. Yet as soon as she laid with that man she became pregnant.

Last family dinner was as unpleasant as it could get.

He ate calm, barely saying anything. Answering monosyllabic. Holding his wife’s shoulders as
they left the house. Eying the father with a diplomatic smile before they got in the car. The man
must have sensed the change of emotions from intensity to nothing.

He was in it for love when it all began. He was in for desire and need for company. When love
vanished, replaced by anger and pity and remorse he stayed for the circumstances. More than
money which he never cared for. Prestige, social status. The ability to hide in plain site. The
opportunity to become invisible.

Chapter 23

“Let’s talk about our child!”

Sam turned to him with a blank expression on her face.
“Didn’t hear your car, and that damn thing is loud.”
“I parked at the end of the driveway. Walked a little.”
She looked down at his feet, his shoes still on. Dusted. Disgusted, her lips turned upwards.
“ Well, so far nothing.” She rubbed her thin belly.
“Let’s make it happen.” He reached for her. His arms pulling her in. His lips finding her mouth.
“Not now!”
“Why not, is the perfect time.”
“You smell like someone poured gasoline on you and you have your shoes on.” Her words
touched his lips.
“We can wash together, like we used to.”
His lips pressed harder. She pushed her hands on his chest. “I don’t want to..”

82 | Page
He pulled her harder against him and lifted her dress. She bit his lip trying to get his attention.
He felt her butt and pulled at her panties.
“Stop it,” she tried to hurt him to get away.
The memory of him beating a guy and trying to rape his ex- wife comes back. The woman
pushed by him and screamed his name in anger in fear. He laughed and pulled her back grabbing
her by the hair. She whimpered and closed her eyes. He pulled her against him, catching her
between him and the wall. He licked her mouth, her neck pulling down on her dress until it
ripped under his brutal fingers. He laughed angry and reached down grabbing her breast. His
hands lifted her on his body one hand reaching down at his crotch undoing his pants buttons. She
screamed, and cried but whimpered under her husband’s touch. She reached his ear and spoke in
a whisper.
“What the fuck, are you insane! Are you going to do me like you did your ex?” He stopped dead
in his tracks.

***
He lay in bed at night as his wife reads some fancy house style magazine and he cannot stop
thinking of the other woman all of a sudden. She jumps in his mind all the time now, He knows it
is not love, but is intense enough to keep him awake the entire night.
There are no emotions besides the strong desire. Madness, lust, obsession.
When their eyes meet it is hard to keep hands still. He has to grab at things or clench his fists to
stop himself from punching something or grab her into him.
She leaves
When does lust turns into falling in love, he starts to fall in love with her. A weakness he hates
yet craves madly.

You are so fascinating he says to her once amazed by something she did
lose but unwilling to give up the hot delicious dance of senses when their minds would go at it
angry needy. The air was hot between them. Trying to break the spell asking random unnerving
question

83 | Page
 ***

“Good morning.”
“Good morning”, I answered, hearing the laughter in his voice.
I hid mine and turned with a serious face. Disappointment shade him his voice behind me gave
me shivers
“How was your weekend?”
“Good.”
“Yours?”
“Wonderful.”
“Mine too. Out with some friends dancing I said, his eyes darkened.”

“Your eyes always do that thing, turn shadowy when your interest wavers somewhere else, you
are not here with me.”
“I was back in your weekend, with those guys?”
“Be back here with me”, I told him. “What did you do,” I asked him?
He stopped unexpected questions taking him by surprise?
I am always here, I spent my whole weekend thinking of you
His lips barely moved, I wasn’t sure if I heard him or not

Chapter 24
I remember the nights in Kenya. That place makes you forget things, seduces you so simple and
erotic. The lights, the water, the nights draw you in until you are drawn in the Tsavo, or you
come out on the other side a different person if the villagers see you floating. Lucky or unlucky
depends how you look at it. But a certain night stayed with me.

The day was gone and nothing came out of the dusted mounds. It was then when we laughed and
promised to keep this fire alive in our hearts through eternity or at least until we could hold our
hands up and throw a stone.

84 | Page
Not everybody used rifles.
Mocha was a killer with steely eyes and steady hands. One rock to the hand would render a man
back to nothing. The times I tried I managed to break the only window in the village leaving the
clinic with a gaping hole and lots of flies in the medication room. The children laughed at me for
days. That night we walked through the dark drapes of the shaman’s hut.

The place lined with gold paint glowed from within as the middle room fire burned small and
steady. The burning incense melted the senses. I sat on the wooden chair, arms crossed like in a
prayer, a thing I barely remember how to do and I let the man tattoo the fire on my arms.

Red long tongues of fire licking the skin from the left side of my chest under my heart. Because
that is where everything starts. Where everything consumes from and where in the end,
everything ends. I can still feel the heat of the inked needle piercing through my skin through my
nerves.
It hurt to no end. I felt pride, thinking of my sister. I was going to send her a copy of the stencil,
if there was one.
A Kodak replaced it.
With kisses and smiles.
My best friend. She laughed and replied with a picture of her tanned smile with the shadow of a
red truck behind her in the strong arms of a dark-haired man with piercing eyes filled with
happiness and laughter.
I stared a bit too long at his face. His eyes, full of light and desire. I brought the picture to my
lips.
The letters, “Just married,” painted on the side of a window in creamy white letters. A fast
Kodak for the memories to come.
I laughed and kept the picture with me until the sun faded it through my pale khakis. I thought
about protecting it later, too late later.
So much later. My skin burned those few summers and paled in the mild winters.
Dry skin, dry dreams, dry nights. I kissed and I dreamed, and I was.

Chapter 25

85 | Page
Between letters and small envelope souvenirs. The crushed powdered scribbles of memories
long gone. Are you there now? I was there too once, remember. Looking back I laugh at the silly
innocence mixed with so much death.
“I do,” she would respond in her letters, “now all of us are waiting for you, you silly butterfly. A
small butterfly tattoo she has done on her wrist. I blinked back the heat of the sun burning my
face, a flick of light touching my face. I blinked. Butterfly? More like a silly leaf.

I was never a butterfly, I always was the rushed flutter, but never quite brilliant and glorious like
she was. I admired her for that. My only friend in this world.

The last letter brought more joy. She was pregnant. Too much joy. Laughter and summer kissed
cheeks in her pictures. Pregnant, she found out she was going to have a daughter. Ok, she didn’t
she was just sure that it was going to be a daughter. And there was a secret she hinted at in that
letter too.
It had nothing to do with the dark-haired man she married.
He was forgotten.
She was happy in the secrecy she wanted to share but couldn’t do it fully. She was going to see
me, when I flew over for the baby’s birth. I could swear the bottom of the page had a smudged
tear, but it could have been my own sweat.
And that was the last letter. I dreamed silly that she flew over to me with her small child in her
arms to see me, share the joy to see the places I loved so much. The peaceful places. But there
was a sadness in her eyes I could not grasp even in my dream.

Chapter 26

I forget for a minute where I am. The blowing leaves and the heat find me in my car on the side
of a white clean street. Old oaks lean over crushing with their shadow.

86 | Page
I stall a little longer at a stop sign before I move again. Next to me a folder with some
documents Gentry sent with me from the office. I am supposed to give them to James.
I park at the end of the street, two houses down ignoring the warning signs. Across the street
there is movement next to a big gray truck.
It is past noon summer hot and water is streaming on the lawn to the sidewalk puddling in the
road. I see him walking around his car only in a pair of jeans holding a water hose, crisp drops of
water splashing on the car bouncing back on his skin.
I swallow hard and I feel the blood rushing to my face. There is something so personal and
intrusive in my staring but I do it shamelessly.
A breeze splatters a droplet of water in the air all the way to me touching my face. In a pool
across the street, the wind blows back and forth in a pink rubber floaty.
It smells like warm sun and it feels like there is no end to the summer, no end to the days as if an
eternity of summer settled in, sunny, warm, salty sweet on the breeze on the lips. As if it was all
right to just stay there and watch the tall almost naked man washing the car, holding the green
hose, leaned over the truck with a foaming rag, touching the doors, the handles, leaning over to
the windows, his back arching muscle in long lines, strenuous moves.
He wiped the water and sweat off his face, when he became aware of me. He may have seen the
sliver of dark in the wind. Silk, black, silk I know he has been dreaming, touching, pulling in his
fingers, bringing it close to him, to his mouth.
I know it in his subtle slowing down. I watch him watching me aware and I sense his intensity. I
see his body tight, wet, kissed by the sun many days over, I cannot help it, cannot break the
stare.
Our eyes locked in the strangest pull.A sharp pang of recognition, of shock and desire at the
same time. I can taste him salty and warm. He drops everything he has in his hands and he steps
towards the road. His eyes are burning me as I am suspended on a breath, my hands white,
squeezing the steering wheel.
Barely smiling that side smirk. He felt the need to drop everything and run across the street and
grab her and do again what he has been wanting to do for months now.
He dropped the hose and rag in his hand and moved towards the street, just as a voice he couldn’t
remember for the life of him, called him back.
“Here it is.”
He pulled his eyes away from the car and turned to the woman.
His wife, wearing a soft summer dress in white and yellow cotton, bare feet, was walking his
way, carrying a tray with glasses. Her shaky hands made the liquid spill over the rims of the
crystal glasses.

87 | Page
“I know you like lemonade, and it’s so hot out here,” she put the tray down on a chair and
grabbed the carafe ready to refill the half empty cups. Tilted the tray so that the liquid could spill
over the edge on the grass at her feet. Little drops touched his leg and he felt the heat of the sun
drying up the skin in a tight small spot where the liquid sugar fell.
He was hard and angry and he grabbed the woman, pushing her against his truck. The tray fell,
contents rolling in the grass, spilling clear light in the afternoon’s sun.
He had the satisfaction of not giving Eva the satisfaction and yet the anguish of not being able to
do so.
His fingers touched his wife’s hair, rushing to take out her careful knot and pulled her face to his,
crushing her lips.
She moaned in anger and pushed him away scraping his naked shoulders with her red fingertips.
He bit her mouth hard, she trembled weak, meek unable to answer his intensity shocked by this
passion. Wanting to reciprocate but not really able.
He pushed her against his truck, hard, wet , half naked. Her body slipped against the soapy door.

His eyes locked with mine after I saw his mouth on hers, the lips I wanted on mine, biting hers,
his fingers clenched on her arms pulling her onto him. My hand moved up to my breast, touching
my skin through the open blouse, for a brief second before remembering where I was in the car
in front of his house, before she remembered where he was almost naked in his driveway.
I saw her pale thin fingers reaching for him finally in a response as if in trance.
But she was a minute too late, a second too late.
A vibration too late, he moved away from her and cursed something clenching his fists hitting
the truck, closing his eyes so tight they became thin dark lines.
She grabbed at his fingers which were holding her shoulder hard “It hurts, let go.”
Enough to wake him as he dropped his hands off her body for a second.

Cursing he kicked the glasses in the grass managing to break it. Pieces of broken glass glitter in
the grass, his sweat.
Slamming his fists against the car mumbling a curse, he watches me drive by, my legs open,
touching myself, craving his touch.
So good to watch him tremble. So good to watch him fall. Yet, I am the one trembling now.

88 | Page
 Chapter 27

I measure his face. He acts as if nothing ever happened. His eyes in the papers in front of him.
He asked me for a signature. I told him I already signed the release forms.
“There.”I point the finger, directing him like a silly school boy.
“Ah.”
“At the wrong place and at the wrong time, hm?” I tell him as I walk out.
He stops dead and a long silence covers us both, his words reach me.
“The right place, just the wrong time.”

***

There was some hurt in his eyes and some doubt over what happened. He had his hat off as if
presiding over a funeral scene. It was cold and nasty, the dryer splattered with now dried blood
spots.

He gets drunk one night with the guy friend from his hockey team, he gets in a violent fight, his
nature coming back, nasty fight where he takes on a guy twice his size to get hit to feel again, he
has been numbed by the new life he got married in, they go to a strip club but it makes him sick
and leaves. The police are coming around the corner but he slips through the backdoor.

“Forget about her, and your stupid campaign, he looks like he is going to die. He lost some blood
and his lungs are wheezing.”
“He will be fine brother, he always has.”
“He’s never been like this before. This time you pushed him too far. He wouldn’t have been here
if he didn’t have to hide because of our ambitious plans.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I am saying it because you know it's true.”

89 | Page
The other man was thinking about all the times the father used his son for his mad plans to get
ahead in life and in his political campaign. I will develop on this later, I guess, not much. The
other man sighted with doubt. John looked bad, he was out of it.

They loaded him up and took him to the farm. Media was told right before the elections that he
fell off a horse and he got trampled really bad, getting hurt.
While still in a wheelchair he married as he was supposed to with the wife of a big politician. He
sat quiet in his wheel chair and said I do, no other swear in.
He could remember
He gets a call and talks to a woman, later we find out is the woman that arrived at the scene of
the accident of his lover’s crash, and that is her sister and that she is the main character in the
revenge movie.

But for now he only cries in his hand as he gets the news about the woman he loved being dead.
He even lost his speech in the beating, he got really messed up, while the wife is really chipper
than the wife to be. A blond larger than life woman.

There are souls that you cannot tie down, you just cannot keep tied down in one place. There is a
wandering strike, a gypsy’s lust, a morning breeze gone by the first shift of the sun in the
morning.
I am not there, but I am somewhere inside. I am watching it all with large hungry brown eyes.
Windows to the soul, windows to me. To the deepest me, that some parts of the world has never
seen that some God didn’t even created nor imagined. I see them greedy, and they see me in raw
tip top shape.
I am not sure how things change how people change, but they do sometimes in an instant. And I
love you so my little son child. “Some paths are chosen, some are chosen for us, in the end we
make most of our choices or not.

**
She sat in her chair, back to the office without hearing him. I sensed him before I heard a shuffle
of clothes, a breath caught between his lips. The Africa inside me.

90 | Page
“What are you smirking”? He asked me, his eyes wide taking the light around me in, until it was
only a pool of light and magic. My eyes locked on his, unescapable, like a fire burning inside me.
Where the animals in me become overpowered by the instinct.

***
“Alo.”Remember me?I was there when you said your I do? And what do I have in my pockets?
Your unsigned divorce papers, which you refused to sign, you stubborn donkey.
**

Chapter 28

He came home to find a delivery at the front door. A basket filled with muffins. He walked in
casually , holding the basket on a finger.
“Did you order this?”
She raised a brow.
“Muffins? When have I ever eaten one?” She looked at him again. “Who sent it? Let me see the
card.” There is no card.” His eyes lit up and she read it in an instant.
“Was that from someone you know?”
“Was she someone you knew?” She repeated him, her eyes cold, dead cold, staring him in the
eyes, stretching as high as she could one her toes to reach his eyes. Another memory came
rushing over him, another woman, not long ago. The one he picked up to reach her face to his, as
he touched her in a way that weeks later, still made him shiver with desire.
She saw the glossy look in his eyes unfocused on her.
“Answer me?”
She grabbed the basked from his hand and looked at him for effect as she kicked it so hard, bits
of it flew all over the place. He took a bite of a smashed half that landed on the table in front of
him. Apple muffins.Tasted like It reminded him of the other one’s lips.

Her voice shrill like a demon pierced his ears as she started to step on the crushed pieces of cake
all over the house, punching her fists on whatever was on the counter continuing to scream at
him.

91 | Page
“Not sure what you are talking about.”
Of course she was someone I knew. His thoughts racing. Why admit it. Why now? She fucked
that guy too.
“Cut it. you know exactly what I am saying. Did you fucked her before, was she someone you
fucked before?”
She squinted. “Here, did you bring her here, in my house?”
“Our house? No.”
“My house, you wouldn’t have anything, any of this if it wasn’t for me! I gave you my name,
you took my name you piece of shit!
“Because you insisted and cried and moaned that we should have the same name and you
wouldn’t take mine, because I loved you!”
“Stop lying, you son of a bitch, you never loved me. Did you do it before?”

“I told you last, it was a random meeting, I never..”

“Was she ever here, the woman was wild mad looking around, as expecting the other one to
appear from somewhere. Looking for some sort of air prints she missed before.
“Was she here, answer me, did you bring her in my house?”
He couldn’t think of anything to say.
“How did these get here, then?” She grabbed the broken basket of treats and smashed them
against his arms, against his chest, throwing what was left in his face. Little sticks scratched his
face.

“Liar”, she snapped, cutting him off. “I saw it in your eyes, in hers, there was no randomness, but
I pretended I didn’t, it felt so good to be touched by the other fool, I let it slide. He did it to me
hard like you can’t anymore, like you haven’t done it in years! Young, strong!” She laughed in
his face, cruel, harsh.
“I wouldn’t care if you did it or here, as long as it was never here. You know what, don’t answer
me. I knew from before not to trust you.”
It hit him like a hard kick in the chest, and he rushed after her grabbing her arms. Pulling her
back.
“What did you say?”

92 | Page
“Exactly what you heard me say”
“The night we met I thought you were pathetic to cry after a woman who didn’t want you and
cheated on you. But you were a good fuck, wild, crazy, perfect. Then you turned soft on me.
What you said doesn't matter.” She was laughing at him now. He felt his eyes stinging with tears.
“Gentle, tender, you may have fallen in love, didn’t you! I married you because of the beast you
were not the sheep you became. I would have had a child with the beast, not with the sheep! You
became so weak.”
He raised his hand to slap her, then bit his lips hard and withdrew it.
“Are you gonna hit me, like you hit her, remember,” said his wife.
His hand dropped. His face dropped. A dead pallor.
“How do you know, who told you that?”
“You did, you did, with your own mouth. The night we meet at the bar. The night I brought you
home. I felt pity for you.”

She walked away then turned around, pointing her finger in his chin.
“I never did,...that is why I never wanted to have your kids!”
Her words hit him like a fist right in his face and he rushed after her, grabbing her arms, pulling
her back.
“What are you saying?” his eyes dark lines of anger.
“What are you saying, woman?”
“This!” She reached for her purse and throwing stuff out she pulled out a tiny round container,
“this!”
He shook his head. But it was right there. The tiny pills rattled inside his head. And he lounged
for her neck.

Chapter 29

“I may change my mind, if you promise to make it good,” she confronted him, raising her chin
up to him.
He turned around angry.

93 | Page
He did not remember confessing to her the nights after they hooked up. He didn’t think she’d
remember even if he did. They both had drinks. They were both plastered and she was so soft
and sweet and filled a need. He must have confessed to her, everything, like a fool. He smacked
his fists against his head.
Fucking fool.
He remembered looking at her next day, searching her eyes for a sign of recognition of fear.
There was none so he imagined he couldn’t have said a word. Now he knew she faked
ignorance, God knows what else she faked.
She was mad now. What was she going to do, go to the police?
She wasn’t, he knew she hated that attention besides she would have done it already.
He reached for her neck and pushed her all against the wall. It was easy, she was small, thin
although tall. He heard something in her back crack and the air pushed out of her lungs
forcefully. His fingers pressed in the soft flesh of her neck and squeezed. She stopped screaming,
pierced him with her pale blue eyes. Pushed his hands away and spit him in the face. Then gave
him the finger and walked out of the house.

She left. Slammed the door, and laughed as she walked away through the driveway. He
remained home. He grabbed a cup off the counter, the cold coffee spilled on his hand in his rush,
and smashed it with his open palm against the wall. Shards of ceramic, thin china cutting his
fingers and smashing back on his naked skin and cutting in his palm. Breaking down on his toes.
Blood rustling between his fingers. On the side of the wall. He cursed. His pants low on his hips,
blood everywhere, his scratches hurt him and he rubbed his fingers bloodied over them on his
side, and his arms.
It was suddenly really cold in the empty house. He grabbed a shirt off the corner and wrapped his
blooded fingers in it, wiping off what he could.
He cursed again, cutting his foot on the shards on the floor. The bathroom lights made the little
cuts look even uglier than they felt. Tried to clean the cuts on his face with his left hand but quit
after his shaky hand made the pain worse. He kept his eyes closed as his fingers washed by the
cold water jet, stangly thousand razor blades.

94 | Page
“What the heck.” Light headed, the light on behind him while he tried to walk out of the
bathroom, leaving bloody prints on the wall. With his body, heavy and his head spinning, he
stumbled to the bedroom.

He lays on the bed in the dark room on the cold sheets. Shivering.
Elaborate on scene. Crashes on bed, falls asleep, light of the day vanishes through the closed
blinds. Decided.

**

She had a strange feeling in her stomach. A nauseating, sickness that crawled up in her body and
could not be shaken off. Something was off. But what? The street, filled with screaming people,
drilling the dirt in a sidewalk hole. The walls resonated making the dust tremble in between
Something was out of place. She couldn’t tell what. The street was full of noise, cars honking,
dist over the entire chaos. She sensed movement and turned her head. Her mouth wide open. Not
one sound coming out. Eyes large, popping out. The loudness became something stomped in the
background. Her hands were shaking trying to unbuckle the seat belt. She tried to scream, her
throat dry.
She tried to scream. Her throat parched. She couldn’t even hear her own voice inside her ears.
Only a whimper, a vibration. Tears coming out blurring everything. The dump truck was moving
backwards fast lined up on her and there was no sign he was going to stop. It was split second
but it felt as everything was moving at the speed of dripping molasses. I looked around trying to
find a way out. The parking slot I was in crowded from all corners. phone rang, a message.
Another. I couldn’t think of anything else but the intensity of this anxiety that made her freeze.
Cars empty, her alone and that hellish wheeled monstrosity rolling her way. She tried to claw at
the door but could not unclench her hands, her fingers useless, powerless numb. She passed out
before the trash truck backed fully into her reducing the entire car to nothing, like a flimsy
cardboard box.

**

95 | Page
Nothing but empty silence behind the closed door. I told him I blamed him for all the pain, for all
the misery of her loss. Their loss. Not his, he didn’t matter. They made sure of that from the
beginning. He was not one of them, he never was. That summed it up in nice, pretty words.
He was cold, calculated, manipulative, yet he loved her. He wasn’t in it just for the money. Not
just. In the beginning it was the curious emotion she raised in him. Her strange softness and
sensitivity.  Proper, refined, exquisite in her blond beauty. Then curiosity slowly dissipated. Then
there was nothing but a desire to humiliate her, to crush her in every way he could. And guilt and
tenderness followed by more misery.

When he is not looking, I find my eyes hungry on his face. My heart flutters. My mind
wonders.Is like my body senses his proximity and wants a contact of any sorts. My hands scratch
themselves grasping at the emptiness inside them.I stab my palms with my own nails sometimes.

**

Tom woke up with a pounding in his head. Dark pours through the blinds, perhaps midnight.
Dreams of someone hitting him with a stick still vivid under his eyelids, his hands raised up to
protect himself, his fingers crushed. The noise is real as he realises there are people knocking on
the door.
He turns on his back and he feels his mouth tasting like rusted metal, his head heavy. How long
did he sleep, he cannot remember.

His head was pulsating when he opened the door. Men rushed in by him and one pushed him
against the wall as in passing. Dressed in blue and with cold annoyed faces.
We need to talk to you
Do you have some form of id? They ask and dismiss their own questions as they take in his body
wrapped in a towel, hair tousled and fingers wrapped in a strange band aid taped with duct tape.
In a rag

“Drop that, let me see your hands. The rag is stuck to his finger and as one of the cops pulls on it
he winches in pain as the dried blood pulls out of the cut and delicate wounds.

96 | Page
“He is almost naked, for sure he is not hiding anything under there, one pointed at his towel.
Fresh, the men look at each other. One rushes out to the street through the open door and comes
back in with his fingers shaving swabs in everything.
Someone was taking pictures, on an old flip phone.
Do you have a lawyer? comes a voice.
He frowns.
“A representative?”
“Why?”
Someone throws him another rag back, “wrap that up, is a bloody mess!.
The voice rings familiar in his head. From another time. Did you do this yourself or someone
helped you.
“What the fuck is this, get out of my house!”
Sir respectfully, this isn’t your house. We checked and it belongs to your deceased wife, more
even, to her family and we now have full permission to look around, from the owners
themselves.
They all stopped and turned his way to see his reaction, they swore later that it was a genuine
reaction of shock and pain. His shoulder crushed like under a log.
“say that again?” he turned towards the man that was now shuffling his feet covered by the
sudden intensity in the suspect’s eyes.
“Say that again”, he gritted.
“De…,” started the cop.
..ceased.” Interrupted the thin voice of a woman, cutting off the visible relieved policeman.
“I am sorry sir, continued the woman.
“If we could talk in the next room maybe.”
“There was a freak accident and she was crushed, it was instant, more or less, no much pain.
Where were you after you left your office, around 1500?”
“Office, I never went to the office. I just woke up.”
“Sure thing. Well at least 5 people saw you at the office today right before the accident.”
Thomas’s head hurt, sharp pains turning in flashes of light pounding in his ears and in his eyes.
“I never went to the office, he looked down grabbing his head, I did? Why don't I remember
that? I didn’t shave, he touched his bear, I didn’t, don’t remember driving, going anywhere.

97 | Page
“Have you been drinking, maybe you had a fight and you drank too much, we all do …”
“No,” he cut off the woman’s words, not that.
“Prescriptions, drugs?
“None of that.”
“Why don’t I remember, who saw me at the office, I wasn’t there?”
“That is not important now?”
“No, is she dead?
“I am afraid so.”
“We had an argument. She was here a few minutes ago, hours maybe. She was fine.”
“And now she is not,” added the cop.
“Where was she, when this happened, she got hit?”
“We will tell you all the details once we figure out exactly what went on. It is hard to explain; it
was a strange thing.
You want to sit down?” she asked him, seeing him leaning on the wall behind him, pale, blood
drained from his face, his body shaking.
“We were supposed to start fresh, and I hurt her, I did this to her.”
“What are you saying sir?”
“I made her mad that she left the house ,and I didn’t go after her, I should have.”
The detective opened the door letting the men in.
“It sounds like a confession to me.”

**
Katherine called the office to see if Thomas was gone.
“I didn’t see him”, I told Katherine.
“Why would you. Is your turn girlie, you did enough damage?” She hissed in my ear.
I could hear her smiling mocking me.
She hung up on me. I held the phone another second hoping I didn’t hear the click, see what else
I can hear.
To break something that hurt you before, has such sweetness. All the moments of weakness and
breaking from before, come together as a victory. You win. You stand on your feet again and the
crumble you were, is healing somehow.

98 | Page
I was anticipating my victory and I heard Katherine talking on the phone. I know she is talking
too, by her tone. Just don’t know why. What did she have, what did she know. She never wanted
any of us to bother him when he was away. She hung up and left. I followed her outside but she
was gone.
She took the stairs too anxiously to wait for the elevators.

**

Kike’s car was pulled next to the curb. Katherine got in, without even looking behind. She
leaned in to give him a kiss and he turned his cheek, smiling, his eyes on the road in front of him.
It was cold outside and cold inside. She measured him dressed up warm and shivered. The ac
was turned on cold in the car, the windows almost fogged up.
He pressed the lock on the door with one gloved finger, and peeled off from his spot.
“Were you racing again?” She giggled, holding tight to her purse. “I left it all on his desk right
before I left. Here is his badge, I made sure he checked in. There is some other stuff I left in his
office. He is set.”
“Good, did you call yet?”
“No, I did not.”
“They may have paid him a visit already, at the house.” Kike grinned.
“Why? How would they know it already, did you call them? Kath turned towards him, with her
eyebrows raised.
“Let’s just say I helped fate a little.
She looked at him with big eyes, curious, excited.
“Well?”
“I made sure there will be no grandchildren to the clause, that is all.”
“Do I want to know?”
“May as well.” He pulled the car over.
“Where are we,” she asked, looking around.
“We have arrived dear.” He made a funny face.
“Is this a joke? Where is your helicopter?”

99 | Page
“Yeah. I think I forgot to call it. Let me see..” He reached between her legs under her seat and
felt the floor underneath it. When he came back out, he stretched his arm fast, the back of his
hand almost brushing her face, and the sliver of metal shone a brief second before he pushed the
small, pearl encrusted, pistol in her temple. The closeness of the flesh muffled the sound.
Big sun, a bright gray sun, draped by the rain, as it began to pour. Her body fell sideways against
the door, her elbow pushing on the window lock, lowering the glass. Rain poured red inside the
window sill, then pink and then clear again, over her face and her twisted wrists.
Rain washed down blood and glass, accumulating a bright puddle at her feet on the floor of the
car. Her red pointy shoes are dirty now and look miserable. He drops the pistol near them in the
puddle on the floor.
“How cute, how terribly cute and sad. Poor ambitious, mad woman.” He gets out of the car as he
removes the gloves putting them in his pocket from where he retrieves a set of car keys.
Her lips still twitch in a silent spasm, behind him, as the car rolls slowly over the bridge in the
marsh. In the air, there is a smell of metal, and blood, and gasoline, drowned slowly by the
murkiness.

**
Thomas was sitting on a metal chair, inside the police station leaning against the chair in front of
him. His bloodied knuckles pushed against the metal frame, trying to make himself stand up. His
head was clouded and his eye blurry, as he was probing the dense smokiness of a two-way
mirror. They held him since last night after they picked him up from the house. Right after one of
the offices got a call while they were rummaging through the house. When they knocked in his
door he almost broke his neck stumbling to open. They pushed by him, walking in accusing.
One of their phones rang and then they turned to him.
So solemnly one of them uttered the words of doom, he imagined so many times before.
“You have the right to remain silent, everything you say will be used against you in the court of
law, you have the right….”
Thomas' shoulders dropped, and then in a sudden burst of anger and helplessness, he moved
hard, hitting one of the men in the face, before they all attacked him, subduing him.

100 | Page
His mind is racing, uncertain. His face pained and his eyes shut tight. It was a dream, it had to be
a dream. Just like when he woke up in the pile of smoldering metal. His hands scarred and his
face cut. Why didn’t they just kill him. Why did they call the police?

Chapter 30
When I met Gustav, he gave me all I needed to know about tracking Thomas. He gave me the
lead, the location, the face of the man. Changed from the picture I had held close all these years.
Gustav’s son committed suicide before I got back to the homeland. His last letter reached me,
months before I left. I felt pity for the man, who wanted me to track down and kill Thomas.
Months before I decided to come back and avenge my sister and her unborn child.

**
Back at the office, police officers were ransacking everything, between some personal
documents they found an old marriage certificate, with his name on it. A dry dark spot smudging
the writing on the corner of the paper.
They speculated right away that it must be blood. For sure his wife’s blood.

**
He is broken. I see it in his eyes. Beggar for a smile. His eyes hanging on my lips.
“Are you, all right?”
“Why wouldn’t I be.”
“You, looked, I don’t know, not yourself.” His eyes troubled. It was tight before the day I
pretended to be a total stranger to a man I loathed and craved at the same time. Right before his
downfall began. Right before mine. But isn’t the fall, so much sweeter than the catch.
I leaned in. “Tonight, be prepared for anything,”
“I don’t want to be prepared for anything, only for you.”

101 | Page
“Sst.” I told him, putting my finger on his lips and arching my eyebrows over his shoulder to
Kath who was watching in the doorway. His lips touched my fingers, kissing my skin, biting the
tip of my finger.
“Ok.” He was leaning over me tall, controlling and blocking her view.
He held my finger captive for a few seconds between his sharp teeth, like a wildling.

**

A decolored beat up red Mustang with dusted tires and delivering two men with broken jeans and
Army boots. They walked straight for the door they found locked. Banged in it and kicked it as
hard as they could.
On the inside of the noise the short man looked up, his forehead sweating, waiting for a second
before grabbing the bag he had next to him on the floor and set in motion.
“Don’t open the door, don’t open the door,” he screamed with red cheeks, barely breathing,
holding a brownish flattened case in his arms.
He was dodging boxes and chairs, and the effort made him sweat. The sweat made the case slide
down his chest on his belly. He was aiming for the back exit of the store. The bag slipping, his
breathing elaborate punctuated by scratching fingertips dragged on the evading possession. He
kept pulling it back up trying to hold it with his chin, his little short steps shaking the efforts
away.
“Damn it!”
The knocks in the door turned into full blown kicks, making the thick wood give in. Two tall,
solid men rushed in pushing the woman in a green jersey holding a folder.

**

It escalates to something new, into madness.

There is madness in all of us, a mad torrent, oozing from some deeper unknown. Troubled, like a
pain under the ribs, for others more to the surface—chasing the winter, chasing the storm.
Chasing the desire. For others deeper in. Always struggling to surface.

102 | Page
I do not remember the first day I woke up to consciousness, just like I will never remember the
last time I’ll close my eyes. The last night, or day when I will forget about myself again. I am
scared. Maybe that continuous anxiety that grows inside my head sometimes is to keep me
awake, my own fear scared of falling in silence without even noticing.
And like a storm surfaces always.

It takes time for me to jump into things, I was always the one to plot the mischief in silence.
I would be the last one to oppress on the trigger of the gun during our hunts. The last to rush to
things. Methodical, but I did like the thrill of the chase.
we used to stay with our eyes closed in the sunset sun seeing the red and the dark purple
blindness brought for a short overpowering blindness brought to our eyelids
Until blinded we would jump in the lake’s waters.
Once the words come out they become strangers, I ask myself, did I ever say that?

***
 
I think I was in the same dusted corner, with the same sun hitting my eyelids, burning red to tears
when I got the letter about her passing.
She was gone, just like that. The handwriting unfamiliar and masculine signing a single name at
the end. James.
The letters are shaky and smudged by the hand erasing tears. I found out later that the mayor’s
son wrote.
Broken up, pieced by the crazed husband. He wrote the letter from the made up hospital to which
his father took him afraid of the scandal reaching the media's ears.  His fingers broken by the
blows, his ribs broken, and his collar bone bruised badly. His entire body pierced by the
metal the man swung around. 
He told me about the crying woman ripped from his arms by the brute. Of the blind hits. My
sister’s crash. Their baby.

103 | Page
My little child, my sister’s child, a little baby girl barely conceived which I loved already and I
caressed in the back of my thoughts with trembling fingers. 
The brute killed her and killed a part of me.  My only tie with what was once home. I was now
alone in the world, a large arena for my fear, my anguish, my angry tears. I crashed on the hot
sand, throwing fists of sand in the air, cursing, screaming to no one to hear. 

There was no one to hear but the pyramids, the dreams of summer melted plastered on their
shadows on the cooler sand. I cried, blinded by tears until the morning. I knew the arms that
protected me caressed me through the night but I didn’t feel their warmth, their weight until I
collapsed in the dark grief. I crashed hard. Crashing like her.
One day, I felt it was as good a day as any other to go back. I bought a ticket without talking to a
single person and I drove myself to the airport. Someone was going to return the car back to the
camp.
Hunting, it was time for hunting.
 
The importance of remembering one's weakness is a decent factor in continuing one's state of
aliveness or physical and moral integrity for a while. Haha. So wise and imposing. It also keeps
one alive.
I guess, I have the gene that makes me forget easily, the pain and the hurt of previous encounters
with my own insanity. Thus, I go back to getting hurt and damaging myself more. There is a
place in the attic, in the house I grew up in, where I used to hide.

Sat crunched up, my knees to my chest until my feet would go numb. I would sit and wait until
the kittens nested there would dare to come out in the dusted silence. Then I would rush and grab
them touching my cheeks to the tiny furry beasts.
How have I changed throughout this journey? What have I gained? What have I lost?
There is this painting when I drive in the town there is this painting in top of the building it looks
like a city mad, fiery agitated and in the background kind of like at its feet the sea, vast, blue,
alive releasing, cool
There is a lot of sun, a hot summer city, walled sun behind which there are waters, endless cold
fresh waters and there is sort of a fuzzy line between the two. But there is boldness in the

104 | Page
crossing. The heat melts away and there it is suddenly crossing over the sharp bold water. It is a
matter of us choosing to see it to take it or if we let ourselves be fooled by the hot walls and
remain trapped in because of an illusion.
An illusion that we can never escape that we cannot ever get out. Or that we do not need to get
out. Illusions are everything after all, they make us click, tick, roll, fall, and act the way we act.

We sport them as hats or bags through fake glimmers, in the eyes of onlookers blinded in our
turn by their illusions. There is less loneliness in the falling. The process of recovery may suck
however.

Is so easy to fall into anything. We have become so weak so uncomfortable in our own skins, so
insecure of ourselves in such need to impress to follow to become always unhappy with us as we
are that our whole lives turn into big fake illusions and we die before we know what happened,
before we ever found ourselves or really got to know ourselves.
So scared of the reality we hold, that we drug, drink, smoke, overindulge our sensors, killing any
sense of the harsh bitter reality that even what we feel becomes a fake, a large untruth.

A yellow golden light of lies.

So scared of everything and then is too late to come back, and then is too late for anything. It
seems, that in old age we found our religion, we return to whatever Gods we abandoned eons
ago, We become so scared that the only illusion we care to grab is the one that our loneliness will
not be filled with nothing as we cross over, but filled by the love of some ominous being that will
show us back to the herd in the afterlife. I am scared too, so scared it scars my heart, my soul,
and my sleepless nights. For a long time now.

It wasn’t always like that. I wasn’t always alone. My sister was my best friend, then she found
someone, and I was alone again. Men are monsters indeed, selfish indifferent careless, self-
centered creatures of habit, of deceit and hurt. I am one of those monsters. But most of the time I
see myself as an angel. Of mercy and revenge.
There is nothing passionate in our society anymore, nothing alive, glorious, or noble.

105 | Page
Even revenge is soft and nimble and is done from the back of a computer screen, after heavy
loads of money, cross wires to some dark, strange realm of fingertips and keyboards, and where
no faces and no lips whisper the punishment but a click. There is more to me than meets the eye.
But there is always much more to anyone, than what meets the eye. We

You see the real self of a man when he is crumbled by his own pathetic misery. I rejoice more
now that I have seen him fully. He is nothing to me, now, nor ever will be. It was maybe once,
for a little bit, when it meant something for my kin. When I was weak. We just choose to think
we are the only one that is special.
Who says our emotions don’t interfere with our thoughts and our rationale is off? Emotions
come from desires and desires from the flesh. When flesh dies, all else disappears.
And there is freedom above it all.

[13]you are not terrible, If I agree to that I would be terrible myself for my wants. We are people,
simple people. What I want won't happen either so that is our salvation versus.... damnation  or
the other way around, maybe

106 | Page