Sanford Crow

PROLOGUE

By the time I came to, my palms were caked in her blood. The thickness of it had pooled and crusted in my love lines, cracking as I extended my fingers. Love lines, what a hokey concept.

Her blood spilled out in vile heaves like flat soda from a bottle tipped over. Its waves, hypnotic, sent my mind deeper down the rabbit hole. Puncture wounds littered her torso. A butcher knife stiffly upright, was buried in her chest.

A part of me still refuses to believe I could do such a thing. To the others? Maybe. But to Lucy?

When you suffer from a disorder like mine, reality becomes a distorted line, one that's easily crossed. My therapist calls it psychogenic amnesia—blackouts for the layman. Brought on from moments of severe stress or trauma, which believe you me, I've experienced plenty of. Recently, however, these blackouts have come with bodies. My worst nightmare coming to fruition, becoming alive—like a Frankenstein's monster freed, having torn itself from the table, bare to the open sky. And it all started with the flip of a switch.

But we'll get to that soon enough.

I tried to gather my wits, sift through the anger and confusion. We're in her place, which used to be our place, in the living room. I can't remember how I got here. The first thing I know I need to do is find some context in the room. A struggle, a motive, a clue, anything. Crime scenes usually open to me like a book, yet this one seems written in brail.

I couldn't move. I was in a semi-state of shock. I vomit. Bile drips off my chin in elastic strings. The only thoughts I had were those of my daughter, Sadie, suffocating the other thoughts from a darker place, the thoughts I feared led me here. 

"Is mommy sleeping?" I hear Eric's voice call out from within me; the voice of a six-year-old boy; the voice of my little brother.

It was the same, only twenty-five years earlier. The exact same.

I see her head pointed to the side, her eyes staring into empty space.

I look down; my boots morph into size seven converse sneakers, tied and double-knotted. I'm eager. My backpack is strapped on, stuffed with detective and superhero comics. I hear my little brother's voice, childish and cute, whispering, "Come on, Sanford, it's time to go."