Greenville

Introduction

In the early years of your life, nothing much really phases you as much as it should or in such a way that it will stick to your mind for the remainder of your life like the ending to The Breakfast Club. A lot of the time you think it will, but it most likely just fades away. Sometimes you think, ‘Will this matter?’ while most of the time it doesn’t, and it just ends up being a small moment that will be put into the large collection of novels and records that rest in the La-Z-Boy you keep in the far back of your cranium. It’s just how you are as a kid, you’re impervious to collecting life changing moments right then and there.

But then something happens.

In the early months of winter 2010, Gary Kite attempted to take his own life by hanging himself on the floor being remodeled at the top of the Sears Tower. It had been a colder day, and the urge was lingering worse. He thought of it as one of his early morning naps at work and just drifted off. Early morning traffic continued to run normally, as did the business downstairs, until one of the janitors for the top four floors had mistakenly left his walkman near the main atrium, and caught Gary in the act. Gary had been hanging for about fifty seconds and went limp. The janitor cut the rope with his swiss army knife and attempted to give him CPR. He succeeded and rushed away to anybody with a phone. Gary was dead for fifteen seconds.

Within half an hour, he was in the Northwestern Hospital ICU, and stayed for a week before he woke up from the event. His wife, Cynthia, stayed in his same room almost every single day until his old red eyes started fluttering open after apparently the smell of roses wafted in above him, giving him hope once again. She didn’t believe him in the slightest, but it wasn’t important. He was alive, that was what was important. The doctors in charge of his case said that he only had a five percent chance of survival, as the lack of oxygen to his head had done severe damage to his nervous system.

Multiple things were considered, including pulling the plug, but his wife denied everything the doctors said and chose to wait with him until he woke.

There relationship had already been on the lighthouse lacking rocks, as just two summers previously Gary had been caught cheating on her with his secretary Jill, but they choose to stay together as they believed things could be worked out. Cynthia started becoming more distant from him overtime, spending more time at saloons and even sneaking out at night to go to bars and try to meet young men to fuck like a racehorse, as she put it. This went on for months until she was hospitalized for a night, while Gary was out of town, for overdosing on Acetaminophen, during a rough night at the bar. She had made sure Gary didn’t find out, but instead hid everything from him. It took less than a year for him to be there too.

Cynthia sat in the Thanksgiving-themed living room, doing one of their old Norman Rockwell puzzles, when she got a call from the hospital, notifying the emergency contact of a man in the ICU on life support. At first, she didn’t believe them until they said his name to her for the fifth time. She stood in silence for a few minutes trying to process everything she had just heard, thinking it had to be a dream. Why in God’s name would he do this? There was no fucking way, she thought to herself as her wrinkled mouth continued to hang open like a nutcracker. It took almost five minutes before her head spun back into position and made her listen. The man she had been contemplating love over, was in a coma and was most likely going to die that night. She wasn’t going to let that shit happen.

For awhile she just sat there thinking.

Thinking about them together. He had always told her that he loved her, every single morning. After every single dinner. All those times after his small little birthday bash, because he didn’t like anything big, and she’d buy him a big cheesecake from Walmart, then she would cuddle up with him while they watched Terms of Endearment or a James Bond film. This wasn’t him. She closed her mouth, and wiped away the tears, staring down at the puzzle. She grabbed her purse, cutting through reality with the determination to keep her husband alive for as long as she could. The house they lived in rested in silence, still looking like it did when they bought it in 1981. No one touched it for another week.

The car ride there was the one memory she could specifically remember overall from the ordeal, besides seeing him wrapped in coil and plastic on a bed made of cheap fabric and little flower designs. The Opel Manta she was in roared down the highway, zooming past the few cars she could see, not even caring who was where or about the consequences that could follow. A few kids on dirt bikes rode into her view, pissing her off even more to a degree. The palm of her old hand laid on the horn for a solid fifteen seconds before they eventually gave her the bird and drove off and out of the way. Stress was getting to her and she knew that in her mind, her mother Ruth was to blame for the travesty beholding her family. For being as old as she was, the way her mind worked was in top-notch shape. Ruth, the woman who ruined most things.

When Cynthia and Gary had gotten married in the early nineties, Ruth saw no special qualities at all with him. His hair was usually slicked back a degree, he always wore a three-piece suit to important meetings, and his hobbies included model airplane building and painting.

What’s wrong with that? Only mothers know apparently.

Cynthia was happy with someone, that’s what she should have cared about, not what kind of gel he uses or what he likes to do. But that small little tick of how he was just the right amount of normal to mess up her bun in the oven plans, just brewed deep in her stomach until she just couldn’t take it from her daughter anymore.

Grandkids were Ruth’s main priority, thus why she scared of all those little assholes during high school, to make sure she didn’t have anybody too dumb to share her eggs with. Then there was Gary who came along, someone she had met at a Peet’s down in Greenville while on business, and she had no control over that. This was all her doing, and it hurt like a knife to a bullet hole. It stung. The one question she had always asked was, what do you see in him? Cynthia would clench her fists every time she was asked that like she actually expected a reply from her with an answer. It wasn’t until the Christmas of 1988, that she first asked Cynthia about all of this. At the time, she was only 38. They were in the kitchen, Ruth was making potatoes while she was making the yams. The turkey was cooking in the oven, while the families were convulsing in the living room. Ruth found it to be the perfect time to have a smoke break. Marlboros became her best friend since high school, and she always made sure to have a pack on her at all times but to keep it in moderation.

Ruth had been in and out of Cynthia’s life since they became a couple two decades prior. Most visits only involved her trying to be a moral compass, and being asked to leave early, seething in silence as the sun set. It was a miracle she even came to Christmas.

Cynthia found her mother sitting on the cement slab coming out from the back porch door of their winter home, trembling with a cigarette between two of her fingers. It hadn’t been lit yet, so she lit it for her with a stove lighter. Ruth looked back at her and almost formed a smile to see that the daughter she had once loved was still caring for her. Cynthia sat down and began to take big breaths of air. The cold winter air and snow made her start coughing. It tasted like paint thinner. A small leather jacket belonging to Gary was over Ruth’s shoulders, to keep her from wrinkling anymore than she already was. Cynthia always found a good laugh in those kinds of jokes, yet her mother hated when anyone else said them. The snow began to fall slowly on top of them.

“What do you see in him?” She asked, taking a hit. The smoke looked like her breath.

A response seemed pointless. Her mother would scold her either way, so Cynthia sat silent for a minute, simply saying, “Not father.”

“Apparently fucking so.”

For a while, she thought about what she was going to say to her mother, and for some reason, she thought this would be the perfect time to try them out. She eventually said, eyes shut and taste lingering, “We’re not going to have kids mother.” The fear was making her tremble, adding to the cold, as she awaited a dreaded response. Her mother said nothing. Just sat still, as the fire slowly ate at the tobacco stick in her hand. That night ended with no more words from Ruth, and Cynthia hadn’t seen her since. Every night when she went to sleep, she wanted to know just what was going on in her head. It kept her up at night and actually pained her old heart to think about. And then she started taking pills. And then she took more pills.

NO.

A quick ringed boney slap across the face stopped her. No more, she thought, No more stupid fucking foolish thoughts. This was her downfall and it ate at her like a fungus. Slowly creeping through her nerves until it was all consumed. It wouldn’t happen again, she thought. A horn brought her back to the real shitty world, as the small Pacer behind her was getting a little antsy. A shift of gear brought her past the light, and down E Michigan Ave towards the hospital. A single tear ran down her face, causing her to take off her glasses straighten up and go deadpan. She looked at the small clock imprinted in her car. 11:48.

Cynthia got to the hospital around midnight, when the number of visitors was lacking, and took a breath.

Everything she had been holding in for years, was lying on the surface. Above her heart, but under her skin. Signing in as CYNTHIA KITE, she made her way down to room D351, to see what was left of her husband. Her throat choked up as she proceeded. This wasn’t right, she thought.

Another slap, this time leaving a small bubbly gash on her cheek and a drop of blood came streaming down her face.

On her way down the hallway, she saw machines and patients being strolled down left and right, left and right, almost making her sick to her stomach. The smell of the fluorescent lighting and cold wet tiles gave her a feeling of regret and tiredness. It was like a warning from god saying, you’ll be here soon. Just like your husband, all hooked up and wired like a machine. Eating food through a straw and shitting into a small metal pot. That will be you until the machines get unplugged. Which they will. She shook it off and noticed her heart was beating through her blouse and she was panting like a marathon runner. She leaned her hand against the wall and watched as the blood from her cheek dripped down.

Tick. . .tick. . .tick. . .tick.

Pure repetition. She felt insane as the small crimson puddle beneath her chin kept growing and growing and growing. Her strength had all but started to leave her old shamble of a body. It was fucking Ruth, she thought. That damn woman that made me worry just because she made her own fucking decision on how my goddamn life should be. HE’S THE ONE THAT CHEATED YOU OLD BAT! We were happy, and then he cheated. But I was doing pills way before because of your constant nagging. She punched the wall, doing nothing but making her feel a little better inside herself. A hint of control. She thought of the coffee shop and Gary, why she loved him. And a smile formed for the first time in a long time, while Gary was in her thoughts.

It was lunch, so Cynthia decided to go out to the Peet’s coffee shop down on Spring St to wake herself up from the dull tiresome workload she had been given.

At the time, her age hadn’t caught up, with her hair as thick as a Don Quixote book and freckles forming a small arch across her petite nose. A nose that would twitch slightly when she giggled, and make you smile in awe. Everyone called her Theo, and she had not yet settled down.

Like every other time she came, she asked for coffee as black as the sea and took the seat in the far back corner of the room, away from the people that preferred the closer seats. Like every other seat, like most other people in the city preferred to just grab a bag of Folgers from the Safeway down on Ville Street for only about ninety cents. She took a New York Times newspaper from the stand outside the building, popping in a quarter and clicking the hatch, heading in. Sipping away at her coffee she sat at the table waiting for the time to run out. Then it was right back to the old grindstone. But she felt different that day. There was no particular reason, but she felt it.

The newspaper article title read, APOLLO COASTS ON TOWARDS MOON; ROCKET FIRED TO REDIRECT COURSE; ASTRONAUTS SHOW CAPSULE ON TV. She cared very little about the whole Space Race thing going on, but there was nothing else in the paper that interested her that much. Sure it was a little stressful and would change the world forever, but it wasn’t something that someone else couldn’t care about.

The only other piece of writing she owned was The Outsiders, and she had read it so many times that it was becoming weary. Her college Government class was forcing her to become more in touch with the real world of politics, something she honestly hated deeply, so the newspaper was a necessary evil. Thomas, her father, had made sure to piss her off constantly by calling her the hippie of the family. Political beliefs can get pretty serious in his household, so that was basically like calling her the black sheep.

The article ended quickly, with the exact things being explained that the title forewarned. She folded it like a hamburger and tossed it to the other side of the condiments holder.

Then a man walked into the store, wearing a blue polo shirt and some navy blue jeans.

His hair was slicked back underneath a baseball cap, and a coat was hanging over his left arm, the one holding two tickets to, something. His face was exasperated, like he was running, or having a night out with the boys, either way, he was tired as a horse. She looked at his shoe, and saw they were dirty Adidas. Like most people though, he just sat still in the queue and waited to put up his order. Of course, she thought of him to be some sexy hunk that had just walked into the same store as her, but he seemed different.

He reached the counter, and raised the number two with his old calloused fingers and gave the barista a crumpled $10 bill. Her eyes never left him, like he was a foreign film, and she was constantly having to look at the subtitles. His head turned from the counter, resting finally on her. Like a bat out of hell, she turned her head away and started fluttering her hair like a teenage girl acting innocent. Is he still staring, she thought. Of course, he was, but she couldn’t see the damn hunk, so as her head stayed turned he walked over and sat down on the opposing side from her, catching her attention finally.

She looked at him with big open eyes, her eyelashes fluttered, and her cheeks went red with blush. The lipstick running across her lips caught his attention, the lights flickering off of them.

He shamelessly grinned, raising his five o’clock shadow up to his ears. She had a sneaking suspicion he was maybe gonna sell her something she wanted nothing to do with, but instead he just sat down, picked up her discarded newspaper, and started reading it.

Little to say, she was shocked.

This stranger just sat down, smiled, and starting to read the newspaper. She gave the room a quick glance, and saw just about a dozen open tables. Maybe this was some Jack the Ripper shit, and she’d be dead in the next few hours on her way back the dorm room. She’d probably welcome it to be honest. Nobody really cared about her that much, in her eyes, except for maybe Sydney who hung with her every so often. But she did about two kilos of cocaine every month over behind the Bowlerama! with her boyfriend John and some other shady fellows, so she wasn’t entirely fun to hang out with. But this guy didn’t seem as shady, in fact he possessed the look of someone that opens his door and stews outside for about two hours every Sunday afternoon.

His dark golden skin was shining into her glasses, making her old childhood memories spark back up about the man she drew next to her and the oversized ball gowns she wore. It was like a dream. But being a woman in her twenties, this was highly unlikely.

“So were you just checking me out, or do I have something on my face?” the man asked. He looked up at her and smiled, making her blush more.

Cynthia had been waiting in the small boney chair next to Gary for two days, living off of the cafeteria food from the only place she knew at the time. In the process she hadn’t cried once, but had instead thought more about what to do after, and encouraging herself that he would live. There was no other choice, he would survive or she would bring him back to life and kill him herself.

Just watching his lifeless shell hooked up like a machine, in a situation where he would die without it, like some sort of computer, shook her. It made her nervous. The kind of nervous that had made the pills enter her bedside table drawer in the first place. And it was reaching back up from the deadly reaches of her thoughts and wanting back in. She had bruised her face from thinking like this, making the nurses have to come and give her a few rags and band-aids alone to stop some of the bleedings she had caused. But she didn’t care. Just repetitive TV viewings of Family Feud and reading the same book everyday. And that old memory of how they met in that small coffee shop and he pulled her in with that one little line of his.

During the first day, when all their close friends started to hear about the travesty, not a single person made a phone call. Some of their younger friends, Henry and Griffin Holcomb gave a quick one. They were a couple that lived in Chicago, with Henry being a colleague, and Griffin being the closest thing Griffin had to a friend. They were only in their mid to late twenties, with a little boy Chris who was just eight at the time of the incident, so with a brain able to comprehend it, but not enough to understand why it happened. They usually got together during Monday Night Football to root for whoever was playing at the time.

The rest of the time, was just going out for dinner.

About eighty percent of the time, they held the get together at Gary’s as he had the big flat-screen TV and surround sound installed. His house was also on Blackbird St, in the Jerry District of town, making him the owner of possibly the nicest kind of house in the city. It beat the old house like Rodney King, as his mother had put it, after years of living in the small cottage out in the country.

The nice living arrangements came from his new job, and it made everything perfect for the time. They were happier at the time. Happier than they ever had been.

Gary preferred the Falcons overall, but usually just watched every one of the games so that he had an excuse to yell like a goddamn mad man, and not make the neighbors think he was just screwing Cynthia hard into the floorboards. Of course, that never happened to such a loud degree, but when they were still at a ripe young age, it was pretty common with most.

Henry was one of those that knew the jokes and made references about it always after a few bottles of Bud Light and a few ceramic bowls of nachos. He was a floor below him in the financial department, making sure no one was fucking up the accounts, the laughter of his dumb jokes could be heard all the way up to Gary. It made him smile almost every time. Their love of model airplanes was about the only things that started the friendship, and went from there, with Griffin just being the girl with an ice-cold Mike’s Lemonade and a cigarette in both hands. You couldn’t see them hanging out all the time, but they were closer than most.

The call Cynthia received was depressing. Henry was on the other end, choking back the tears the best he could. Henry wasn’t the manliest man, but when you saw him, something said not to mess with him.

It was 6:31 when he picked up the old block, so he was most likely at work going over the financial records when a text reached him that a good friend had attempted the unspeakable. He gave all his sympathies, having to yell a lot of them because of the office noise. The tone of pure sadness in his voice made Cynthia choke up more than she already was, so she just continued to say ‘mhmm. . . mhmm’ so that she wouldn’t slip up. After about fifteen minutes of talking and almost crying, he hung up with a sniffle and goodbye sympathies.

As soon as she was done holding up her phone, she let out a heart-wrenching scream, crying her eyes out like she was being born again. Everything just washed over from that single average man giving his sympathies to a grieving wife. The band-aid on her cheek began to peel after about five minutes of pure relief. Her eyes became swollen, even alerting some nurses in the hall, which she had to explain too. They would usually give her hug and leave, as she continued tearing up.

A bundle of roses was sent up from the lovely couple a few hours later when the sun was finally starting to drop, and the snow was starting to fall once again, melting as soon as it touched the constantly heated tar running all the way through Illinois and dropping down into Indiana. The phone calls lasted for a while until she just gave up entirely on it, thinking about just taking some kerosene and pouring it all over each phone in the room, then lighting that single match. By 3:00 a.m., she had 31 missed calls, twenty of which were from her mother, and evil-doer, Ruth.

Cynthia let them sit still.

(Why you would only answer them if you wanted to hear, good job making him try and kill himself you worthless trash. Now, go get me another brewski from the fridge honey-pop.)

Acting like a selfless saint. All the words that would come out of her mouth would be negative, and make her reputation worse in the long run.

The woman.

Her mother, and her devil. Ruth McDonald.

Then she thought about Harry and Griffin again, to get the thoughts of her out of the thoughts she wanted to keep clean and tidy. A voicemail left by them said that they would stop by as soon as they could, and not waste a single second doing so. That made her smile. Maybe they’d even bring Chris, and he could see Gary at least one more time in case he passed into the night.

Chris was a great little tike.

It would be peaceful, she thought, he would be finally escaping this shitty world and to a place that actually had some decency.

It was at about 6:00 a.m. the next day, when Henry and Griffin showed up in their old Acura MDX, cleanly showing up in the dark of dusk, and coming up to see their dear friend. With the seat up against the wide cold window, she caught a glimpse of them, with a small child dangling from each other’s arms like a monkey. The old air conditioner was resting by her chair and the one parallel. She formed a small smile underneath her wrinkled nose, making her tight skin pull a little bit. She waited for about ten minutes until the commotion and uproar coming from the already crowded hospital hallway, probably giving young Chris a feeling of discomfort. Something he probably only felt when watching Poltergeist.

They walked through the door, both wearing casual jackets over pajamas, and a faded smile still visible on their cheeks. Harry knocked on the door to get Cynthia’s attention, something that had already been retrieved. His face looked like it was worn out, from crying most likely—Or work overloading him—but he still had a smile on. Griffin had no makeup on, but you could see the small blemishes of mascara around her eye as if it had melted and been wiped away. Cynthia wasn’t really paying attention to that, everything was on them actually being there.

“Hey sweetie, how are you feeling?” Griffin asked while walking in slowly. A tissue was resting in her hand. Cynthia just nodded and smiled back at her. Or, in her terms, Not to fuckin’ well Griff. She knew that, and cowered back.

“How’s. . . how’s he doing Theo?” Henry asked. His hand was still holding Chris’s while he cowered behind him in fear of the machine Gary had been hooked up to. Cynthia took a breath of raspy air and said, “Well not too well sadly. He’s an old man and the. . . ,” she choked a bit but continued. “And the rope was around his neck for a long time. He may not be around much longer in reality. We just have to wait it out for now.” She began to tear up, holding a small handkerchief against her mouth. Inside she wanted to sob, but it wasn’t the time.

Cynthia smiled while tears streamed down her face. Griffin then started looking concerned. Speedily, she went towards her and raised the young thin hand of hers up to the band-aid covered cheek.

“Theo, what happened? How did you cut yourself darling?” The real answer obviously wouldn’t be told.

“I was washing my face and got cut by my ring, it’s nothing. Just a little harmless scratch.” Griffin gave her that look of disbelief but ignored it in the end. After digging through her purse— something that was clearly a satchel, but too cute to complain— she pulled out one of the Spongebob band-aids she usually had for Chris, and a small disinfectant wipe.

“Just hold still sweetie.” She told her. With a quick jab away, the band-aid scraped off, leaving a small imprint, and a small dot of blood, which slowly grew bigger. “Man this is a deep cut. Sure it was your ring?”

Cynthia croaked a chuckle. Griffin then wiped the wound slowly, making Cynthia wince in pain with each and every stroke. Once there was no sign of blood, she quickly undid the band-aid and reapplied it to her cheek.

“Now make sure to change this every so often, or else it’ll just get damn near rancid and not do much safety-wise. I can’t have you getting hurt too.” Griff told her.

“I’ll make sure to do that. Thank you.”

Griff got up and went to get a sandwich from the GREATEST CAFETERIA IN THE UNIVERSE! for Chris.

Henry continued to sit in the chair right beside Gary, the one that Cynthia had sat in for two days straight when the news first came out. His face showed deep remorse like he felt he could do something. Cynthia only saw Gary, on the day they had to put down their old corgi Clear River. Just a look of remorse.

Henry held it, like the pact they made during the 2006 Super Bowl should be fulfilled at this exact time. The working-man jacket he had over himself was sagging like himself, with his straight-arrow back hitting the spine of the chair. A frown began to form on his face, something nobody had ever really seen. His happy-go-lucky attitude was why he was invited to most events and get-togethers. Resting against his arm was Chris, looking at his big strong father figure trying to know why he was so sad. His eyes were fixated on him deeply and heavily. Henry started to notice him doing it and slightly raised his mouth. A big dad hand messed with Chris’s hair.

Cynthia began to overhear the conversation they started. “Hey daddy, who is this man and why is he hooked up to all this stuff?” Chris asked. His high voice matched the innocence of the question. Henry looked over with his dad face and responded with, “This Chris is my very good friend Gary. He’s the one that comes over all the time to watch football, remember?”

“Uh-huh, yeah he’s the guy in the suits.”

“Exactly Chris. And he’s in here right now because he’s very sick and needs people to help him not get sick with medicines and stuff. That’s why we’re here to make him feel better.” Henry said. Chris’s eyes went off like a lightbulb, as everything clicked inside finally. “Oh, well I hope he feels better soon. He seems like a cool guy dad.”

Henry shed a tear and smiled, continuing with, “He really is a cool guy Chris, the coolest of them all. Even cooler than you.”

The whole family left around 12:00 a.m., leaving Cynthia by herself again in the same chair by the same window, in the same pale room that chipped away at her insides more and more as time went on. Clouded with smells of chemicals and paint samples. And while Gary sat in the bed, she still felt like it was her fault, less than before, but now more clear. As the days had drifted by like a plastic bag full of air, she had actually been feeling happier, not because her man was in limbo, but that she knew what to do.

Not everything, but the basics for her. To not be Ruth.

Happiness had finally hit her. It was weird. Really weird for her type of person. She felt warmth over herself, and it wasn’t the small hand-knitted blanket Griffin had left for her when they had stopped by earlier to give their time for a greater cause. It was most likely the simulated heated carbons speeding out of the roaring machine underneath the window, looking out onto the I-90, always overflowing in headlights.

She put her mind into one of those cars, how the breeze would flow back through her locks, pushing back through the open window in the back, while the sun reflecting off of her Aviator glasses made her an 80s Bud Light commercial, trying to sell something for men. Another moment of clarity for Cynthia.

And then the computers behind her started whirring.

And whirring more.

Then a whine.

Cynthia turned her head from the window, swishing the current of the air another way, causing the sound to act as if it was booting back up from a reset. A sense of fear gripped her old heart first, and it started pounding hard like a marching band. In a pattern; bump-bump, bump-bump, bump-bump. The pupils of her eyes widened, and she stared at the bed. A bright light from behind the curtains lit everything up.

A shriek tried to exit her lips but stayed still in the back of her throat.

A noise then began to come from outside, numbing everything in the area. Cynthia began to panic, but couldn’t do anything about it. Papers from the tables began to float up to the ceiling, fluttering like birds while they blocked some of the incoming light. The frail thin strips of her fading hair flew past her eyes. There was no warning for her. Her chapped lips opened up again, and she still made no noise, while the constant outside buzz drowned it out. Lights coming from outside grew brighter and brighter.

And brighter. Out the window the I-90 and McDonald’s were nowhere to be seen, they were like other things stuck in the white darkness.

Then she wasn’t sitting. And Gary wasn’t sleeping.

“You’re not using this I hope. If so, mind if I borrow the sports section?” The man once again spoke in the small direction, pointed in Cynthia’s gaze, only more direct. His breath smelled of caviar, and the stress on his shoulders was that of a truck driver. Broad, and experienced. Why though? He didn’t look like he was some big guy speaking into a ham radio for hours on end, while behind the wheel of a Ford N600. Even if so, his breath would’ve smelled like cheap gas station sodas and smeared kerosene on his boots. Something he was not wearing. Her big blue eyes were still stuck in the bridle path of his divine eyes. It was girly, to her mostly.

“Umm, miss?” He asked again, looking more concerned than before. Cynthia’s eyes came to. The same smell of coffee beans and styrofoam entered her again, and she was back in the real world. Back in her short summer dress, her father had called ‘slutty’ and in the same table as Mr. Man. Quickly, she put on her smile and gave a half-assed response. “No no no, I’m not reading it anymore. The headlines are like the only thing that interests me, and they aren’t the best today so go right ahead.”

A small grin crossed his rough face, outlining the wrinkles surrounding it. His teeth had a dim yellow tint to them, they were unnoticeable to the point where your eyes couldn’t stay off them until he closed his mouth back.

It seemed comforting to Cynthia, giving off a feeling of the old neighbor, Bob Haggard, that always babysat her when they used to live in Greenville, Oregon. Due to the lack of years she had built then, he was some of the only memories she could recollect from that old two-bedroom house, that smelled of clay and uncleaned carpet. It built up her senses.

The crayons spread across the floor, creating a rainbowesque pattern on the living room floor. Everywhere, papers sat popping out like a kernel. A stack of old history novels, sat in the corner of the room under her mom’s reprint painting of Van Gogh’s “Beach at Scheveningen in Stormy Weather”, taking up a good yard on the wall. Mr. Murphy, her father, sat in the living room’s leather chair, sitting quietly while a candle stick protruded from his lips onto the ashtray below. Nothing ever really came from his wisdom, but I won’t forget his little statement about how them companies are just trying to scare us with their health talk. Cigarettes are made from plants, wrapped in tree si And then there was Bob Haggard, in the kitchen, wearing his old fisherman hat and sagging navy overalls. The fish stench was still stuck to him, and his hairy arms always had the culprit on one end, and a sharp blade in the other. She would look up at him and smile, with great joy and graciousness, while he smiled back. The same teeth were in his package too.

And then on the nights when mom and dad fought, throwing china and spitting slurs towards each other, while one has the other in their hands, he would comfort her. Tears would be streaming down her face, with her hands gripping her ears like earmuffs. She was tied up in a knot of her own creation, with the small outfit she had on was already soaked in snot and spit. Most of the time, she stayed in the little cupboard underneath the atrium stairs, behind all of the boxes marked UNCLE JEREMIAH’S WINTER WEARS.

The man undid some of the newspaper, ripping out the sports section, going on about things from baseball to football all down to Joe Frazier making Jerry Quarry go to sleep early in a seventh-round TKO. He chuckled at that part at least. “Sorry if I’m intruding by the way miss. I don’t mean to be too rude by just sitting at your table.” He said without darting his eyes from the shaded paper.

“Oh no no, it’s no problem at all. Just surprising is all. And a little odd. But I don’t mind at all sir--”

“Gary.”

“Wha. . . what?” Cynthia replied in a stuttering pattern. She was prone to stuttering unconsciously when the anxiety started to hit her. It had earned her the nickname, ‘The Cowardly Lion’ in grade school, and Theo later on.

“I said, Gary. Not sir miss. I hardly deserve that title in the slightest. You, on the other hand, can pull off miss.” Cynthia knew it was a compliment, and even blushed a little bit, but felt a little insulted for no known reason. “Oh well I’m Cynthia. Cynthia McDonald.” Gary looked up and smiled at her, while simultaneously flipping over to the real-estate section. A small one-room apartment caught his eye first, he went into a state of contemplation.

Once again, Cynthia was confused as all hell. She wanted to say something, opening her mouth then shutting it rapidly, like she had a small case of Tourettes. It wouldn’t be shocking, to be honest, but enough to scare him off and probably ruin another goddamn relationship. One of her greatest skills it seemed. Still though, she thought, why is he just sitting here.

Did he see her staring at him, eyes blaring and cheeks bloody? Her breasts trembling from the beating of her heart? There was no way, his eyes were looking forward the entire time, even using peripheral vision she wouldn’t have been that noticeable. And his face was buried enough into the limited menu above his pomade made up hair. Just thinking. There was nothing wrong with thinking of him. In a sense, none of this would happen if she should just talk to the fucking guy. He’s no more than two feet away from her. A lump formed in the back of her throat, causing her to cough a small bit. Enough to conceal.

“Okay, I’m just wondering sir, uh I mean Gary, why exactly are you sitting here? It’s not that there’s something wrong with it, I was just curious.” Cynthia finally spouted out. If she had been silent any longer, her lungs would’ve burst. And then again, that feeling hit her like a truck. A big, cement, Buster Keaton type injury truck. With a quick clip in the air, the old paper snapped into the air with his hairy arm following right below. The small Casio watch hanging off his arm was now his attention. Either that or he was catching a glimpse of the woman melting right in front of him. And, it no longer became his focus.

“Oh, no no ma’am, there is no harm intended. It’s just I thought you could use some company while you drank your coffee, and for another reason, I didn’t have any coins for the newspaper and thought I could borrow yours. I can leave if you want, miss.” His words flowed like poetry through Cynthia’s ears.

“No it’s fine. Besides, it’s rare finding a nice guy in the world.”

“Ha, you barely know me miss. Let alone know that I’m a nice guy. For all we know, I could be that guy in California killing people.”

“We are not anywhere close to northern Cal,” Cynthia said with a satisfying smirk.

“Maybe I’m relocating to a more small area. I mean Greenville is a very unknown little town. No one from the federal government would pay attention to a small murder like that.” Sincerely, with all his effort, he gave a slightly tilted smile and stared directly at Cynthia.

Needless to say, she was a little creeped out.

The yellow teeth mixed with the battered hair and sly lingo he was spouting off, was not creating the greatest combo. The same memory of her drawing in the living room popped back into her crown. Only she wasn’t thinking of Bob. Nor her father. Not even the mailman passing by on his daily run. In the nice summer weather, he made our day for just a little bit. His white outfit glistening in the sun as the thick bundles of paper are left on that cheesy, ME CASA, SU CASA welcome mat.

Her brain was stuck on her mother, and her smoking teeth.

“Can you not?” She asked. Deep down, she felt that some terrible things would wash up like her cranium was Normandy, and artillery fire was constantly raining down upon her. His thick eyebrows raised, and he responded with, “Oops sorry. Just trying to make a funny miss. No hard feelings.” Scoffing, a slight clap echoed from her palms. Sarcasm rang in the air, and then she went deadpan, staring at him. “Don’t flatter yourself guy, that ain’t worth an Audrey Hepburn breakfast.” He stared. He smiled, and looked down and studied his old tennis shoes like a good Russel Baker article was there waiting.

“Oh, how the roles have changed.” His mouth spatted as his head continued to look down past the table. “What do you mean?” Cynthia asked back.

“Well when we first starting talking, it seemed that you were the shy one, and I was the confident one. Now it’s the other way around. It’s a little ironic is all I’m saying.” A little puff of air came out of his nose, and the eyebrows reemerged from the wooden table followed by his eyes. Now a crimson blue.

“Well, would a shy guy ask me out.”

“Most likely no. But the roles can change again. That’s the magic of it.”

With the light still shining like a being from the far reaches of the galaxy, Cynthia began to float from her old chair, in sync with just about anything that wasn’t nailed to the floor inside one of the typical hospital rooms. A single breath was all that could leave Cynthia’s mouth, one by one. No words or sounds could greet themselves into the world, just being held hostage by whatever it was. Nothing was going through her mind. It was just. . . blank. Not a single thought, trying to be rational or even intriguing was flowing down her river of consciousness. She just stared at the surroundings of the room. Each lifting up and up until they were touching the trim that joined the ceiling and walls. She wanted to think, but this was too incomprehensible to her.

Something that would only happen in movies, or old horror memorabilia. Old pictures of The Thing and Creepshow came to mind. Thoughts were suddenly flooding in. And then a click went off in her head. The most satisfying click. Like the pen that’s about to win you the custody of your child, when everyone knew, everyone, that you were the top-notch parent.

And while the cold clammy hands she possessed unlatched from the manchette on her seat, a scream finally left her mouth. Only the beeps and whirring from the manic hospital machines drowned it out. No one even saw her. Nor the light or anything else. It was just her, and Gary sitting in an empty, cold, and dark room together. Her stringy hair was staying stiff, except for the one spot getting hit over and over and over and over again by the ancient conditioner underneath the harrowing curtains.

As far as anyone was concerned, she was sleeping under a recently quilted blanket next to her lover of forty years happily sleeping.

The next morning, as the sun gently rose over the corporate filled buildings and tasty waffle joints on the interstate leaving town, two nurses doing their routine rounds for the fourth floor found a Mrs. Cynthia Kite. She was lying in a tattered room of papers and blotted liquids on the floor in the same position as the newly born Robert Smith next door, and a face as pale as the ripped curtains drifting in the wind behind her.

After a few brief moments of staring in shock, frozen, the two nurses picked her up and brought her to the nearest open room, plugged her into an IV bag, and called her emergency contact, who just so happened to already be in the hospital. So they went for the next one, Henry and Griffin Holcomb. Specifically the number of Henry, but in such a case they would both come to see what was up. Her eyes were open and her mind was ringing the entire time, with doctors trying to get some indication of what had happened to her in that room, but she was unresponsive.

The nurses and doctors around the area questioned and reported they had heard nothing and saw nothing. With the slow night they had it, would have been easy to notice even the smallest click of a heel or cough under one’s breath, and still, not a single thing was noticed.

Cynthia was awake for the first few hours she lied in the newly cleaned gown under the newly washed sheets, in the cold as ice bed, just staring. Like before, while she was in an equally paid for room under an ambassador’s rule taking each and every page of sanity from her fragile set, she could only admire and observe. As a kid, she always did this. When in class, her eyes would wander through each shelf and desk that sat alongside the windows or cheap oak baseboards on the floor. Her small kiddy knuckles sat unevenly against her chin. The bitch who was regularly called Mrs. Unfaithful by a lot of the teenagers, for her love of the war on the other side, would sit in front of the small class and teach nonsense with no intent of fun.

She didn’t call her that. It was all the other little snot-nosed brats. And as she stared off, a bead of sweat would wash down her head every time the thought of her teacher came into mind. To keep her mind at bay, she would scan the room every ten seconds. The second her eyes narrowed to a floss length point, her hand would be burning red from a small thin plank of wood given by her most gracious teacher. And then she would sweat harder, and start stuttering when thinking up the fake excuse, as the class clown was chanting “COWARDLY LION!” in the very back. Protected behind the engraved little desk made from the local Sidney Furniture Company outlet. His hand got slapped just as hard only a few minutes later, and with more moxie. This never made the lesson clear to him. That thought made her nine-year-old mind laugh in small bursts, until some bullshit on the importance of the American way of baseball in our society, or a Robert Frost poem assignment that would make each and every one of the kids want to jump from the flagpole. Neither of which fit the curve, but would bring back into reality, and push the thoughts of hers back another day, up until she was in a bed shaking. And just wondering.

A smell of lilac brought her back into present-day in the bed, with Henry and Griffin coming in through the door, this time in nicer clothes than before, and without the child hanging onto one of their fingers. There was a nice autumn dress hanging from Griff’s shoulders and ending at the knee. Her hair was made up, and she almost looked exactly like someone modeling in a Sear’s catalog.

It reminded Cynthia of herself at a young age when she still lived with her Uncle Tom in Wisconsin, post-incident with her parents.

Henry was in the same kind of outfit, but with a polo shirt and navy khakis instead. They both looked beautiful.

The nurses and doctors speeding past behind them made them stand out even more, with the colors echoing off strikingly. They came bearing a bouquet of red freshly picked flowers and a box of waffles from Rachael’s Pancake Hut. Henry was now sporting a short beard crossing from ear to ear, connecting his smile. Griffin looked only concerned and with fear in her eyes. They both had shaky hands.

She ran over slowly and bent down through her dress next to Cynthia’s face. It wrinkled up a bit at the seam, tightening at the neck down to her knee on the floor. She finally felt anchored back at the hospital, it was the place she did not want to be in. The sweat drying on her forehead came back to her senses. And then she thought back to Gary, and what had happened the night before. A familiar feeling got to her when Griffin looked at her and smiled. It was comfortable. Something she rarely knew in her regular life, only from a few days in her childhood when she had the chicken-pox. Griffin started saying things to her, but she heard none of it. It was all silent for her, just movements. Griffin eventually stopped and looked back at Henry. His face told her the story, and she listened like a child at bedtime. She stood up slowly and placed the flowers on the nightstand right next to her. They were the only ones there.

In an instant, it seemed, the two left the room and were on their way to their car in the crowded parking lot, to go back to their young lives and son. The constant bickering of patients and doctors, writing on clipboards and taking five-second phone calls, became the only sounds she could hear anymore. Her eyes were still stuck on the wall, in the spot where there was a small stain of soda stuck in place right next to the light switch. It was taunting her she thought, and she could do nothing about it. It was that stain in Uncle Tom’s house all over again. The one she would see in his room every night when her nightmares would build back up and gut-punch her towards him. It sat just above the fan on the ceiling, bu closer to the bookshelf than anything. It was about the size of a cigar box and looked like what she thought an H.P. Lovecraft monster might look like.

Most nights, for the few weeks she was there, the stain seemed to stare at her with dark desires for her soul. Sometimes it scared her, and some nights it didn’t, and she never knew the reason she felt an urge, but yet feared that stain.

One night when she had a nightmare and went to sleep in Uncle Tom’s old man’s bed, there was a sound she heard outside. Nothing big like a branch snapping off a tree and hitting a car, but more like a pebble hitting the window from a teenager trying to act romantic and secretly get a girl’s attention. Curiosity struck her like gold, and quiet and careful to wake up Tom, she lifted her gown slightly and stepped off the bed. It took a few minutes to get to the window, and when she did get there, there was. . .

nothing.

Not a single little thing stood there waiting to whisk Cynthia off to Neverland or even just to get her attention and just scare the shit out of her. She shouldn’t have expected too much from Illinois. It was only a dark night sky, and a large oak tree towering over the house. The other houses she saw were just as dark and empty as the ambient air surrounding it. She pressed her face against the cold glass, her face mirrored onto it in a fog, and she looked down at the backyard floor. Besides a few lone red leaves and Rex, Tom’s loyal beagle, nothing was out of place. Not an unkempt hose or a lost baseball, everything was just as it always was. So curiosity hit harder.

With a quick patterned run, she left the room and headed for the kitchen, keeping an eye on Tom the entire time as she went down the short hallway. Then she turned the corner and continued her adventure. One that she knew would get her in trouble if caught, but a fun journey nonetheless. The kitchen was her first destination. Not hitting any dishes, she opened up the drawer right above the trashcan and grabbed Tom’s flashlight, clicking it on and off to make sure it had batteries first, before smiling with contempt and tucking it underneath her little arms and going on still. The sound of crickets was getting louder the more the night went on, as it usually did in Tom’s cul de sac, making her tense up, each time her short hair would rub against her shoulders and neck. She blew it out of the way.

Besides the flashlight, she grabbed a few crackers and her windbreaker from her little temporary living quarters across the house from Tom. Then like a real Sherlock Holmes, she sneakily grabbed the small knife from Tom’s nightstand and left as quietly as she possibly could through the backdoor into the small patch of land he called his backyard.

On the lawn, there was nothing but her and Rex sitting. He perked up his ears when the door opened, but did nothing more, as usual. He was getting old, and probably just preferred to be pet and sleep most of the time when he should be doing the taxes for Tom. A few sounds of cars going down their road and the infamous crickets were all she could hear. She clicked the flashlight. Nothing. A few smacks and retries and the light illuminated and shined through the dark air, guiding her path. Particles filled her view like a dusty TV, but it didn’t really bother her. Her first ambition was to check under the window, near Rex. Her bare feet hit the cold and wet grass easy, and she headed towards the window faster than inside. And as she turned the corner, once again it was vacant. There was zip, nothing, and it was upsetting. The urge for adventure was strong. Except for right under the window where there was her solace. The key to Neverland. A small shiny piece of something deep into the grass.

She walked over and picked it up, lying the flashlight right on it, so she could kneel and examine it. When she was only a year younger, she saw a car for the first time and the way it looked astounded her. It looked unreal, with its colors and cleanliness. That was the only way she could describe the metal. It had to have fallen from a star, she thought, or from the wing of an angel. Her face was in awe, with a clown smile crossing her cheeks. A small, ‘Woah’, exited her mouth several times, but that was it. She couldn’t be taken away from this if someone threatened to throw out all of her dolls.

She moved her feet, her gown now completely on the ground, getting the taste of worms and freshly cut grass, thanks to the freshly cut grass. Her eyes kept on at it, not a single thought of anything else was going through her little noggin. She flipped it over and saw a small panel or something. The Mechanical Man was the first thing that came to mind, with the big battery pack on his chest, with the little panels underneath. A few wires were poking out and sparking, making the flashlight seem brighter somehow. And then there was another sound. Only this one wasn’t from outside. She traced the sound back to the source, and found herself looking right up at the window she had been peering down from earlier, but now with a light shining from it, differing from every other house in the neighborhood. Now the little shiny piece of metal wasn’t on her mind, only just how much of an ass-whooping she was gonna get if she didn’t get inside right away.

She snatched up the metal, turned off the flashlight and bolted inside, startling Rex, as he was almost standing for the first time in about two years. Her heart was pounding, moving almost in unison with the rhythm of her little feet. As soon as she got to the door, she went quiet, opened it slowly, and snuck inside. The downstairs was quiet. Uncle Tom was nowhere to be found, and the sound of a light clicking could be heard from upstairs.

False alarm.

After a few days, Cynthia was able to lean up against her bed, without taking a handful of Advil, and watch Good Morning America comfortably with the New York Times crossword stuck in one hand and the cafeteria coffee in another. The panic and shock she had been stuck in before had been wearing off at a slower rate than most times in her life when she had similar episodes. The shitty coffee sure didn’t help though.

Like usual, she was just sitting with her back straight up wearing her baby blue cardigan over the nightgown her doctor gave her when she was finally able to talk again, and make conversation. As well as intelligent decisions. It wasn’t the most comfortable, unlike the bed which she found to be heavenly, but it felt homely.

The hospital had begun to grow on her, with all the noises and smells actually not being as bad as before. She was even able to clean up the small stain, the thought that occupied most of her time while she was in her near-catatonic state, adding a whole new layer to her acceptance of what was going on. As far as she was concerned, a little Prozac and a nice glass of orange juice and she would be better than new, finally able to leave the place and get back to the half-formed puzzle she left at home. Another thing that was getting to her.

She took a sip and went to fill in one of the columns in the paper with a pen. It had become her routine each morning from 7a.m. to 10a.m. for the past few days. The Chicago Tribune was the only newspaper delivered to the hospital, so she had one of the nurses pick up a New Yorker paper on their way to work, to get a quick buck from her purse. Each nurse said they were just fine doing it for free, but they both knew all better.

The elderly kind of have a knack for that stuff.

Every morning in the paper it would say the same thing about the floods in Southern England, each issue showing just how bad they were getting. She would read and read and read, take another long hot sip, and keep reading. The same shit happened every year, she thought, so why should she care? It’s not affecting her personally. Not a single family member of hers lived outside of northern Oregon or eastern Kansas so she had no vested, rooted, interest. But still, she engaged her emotions everyday, using the books, and the magazines, and the papers, as her vessel.

When she finished the crossword finally, finishing strong with LICENSE, she placed the newspaper over the handle beside her bed and put her steaming coffee back on the table along with all the flowers. Each addressed from, HENRY, GRIFF, AND CHRIS. YOUR BEST PALS. She smiled every time they were strolled into the room for her. A smile and nice smell with her name written directly on the card with it. The trio hadn’t been able to stop in since the last time they came to see her, while she was in a comatose like state, and not be able to say or do anything with her. A note came with each set of flowers wishing her good health and a cheesy dad joke from Henry that he probably got from his joke book called something like 1001 Dad Jokes to Embarrass the Kids With! Gary had gotten it for him for his thirty-third birthday the year prior, so it would make sense.

While Diane Sawyer was talking more about the early morning news in ‘the greatest country on the planet’, the click-clacking of dress shoes entered her room.

Her first thought was that of a preppy doctor with his hair slicked back into a perfect wave, while a pair of little spectacles sat beneath his eyes and his laugh sounded like a bird trying to talk. But when she looked over at the door edge, she saw two adults and a small child swinging along behind them reading a copy of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Henry and Griffin stood there, once again with a bouquet of flowers. This time they had some suntanned yellow and white daisies to add to her vase and army of balloons. They waved, and Cynthia smiled while taking her penciled hand from the paper and waving back.

“Hey guys, what a surprise! I thought you were out of town?” Cynthia said with a slight rasp in her voice. Henry started pushing Chris slightly from his back, his face still stuffed into the book until he found himself sitting in one of the visitor’s chairs in the same position as before.

“Yeah well, I managed to convince Roger to let Sydney take over the wing instead of me this weekend. It was a bit of a pain in the butt since she knew nothing about the new patients, but she can manage. So we got in the old wagon and headed up as soon as possible. It was a ride, but eh.” Griffin bent over the bed and gave Cynthia a big bear hug like her mother would give her when she fell off her skateboard. The grunt leaving her mouth when bending up to hug Griffin could be compared to a punch in the stomach.

“Oh you’ve been trying to get that position for almost a year now, I’m not worth that much Griff. You could’ve stayed.”

“Nah nah it’s all good Theo. And besides, between you and me,” she knelt down to her ear, “I couldn’t stand to stay in the hotel room with Henry any longer. Those damn walls make his snoring echo like a damn cave.” Cynthia and she shared a quick laugh which sped down slowly.

“You know I’m glad you’re here girl,” Cynthia said to her while putting the small worn-out pencil in her empty glass on the table beside her. It rattled a bit and then sat still like the other ones. She began folding the newspaper up. “The people here are pretty boring. I think the most interesting guy is a little nerd down in the burn unit.”

“When in the fuck were you in the burn ward?”

“I was still a little out of it, if you know what I mean, and I went looking for the bathroom. Next thing I know I was just talking to some little Freddy Krueger lookin’ kid while drinking a cup of tap water.”

The only look Griff could give was one of true confusion. The last time she gave this face was when Chris tried to give an excuse for cutting her gorgeous roses around the front lawn’s mailbox. When out of her trance, Griff eventually said, “Okay I guess.”

Cynthia clicked off the TV and gave a grunt of agreement to settle her down. Back in her teenage and early adult years, she was quite a crazy cat. When her parents asked, allergies were her goto excuse. But of course she knew it was just her rebellious friends from high school that wanted to be like those cool kids they saw all the time in the back parking lot of their school. Cynthia wasn’t a druggie, just taking a toke or two when it’s passed to her in the circle, or use it to just calm down after a stressful fight with her mother. John, her on and off boyfriend, was probably the biggest stoner of their little group. He even ran away from home to be with the big bands, to be like a total fuckin’ rockstar, in his words, and be the best that like ever lived. And then, of course, the pills.

Griffin started laughing. And laughed louder, attracting the attention of Henry, his eyebrow slowly rising. “You know, for a woman your age, you get into more crazy situations than I did in my entire high school life. Which is weird because you’re in a medical coffin.“ Cynthia looked down from her glare. “I don’t ask for it a bit. I’m too tired to deal with most of it. For christ’s sake, I’m almost sixty-one years old. My hair’s as white as Santa’s pubes during the rough months with Mrs. Clause.”

“What months?” Chris said looking up.

“Oh, oh it’s nothing dear. Just, just presents can be a bit stressful at times is all for him.” Griffin said back with a big fake grin on her face. Chris smiled back, said, “Oh ok Mom. Sorry.” and went back to his thick book.

“You almost lost all trust there Griff,” Cynthia said. She began stepping out of the bed slowly, her bones and old muscles began to creak and she gave a slight sigh because of it. While talking she slipped her feet into a pair of woolen slippers. “I still got about three more years at most. Then I’ll just be his food handler and life-giver. Two things that are obviously not important. And at least he didn’t question the bad part of the sentence.”

Almost in sync, the two ladies heads’ switched over their necks to see the reaction from Chris behind his book. All they could see was the three little hairs coming from the top of his book out of his head. Not a peep. Then he flipped a page and confirmed their suspicions to be wrong. Griffin turned back with a blank face and said, “Okay then, I guess not. “

“He’s a kid, he doesn’t give a shit, to be honest. He only contributed because the word Santa was involved.” Cynthia responded. She slid her arm back into the same blue blouse she came to visit her comatose husband in almost exactly a week before, at the time when snow hadn’t yet hit the ground. And she hadn’t been lying in a bed herself. The small blotch of blood from her cheek was still there, getting darker as time went on. Purposely missing the top button, she reset the rest.

“You goin’ somewhere hot stuff? Cause, as far as I know, you’re still stationed to stay in this room until the doctors say so.” Cynthia gave her a smug look, usually only given when Griffin is giving her opinion on why she should go to concerts with her. “Actually, missy, I was discharged this morning. This was just a late start. I took some Xanax earlier and my nurse said to avoid driving for a few hours.”

She sarcastically looked at her watch that wasn’t there and looked back up at Griffin with a wrinkled smile. “And you know what Griff? Now that my time is done, I could really use some coffee right now. Peppermint Patty Mocha. Or maybe just an espresso.”

Griffin looked over at her and shrugged. “Alright if it’s all good with the doctor. It will be a relief to get out of this hellhole. We’ve been talking for only like five minutes and I already feel worn down,” she looked back at the two men sitting comfortably behind her, “ You two okay to leave?”

Henry’s eyes lit up as he threw his head up and looked directly into his wife’s eyes with almost true happiness. And then he hesitated. He lifted his arm and looked down at his watch, studying it like a good Agatha Christie novel. “Honey we like just got here. I didn’t even actually need a watch to know that.”

“You didn’t even want to come here in the first place Henry. Besides we can go get some food, that I know you want, and head home after so you can sleep.”

A big sigh was all he said in response, but his face was something of acceptance. He did want that food. He wanted to sleep more. For about six hours he was behind the wheel of their car, and his feet were starting to feel like those of a missionary in old Japan. Like an old dad, he let out a horrifying noise and straightened his back up, making his outfit looking semi appealing to go with the face he had yet to shave.

He smacked Chris’s left shoulder, jolting him out of Hogwarts and making him yelp a small bit. After Henry laughed, he said, “Come on kiddo we’ve got to go get some grub.” He stayed still for a minute, closing his eyes to try and wake up, but opening them to reality. He closed his book and tossed it to his side as he stood up. With his Toy Story shirt, he looked like an average little kid.

Henry got up and pushed Chris by the back out of the room, avoiding the numerous doctors and nurses trying to make sure people didn’t die in their care. The noises of conversations about how much medication to take each meal and who they’re gonna have to cover that night came back into Cynthia’s range of hearing, giving her a slightly unnoticeable aneurysm. Griffin grabbed the small pencil her son had dropped onto the chair and walked out as her friend cuddled into her stormy cardigan and snatched up the newspaper and her copy of Misery. Another feeling of her being rushed came back, and the two little things she owned got thrown back into the little handbag. She smiled. Happiness was so rare, and for some reason, this whole situation that had fucked up her entire present-day life had opened her eyes. If not a lot, at least slightly. And this room or the giant fuckhole called a ‘medical center’, was where memories shouldn’t have reemerged. Ruth was the only one that could come to mind. The pills had gotten rid of those long ago, and oh boy there they are. So maybe it was just the two young adults, filled with such euphemisms and fun, that made these come back up and just take out all the depression that was trying to push her into the tits of Mother Theresa.

So she decided to leave as fast as possible.

The light switch, next to some faded paint where a stain was, flipped off with a satisfying click, and the door shut. The clipboard on the inside rattled. The noise of everyone else tuned that out. Not even her heels could be heard clicking and they were two inches. Not much, but still enough to give some attention. The hallway to the left gave her the obvious directions on where the exit was. Downstairs, but to the left first and by the burn ward. A place she didn’t want to pass, but this place just knew her that well. His name was probably Jeff or something, she couldn’t quite remember because of the damn pills (basically LSD and a pint of pure Moonshine swirled together in a witch’s pot) but she wasn’t going to stop by to find out.

While on her way down the hall, she thought mostly about her order. An Espresso was exactly what she needed, maybe a Bloody Mary now that she thinks about it. And some waffles. Maybe with Gary, in his room. Then she looked and his room, its door slightly open with a caution sign crossing the top layer to cover up the room number and bloodstain covering it. She stopped in her tracks, all others took no notice as she then walked over to it. Lifting the tape, the blood looked fresher than it should. It had been a few days and this still looked like cocktail sauce had been spat up all over the surface. With hesitation, specifically that she would get kicked out by some people there, she began to turn the knob and look inside.

There was nothing different in there but a few lines of tape and a big table of shattered equipment that had been on the ground. Some of the glass was still there but it wasn’t all together.

Nothing much caught her eye except the bed, and the wall on the far east of the room. The bed was empty here, not even made up from when Gary was lying still in it on the brink of death. As was the chair, still holding her ass print from a few days ago when she was in the worst place of her life. Except for during the time that her mind was so clouded with Xanax and Prozac, that she couldn’t tell which side of the road to drive on. Only this time, she didn’t choose to take the pill. It was shoved down her throat.

And with one final glance at the wall, the letters still looking as clear as day with the liquid still dripping down into a permanent state, she left the room still thinking about that, and what she should do next in life. Even if it meant fucking over others, in a good way, and dying slowly. The first thing she thought, was getting them the fuck out of buttfuck and drive-by shooting style Chicago, and somewhere peaceful. A place where Chris could be raised and not be put into a gang. A memory.

But she knew where. And hopefully, they would trust her on this, and do it.

Around twelve o’clock, just about four months after the incident with Cynthia, the Holcomb family officially packed up every item in their house, including the treasure of VHS tapes and old classic books they had found in the attic when they moved in, and drove away from Legacy, onto the Highway 52 on their way to Oregon. On their old parking lot, where Chris had learned to ride a bike, and many late-night beer runs had happened with the parents years before, Cynthia sat and waved away with a single tear streaming down her face and the same cardigan on her shoulders. Gary stood beside her, looking slightly more drowsy than they had seen him, with a big parka over himself and a Chicago Bears hat covering his short grey hair. Without it, his ears would be dead in minutes from the cold snow plowing down. The U-Haul was already about halfway there, and the drivers would be sipping a beer in about two hours at the town’s little tavern. Henry and Griffin had just over twice that since they took the time to take in the rest of their town for the last time.

They each waved goodbye, all with smiles, and Chris stayed up against the window looking at them and smiling, but not really waving. Just a grin gave some indication, but they knew exactly how he felt and what he meant by it. The cars trail of gasoline smoke stayed behind on their path until they had finally gotten out of the neighborhood and headed down the main road to start their new, more suburban, life.

The snow was probably the biggest problem on the road. It just waited for everyone, and when they got to a bad, traffic hungry road, more came down in a blaze of cold cold fire. So nice. Chris didn’t pay attention to any of this on the trip (or at least the first half since it stopped snowing like a motherfucker at about that time) and just kept himself reserved with a stack of books, coloring and hardcover, sitting beside him in the backseat with some crayons and a bag of snacks. The frosted window stopped him from enjoying the scenery like there was even any that he could see. Just the dull outlines of road signs zooming by their car going at least seventy mph in the other direction. He played a little game on the way, trying to differentiate most of the cars through the frost (except when they were white, which was a no go buckaroo) and by the end, he honestly didn’t know how many he got right, but it let time flow while he dozed off into tranquility. His parents looked back every so often, his hand would usually be scrunched up against his cheek and his eyes would be staring at the iced glass, making them give a parent chuckle.

After about four days, a dozen stops at Cracker Barrel, and a few refueling stops at Marathon’s and Sinclair, the crew landed only about fourteen miles in the opposite direction from the I-5, just beyond the view of the Ben Fodd Prairie Preserve. Unlike Chicago, you could see green everywhere. A fairy-tale storybook was the only thing Chris could compare it to. Not a single skyscraper, twelve-mile long traffic strip, or cheap toy store could be seen. Even though Chris hated having to move, because of all the friends he had to leave behind, this new change of perspective on the world seemed pretty alright to him. Still not good, but content. Like every ten-year-old kid.

No traffic got in their way when they pulled onto Main St, which was quite a relief. Henry was immediately thinking about how easy and calm his drives to work would be now that he didn’t have to deal with hundreds of people that are probably sending a little funny emoji to their friend in the seat next to them. And no more swearing, he was quite happy about that, considering he hated doing it. Just impulses from his brother Jeremiah

Only about two cars passed them by down their way, both old beat up pick up trucks, which confirmed some of their thoughts of the place. One, it’s almost exactly like they expected, an old village filled with friendly, beer-drinking, Marlboro smoking, corn picking people that would bring you a bag of sugar if you asked for a spoonful.

And this place is truly in buttfuck nowhere.

They managed to find their house, about a mile in town, with the big U-Haul sitting there, it’s emergency brake was put in place and two Armenian fellows were resting their backs on the loading dock with cigarettes in their mouth, and a few empty beer bottles on the edge. The house was taller than most in the neighborhood but colored more dull than those on the street. A bright yet dull blue covered the front, while a cookie dough yellow took over the two-car garage. Something told Henry and Griffin that this would be the best place to raise Chris. A place that could make other people say, ‘hey he sure looks like a nice young champ, something tells me he didn’t live in the inner city.’ They didn’t live in the inner city, but the meaning is all the same.

Chris was the last one out of the car, he spent a little bit of the time just getting all of his toys and belongings together and getting ready, but the majority of it was spent just pouting and looking out the window at the line of barren trees in the cul de sac and all of the kids his age just running around in big puffy oversized jackets while throwing snowballs at each other, full force. Their contagious laughter was echoing up and down the street, tempting Chris to go play with them. For a brief second, a smile crept up, but he dropped it back down. Letting out a huge sigh, he clicked open the back door and stepped onto the snow, crunching it together. Some immediately got into his Skechers, making him wince and shake. He ran to the house, passing his dad who was paying the U-Haul people for their service, and onto the front porch to dump out the water that was soaking his socks and freezing his little feet.

Once on, he kicked them off and smacked them against the pillar next to where the rocking chair would soon be. Water dripped out slowly, looking like a rain gutter in the morning. Then he tried ripping off his socks, already wet to the point that it was quite a struggle to get them off, and threw them into the snow as fast as he could. Henry looked over at him as the driver walked away with a wad of cash and said, “Chris, what’re you doing? Why’d you throw your socks?”

He looked up frantically and stuttered, “I. . . I got them wet.”

“You can’t just throw your socks though kiddo. Look just go up to your room and get a new pair, maybe run your feet in the bath if you’re really that cold. And then go play with those kids out there while we unpack so you’ve got something to do besides hiding behind your book. I’ll help you with your stuff tonight, okay pal?” Chris walked over and picked up his pair of white socks, putting them in his jacket pocket. They hung out slightly.

“Yeah okay, dad,” Chris responded. He really didn’t want to go and socialize, that wasn’t his thing. Books were his thing because they were fun and adventurous. They could make you a knight, or a wizard at school, sometimes even just a gangster living in Brooklyn during the 1920s. He liked those stories, they weren’t things you could ever experience, making them rare. Once for a solid year, he sent a letter every day, addressed to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, cause for a little while he saw the hope of getting in there and making a difference.

He bent over and picked up his shoes, still cold and wet and walked inside to his new room. The smell of mom’s scented candles wafted towards him first when the door open, that and just pure warm air. He dragged his feet on the rug, getting rid of all the access snow that might have been there, and dropped off his shoes at the door. A view of his mom’s red hair could be seen from the hall as he headed for the stairs, illuminated by the big sky lamp hanging down from the kitchen. Their dinner table was set up against the wall, resting next to the window and a few boxes marked KITCHEN. To avoid any more confrontation that may include more questions, he quickly pattered up the stairs to find his room. Griffin probably heard him, but she just went back to unpacking the ladles and pot lids.

At the very top, his room’s door could quickly be spotted by the big stack of boxes by the door labeled LIL’ BIT and the bed spring already down on the floor inside. He spotted the box with his winter wares before he entered the room and quickly pushed the others off, carefully, and picked up the bulk of cardboard. It was heavy. He dropped it on the floor with a big thump, letting out heavy breaths, and knelt down panting. He started undoing the tape on the side, until it all came off and unmasked the treasure. On top, his boots and winter jacket, as well as a Star Wars hat and some red mittens. As fast as he could, he put them all on and put his other clothes in the corner of his room in a cluttered pile. He then ran back downstairs, still hesitant but excited a bit, and left the door preparing to get absolutely pelted by snowballs and sticks.

It’d be fun.

The group of kids saw him right as he was off his block, and heading towards them. His big blue parka probably gave it away, as well as him being the only person in the neighborhood they didn’t recognize one bit. One of the kids closest to him ran up to Chris as fast as the snow let him, and said, “Hey, who are you?”

“I’m Chris. I. . . I just moved here.” He responded. The other kid, wearing a big jacket too except with a big orange Ushanka to cover his, then, buzzed hair, smiled super wide and stared at him with awe. He said, “Cooool, we have another person to play with us! We’re playing War if you want to play Chris.” The voice he had was pretty high, making him sound much younger than he actually was. The guy looked his age, but compared to what he could see, he was shorter than everyone else. “Yeah sure, I’ll play.”

Right after he responded, he fist pumped and then bolted in the other direction towards the kids. They were split up, with half of them being on one side of the road and the other half on the other side. A big snow wall was blocking both of them, and a little arsenal of snowballs could be seen at the side. “Guy’s we got someone else to play! He’ll be on team blue!” Chris didn’t have any say in the matter, but he didn’t really care either way. He smiled a bit and started walking faster towards the little base marked with a B in the snow beside it. The other side had a big R engraved on the ground, where the first kid ran to. Must’ve been the leader since everyone surrounded him in a football fashion when he finally got to the other side.

Once past the wall, a taller girl with pigtails ran up to him, her cheeks were as red as blood and each breath echoed in the cold. “You take left side, the butt-nuggets are gonna try to get us from there.” Chris slowly nodded, and walked over, picking up a few snowballs on the way. She must’ve been the leader of this team. A line of kids, all wearing big gear, even one with a huge icicle, sat up against the wall. It looked like a shot from a WWI movie with the soldiers in the trenches. He picked up speed and slid onto the ground to his position, his heart started beating fast and he started laughing. He peeked over and saw the other side, only the kid was visible, everyone else was behind the wall.

“Alright retards, we got one extra guy now, you might as well just forfeit!” the girl yelled to them. Mr. Ushanka. “Never! We got Harry, the biggest kid on the block, you’re gonna die!” he yelled back.

It really was like a war.

“Rex’s group! Attack now!”

That must be what the R stood for. All of the sudden snowballs were flying through the air left and right, with some going over to their side. In the corner, there were a few younger kids hastily making balls and placing them in a pyramid near the middle of the wall. Without hesitation, Chris started throwing snowballs one by one, peeking over the wall only slightly in between each throw as protection. He took off his hat and tossed it to the side, just in case it counted, and watched as little kids fell to the ground dramatically with each hit. A huge kid was in the middle throwing what looked to be snow-covered soccer balls and footballs at his side, with Ushanka hiding behind him, throwing snowballs only when he truly needed to.

The big kid must have been Harry. He wasn’t even that big either, only standing maybe about an inch or two above him. Chris lined up his shot with one of the ‘snipers’ in the back of the squadron, ducking with a big snowball shooter and ski mask on to totally sell the show, and arched it over one of the main infantrymen into his head, causing him to fall and stay still. He was obviously awake, thanks to his constant itchiness and shivering. One of the men up front spotted Chris, and started directing all hits towards him. Without getting hit he managed to duck down against the wall again, snow falling by his shoulders. He stayed still until he heard a screech from the other side, he peeked up to see him missing.

Another ball passed his wall, hitting a heavy from their side, making him topple to the ground like a sack of potatoes. Spit came out of his mouth, and he lied still. Chris went back up and spotted Henry again, still in the middle. Only about four or five more kids were on their side, while it was just him, a little infantryman, and their leader with iced-over pigtails. He frantically crawled over to the pile in the middle. Each snowball fell apart with each lift, leaving all but the one he had left.

His heart started racing faster, with snow raining from the sky, or more specifically the tree that their iced balls were hitting constantly. One of the kids that was ‘dead’ had a snowball shooter lying in his hand by his corpse. It was frozen over against his hand, with two shots left. With no hesitation, he grabbed it up and got into position. The kid he had taken it from was a little confused about why he took it, but the dead couldn’t be so. Scouting out the other side, not a single snowball was being thrown at him. It was quiet. And no balls were being thrown from his side, as his comrades were just still with one in each of their hands.

The battlefield stayed quiet and still. The snow was melting in the hands of enemies.

“You guys dead yet?” Ushanka yelled over. Pigtails peeped over slightly, and shouted, “No!” Then a brief period of murmuring occurred, while Chris loaded the weapon with his last snowball to give it a total of three.

He raised up, right on top of the wall. All three stared at him.

The hammer fell. Two times.

Each one hit someone, Harry and the infantryman, while the third one stayed aimed at Ushanka. Chris was panting, and his heart was racing, while he heard laughter from Pigtails as she raised her hands and started cheering. “Yeah get destroyed retards. New kid is best!”

Ushanka was still. The dead soldiers on both sides started to get up, shaking the snow off and shivering from their short nap in ice.

Chris honestly wasn’t expecting this to be his first little encounter with the people in his neighborhood. Especially since he just whooped their asses big time in a game he had barely played outside, mostly just with just water balloons when his parents were having a ‘good’ summer in the city. The next thing he knew two big arms were squeezing him to the point of suffocation. He craned his neck up and saw it was Pigtails giving him a big ol’ bearhug.

“Yes, new kid! You kicked their asses! Now we’re one point ahead of them!” She said to him, her eyes still shut and shaking. Letting go, Chris felt frozen from getting smushed, but slowly undid himself and stayed silence once more. She smiled at him and raised out her red wet hand. “My name’s Meredith, but my friends call me Brownie because of my hair.” He just then noticed her hair, besides the pigtails, and just how red and shaggy it really was. It didn’t make too much sense. Almost like his mom’s. To not be rude he put his hand and shook hers. “I’m Chris,” he said back to her.

A bunch of the other kids from their team started going up to him and yelling stuff like, ‘Dude that was bananas!’ or ‘Nice job new kid!’ almost acting like he was some sort of celebrity for hitting some kids with snowballs. He wouldn’t have been surprised if some little kids were holding out papers and posters with his face on it. THE BIGGEST BAD-ASS THIS SIDE OF THE MISSISSIPPI! printed out in big letters on the bottom like propaganda. Within a minute, the infantrymen and remaining soldiers had scattered across the street, following the calls of parents. Just like that, poof.

Spare snowballs on the ground stayed where they were, and even one kid started taking down the wall on his side, as a losing mark, while they all pretended to smoke and pouted on their journey to get dinner.

Most of them were called off, and he could still see Ushanka on the other side of the street standing still with his hat in the same position. His face was blank, while his red snotty face was just staring at nothing. A defeated captain in sight. Looking both ways, Chris crossed the street to him, dodging a few kids that were saying some pretty offensive slurs and rude dude things towards him. He could see him just sitting on a little snow throne, while two launchers stood by his side. The bottom of his coat had a nice rim of ice on it, adding a nice wool lining for style. When he got to Ushanka, his head was starting to hang lower and lower to the snow, soon crunching it like his big boots. Chris couldn’t think of anything to say but, “Hey good game man, you got some really good shots.”

His head slowly turned up at Chris, his face as straight as a razor blade. And with his face all bloody, it wouldn’t be more surprising. “Thanks new kid.”

Still nothing. Tension was starting to rise a little bit, and the air was growing colder than it already was. More of the kids started walking away from their corresponding walls to home, even a few going together like a band. Yet Ushanka stayed still behind his portion of the wall. Something about victory must have meant a lot, or he was just a little kid that doesn’t like losing. Either way, it happened.

“Hey, guy, you wanna come over for a cup of hot chocolate. Not all of the stuff is unpacked but I think we gotta some of that stuff lying around. And trust me, my mom makes a bitchin’ cup.” Ushanka looked up at him and had a reaction of joy and confusion. “Yeah yeah that’ll be awesome, but you said a naughty word.”

“I don’t think it’s so bad. My dad says as long as you don’t say towards another person, you’re okay. Not my mom though, she thinks it is bad.” Chris responded back to him. Ushanka nodded, and then jumped off his throne and started running to the house behind him, on the far end of one of the roads, slipping quite a few times in the process. Frantically he jolted up the steps and shoved the door open. Nothing he said could be heard from where Chris was at, even though he was yelling into the door. But it was at that angle where it was just a loud mess of nonsense. A few minutes passed, and he came back down, with his hat now gone and probably on a rack by the door with the other hats. “My mom said I just have to be back for dinner, which is in about an hour!” he yelled down to Chris.

After another excursion of running back to the wall, he was now panting like a dog and holding onto his knees. “Oh, by the way, my name’s Tommy. Tommy Willer.”

He looked up still heavily breathing, and said, “Well let’s go. I’m freezing.”

Every time since then, when a cup of liquid goodness was placed in front of them at the still operating Peet’s Coffee & Tea on Main St, next to the antique book store and beauty salon, the two friends would clink them together and say, “To war.” And then they would chug the mug, and see who would burn their mouth the fastest. Neither of them could make it past two seconds before their tongue would say ‘fuck that noise!’ and make them spit it back up and cough profusely. And considering that from when they met at the fight to three years later, they would go to that shop every Friday after school, you could tell that their nerves were just about gone at that point. Tommy almost developed a lisp at one point.

People called them fags behind their back, even some of the adult, because they were hand and hand basically. Although they had said worse, and the two could hear them whisper it right behind their necks yet it really had no effect. In their heads, they were old enough to know that those kinds of words can just bite the bullet and get a knife to the gut. They had matching hoodies from the Gap and little bracelets from the D.A.R.E. program at school that ended up being the only useful thing from the system. They knew they weren’t going to do drugs, but they didn’t need to waste so much time to figure that out. And with the same shaggy brown hair, you basically couldn’t tell the two apart. Even during holidays, the parents loved each other enough that they would collaborate a few times. Cynthia and Gary would visit every time, and they were seen as brothers.

Each summer, right when the sun was in the perfect spot, they would go out and explore. Sometimes down the river that passed through their neighborhood, and see how far it went, and sometimes they would just go as far as they could, up to the old graffiti-covered train tunnel, where the town technically ended and the mountains began. The train stopped on the other side of the town, past where the river officially ended, and there was a small place called Artemis.

The town was very homey, but they had never gotten the chance to go there. For some reason, they all loved the hick ass town. It looked simple, even giving off the same feel that Gravity Falls did, and they loved it. It was something out of a movie, even if they could only observe and report. The one little building they were familiar with was a motel and it’s massive colorful sign. It was called the STARLITE MOTEL, and it was empty almost every time they saw it. Being almost completely surrounded by mountains, they didn’t get many visitors, as far as they knew, making it even more magical. Knowing that everyone knew everyone. Some of their parents knew about their love for this city, and once the gossip about how cute and imaginative their kids were, most people actually started preferring that alternative. Just to move them over, so they wouldn’t have to deal with them ever again, and have a peaceful town again.

Then they would laugh at them, just shrugging it off, and hop on their bikes with adventure in mind. Going through the usually empty street with only about a dozen cars off to the side, or in back alleyways, all with their emergency brake on to stop the slope of the main road from making the insurance fairy make a visit. Some of the keepers, teenagers and little kids working to gain some revenue for DVD’s and things, would wave at them and sometimes give a few shoutouts to make their presence known. They’d lift only a few fingers to wave and get back. The sun always sat stationary in the sky behind the line of little buildings, so they would never be able to give full eye-contact with going blind for a brief period.

A lot of the townsfolk knew to avoid the road at about that time they left the shop and went to visit the others, sometimes even with more fellas trailing behind them in a mismatched fashion. Just a bunch of the kids living on their same street, from the same fight, but they often just stayed secluded to themselves. It’s not that they were anti-social, which they clearly weren’t, but they barely made jokes that didn’t make a race offended, or make a person just mortified and stuck in the Frankenstone Asylum, down on the unused gravel road somewhere out of town. Good move on their part to realize it before the super religious kids got up in their business.

This was basically the town for almost three years, at a place where it couldn’t go on for four. And nearly none of those quests took place, at the end of the main road, where the asphalt met the line of flowers and water. Where they would take their handlebars, and turn them left instead of right where the entrance was.

The town was known in Oregon, by the old lasting members who had stayed around long enough to hear too much about it, as ‘The Devil’s Pencil and Pad’. The name was really coined during a newspaper article that went around the US, when a huge pumpkin grew in Old Man Ingrid’s farmhouse a few miles west of Greenville, with a big skull looking face engraved into the front of it. Some didn’t see it, and too many did, giving the town a weird vibe from people passing through like it was cursed by a gypsy from the darkest reaches of hell. Even the Franklin and Bogs Carnival stopped passing through the town, due to a huge number of people blaming them for the gypsy problem. The paper read, GREENVILLE, OREGON! A SMALL SUBURBAN HEAVEN? OR SATAN’S PENCIL AND PAD? It wasn’t the most clever headline, but things stick to people that entrust all their knowledge into the newspaper. Over the next few years, the population dwindled, and tourism visits got smaller and smaller. Smaller than they already were.

Since the town already preferred to love only the people that knew how to get to Granny Smith’s bakery (which is on the corner of Locust Grove and Lion, one street down from the big city central road in town) they were fine with no one coming as often. It was more peaceful there than the time before no one had nailed a fence post into the tilled dirt and called it ‘theirs’.

But then again, the kids weren’t all the same with each other for their entire young lives, always having their monthly summer picnic underneath the Old Oak in the very back of the Green farm, or riding under the trees while Tommy yelled, ‘FOR HONOR’ as loud as he could. It died down in a short amount of time, leaving the tumbleweeds out again and the bikes to collect dust in their corresponding garages down the road. It would sit next to their blue bin that smelled a foul shit like stench and got hit by the backlash of the rain from the roof. It was sad really that it ended.

The shops were quieter. On the street, for the traffic that did come, there was no hassle they had to deal with. No little kids swerving in and out of its way while laughing like hyenas during a Jerry Seinfeld special. The town became more normal and boring for all those around, making the owners actually a little more happy since they were able to have a sense of peace and quiet in their lives. But it was different, and not everybody likes different when it’s been the norm for a good number of years. And the town no longer had what it was known for.

Uniqueness.

And then something happened. One of those things that change how your life is, and not one of those events that make you wonder if it will be important at all in the coming future for you. It just is, and that second. That one second when it passes through your head and falls onto you like a ton of bricks, and you can feel that pain from the numerous bruises and cuts because you made those bricks with perfection and it bit you in the ass. And not just you.

Not just that, but it brings people together and sets them down in front of a nice dinner, where you can only eat if you talk. The meaning is there. And it lingers because everyone knows the audacity of it.

For the kids of Greenville, mostly those living on a single street marked RED VIEW, it was during the late months of fall, on the year where the hype for a new Star Wars trilogy was still at its peak, when Tommy Willer went missing. Along with his two loving parents, and the house they lived in.