I’m on a beach. The warm Florida sun kissing my skin. My girlfriend cuddled next to me. My son screaming with joy at the seagulls nearby. My son. The most perfect fluffy cloud passes overhead, dimming the light and turning it to a soft glow, like the inside of an airplane. Please, God, no. My throat closes. The sky begins to hum, the earth rocking gently like a cradle. I try to focus on my boy, his eyes, his silly fat legs, running towards me as fast as they can. He is scared. He needs me, I won’t leave him. I can’t! My eyes open. Jeffrey and the girls are chortling next to me. They’ve turned on the cabin lights. I’ve lost him.

I lift my head slowly. I don’t bother to try to dry the shameful wetness in my eyes. There is no reason to. Jeffery has his hand on the new one’s thigh. Even if he was accustomed to looking at me, he would not register anything of note to him. I used to like that about him, his genuine don’t-give-a-shit nature. My own personality dialed up to an 11, right where I wished it could be. After so long together, I see him differently now. The lines on his face are illuminated under the unforgiving overhead brightness, each with its own deep craig yawning beneath. I know every single one. They had crinkled like a jolly dirty Santa when we’d first met. He’d winked at me. Protecting him came with an Island of perks. He knew I’d like that. Now I turn away. I’m sick of looking at him. I can’t look at the girls either, that’s so much worse. Bubble-gum pink lips and baby giggles. I want to throw up. Too little too late.

I can’t look away forever. That’s the point of all of this. My punishment for shame learned too slowly. I have a job to do. I clear my throat “Jeffery”. Jeffery looks up at me with annoyance. I plough on: “your lawyer has urgent information to discuss before the plane lands, can you come with me please?” Jeffrey rolls his eyes. For two agonizing seconds, I am terrified he will waste my time arguing. He does that sometimes. Today I am lucky. He hands his champaign to the blonde girl. She is an old hand-speaking with great relativity. He trusts her at least not to spill any.

Jeffrey and I make our unsteady way a few feet over to the other side of the plane. I dive right in. That’s the way to do it. “Jeffrey, you don’t have much time. As soon as this plane lands, agents are waiting to arrest you. You have to tell them everything-I mean everything." My fear has made me breathless; I inhale and that is my undoing. He is on me “fuck you” he hisses, his rage only slightly tempered by surprise “you incalculable moron, you are a dead man”. This plane is too small for a private conversation. Both the girls are staring openly. I will my voice to regain the command it used to have, “Jeffrey Epstein LISTEN to me”. He has moved quickly away and is on the phone now. Eyes hard. He is beyond my reach. I’m done. I have failed. Again. The airplane hum grows louder. “JEFFREY” I scream “PLEASE” I lunge towards him. He dodges me and shoves the body of one of the girls at me in one swift motion. I see her terrified young face, helpless and so small. It falls towards me and dissolves into a flock of impossibly white seagulls.

I’m on a beach. The warm Florida sun kissing my skin…

I am, by nature, a person of intellect. I have been blessed with the rare ability to assert mental dominance over whatever situation is at hand. Thus, in this time of uncertainty, I lay out the facts as I see them.

One: I am laying in a pile of assorted refuse behind a building labeled “Tres Amigos”

Two: By the sun's position, it is roughly 9 in the morning.

Three: There is a strange cat clinging to my left lower appendage. Four: The cat's name is Luz. I know this with unshakable certainty. I fear we have become intimate.

Five: There is a man who has been yelling at me in Spanish for the past three and a half minutes.

Six: I have just vomited on his shoes. Also on Luz a little.

Seven: I am having severe doubts that I am still in Boston

I am escorted with precious little consideration from what must have been my bed. The man and I do not speak the same language. A true moment of culture meeting culture. He kicks me in the shins. I understand this to be international language speak for “please evacuate the premises immediately.”

I exit the alley with admirable dignity and, dare I say, aplomb (all things considered). I would like to see anyone else try that. Luz follows, her affection for my leg as passionate and unsettling as it was in the bin. I will deal with her later.

I squint impotently against an objectively brutal assault of sunlight as I step out of the alley and onto the sidewalk. I am facing down a row of bright, cheerfully decaying colonials. The smell of steaming meat, tortillas, and pepper wafts past. I am intoxicated and nauseated at the same time. My sensory collection is interrupted by a sudden, gentle hiss. I look down. It is not the godless leg molester. A second hiss reveals itself to be emanating from two windows down right. I hesitate.

The owner of the agitated whisper hurries out. I have time to take in a violently colored dress and a head of equally flamboyant hair before I am whisked to where I assume it will be harder to hear me scream. The hair is attached to a plain face-albeit one made interesting with fury. “What are you doing here?! People are looking for you!”. I try to focus on processing this information but I am distracted by a nascent headache. The throbbing is in time with the twitch above her left eye. I find this pleasing. Mental note to myself to share this observation if my new friend turns out not to be the murdery type. Luz hisses. This is not a good sign. Or is it? I am not one hundred percent on the trustworthiness of this particular alley cat.

I finally pull myself together long enough to sigh out a reply. “ I haven't the faintest idea, ma'am. Also, what people and why?” The woman takes a step back. Her face has done an impressive 180 from anger to fear. “Leonard...you do remember me...don't you?” I am silent. I need to find a gentle way of telling her that no one could forget the first time they saw troll doll hair on a real human. I can't.

The woman sinks to the ground. “what have I done?” “Nothing that can't be undone by letting me walk out that door”. This is a good reply. I find time even in this difficult situation, to give myself a mental pat on the back. My companion looks up from between shaking hands. “I can't do that anymore, you're not who you said you were, Leonard! They were right the whole time! God, I am such an idiot!”. She stands up, “do you even have a wife?”

I am torn between my need to know what on God's sensible earth is going on and my need to not accidentally pull some kind of pin on this human hand grenade. I make a decision. “I do have a wife”. Pause to think. “Cynthia was telling me just this morning what a great friend you are!”

This does not make her happy. “Oh god.... I lied for you, Leonard. I hid you. I fucking helped you escape. Do you even understand what that makes me, now??” She is moving closer. I notice for the first time that her arms are unusually muscular for a woman. Her eyes are darting back and forth. Bomb very much not defused. She reaches for her phone. “Leonard, you are going to sit here like a good boy while I call the police. You are not going to move. Do you understand me?”

I understand alright. I understand that a confused, horny cat had better judgment than a grown man. No more. I don't know what happened to lead me to this point, but I know that there is no way I am winding up in a Mexican Jail. Is this Mexico? Why did I think that? No time, I need to make a move. Confident. Decisive. “No, dear. I have done nothing wrong. So let me tell you what is going to happen. You are going to move aside and let my companion and I pass (Lets be honest, Luz has earned it by this point)”.

The woman is crying. Tears are streaming down her face even as she continues to advance. “I am so sorry, Leo. I wanted to believe you. I really did. I thought I was helping. Please, please don't make me tie you up”. She looks so sad. I feel for her, I really do. “I would never make you do that...kind friend”. I hope that is right. We are standing so close now. This is the distance needed to bridge a misunderstanding. This is the distance from which to effectively assault someone with a cat.

She is shrieking. Luz and the madwoman both, that is. I book my exit posthaste screaming on my way out, “find me Luz!! Find me!!”. My heart is pounding, my throat is dry. There is no time for detailed analysis of the situation. I make a decision. The desert is calling. I run.

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

Anna finally pulls the cat off her face. The furry little bitch immediately bolts out the door. Anna is laughing. Hysterical laughter, yes, but still relieving. There is no time to waste. She pulls out her phone and dials. She has one call to make before she dials the police.

“Hello? Is this the Kaminsky residence? This is Anna from the hostel last night. I lied. Your father was here. I'm sorry. I am so so sorry. Please believe me. He seemed so sane! I believed him! Please, anyone would have if they just met him in that state!"

Anna is crying now. “He said you had been keeping him from finding his wife. I don't even think there is a wife. I just assumed because he kept saying that he needed to find his darling, his Luz. She had left him during their last vacation together in Mexico. His Precious. Fucking. Luz”.

My mother had a special weeping closet. When I was a small child, this was where I would watch her cry for her lost family members. When my aunt backslid, left the church, my mother wept for days. I watched her face crease with anguish and knew she was in physical pain at the thought of her sweet sister burning alive forever. This was where I was first truly afraid. Everything good in life dangles over a precipice of torture, mutilation, agony. It is real. It is permanent. Aunt Jessa will have the skin ripped off her face and will sob and cry and no one will save her. Heaven may make you forget but, here, on earth, you always know.

Falling asleep was a Russian roulette of nightmares for the first 19 years of my life. In my dreams, my loved ones faces would morph into scaled, melted demonic masks. Their voices would deepen. I would know that there was no way out. I would scream at the demons to flee in the name of Jesus. They never did. I knew this meant that I did not have enough faith. My emotions were not right. Demons know when you are not right. That is when they get you. God knows when you are not right. Invoking his name will not work then. This is why I suffered. It was my own fault.

Waking up was a relief. I could then begin the process of prayer, bible reading, and weeping. This would help atone for my sins of not loving Him enough. What to do once this was done? Something fun? Something I would enjoy? When you are in this situation, ask yourself this: Is there something that you could be doing that would honor God more instead? If the answer to the second question is yes, abandon what you wanted to do and pray some more. Repeat.

God is a god of joy, not fear or sadness. Stop feeling afraid. Stop feeling sad. God always blesses the sincere. If you don't feel his joy, you are not sincere. This is when you know you need to pray more. The demons are probably already feeding on you. God would help you if you did not secretly resent him for your own failures. Forgiveness may be endless but sin is not without consequence. Stop. Feeling. Wrong.

Thoughts are dangerous. What did Aunt Jessa do wrong does the idea of eternal torture make any kind of sense how is this defensible to anyone his ways are greater than ours you can never fully understand God don't be deceived don't let Satan take your faith you will lose your family you will lose your friends you will lose your community you will lose your place in heaven don't lose faith don't lose faith don't lose faith don't lose faith don't lose faith don't lose faith.

Ten years ago today I sat in a college hallway and I cried over my faith for the last time. This time, I sobbed with raw, visceral relief. An invisible house had been lifted off my shoulders. I gasped in the first free air I had ever breathed. It was gone. It was all gone. Nothing in my life had ever come close to this delirious bliss. Nothing has since. Demons vanished. My guilt vanished. I got up off of my belly. Never again.

I lost faith that day. I lost heaven. I lost the assurance of immortality. I think about that sometimes.

On the other hand, Aunt Jessa is going to be just fine.

Nobody ever gave a damn about Lovelin, West Virginia. Not that they should have. Some of the people in town might have been less committed asses if someone had tried. Might have been worth a shot.

My Grandma Nellie always had what she called “a touch of the third eye”. She claimed that somewhere out there was another reality where Lovelin was a better place. A place where shuttered windows were flung open and festooned with hanging flower baskets. A place where children walked openly and yet people were not afraid. She claimed that the fork in the road for Lovelin had all come down to one woman. Barbara Lester. She would never tell me the story though. Until now.

I'm twelve, I'm not a moron. When Grandma tells me to fetch her “Third Eye Juice”, I do so with the full knowledge that this is to actual juice what fast food is to actual food- that is to say better. Its better. Apparently, if Barbara had behaved decently, I would never have known this fact. I remain unconvinced that this belongs in that magical Better Lovelin category but I keep an open mind. I want to hear the story. Please and thank you, and here's your “juice”, Grandma.

I'm a bit too old for sitting on Grandma's lap. I tell her this but she insists that it is here and now or nowhere and never. She fears she may not have enough time left. I sigh but snuggle up between where her chin and the third eye juice will soon be staging their courtship dance. Back and forth, back and forth. Rocker and floor. Bottle and face. Its the Lovelin dance.

Grandma begins. “Barbara used to be a cute little thing. There was a developer came into town who went mad crazy for her.”..... Grandma stops. I look up. She has put the juice down and a single tear is rolling down her face. I don't know which is more alarming. Grandma laughs. I pee myself a little.

“Grandma?” I am almost terrified to ask. “What's the matter?” Grandma smiles down at me. “I've been a bit silly about Barbara. I spent all this time telling you all how one little woman's action could have saved us all. Really, there's nothing would have saved us. We're an awful town full of awful people. That's all. All that butterfly effect crap is just another way of avoiding responsibility.

I feel slightly relieved. Enough to gather courage for one more question. “Grandma?” “Yes dear?” Is there any reality where Germany didn't win? Grandma chuckles and pats the swastika on my sweater. “No dear, that always happens.”