Quiet

There's nothing around me now. Just the quiet and the cold.

I pause for a second here in the trees, wind swirling around me. I realize that in this instant I am truly alive. This place and this time are all that exists for me.

The only sound now that wind has died down is that of the blood hitting the ground beside me. I feel the slick trail of the warm fluid down my arm and the accompanying warmth along my chest.

I stand, surprised now. People really do change over time. That fact alone was worth all the pain leading up to this point. That's the only way I seem to learn anything - gut wrenching pain. Just seeing something is never enough. It's too easy to make the excuse for that other person, to easy to believe that I wouldn't do anything so stupid as that, but of course I did, and more.

I got off easy though. A simple stabbing was enough to wake me up. Too easy to stay there and take another blow than to realize that what happened before was more a dream than reality. So simple to lay down and give up. I couldn't do that though. The easy way was never my way, even when I consciously wished for nothing more than death, I still stagger forward.

I had to run from the motel room. That little bit more imprint of violence on the shady room was more than I could stand. At once, I saw all the little things that made up the substance there. The small beatings and random heated hatreds all stacked up and this minor thing was simply too much.

Small town police are only good at finding the obvious. Sure, they could call in the state people but, honestly who would call in someone to take the credit for something anyone could figure out.

You find the stabbed women and the wounded man in the dingy motel room and you can only come to one conclusion - he stabbed her and she, in some sort of heroic last stand, managed to wound him. Nothing else matters.

I never should have let Sandy into the room. She was unbalanced by the amount of prescription goodness she was getting, but I let her in again anyway.

After saying she was sorry for all she had put me through I sensed more than felt the knife sweep up into my chest. A cold pain followed by an immediate warmth as the blood spurts out.

I was aware in an instant of how it would look to the young officer I had seen patrolling the area. He looked as if he hadn't seen more than a dead animal on the side of the road. I could see, instantly, how his eyes would look when he came into this room. The shock and eventual easy understanding of what had gone on would dawn on him in a moment.

So, I ran. No driving away now, I had to feel the cold on my face. Not knowing where I was or where I was going was par for the course. I simply had to move, to feel something. I had to make some form of offering to Sandy after seeing her plunge the knife into her chest. The light going out in her eyes demanded something from me in a way I didn't understand.

Nothing mattered now. I could feel the cold grabbing at me as the blood flowed away from me. Here in the woods I knew the blood would find a home somewhere, helping something grow unlike when it was within me.

I hear a dog bark somewhere close by and know it's time to move again. I take a deep breath in preparation of the pain, but there is none as I push myself up. That is only a distant worry to me as the fresh face of a young Sandy forces it's way to my mind with it's own sweet pain. That girl I remembered wouldn't have hurt anyone. I preferred her to the replacement Sandy with the knife. She had killed so much more than herself. Every dream I had ever allowed myself to have died with her. The dumb animal lumbered forward now, perfect in it's unknowing.

Life seemed such a waste to me. Marriage was so overblown in everyone's estimation. It ended, and often not well.

Only questions remain now, ones I'm sure that won't get answered.

That is the one comfort left to me.

A Phone

He stared at the cell phone for a moment. It had been a central part of his life for so long. The phone was like a living thing, it spoke to him and showed pictures from time to time. It had, by itself, become an almost indispensable part of his old life. Everything he was could be found, totaled, examined through a single piece of technology.

That was the key there - old life. All the pictures and sounds could do nothing to bring that other existence back again. Just seeing it in his bag made all the hurt and worry return to him. He was afraid that the old life would somehow catch him again. He worried that in all the fear he lost the ability to just let go of it all.

Now it was speaking in a different voice.

"I'm not happy about you laughing at me," Sandy said in a listless, petulant voice.  Again, the first words of the conversation were not about what was really important, just some mindless chatter.

"After three days, what did you expect?"

"Don't change the subject, why is this all my fault anyway?"

"It's always someone else isn't it? Your ex-husband did this or an ex-boyfriend did that. It was all you wasn't it?"

"Is this some sort of defense mechanism of yours? You laugh and leave to make me feel bad? Well, I don't. It's your loss"

I wasn't exactly worried at this point. We weren't together anymore (if we had ever been) and now I saw how pathetic she was. How she would never be able to realize what she had done or even care, did she know. It was always going to be someone else's fault.

"I would ask you where you were for those three days, but I know you'd just lie about it or just continue to try and blame me. Why don't you settle in that town? All the people have dead eyes like you do now. You belong there and as long as the pharmacy stays open you should be numb enough to survive.

"Can you hear me laughing at you now? Can you imagine how ashamed I am that I actually cared about you when you care nothing for me?"

"All these questions, and you think I am the problem? You should take a long look in the mirror"

"I have Sandy, and not only have I looked hard at myself, but at my life and our time together. We were never really together, you were always evasive and manipulative, even when we hiked together so long ago I saw you and knew inside that you weren't thinking of me. You dropped that stone I found after holding it by the edges for a second. Now, here we were with a chance to start over and we just took up where we left off, except this time I'm the stone to be tossed aside."

Sandy sensed the goodbye coming and decided to backtrack a little bit, "Listen, we still have time and no one is going anywhere today. Why don't we just set everything aside for now and just talk?"

"Sorry, I just can't imagine spending anymore time with you. Talking to you is like talking to an escaped mental patient - you just never know where the conversation will lead, but you are certain that in the end, you'll be worse off for it.

"Try to wean yourself off the drugs - they don't help you. They're just an invisible crutch that other people run into."

The line went dead then and everything started over. The people here had dead eyes as well. They too seemed shackled to a life that none really understood. He knew that they would accept her, her life, such as it was, would be a novelty for a time.