Dead Echo

by C.G. Banks

  *

  Patsy pulled up sharply at the counter at the memory. The sound that had brought her around no doubt the broken glass lying in shards around her feet. Her hands shook violently and she barely made it back to the kitchen table. Where the fuck had that come from? She hadn’t thought about that hell-hole of a morning in years, not in all the time since the Accident. But it was there, right there in her mind, as crystal clear as a knife viewed through spot-lighted water. The black of the asphalt, the blue line of sky leaking up into the haze of the early morning, the sun a blazing sore on the horizon. Cornfields to the left and right, a cleared field straight ahead leading to absolutely Nowhere. She fumbled again in her pocket and pulled the cigarettes free, almost broke a nail thumbing the lighter. When she closed her eyes and breathed in the acrid smoke she could see the memory closer up, every detail etched out like an artist had spent months preparing her this presentation. And oddly enough she began to feel better.

  She’d believed it the end there on that desolate plain. She’d known she would never do any better than right there, right then, and as she remembered the surrender that had rolled over her, she also remembered the release. Even at the end of everything, she tried to remind herself now, there was still life. Even out there underneath the seat of her car. She sat quietly, fire-boxing the cigarette until it was just a burning filter between her fingers. She tried to convince herself, on this bright day of her first ownership, that even though she readily admitted to being a Loser, she’d never been a quitter. The memory had jogged that little bit of belief to the forefront, set it out for her to dust off and have another look at. Because she could have let it go. She recalled standing there on the parking lot asphalt, wanting nothing more than to walk out into that long stretch of field and keep going. Just walk to the sun and quit. But she hadn’t.

  And as the long day dwindled slowly to a close she sat and let the memory of that day wash over her.