The last time I felt the rain, I was huddled under the abandoned garage in a beach chair, one with two pockets on the side for your beers. You laughed as I ran back and forth into the puddles forming on the cracked concrete of the driveway, not caring that I was barefoot and that your belly was starting to peek through your shirt.

I used to hate that, people who wouldn't go anywhere without shoes. I remember burying my feet in the sand of the islands not too far from here, ones where we would go every summer. The rain felt even more real there. I played games of drip drip drop with the sky and my sisters until you would call me inside to watch the sun drip into the horizon from your view on the recliner. You said it was melting like my favorite popsicle. None of the other kids liked the orange popsicles.

I wasn't like the other ones, and I remember being mad that you treated them the same as me. I guess I should see the viture of that now, but I remember being alone at the age of nine while locked in the coat closet with a bloody lip and bruised knees and thinking: I'm melting away and you don't care.

The other ones laughed at me after that. I sat in my mushroom chair with a book in my lap, squinting at the whipping wind and branches from the storm while you got high off the generator's gas as you kept us alive. I decided to use candles anyway, maybe to spite you? You treated the girl from the mountains the same as you did the boy of the sea. Don't you realize that I looked at you differently than they did?

Now they're all gone, and with them you as well. I ride my bike past the rebuilt house, the ashes of which that served as the colosseum in which I fought the others for you. I threw out the beach chair along with the mosaic of the barefoot man when you left. I figured if one was to die the other had to go with it.

I don't know if I killed the boy that day. I had killed you, and now its hard for me to remember the last time I felt the rain. You shroud the summer days with a mist that can still make me perspirate in fear. A fear that every barefoot memory of you might be wrong, and that you were the one who killed the boy in the first place.

New York was gridlocked, the subway had shut down and everyone had come up from underground into the stagnant July air to hail themselves a taxi. But the traffic wasn’t moving and every cab taken. Luckily, I was already in one and was ’phoning my West Village breakfast appointmet to let them know I wasn’t going to make it in time.

Afterwards the driver spoke to me;

“Is that an English accent? I just love to hear you speak, the way you told them you’d be late even makes this mess sound palatable.”

He gestured at the crowded-in streets and the high rise and din. Steam rising from the pavement and distant sirens the backdrop for this traffic jam. We were in an emblematic scene of New York, he and I like punctuation marks in the epic ongoing story of it.

“Where is your accent from?” I asked.

He has a lot of New York in his voice, but it’s piled on top of something else; vowels clipped short, some of the consonants thudding in on the end of his words in a way I can’t place.

“I was born in Ethiopia, I came here as a kid refugee in the late 80s” he said, glancing at me via the rear view mirror. My head provided me with newsreel images of 1980s Ethiopia; pot-bellied, big eyed, tearless, children, covered in flies, too weary and hungry to swat them away. I looked back into his brown eyes framed in the rectangular reflection.

“Oh God, I’m so sorry.”

It’s was stupid thing to say, as if it came from teenage me, watching the news reports of it.

“It’s okay” he said, “this country has been the making of me. It gave me food, and I went to school. I’ve got this job. I like this job. Moving people around the place, talking to people…”

He smiled a smile that made me feel like part of that pleasure, but also as if he wanted to move the conversation on.

“So you Brits have just voted out of Europe, right?”

We had. Only a month before the sting of it is still very fresh. I wasn’t sure I could talk to him about it yet.

“I’m surprised at you, when I think of the Brits I imagine those early seafarers 500 years ago who set out on tiny boats to see if there was any more world out there. They just sailed off…” He gestured at an imaginary horizon “not knowing if they’d fall off the edge, sink in the sea or find another world. Can you imagine such a thing? There must have known there was no chance they’d ever return, they must have been fuelled by a curiosity and bravery we can only dream of. You’ve all got that in your blood, but then you cut yourselves off from the world again. Why do you think that is?”

I felt the full weight of the disappointment in my country that many of us had been feeling since the referendum settling heavily alongside me on the sticky plastic seats in the back of this taxi. I said something non–committal and evasive like “We’re still trying to work out what the hell happened” and gave him that same smile he’d given me – yes I’d like to move the conversation on, he understood I think, and started afresh;

“I went to England once. When the plane was landing it I looked out of the window and the landscape was so beautiful, like it was hand-sculpted by God”

He made a thumb gesture, like that of an artist working in clay, which so accurately illustrated the scooped out, curving valleys and hills of southern England that I felt quite home sick. Home-sick for that disappointing, infuriating, beautiful, country of mine.

He starts on a new tack, on less political ground.

“I bought these peaches. They’re the exact same ones as I bought yesterday, because yesterday, they were so damn delicious!” He smiled at a four pack on the passenger seat beside him, two already eaten. “I can’t tell you how good they taste, so damn sweet and juicy. I thought, ‘what the hell kind of place could make something that tastes so good?’ So, I look on the packet and they’re from New Zealand. I think ‘I don’t know anything about New Zealand’ so, I looked it up on the internet last night. It’s like a tiny world, all habitats and terrains in one place; snow and ice and plains and mountains, and such lushness. And it’s peaceful. I knew it’d be a great place, it’d have to be, right? To be able to grow a thing that tasted so much of heaven. I’m going to go there. I’ve decided. The natural New Zealanders have the exact same skin tone as my children! I like that….”

A quiet settles on us, I feel such affection for this smiling man. Born into the worst of places and times but springing with positivity, with a world view that scrolls with deft dexterity around the centuries and continents and a curiosity to learn cultures and visit new places. The shadow of our brief touch on politics is still in the car with us, I can feel it and it seems he can too because next he says;

“Of course, we’ve got a big election coming up too next year”

And then he says;

“I’m voting Trump.”

This beautiful, black, Muslim, former refugee. This hard working, job loving, happy, engaging, international human. It hits me like a stone. I can’t make my face into a passive, relaxed, enquiring shape while I ask him why.

“You’re surprised, yeah?”

“I’m surprised, yeah.”

This world. This broken world.

(This is a true story, of a hot, July morning in Manhattan in the summer of 2016.)

You are not a stoic.

Indifference fits you like the medium sized t-shirt on the depressed teen: too snug in some areas and completely loose in the others.

I am the one person you can not fool.

Trust me, I have been indifferent. I went through life as a spector. Neither a morning nor a night person, although I was only awake for the night. It's when the world becomes silent and seems to give you the respect that only a fragment of god deserves.

Don't let the night fool you.

You feel it. So intensely it aches your bones and clouds your vision. Don't you notice when people ask you what color your eyes are? It's because they seem to be...smoky. As if the fire that burns you goes ignored and has has climbed from your heart to your head.

That fire is the enemy.

You must not kill this enemy. You must negotiate with it. Accept its existence, and make it accept yours. A duality exists within you, Reclaimant. A violence who's only wish is to bring peace to the world.

Clear your mind, Pastkiller. For you are not a stoic.

What if you met that person already?

The one with the smile that they warned you about. The girls always used to say it was like a drug. What a simple fucking comparison.

No, I always knew that a smile was more like a fruit.

Do you wonder why the storytellers tell us it was a fruit that Eve ate?

It's because its so sweet, far sweeter than a drug. Except you don't know that its bad for you. It never seems like you're rebelling when you eat the fruit. It just feels right.

Have you ever heard of a canker sore?

It's a small, shallow sore that somehow manages to hurt worse than a knife to the thigh. Some people get canker sores more than others. They are the ones who tend to eat citrus anymore. You can always feel the acid erode your fleshy gums when you bite into that tender orange, but it doesn't matter in the moment; because, in comparison to what the fruit gives you? Well, it's worth it - then the sweet sensation of the fruit leaves your tongue.

So, what if you met that person already?

You know him. Or her. They left your mouth thirsty. Not your throat, but your mouth.

You think about him or her all the time. What they managed to do to you was far worse than a shot in the arm. You're not addicted now, you're thirsty.

For the fruit contains juice, and we will all die much quicker without juice than we do without our pills.

A farmer had two Volkswagen Beetles, both of them white with spreading rust trim and not a running board between them. He’d interchanged their parts so many times in his efforts to keep at least one of them running, now, neither one would start. Their driving days were over. Hoping to find some cheap replacement parts, the farmer clomped out to get the morning paper, but found only a pamphlet someone had left beneath a stone on his porch:

LIFE IS AN ECHO: YOU REAP WHAT YOU SOW

“Must be a good day to plant cars then,” he said. But long after his laughter died, the idea remained, tenacious as a spider in its web. If he could coax corn from a field full of rocks, why not?

That settled it.

The farmer hitched the cars to his tractor, dragged them to a pasture where only stones and witch grass grew, and sprinkled a little manure for luck.

The cars, who had traveled each other’s distances through their shared parts, did not understand why their owner had abandoned them. The wind howled through their broken windows and the long, dried grass hissed through their rusted floorboards. Huddled together, they comforted each other through the long winter with the music of long silences, the memories of engines stalled, the ghosts of radiators past.

When spring came, a hundred gray spiders landed on the old cars’ hoods.

The spiders weren’t car shoppers but refugees, tiny aeronauts borne on the wind. Whisked away after the walls of their little world erupted, the vastness of the new world frightened them. When they landed on the cars, the spiders liked what they saw. Solid ground! Safe at last! Halleluiah!

The cars, thrilled to be useful again, welcomed the spider family. The spiders, having hatched from the same egg sac, were blood relatives, but neither they nor the cars minded. No problem in this world has ever been able to cite “inbred arachnid DNA” as its root cause. At night, the old cars sheltered the spiders from the wind and rain. In the morning, dewdrops caught in the spiders’ webs sparkled like a million tiny circus lights. The spiders, exceptional aerialists, performed gravity-defying feats to the cars’ delight.

#

As I write this, the Children I Forgot to Have are looking over my shoulder.

“This story is stupid,” says my daughter. Today her name is Eleanor. She was Lucinda yesterday, Octavia the day before that, and tomorrow, for all we know, she might rechristen herself Wheezie-Gidget or Burpelina. She says it’s only fair on account of her having never been born.

She’s never forgiven me for that.

“Is not,” says my son, Carl Louie David, who’s named after all the boys I loved who never loved me back. Sensing yet another round of unborn sibling rivalry, I hunker down at my computer and keep writing:

The rain dribbled into the dark crevasse between the cars, an alley littered with the husks of dead insects and dragonfly wings. The spiders scattered husks as busily as the farmer scattered seeds. Corn or dragonflies, all dreamed of bumper crops…

“You can’t grow dragonflies,” Eleanor says, stubbing an accusatory finger against the screen. “That’s a lie.”

“Not if it’s part of the story.” Carl Louie David pulls her pigtails. “You just don’t know how to believe.”

“This room reeks of intention,” she says, pulling away from him. “But it’s not real; neither are you.”

He shrugs. “I’m as real as I want to be.”

Carl Louie David is my favorite. If I tell Eleanor, maybe she’ll think twice before ruining another of her Un-Mother’s dragonfly gardens.

#

The spiders with bodies like fat, dark tears hang in their webs and are lulled to sleep by the summer breeze. They walk in the spider dreamlands and leave no footprints.

When it rains, the spiders crawl inside the cars and warm themselves in the gasoline-scented shadows of neglect.

A family of wasps tried building a nest in one of the car seats once.

Just. Once.

#

“Hey, Mom?” Carl Louie David puts his chin on my shoulder and does that thing with his jaw that sends a jolt down my arm. “Do spiders dream of driving?” He makes racecar sounds: engines revving, tires squealing. Around and around and around the spiders go, left turning into infinity, racing to win a cup from which none of them will ever drink. Helmetless, unbelted, they hit the wall at warp speed. Their gray bodies shatter and scatter, mingling with the track’s dust and discarded debris.

Still muttering, Eleanor rechristens herself Master Lucy and exacts disdain upon a circle of nameless dolls. Nameless, because nothing good ever lasts: Barbie head, meet Smaug body—the distance between Malibu and Middle Earth a short, sharp snap. Inquisitorial ghosts marvel at Master Lucy’s outrageous alchemy, while the disembodied heads of the unfortunate, trapped in her purgatory of injustice, proffer mute, shocked stares.

“Maybe the spiders dream of eating the drivers.” Carl Louie David makes deeply disturbing slurping sounds.

“One of your stupid spiders just barged into my laboratory—and now it’s all over my shoe!”

“So call the janitor.”

“That’s you,” says Master Lucy, her voice a bony finger jabbing between my ribs.

I throw a box of tissues at her head. Bye-bye, baby teeth!

In the field, a crow flies through the web town, the strands strung with carnival dew. The spiders mend their shattered skeins without complaint.

“Howcum you nehwer writta grocewy wist?” Not-so-Masterful Lucy says through the wad of bloody Kleenex. “Weer outta shlokat miilk.”

I wait for Carl Louie David to chime in, but he’s upstairs. I can hear him rummaging around the room I can’t use for sleep. Too many boxes haunt it. I hope he’ll find something worth keeping.

“Only real children drink chocolate milk.”

Eleanor storms off. “You’re the worst mother I never had!”

#

One day, a woman found the web town in the field where only stones and witch grass grew. She took a jar out of her backpack, trapped one of the spiders, and screwed the lid down tight. “My students will love you,” she said.

The spider tried to free itself, but the sides of that jar were as slippery as ice.

The woman, who taught earth science, took the spider to school and set it on a window ledge. Next to its jar was one that housed a single bumblebee. “This spider is going to feature prominently in our experiment next week,” she told her class.

For days, the spider stared through the jar and the window. This was not its home; the children who pressed their dirty faces against the glass were not its family. The spider refused to eat, refused to weave a web.

“This spider’s broken,” one student said.

The teacher put the bumblebee in the spider’s jar.

Until then, spider and bee, mortal enemies, had lived in adjacent jars on the same shelf. Through the curved walls of their identical prisons, the spider that would not spin and bee that would not buzz reached out to one another with their minds, until a single idea sparked on the invisible tether of their shared loneliness.

Survivor: Earth Science ended in murder-suicide.

#

“Sweetheart, what’s for dinner?” asks the Husband I Forgot to Marry, a man who doesn’t look like my father, my ex-boyfriends, or any man I’ve ever met: he looks like what having a husband feels like.

“You promised to take the kids out for pizza.”

He sighs, stale cigarettes and whiskey. “But I wanted to watch the game tonight.”

“I’m sure you’ll find the time,” I say, noting a smudge of something red on his collar. “For children, pizza… everything.”

After he’s gone, I miss the kiss he didn’t give me.

#

In the field, the spiders have mended their webs again. They swing in the wind, singing their spider songs.

A man and a woman are walking through the field. Summer’s gone; the grass is long and dry. As the woman walks, its withered blades scratch a love poem across her bare thighs. “Look at all those spiders. We should take a picture.” She pulls out her cell phone.

She’s always calling them “We” and it makes him uncomfortable.

She loves photography and tells herself that one day, she’ll just take pictures for a living. Once she’s famous, she’ll dump this loser whose car smells like stale pizza and date a rock star.

“Kneel down and shoot up the gap between them,” he says.

“Cool! They’re in silhouette.” She hands him her cell phone.

The spiders hang in the wind, saying nothing. The man and woman are too big for them to eat. They’ve never had their pictures taken before. They don’t know how to be celebrities.

“I bet I could sell it to a magazine,” she says.

“I just posted it on Facebook.” He waggles the phone at her. “I bet we’ll get a thousand hits!”

“We? What’s this We shit?” She glares at him. “That was my picture!”

Thunder rumbles, echoing in the space between them. Rain falls. The spiders scurry inside the cars. The man and woman run.

Everyone runs for cover but the man on the porch and the young women in the bright red VW. They’ve come to the farmhouse bearing good news: the world should be ending any minute now! No time to dawdle, get drunk, or screw, the Creator’s about to manifest his Great Plan! A handful of lucky winners will grab immortality’s brass ring, while all those other sorry buggers will crash and burn. The harvest is at hand: it’s a great day for schadenfreude!

The farmer reaches behind his rocking chair, recalling the words on their last pamphlet:

LIFE IS AN ECHO…

Truly. The prophet Remington agrees. Namaste, bitches, ramma-lamma-ding-dong—KA-BLAM!—Papa’s reaped a brand new Bug!

Blood and rain collect in shallow pools on the lawn.

The farmer fires up his tractor.

Beneath the eaves, another egg sac bursts.

The wind moans…

When I was born, they didn’t have a name for my condition.

“He’s normal,” the doctor said.

Back then no one was upset by his choice of words, even though it implied that quite a few people — including my parents — were not normal. The hospital interpreter looked at my parents and translated “normal” into sign language. Her right hand drew two small circles in front of the heart, clockwise, with two extended fingers, then moved down toward the stomach and touched her left fist. My father smiled. Normal was good.

*

There was nothing normal about my childhood. Unlike the other kids, who had been mumbling words to their parents since their first year of life, I only discovered spoken language at school. I heard it before, of course, on the street and on TV, but never truly needed to use it. My parents were my life, and life was quiet. Even when friends visited our house, nearly all of them were deaf, just like mum and dad. Before I was old enough to go to school, I could spend days without hearing the sound of a human voice.

My parents had warned me that school would be different, but nothing could have prepared me for their voices.

“Are you deaf? Huh? Deaf? Can you hear what I’m saying?”

They took turns shouting at my face, one louder than the other, trying to test the limits of my silence. All I ever did in response was shake my head. A universal sign for no. The only sign they could understand.

When I mentioned my struggles to dad, he told me I should speak up. I was normal, just like them. Why didn’t I shout back? I shrugged and signed back to him: "I prefer silence."

I was eleven years old when I found out they had finally come up with a term to describe people like me. I was a Coda: an acronym for child of deaf adults. I learned it first from a school psychiatrist, who insisted on seeing me after a teacher voiced her concerns. The psychiatrist tried to keep her notes out of my sight, but I noticed the words "social anxiety".

"Why don't you speak to your classmates, Tom?"

Looking down, I mumbled an answer I had rehearsed the night before. I had grown up use to silence. My native language was sign language, not English. Speech was foreign to me. I even disliked the sound of my voice, just like a native English speaker might hate his own accent when speaking French.

The psychiatrist stared at me as I answered, her pen suspended a few inches over her notebook. At the time, the first thing they used to do after a teacher complaint was diagnose you for something. A lot of my classmates were on Zoloft, Klonopin, Ritalin. They would show the tablets to anyone—even to me. It had become some sort of club.

My case was trickier. There was no pill to make my parents normal, and even if there was one I wouldn’t get anywhere near it. I hated normal. It was noisy, aggressive, uncomfortable. The best part of my day was hopping off the school bus, walking back into my house and quietly talk to my parents about anything else. Sometimes their deaf friends and their kids would come over, too. They knew better than to ask me about school. There was no place for it in my temple of loving silence.

“You need to find your voice,” said the psychiatrist. I mumbled something about sign language being my true voice, but she was having none of it.

“A speaking voice. Your parents are not the only people in the world. How are you going to speak to everyone else?”

I said nothing in reply, but a sentence in sign language crossed my mind. I had to clench my fists to stop myself from signing it.

“Why would I want to do that?”

*

The silent question echoed in my mind until my father’s funeral. His death was sudden for us, but his illness had been growing silently for a long time before it was discovered. Middle-aged men are usually not big fans of going to the doctor. Combine that with the difficulties in communication, the need to find an interpreter, and it's not a surprise that he took years to get his cough check and tell someone about his throat pain.

I was 14 when he died. I remember many moments from his funeral, but what struck me the most was how noisy it all was. The church was crowded. We used to go there every Sunday, but entered and left quietly. The language barrier stopped us from making contact. Very few of those people had ever said a word to us. Save for a couple of other deaf families, none of them were our friends. Yet everyone had come to my father’s funeral, along with the very few friends we had.

I saw pity in their eyes. Not the usual pity one has for a child who has just lost a father. No, there was something else. They pitied us — my father, my mother, even me. They probably thought I was deaf, too, and spoke carelessly in front of me. I could hear their comments from the front seats.

“Poor man. Such a difficult life.”

“It must be hard for the kid. First you have a deaf father, and now not even that.”

Their words made me wish I was deaf.

In sign language, it’s hard to be offended by a stranger. Whenever someone starts saying something hurtful, you can just close your eyes or look away. Communication requires full attention and consent on both sides. A hearing person had no such luck. I tried to explain it to my mother several times, back when the mean comments at school were just starting, but the concept was foreign for her. How could I feel offended by something I didn’t want to hear? Why did I choose to hear it?

Even though she couldn’t understand it, she knew me well enough to notice when it was happening. Right there, as we stood in front of our father’s coffin waiting for the minister to give him a final blessing, she let go of my hand for a second and made a sign to me.

“Ignore it.”

In any other day, I would have followed her advice. I wouldn’t have walked to the pulpit. I wouldn’t have grabbed the microphone. I might have looked at the audience, but I would never have said the words I said to them. I would have thought them, yes, but never said them.

“My father was a greater man than anyone sitting here today. We were lucky to have him in our lives. If you feel any pity for us, I pity you.”

At last, they were all quiet. I looked at their faces as many of them stared me in disgust, shrugged and walked back to my mother's side. If I had to hear them, they had to hear me.

I’ve attempted to re-create it, if that’s the correct word. I’m not sure about the terminology. I mean, I’m trying to basically de-construct the destruction or maybe reverse-engineer it. I don’t know. I mean can an event, a past event, be reverse-engineered or de-constructed? I’m going to attempt it. I have to.

Okay, it’s just that I have the memory intact. Analyzable data, I think, right? And the conditions, I’ve re-created the conditions exactly, well not exactly, I mean she’s not here anymore, okay, I’ve accepted that, but that’s what I’m trying to correct, her absence. I have the porcelain cup, or an exact copy of it, slight alteration, some chalk dust coating the surface, to track the shards when it breaks. And the corner wall, the same as before, only painted black now instead of beige, again so I can track the shatter patterns and Hanako, I mean not the real Hanako, a simulated Hanako, for testing purposes, not a My Doll, a simulation, right.. All necessary, so necessary to change it, I just need enough evidence, that’s all. She’ll see, I think she’ll see.

Okay, slow down now, remember, re-create everything in my mind right up to the exit point. Me over there in the yellow leather lounge chair facing the television, watching Naruto. My glasses, a little too round, maybe, they make my nose look pointy, but their expensive, bookworm chic. My hair gelled back to hide the thinning, still stylish, dark brown with blond streaks. My hairstylist does well for himself. I’m lounging, so my tall lanky body is adorned in casuals, a long sleeved checkered cotton shirt, chambray and white, faded Edwin jeans, and Patagonia socks, grunge without the heroin or the smell and with a better haircut. Okay, that part is in place. Oh yes, the cup, the green porcelain cup resting lightly in my hand. Set.

Okay, now for her, she’s gone now, but I’ve accepted, focus Anthony. Okay, Hanako standing in the atrium to the left of the corner wall now painted black to track the shards. She’s Goth tonight, ready to go out. Black, over dyed black straight hair, long past her shoulders, white face, big brown eyes, round for a Japanese, black V-neck sweater, black lace bra, black leather riding jacket, Mine, too big for her, black leather mini-skirt, fishnet leggings, white, thigh high leather boots. Hanako’s slouching slightly, chewing purple bubble gum, annoyed and bored. “She’s just a beautiful emotional doll, a wind chime, so fragile.” Okay, set.

Okay, conversation, remembering. First our tone, yes tone of voice is critical here, the words and the tone of voice are the, were the, (I’ve accepted this), catalyst. Okay, so, the conversation, remember it.

Me: I’m watching this.

Hanako: I wanna go out to Oddbar’s, or The Chicken Nest, anywhere.

Me: You knew I wanted to watch Naruto tonight. I told you I was going to watch it.

Hanako: We never go dancing anytime. It been two months ago since last time.

Me: Anymore. It’s been two months since the last time, and you’re wrong. We went to Shiro’s Shooters Club on the fourteenth, twenty days ago.

Oh shit, the lighting. Okay, pause the conversation. Check everything carefully. Something’s not right, look closely. The kitchen, it’s too bright. Dim the lights, okay yes, Tokyo Tower through the window in the background, Yamada English School’s neon sign burning across the street, perfect. Now back to the conversation. Let it unwind again and go.

Hanako: I have sex with Jake last week.

Me: What did you just say?

Hanako: We do it twice. I’m sorry Anthony.

Okay, not okay, okay, memories intact, set, focus do the re-creation, you need the shards, need to track, this is the evidence, okay. Sit in the lounge chair, face the television, hold the cup lightly in your hand, review the conversation one more time. Okay, slight memory slip, Hanako in her schoolgirl’s uniform, me receiving a spanking, focus Anthony.

Hanako: We do it twice. I’m sorry Anthony.

And raise your eyes from the television, tighten your body, slow your breathing, look towards the atrium where she is, (was), the Hanako My Doll is, raise the cup to an eighty-seven-degree angle, snap your arm forward, and let the cup go. Okay, it shattered against the wall, get out of your chair, go to the wall, note the chalk marks from the shards and measure. Damn, marks on Hanako, I mean the My Doll. It still looks intentional, just an accident. Damn.

Back to the memory for a comparison, original cup thrown above and to the right of her head, it shatters, Hanako ducks (possibly reflectively), she stands back up, looks towards me, there’s a small cut on her cheek, some blood, fear in her eyes, she turns, opens the door and leaves the apartment.

Stop memory. Back to the analysis, let’s see, facts so far, errant shard of porcelain cuts her cheek, okay, I mean it was an anomaly if I can re-create it, show her, I mean prove to her, right, an accidental shard, I didn’t mean to hurt her. She just needs to see it.

Nathan was thinking of chicken wings when he found the note in his backpack. “Whatever happens, don’t die. See you on Monday.” No signature. What the flying fuck. Was that more of the chief’s motivational bullshit? Did Zack choose today of all days to pull another of his stupid pranks? Could it be from Kyle or one of the other boys? Nah. That would be fucking weird.

See you on Monday. Yeah. right. Like he’d be seeing any of those fat asses on Monday. Their first day back home after nineteen weeks stuck in that North African shithole. Fezzan, Libya. Not on the top of anyone's list of tourist destinations. The Special Forces command would make shitty travel agents, that’s for sure.

Anyway, their holiday in the desert was almost over. Nathan already had his Monday morning all planned out. A big bowl of hot chicken wings, a case of ice-cold beer, a blowjob from his girlfriend. Fuck, he wouldn’t mind having all that for the entire week, breakfast, lunch and dinner. He had no plan to see the other eleven guys anytime soon once they were stateside again. No offence, but hey. Priorities.

Priority one was not to get shot, sure, but the note made that sound easy. Seriously? “Whatever happens, don’t die”? Get out of here. The officers were trying to play it down, but the entire team knew they could end the last operation with a couple of extra holes in their bodies. They called it a suicide strike against suicide terrorism.

You hardly saw one of those anymore. Sneaking up on an ISIS big shot like that, as if you were playing a game on your Xbox. Those were the ones you would vaporise with a drone strike nowadays. Boom, gone. Thanks, Obama. Why they wanted that particular motherfucker to be caught alive, well, that was way above Nathan’s pay grade. He only had two orders. Follow the plan for as long as it works, avoid killing the wrong bad guy if he had to improvise. And, of course, try not to be the unlucky bastard who ruins homecoming for everybody by getting shot on the last day at the office. Whatever you do, don’t die. Chicken wings. See you on Monday.

The rest of the country was asleep, but the TV lights stayed on all night at the houses of those twelve families. Live from Tripoli, CNN had breaking news about a military operation in Fezzan which led to the successful capture of the Isis leader codenamed Jihadi Tom, number three in the CIA’s most wanted list, as well as five of his closest associates. It was an outstanding victory in the war on ISIS, which the entire country would celebrate when morning came.

In those twelve houses, the capture of Jihadi Tom was an afterthought. What kept those families awake until dawn, dialling furiously on their phones and with their eyes bloodshot from staring non-stop at the television, was the short sentence news anchors repeated every time they mentioned the operation. “One special forces soldier was reported dead.”

On the day of the funeral, Kyle’s girlfriend was catatonic. Nathan had seen other military widows before, but nothing came close to that. Everything else was the usual. Family members would cry, friends from the army and school would exchange stoic looks, maybe have a short conversation and share a memory of Kyle. But the girl just stood against the wall, not a tear in her eyes, not a word spoken to anyone, not a sign of emotion on her face, staring at the casket for five hours until they removed it. Fucking creepy.

“He was going to propose to her,” said Kyle’s mother when Nathan went to pay his respects. She took Nathan aside and showed him what they had found with Kyle’s belongings. A thick engagement ring with a discreet diamond on it, stuffed inside his gloves along with a small piece of paper. The handwriting was the same Nathan had seen in the anonymous note left in his backpack. “I want to fight by your side for the rest of my life. Will you marry me? K.”

Nathan’s girlfriend fell asleep on the couch while he watched TV in the dark, drinking can after can of warm beer. His chicken wings were getting cold.

Fucking Kyle. A note and an engagement ring? Is that the kind of shit you leave in your backpack on the day of a suicide operation? Seriously? What the flying fuck.

They had an agreement when they went on those long missions — Kyle, Nathan, a couple of the other boys. It was no big deal. They would get together to let off some steam, forget about fucking ISIS for a night or two, try not to lose their shit like those veterans who go nuts after months touching nothing but military gear and their own junk.

The other side had their jihadi brides, their harems with two dozen virgins or whatever the fuck they had been promised. He and the boys only had each other. In the States, they would go back to their girls. What happened in Fezzan stayed in Fezzan.

Sure, Kyle would say some girly shit when they were together sometimes. Nathan played along and enjoyed it, but he would always tell himself it was a little game between the two, just to kill time. Maybe the desert had been messing with their heads lately. But an engagement ring? Holy shit.

Before falling asleep in front of the TV, Nathan thought about Kyle’s girlfriend again. Did she know the truth? If she did and was playing along to save his face at the funeral, well, that would explain the creepy fucking look on her face. That must be some tough shit to swallow. Nah. It couldn’t be that. The poor girl sent a boyfriend to war and lost a husband. That alone would be enough to leave her the way she was.

On that night, Nathan dreamt that he was at Kyle’s funeral again. Instead of military uniforms, they were both wearing suits and ties.

He stumbled. He knew the way, or at least he was reasonably sure he did, but he had a hard time staying on track.

He fell. He decided to just stay there for a minute, and catch his breath. When he got up, a moan escaped his lips; he didn’t hurt, exactly, but was frustrated. He looked up at the afternoon sun, and didn’t remember it getting so late. Where did the time go?

He just shrugged and walked it off. Home. That was his thought process; I have to get home.

He’d been drunk before, of course. There were times where he couldn’t remember events from a night of revelry, but never had a substantial blackout before. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember what had happened between doing shots at the bar and stumbling around now, at least sixteen hours later. Was he asleep? Where were his friends?

Why did he have only one shoe?

He thought about asking the woman sitting in the park bench. Asking her what? He forgot.

He was so confused, but he felt that he couldn’t possibly still be drunk.

“My god,” he thought, “am I sick?”

The lady on the park bench was pretty. He moved in her direction. She looked past him.

He loomed over her, and she continued to ignore him.

“Hey,” he tried to say, but his words came out a gasp. Tongue tied, he stood there, trying to ask a simple question without appearing to be a fool or simpleton. He just needed to use her phone, if she had one. He grew nervous and agitated; it was like he was stuck in a dream, and he couldn’t get the words out.

All she did was dismissively grunt in his general direction.

He knew when to take a hint, so he kept walking towards home.

He wasn’t tired, but terribly annoyed and hungry. There was a shadowy spot underneath an old oak; he liked how the moss hung to give shade. He sat down, leaning against the trunk. He looked back towards the hotel, but couldn’t see it. Where were his friends? What had happened to the bachelor party? He didn’t remember walking so far, but things had been a mess since waking up.

His eyes wandered the streets around him, and he thought it odd how there was absolutely no vehicle traffic. Cars had stopped in some places, and the roads were completely clear in others. Vaguely, he registered the sounds of alarms and horns blaring in the distance. He saw a lot of folks walking, not seemingly in a hurry, and completely unconcerned about the heat of the day.

He drifted off, tired of thinking, tired of trying to remember and piece it all together.

Awareness floated back to him on the beams of a half moon. He was walking again. Just as confused as earlier, at least he was no longer hungry. He found it odd that he was now barefoot, but he didn’t dwell on it.

He had to get home.

He smiled a little as he remembered being this drunk once before. He was being led back to the hotel from a night on River Street by his less-inebriated friends. He became obsessed with the fact that his wife was missing. “Where did she go? IS SHE OKAY?” he yelled, and he lit out to find her at a full-trot. A keystone cops moment followed, wherein he ran circles around the old weathered brick building that housed a nightclub, chased by four of his closest and dearest. When he finally stopped running (he found her safe and sound hugging a lamp post) the almost-sober of the group ushered the concerned parties to the suite before police could be involved.

Lost in thought, he tripped over something on the shoulder of the interstate.

Wait. The interstate?

Headlights in the distance illuminated his path. He looked down at what nearly made him fall. He couldn’t tell for sure what it was, but it was slippery and smelled delicious.

“A food truck crashed?” he thought.

He shambled on towards the headlights, intending to wave them down for a ride. He reached out to them, waving his hands.

The car swerved towards him, and didn’t slow down.

Confusion turned to anger when a side-mirror grazed his arm. He spun around, and landed in the ditch. The car kept going, red taillights in the distance weaving around other vehicles in the dark.

Anger added itself to the perpetual confusion and frustration. He tried to get up, but found his left arm uncooperative. He roared in fury, and slowly got back to his feet.

He looked down, and in the starlight, his arm hung limply. It was twisted and obviously broken.

“Wow. I must really be blitzed,” he hazily thought.

There was no pain.

He walked on.

Slowly, the miles melted away as surely as his thoughts. Blackouts became more common. Words became disjointed images in his mind, and soon the only two things that he knew were hunger and the need to go home.

Time became a blur, discomfort became a constant companion, and anger colored everything with a hazy white film. Days became nights, and strangers shambled beside him. He didn’t speak. After it became obvious that they would ignore him, he began to return the favor.

He finally recognized the exit ramp for home.

He left the pack of weary travelers that had both welcomed and spurned him, and he refused to rest until he could do so in his own bed.

His wife and children would be worried sick, and the Missus would probably be angry that he hadn’t called. She never really wanted him to go off to Savannah with the boys for the bachelor party, anyway.

These thoughts seeped in and leaked out just as quickly, and it was hard to concentrate. He vaguely remembered being upset that she hadn’t come looking for him, but these complex ideas, too, just became images.

Home. Hunger. Eat when I get there. Rest when I get home. One foot in front of the other, fall down. Get up. Keep going. Home.

Hunger.

Her.

Love?

Longing for her.

Longing for home.

Blackout.

He couldn’t get inside. The front door wouldn’t open. He knocked with his good arm. He beat at the door with both arms in a slow-motion frenzy as frustration mounted and became anger.

Ever present, under his roiling emotions, that hunger kept gnawing at him.

“I’m home, let me in,” he thought he said, but the reality was that only a growl escaped his dried, cracked lips.

He heard crying from inside. Something was wrong! The need to feed flared white-hot, and his fury peaked. He knocked louder, and he yelled for her to let him inside. His arms flailed against the door, and his growls became a constant moan.

Finally, the door opened, and there she was.

He saw a flash of light, but he never realized it was the flash of a muzzle. The sound of thunder that echoed into the pines and elms surrounding their secluded country house never reached his ears; he finally stopped walking, moaning, and longing.

“There will be others. Close the door and let’s get the barricade back in place before they get here.”

“We need to bury him, mama! He’s been missing since this thing started, but now he’s home, and we need to take care of Dad!”

“That’s not your daddy any more, baby. He died weeks ago.”

Under the cover of darkness, as quietly as they could, they laid him to rest next to other family members. Each of them in that shallow makeshift cemetery had been driven by longing and hunger; each of them had been looking for a missing piece of themselves that could only be found back home.

When I first stood over the

grave of youth, uncertain

a crow perched himself

upon the crooked cross

motioned his beak as

if to give last rites and

sacrament

“Do you know, fool boy,

what to say to the ferryman?”

I crossed my chest, considered

his question, shook my head 

“Not coin, nor offering.

Not blood, nor bravery.

“It is but a word, yet still

a weapon, a danger.

“Utter this, fool boy,

and you will know.

“The garden. The valley.

The soil of creation.

“The man at the gate

fancies himself a saint.

“He will ask a question

scripted in iron, in stone.

“Do not let your eyes

waiver and say ‘No’.”

I thanked him and

went on my way

telling him that

I would rather burn

in the truth

than sing with the 

lies