by Nate Allen
know when Janet kneeled down next to me. The pain that unhooked from my chest fell into the center of me and shocked my body with violent shivers. Now I can feel nothing whatsoever. Even Janet’s fingers feel alien to my own.
She has asked me why my eye is a swollen socket. I haven’t answered. It doesn’t even feel like I am here. Her kisses against my cheek only feel wrong. But, I let them move to my lips. I kiss back. My eyes close. Marcy blood soaked at the top of the steps is all I can see. Her already-gone eyes haunt me.
I open my eyes again. Janet is kissing my swollen eye, and now the tip of my nose. I look into her eyes. My wife is staring back at me, not the unrecognizable. And she is as sweet and caring as ever. It pulls me back to this reality.
“It’s going to be okay, Matthew.” she says.
“Marcy is missing.” it falls out of me unintentionally. I can’t unsay it.
Her eyes don’t change. No hint of fear sits in them. She just looks at me and says it again, “It’s going to be okay.”
John Doe
The light was white and warm. It wrapped around me. And then it faded. Now my hand is clasping my mother’s. We are sitting on a park bench. There is a colorful sky above me, and green grass beneath me. On the horizon, I can see a city that spreads across endlessly.
“Where am I?” I ask.
“You don’t get to stay my sweet boy,” she smiles. The lines of age still trace across her face, yet somehow she seems without age. “But, you get to see heaven from here: the city without end. The Lord made this spot just for me. He knows that one of my favorite memories with you was watching the sunset from the bench in the park. We used to live outside of a city. You would sit on my lap and coo. The setting sun always made me think of heaven. I would tell you how much Jesus loves you. That hasn’t changed, my sweet boy. The light isn’t gone.”
She’s fading. Her voice. Her face. Her warmth. I can hear the traffic on the highway zipping past. My eyes open to find my hand is holding my own.
Matthew Mills
It’s going to be okay. They are the only words Janet has said about the situation. When I try to describe the absolute certainty I have that our daughter is gone, she doesn’t try to reason it away. She doesn’t grasp desperately for hope of finding Marcy alive again. Her eyes say that she has already accepted the news that still makes me feel bottomless. When I close my eyes, I think about the razors in my shaver. I think about locking myself away and slowly bleeding—I now think about what I know: the Word. The Lord has promised to never give us more than we can handle. It’s a promise He saw through when my dad died long ago.
The wreck I was then became the man I still am. At least I have to believe that’s the man I still am. I have to believe that God has a plan for taking away my unborn son a week ago, and now, taking my daughter today. It’s all I have left.
Janet’s eyes have been staring at my swollen face since she said those words.
“You hit yourself, didn’t you?” she asks, seeming to already know the answer.
I look at her with a slow, extended blink, saying nothing.
“Did it help?”
I shrug. The question is something I can’t answer. It gave me something to hit. And as the swelling decreases, and the bruising increases, so will the pain. Maybe it did help. It’ll give me a distraction. It’ll make me feel grounded in my body, instead of hovering despondently.
I look at Janet. There is some part of me that wants to scream at her. I want to yell, “When the baby died, you were a basket case! Your daughter’s gone and you’re calm?!” But, I don’t. That’s the angry, envious part of me. That’s the part that wishes I could feel the same. I can see the Lord’s light in her. I am jealous and guilty for the way I feel.
“It’s going to be okay.” she says it again. She pauses, and I see her bottom lip begin to quiver. “I-I was lying in bed, sobbing. I cried out to Jesus that I couldn’t take anymore. I wanted it t-to end today, Matthew. I thought about the pi-pills in the bathroom cabinet. I thought about the ra-razors in my shaver. I thought about fi-filling the tub with just enough water that I could slip beneath it and drown looking u-up at the ceiling. And then I heard the deepest voice tell me to stand. I did. In the darkness of the room, I saw a wall of light appear. It almost looked like a door. It was pure light. White. Warm. I never wanted it to end. And then hands came from it, just far enough out that I could clasp the fingers. There were holes in His wrists. The light shone through them. The only words I heard were, ‘It’s going to be okay.’ And then it disappeared. So sweetheart, it’s going to be okay.”
John Doe
The way it feels to leave mom’s side is the way it felt to watch her die when I was a boy: one minute she is there, the next she is gone. Only when I was a boy, I still believed in something as beautiful as the endless city on the horizon.
But, just like the way mom faded from memory years ago, the visit with her on the park bench is already slipping away. The reality of the day is back in the front of my mind. The plastic bag that nearly killed me is now a crumpled ball in my hand. It somehow seems right that M is dead in the backseat. She brought the idea of light back into the darkness of me. And for a brief time, I saw something beautiful. I saw a light.
But, everything has returned to what it was. I am not the boy mom left years and years ago. I am a killer. I have lured each child to a death Teddy planned long before they entered the car. I am the one who stuck their dead skin with a needle, withdrew their blood into a vial, and placed it inside of their teddy bears propped on the shed shelf. I am the one that buried them within walking distance of the shed, under the deck of my old house.
Even if that brief moment of time on the bench was real, I deserve punishment. Sometimes late at night, my head fills with the images of parents pleading for whoever has their child to let them come home. Teddy likes to watch them give their press conferences on the TV. He likes to see them hurt. And when he likes it, some part of me does too.
I don’t deserve somewhere better than this world. She does. She deserves the view of absolute beauty. She deserves the warmth that wraps around you. She deserves that happiness. I deserve torment. Maybe that’s why Teddy is in my life. Maybe he’s here to keep me from happiness, because I deserve every pain he inflicts on me. I deserve much more.
The very mention of light made Teddy want to kill me. And now I know why. Come back to me, Teddy. M said the light isn’t gone. But, it is. It has to be. Because I deserve everything you do to me. You aren’t my friend, Teddy. You are my punishment.
Matthew Mills
A year before my dad died, I was given a dream of his resurrection. Ridiculous or not, I believed it to be true. At the funeral, I stared at the casket, waiting for God to breathe life back into him. Despite all of my relatives’ tears, I did nothing but stare. I believed God had the power to bring him back, to show Himself in the way He did back when Jesus walked the earth. But, my dad didn’t resurrect. The preacher said his words. The casket lowered. And the dirt was reapplied. God died too, for a very long time.
He never promised an easy walk. He promised to give us the strength to endure. He has to have a reason for taking my little girl. I can’t lose my faith. It’s all I have. But, the pain is sharper than I’ve ever experienced.
Janet grabs a hold of my hand and says the same thing again. This time, I believe it.
John Doe
I’m not on the shoulder of the highway anymore. I’m going seventy in a sixty-five. It’s a long drive to the shed. And soon M will join the other fourteen beneath the deck of my childhood home.
Teddy is quiet, but I can feel his presence next to me. I am not searching for any form of comfort. Teddy will no longer provide me company. He will tell me what to do, and I will do it. No hesitation. No questions asked. And that will be what my life returns to. And many more children will join M and the others.
The radio just turned on. I didn’t touch it.
“In a stunner, the Twins be
at the Yankees, building to a nail biting twelfth in—
The station changes: “Hallelujah and glory to the Lo—
It changes again: “Welcome to Talk Radio. It’s our open hour. Call in about what you want to discuss. Aliens. Sex. Violence. All three.” the man chuckles. “First caller, you are on Talk Radio.”
“I was reading about curses.” it’s a woman.
“And what did you discover?” the man asks.
“I discovered that you can kill someone with one. Okay, I already knew that. But, how easy it can be, I didn’t know that.”
“How easy is it?”
“Let’s just say I prayed darkness on you. At first, nothing would happen. You would maybe have a few strange dreams, nothing more. But, soon enough that darkness would start to grow in you. You would see blood when your eyes closed. It would belong to nobody at first. And then soon it would belong to your wife, and son. Those strange dreams would become strange activities that you didn’t remember doing. And then one morning, you would wake up to find the blood you saw when you closed your eyes, is now on the floor. It would all come back to you, as you remembered killing both your wife and son. And then you’d kill yourself too.”
“I don’t have a wife and son.”
“Imagine you did.”
“Well, that’s interesting caller. Any experience on
