God is love. God is life. God is a bomb.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
It’s Friday and the man from last week waves me into the mosque. Tonight I’m a Muslim and tonight I get on my knees and touch my forehead to the carpet in harmony with every other person here. The imam is humble and the imam is loud and the imam is rhythmic. The imam says:
“God is love. God is life.”
I mumble, “God is a bomb.”
Tick—Tick—Tick.
It’s Saturday and the man at the synagogue hands me a yarmulke. I put it on the crown of my head and nod at him just like I did last week. He nods back. We have an understanding. Today I’m Jewish and I read from the Torah as the rabbi speaks:
“God is love. God is life.”
God is a bomb. Tick. Tick. Tick.
It’s Sunday and I’m wearing my itchiest sweater into the cathedral. A parade of strangers smiles awkwardly in a way that matches their vanilla yogurt personalities. One by one our spines strain against the wooden benches creaking with years of service. The priest, standing above us on an elevated platform, podium to his chest, does his best to transmit warmth to everyone in attendance. He raises his hands in the air, the sleeves of his robe bunching down his forearm. In a gentle baritone, he says:
“God is love. God is life.”
God is a bomb.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
It’s just hours later and the sun has died for the day. The moon is out, and everyone is home because the black sky threatens to pull them into their little bedrooms to sleep.
I’m inside my apartment, fiddling with plastic blinds. Looking through the smudges on my living room window and into the lonely courtyard. Somewhere out there in a special corner of society awaits one more stop. One more opportunity to find God or redemption. Another view on what it might take to attain a sliver of peace or contentment or forgiveness. Out there is hope. A last chance to outrun the memories of the farm and the gun and the guilt and the uncertainty.
I check my phone. Nearly three in the morning—which means one thing.
It’s time.
I zip up my black hoodie. Move through my four-hundred-square-foot apartment that costs two thousand a month. Look in the bathroom mirror. Push the short black hairs off my forehead. Comb it high and tight. Survey the damage across my face. The deep, blackening circles around the eyes. Wrinkles along the forehead that seem more pronounced. It’s been five days. Five straight nights. No concentrated sleep. Only intermittent naps. Nothing more than fifteen minutes. Maybe less.
Check that. Six straight.
My chessboard rests atop a breakfast nook. I move my knight to F6. There is an echo of gratitude when I do this. The chessboard thanks me for the move. I thank it back.
One last thing to do.
I grab The Essential Kierkegaard off my bookcase. Open the thick, leather-bound book to its hollowed-out pages. A few amber bottles roll out of the cavity and fall to the floor. For a second, I hesitate. I wonder if I can do without them tonight. My self-prescribed cocktail of uppers and downers and other meds. And then I think of the farm. So I grab the two I need right now.
Adderall. Thirty milligrams.
Two Vyvanse. Twenty milligrams, delayed-release.
These are both prescribed for ADHD but are abused by college students everywhere. They can get you high but not in a psychedelic “I’m going to listen to The Dark Side of the Moon” kind of way. Adderall and Vyvanse, stimulants, will get you high in an “I feel great and can stay up all night” kind of way. If you do this long enough, the parts of your brain in charge of memory will become damaged.
And that’s what I want.
* * *
My keys are in my hands and my nerves are in my palms. The front door swings open and the opera of the night cries out to me. It woos me with the falsetto of the stars. The baritone of loneliness.
I’m on foot and passing houses and lawns and hybrid cars parked in driveways—lawn signs telling me who to vote for, the “Live, Laugh, Love” doormats. All the standard markers of suburban life become little dots passing my periphery like I’m in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon and I’m pushing it into hyperdrive.
Now that I think about it, probably seven straight days.
This is Monterey, California. One freeway stop south is Carmel. One five-minute drive west is Pacific Grove. These are the towns for which everyone wishes upon a star. The towns that real estate agents never stop squirting nocturnal emissions over. But for locals, it’s a sleepy beach peninsula with zero industry, an area still clinging to yesterday’s greatness, reluctantly accepting tomorrow’s hopelessness.
No cars congest the road. Twelve hours from now, a thirty-minute rush hour will overtake the streets closest to the freeway with some minor bumper-to-bumper fuckery. But in this moment everything is quiet and still and perfect. And I won’t keep this all to myself. Tonight I’ll share it all with a friend—Enzo.
Enzo is a war veteran. Tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. He signed up for the army a few weeks after turning eighteen, more for the money and to get away from his parents than an overwhelming sense of patriotism. He doesn’t like talking about any of it. He says he survived the wars but still somehow died in the process.
I can relate to that.
Mainly, Enzo is an associate who can help me get what I most want. A way into the Liberty Subterraneans—a group often rumored about. Maybe they’re criminals. Maybe a bunch of religious fanatics or even a cult. But for me, they offer a way to forget everything about myself.
Closer to eight days?
* * *
Enzo stands underneath a gas station’s overhang, engaging the clerk in conversation outside the sliding glass doors. Enzo’s cheekbones pop out as he talks and so, too, does the marbled scar of an old wound below one of his eyes. His hands are synchronized with each word—circular motions around his chest, cheap leather jacket shifting across his broad shoulders. He spots me just as I pass a homeless man sitting against the side of the gas station. A wool blanket pulled over his legs.
“Spare a dollar?” he asks.
“Dash!” Enzo blurts out. He looks at the clerk in a way that somehow kindly informs him that their conversation is over. “Coffee?”
“Sure.”
We go inside and I fill a Styrofoam cup with coffee and vanilla creamer and listen to Enzo talk. He likes to talk. Probably too much.
“Cats bury their feces to hide their scent from predators.”
He talks about things he randomly learned.
“Kramer was the least realistic character on that show.”
He talks about things he saw on television.
“You ready, my friend?”
He’s talking about the Subterraneans.
A rush of fear and excitement springs up into my rectum and through my stomach.
Our shoes march against the pavement as we hear the early morning tide slosh in the distance. Water warring with rocks. A loud smack, then a splash, finishing with a fading sizzle. Mounds rising and falling with each slope. A camel’s back. The last vanguard for everything we naturally ruin.
Not that we don’t try.
Multiple times a month, a random lovestruck teen will drag enough black kelp up the tallest dune and use the kelp to write out a note for everyone on the peninsula to see.
Suzie, you’re my love. Prom?
—Brian.
“Are you nervous?” Enzo asks.
“Should I be?”
“I was nervous when I first met Rocket. But soon, I only felt gratitude.”
“I’m not nervous. The last meeting went fine.”
“Tonight is different. Rocket will be there.”
The night lights up as we ease toward a car dealership. Three sky beams pierce the air, oscillating right to left.
“Do you mind?” Enzo asks. “We’ve got a few minutes.”
I shrug. Feel the amphetamines kicking in. A quick hit of euphoria floods my brain in the form of my closest friends—serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine. “Why not?”
We step into the dealership. Plastic triangles—blue, red, and green—fixed to a sagging rope bordering the lot flap against the ocean breeze. The demarcation of cars is without order, and as you near a row, you’re as likely to come across Jeeps as you are motorcycles—old German sedans and sports cars from the eighties.
“Dash, my friend. This is the one for me.”
Enzo talks about cars with high fuck appeal.
“What do you think?”
It’s a black Pontiac Trans Am from the eighties. The neon-blue firebird decal rocking on the hood like a Def Leppard song. I like it. And I hate it.
“Not bad,” I say. My fingers drag along the cold steel and carbon fiber of each overpriced trophy. I stop. A faint buzzing in my ears. In my head. It grows in volume. Becomes a consuming hum. It sounds familiar. Is it familiar? It can’t be familiar. I look around, and time floats two inches in front of my eyes.
Enzo is still off in my periphery. But in my direct line of sight is someone else. A man. He walks away from the dealership, his back facing me. I can’t stop staring, my eyeballs fixed and frozen. He wears a plain white shirt with green sweatpants. He stops underneath the brightest streetlight on the block. He turns around and his face is awash with a white glow. But I know—he’s staring back at me.
“Dash!” Enzo calls from several rows away. “Look at this one.”
I turn toward Enzo. He’s flapping his arm, pointing at an older Suburban. I ignore whatever Enzo is saying and look back for the man.
He’s gone.
And so is the hum.
Probably nine days.
Enzo checks his watch. “I guess that’s all for now. Let’s get moving.”
We’re back on the sidewalk. We pass the bike trail that rides along the nearest beach underneath the deep shadows cast by a large tree canopy. I ask Enzo about the man in the streetlight. He looks confused. Shakes his head. Says he didn’t see anyone.
Soon we turn into a huge, empty lot riddled with parking meters every ten feet. On the other side of the lot is the Monterey Pier—a hot spot for tourists to purchase shiny clutter for their homes. Magnets or posters or coffee mugs or something related to the one John Steinbeck novel that inserted this town into the American consciousness eighty years ago.
“Here?” I ask.
“The warehouse is big enough for everyone and far enough removed from the main road. It’s why we all have to walk here. People could see the cars taking up the parking lot.”
I see the first person, a walking silhouette, making their way down the pier’s narrow alley. Another person—a woman—cuts across the parking lot, looking over her shoulder at us. Sizes me up. Probably asking herself if I’m an undercover cop or narc. Soon a dozen people are headed to the same destination, crawling out from underneath their special rocks to be here. Some are teens, others early twenties, a couple in their sixties. Maybe one other person besides Enzo and I are in their thirties. But as I get closer, catching faces crossing against streaks of starlight, I realize we all share something. It’s in the dimming of our eyes. Like we’re stuck in our own world’s computer freeze, spinning in circles from uploaded confusion.
Now bunched together, the group crosses the pier. Shop signs in wacky fonts spelling out store names that are trying too hard to be Californian for non-Californians. After the Quake! Out beyond the pier is the other side of the Monterey Peninsula—glowing with faraway lights like a faint fire, too civilized to match the soulful infernos emanating from every one of us moving through the night together.
We come to the old fishing warehouse at the end of the pier. It’s a simple rectangular building with no windows, the outer walls splintering with decay. Boats bob on the docks nearby. Six men hold child-size fish against their chests, the predawn catch, and walk it up a ramp and into the back of the warehouse. Standing to the side of an open door is Caris—pale and short, bowl haircut, brown trench coat too big for his Napoleon frame. He sports the same seductive grin as the last time I saw him.
“Your friend has returned,” Caris says.
Enzo throws his arm over my shoulders. Curls his elbow around my neck and pulls me closer to him. “He’ll be one of us soon enough.”
“Looks like he’s already one of us.”
More than a dozen torches fastened to the wall illuminate the inside of the warehouse. The flames snap from side to side like erotic tongues. There are no chairs or benches. There is no rug in which we will be kneeling for prayer. Only cold concrete to accommodate the comfort that we somehow make with it. Enzo and I sit in the open area, legs folded in a crisscross like we’re children at an elementary school assembly. More and more people, a few dozen at this point, find a place near us and sit down in the same manner. With each person who takes a spot, the group grows quieter and more uneasy. There are a few people wearing the same brown trench coat as Caris. Everyone else is in their street clothes like us. The first time Enzo took me to a meeting I asked him about the attire. “Rocket gives the coats to people as a reward,” he said. “It is like a karate belt. It starts with beige, then navy, then brown. Each color signifies the levels of freedom one has achieved for themselves.” He then tells me that he’ll receive his beige coat after I become official since he’s my sponsor. There are several people here tonight like me. This meeting is our final trial meeting. “Getting excited?” he asks. But lack of sleep does one of two things to your emotional state. It either dulls it completely, nullifying any emotional reaction to what is occurring no matter how weird or overwhelming it might be, like everything about this night. Or it floods your emotional system with anxiety and nerves, which is starting to happen at this very moment. I nod at Enzo and try to distract my mind. Avoid asking myself questions like, What happens if this isn’t for real? or Holy shit, is this a cult? So I take a look around the warehouse. I start to recognize some people. Nobody I know personally but faces I’ve seen around town. An older woman, body like a bowling ball, who bags my groceries. Or does she drive an Uber? I see a white guy with silver hair and a silver suit and no tie. We make eye contact, and he looks away. It’s a local attorney. His corny TV ads sell multimillion-dollar settlements to anyone who has recently gotten into an accident. The huge type at the bottom of the screen: 877-Rick-Sues.
Fishermen file inside and head for three or four rows of waist-high tables with slim containers of ice on top. They carefully lay their huge catch on the ice and display it for the market that will open in a few hours.
“Doesn’t this seem weird?” I ask.
Enzo looks over at me, then turns to the fisherman. “Don’t worry. The market is owned by a Subterranean.” He points to a smaller man standing against the sidewall. “He lets us use this place. All those guys work for him. They won’t say a word.”
I try and relax as the inside of the warehouse thickens with fish recently drowned in oxygen.
“All rise!” Caris directs.
We stand, hands at our sides. For the moment has arrived.
The orange-and-red flames mix with the shadows, tracing the last person to enter the warehouse. The door closes behind him, a towering human being—a dominating creature.
Rocket.
He ambles, moving his eyes up and down the line of people in attendance. The torches light up his pale skin and flicker off his metallic teeth. He looks close to seven feet in height. His long dreadlocks, tied into a thick tail, bounce on the back of his golden trench coat. If Burning Man spawned a child with motorcycle crank, Rocket would be it.
“Please, lovely birds,” Rocket says. He twirls his hands with whimsy. “Seat yourselves.”
Everyone lowers themselves back to the concrete, dusting off small pebbles from our hands as we sit down. Some people park their chins on top of their open palms like little kids during story time. I feel my spine harden. I feel my skepticism fight my suspension of disbelief.
“My metaphysical being reaches out to everyone here tonight and only provides love,” Rocket says. “This universe ensured we’d all find each other. That we remain connected from this point forward. Never looking back. Never second-guessing. You are the Liberty Subterraneans.”
The trench coats begin to cheer. Others quickly follow. The attorney in the silver suit, no longer feeling shy, holds his arms above his head, fists clenched.
“Will all of our pledges please rise?” Rocket asks.
Enzo nudges me. I get back to my feet. Looking around, I see seven or eight others also upright.
“Have you all done your homework? Have you all ventured out to these other holy houses? The supposed sacred grounds?” Rocket walks over to a stocky man no more than ten feet from me. He wears thick-rimmed glasses. Eyes bugging out. “And you, little bird?” Rocket puts his hands on his shoulders. “Did you do as you were asked?”
“Yes, sir,” he says with a tremble.
“Good. And what have you found? Did you find as much love as I offer you here?”
“No, sir.”
“Hmm. And did you find a community? Did you find a collection of people not seeking to judge but rather to rebuild? To reconstruct life?”
“No, sir.”
“No? Did you not find a way for your worst self to be forgiven? To be forgotten?”
“No,” the man says, cheeks trembling.
“That’s okay, little bird. You are here now. Please, sit.”
Rocket looks in my direction. His face is half awash with a fiery hue, half-hidden in shadow—the two-ingredient recipe we all follow in this life. He holds his arms behind his back as he moves toward me.
For the first time tonight, I feel the crash. The dam is shutting off the flood of happy chemicals to my brain. In its place is the monster by the name of exhaustion. Drugs can only stave it off for so long.
“And you—your name?”
“Dash,” I answer.
“Ahh, Dash. You are here as are a result of Enzo’s sponsorship. Enzo is a trusted agent.” He passes an affirming look to Enzo, still seated. “He is nearly complete with his missions. Do you know what that means?”
“I do.”
Rocket puts his hands on my shoulders, just as he did with the stocky man. My neck arches as far back as it can so that I can meet Rocket’s gaze.
“Soon, Enzo will move past his pain. Past his sorrow. His life will reboot. He will be reborn. Did you, Dash, do your homework as asked of you?”
“I did.”
Rocket sucks on his bottom lip and it squeaks. He stares into my eyeballs. Finds something more uncomfortable layers deeper. “Oh, Dash,” he says. “I can see everything you’re holding onto. I can see that splinter in your mind. The infection spreading through every thought you have. Every day in which you wake. Your soul—it corrodes as we stand here now.”
My head grows heavy, gravity tugging on it. It’s the kind of head rush that only insomniacs understand. The type of battle between mind and body that erupts after the body is so fed up that it hits a self-destruct button, summoning a fainting spell to induce sleep. My eyes start to roll back in my head. A white cover, thick like milk, overtakes my field of vision.
“Little bird,” Rocket whispers. “Stay here with me.”
I breathe deep and push as much oxygen to my head as possible. Rocket holds me tight, keeps me from falling. Another deep breath. The milky cover starts to dissipate, the tug on my head relents. And all I see is Rocket.
“There you are, Dash.” He brushes blood away from my nostril. He snaps his fingers and someone runs over with a tissue. “By the looks of it, my little bird, you’ve been trying to find the answer in your own unique way, haven’t you?”
Enzo helps me back to the floor and looks over at me with concern. These types of fainting episodes can resolve as fast as they come on, depending on how soon oxygen returns to the brain. I know I’ll survive this, though not without the cost of embarrassment. But Rocket could have made a big deal out of watching me break down and didn’t. Instead, the meeting carries on like I didn’t just reveal to the whole warehouse what a total mess I’ve become. And for that, I already feel gratitude toward Rocket.
* * *
Rocket reassumes his spot in front of the group. “A great many of you are new, but everyone gathered here tonight is in search of the same thing. To our pledges—our community is not like those religious institutions you visited. Our community is not about forgiving. It’s about forgetting. It’s also about becoming the best version of yourself. We help all our members achieve their greatest potential. And we do that by removing the one thing that must be gotten rid of for everyone to start fresh: control.” Rocket’s sharp chin cuts through the air with every nod. “You are all here tonight due to control. Controlled by so many things. By religion. By money. By relationships. Controlled by your mind. And above all, controlled by your past.”
I feel the seduction of Rocket’s sermon. It slips into my ear canal and worms through my brain. Lowers my defenses. It was one thing for Enzo to convey the merits of the group to me. Another to get it in previous trial meetings from Caris. But now, hearing from Rocket for the first time, the systematic breakdown of why I’m here—probably everyone else too—heightens my belief that maybe, just maybe, this is the solution I’ve been trying to find.
“Your past tells you what you are,” Rocket says. “Your past tells you what you are not. It prevents you from ever truly escaping and becoming the best version of yourself. We move you to that best version by starting over. By forgetting everything you need to forget. Being born again—not by Christ—but by erasing the limits and controls of the mind. Erasing the past.”
And there it is.
There are many self-help books, online programs, and even therapists who promise a brighter future or a better daily mindset. But those promised incremental changes mean little if your past still hunts you out. This is why I’m here.
“Most of you already know that there is no other place to find your redemption. Your forgiveness. Your new life,” Rocket says. “But what is it you can find here?”
“God is love!” everyone chants.
“Yes,” Rocket raises his arms in the shape of a Y.
“God is life!”
Rocket closes his eyes. “What else?”
“God is a bomb!”
“That is right, my birds. God is a bomb. I will help you detonate the past to liberate the future. This is your family now. All I ask in return is that you contribute to our group through your private missions. If you do as asked, the peace you seek will be delivered.”
At this moment, we are all apocalypse children sitting in Rocket’s nuclear field. This is our shared bond. Every one of us in this warehouse. We’ve all spent too many hours fearing what we would eventually find. Often over and over in the bleakest corners of our minds. Because what we feared was a singular moment from our pasts. One insipid memory that no matter how hard we tried, we could never outrun. No matter how much good we decided to put back into our souls, it would never be enough. And what we eventually find—what we learn about ourselves—is that the worst moment of our lives is so much bigger than anything else we will ever experience. So much more defining than any other moment spent on this green-and-blue pebble blasting through space. Forever trapping us in that memory, we’re forced to relive it again and again.
“Until the next time, be well, my little birds.”
I nod in affirmation, and in my periphery, I see others doing the same. And in that moment, the fog of the promise wears off, and the fear of groupthink overpowers the seduction at hand. I look around the room and dozens of pledges are trapped in that seduction. Mouths open. An intense gaze fastened on Rocket. I want it all to be true. I want it all to be as easy as it sounds. But I also know how this life works. How it’s very rarely what it appears or as easy as it seems. I tell myself that skepticism is still warranted.
* * *
Rocket has exited into the night. Everyone eventually collects themselves. The other pledges confer with their sponsors. Enzo meets with Caris to hear the details about the missions we are to carry out. I keep to myself while others in the warehouse linger. This isn’t exactly the occasion for small talk with strangers. Enzo returns a few minutes later, and we leave.
Neither of us says a word to each other until we’re off the pier and into the parking lot.
“I’m guessing you have questions?”
“When do we start on the mission?” I ask.
“Tomorrow night.”
“And what is it?”
Enzo smiles. “We’re going to steal someone else’s life.”
“What does that mean? We’re not going to hurt anyone, right?”
“You need to know just enough at each stage of this journey. And all you need to know now is the following—be ready for another full night out come tomorrow evening.”
I want to press him. Extract every single detail about the mission, but I’m afraid if I do, I will fail some secret test. So I relent.
“And how do you feel about what you heard from Rocket?”
“It all seems appealing. How do I know it’s real?”
Enzo puts his hands in his pockets like he’s stuffing away a secret note. “When the time is right, he’ll reveal it all.”
“What is it you want to forget? The war?”
Enzo clenches his jaw. Takes his time finding the words. “If all war entailed was fighting the enemy, it wouldn’t be a problem. But it isn’t that simple. It’s best not to get into it.”
“But Rocket has helped you?”
“It’s a process. Soon Rocket will give me what I need to put what happened in the desert behind me forever.”
I let Enzo’s insinuation of Rocket’s wizardry carry us in silence for a few moments.
“I can tell he’s taken to you,” Enzo says. “I’m not sure he’d be that patient with another pledge if they fainted.”
“That was just bad timing. Awful head rush. It happens.”
“You have to sleep, Dash. This is madness, what you’re doing.”
Enzo is about to launch into a speech. A diatribe about being healthy. I decide to lower the volume on his voice. I find the audio toggles in my brain and adjust them. Turn the nob all the way to the left. Sometimes life is better as a silent movie. We weave through neighborhoods until we arrive at the same gas station as before. The homeless man still rests with the blanket over his legs. I turn the volume back up as Enzo gets ready to say goodbye.
“You’re part of the group now. Rocket will help—trust me.”
“Thank you, Enzo.”
“I’ll be in touch. We have work to do.”
We part ways, and I turn to the homeless man. He looks my way but has too much pride to ask for money again. I won’t make him either. I reach into my pocket and pull out the only bill I have. It’s a twenty. I hand it to him anyway.
“Thank you, son.”
The lavender streaks taint the otherwise black sky. The night is dying. Soon to be replaced with a full tangerine horizon. Then the first gold strips of light will pierce bedrooms, disrupting REM cycles. It reminds me that I’m going to have to fall back in line with the rest of the world, taking my place in the hierarchy of Western order. I’ll have to be at the office in less than four hours. Putting in another day’s work at the Monterey Coast News—a paper that reports on all the hardest news in the area. “Jazz Club Temporarily Shutting Down for Renovations.” “Business Commerce Looking for New IT Manager.” The only decision left between now and then is how to spend the remaining time before Cal, one of my only friends at work, pulls up outside of my building in his Honda, ready to carpool. Like always, Cal will be cheery and optimistic in a way that tempts mockery, yet his good nature, the kind that is indisputably soulful and pure, will make it impossible. He’s Superman without the over-the-top power set. Clark Kent without the boredom.
But Cal and the Coast News are still a few hours away.
I think about Rocket. His promise of a new life. A fresh start. Nothing is that easy. Nobody is that eager to help. But then I think of the alternative. I think of what I will be left with if Rocket can’t help.
I think of the farm.
That November night, years ago, envelops me. I try to fight the thought. Futile. The memory, dyed in shades of sepia, plays from the projector of my mind. I see myself walking through that old house, the wooden floor creaking with each step. My legs are cold and heavy, but they still move me past the olive-green wallpaper cracked with faded illustrations of horses and steeples and churches. I pull open a cabinet and ruffle through folded sweaters, feeling for the unmistakable dimpled metal handle. The curve of the trigger. I hold the handgun before my eyes, staring at fate.
STOP.
I shake my head. Try to rattle my brain back to the here and now. But it’s never that simple. I wish life was like a television show you can binge-watch. Something episodic that counts down to the next irresistible episode from three, two, one. The plot shock from the previous episode quickly replaced with the next installment.
Shit.
Now I’ve done it. I’ve gotten so lost in my head that I left my body exposed to danger. I’m back on my street. Right in front of my apartment complex. My legs come to a complete stop. My hands raise by my shoulders, palms out.
“I don’t want any trouble,” I stammer. Fear enters my spine.
Guns look like toys, even when a real one is pointed right at you. A flashlight clicks on, and murderous white light limits my vision. But I can still see his outline. It’s him. The man from the car dealership.
“What do you want?”
No answer.
The hum has returned.
Do we die in many more moments than just the one? We must. We may live and sleep and wake up over and over, but there is no connective tissue strong enough to make me believe this is all one genuinely fluid experience. We go years within this existence carrying but dozens of tangible memories to show for it, and the rest is only a scribble of recalls and fictitious blurs. There are moments where we die, but our experience carries on in some other fashion or mutation. We’re never the same. Trauma has a price. Sometimes that price is a purgatory. And even worse, sometimes you have to die again to exit.
But this isn’t the exit door. This is the entrance.
The flashlight never gives me a chance to see anything other than a bright tunnel made of hot light. The man stands still and silent. I look around and there are no witnesses. No neighbors. No cars. Nobody to help. It’s just me and the man.
And his gun just went off.
THE NEXT CHAPTER BEGINS IN 3, 2, 1 . . .