NINE TIME MACHINES: Do you want to undo your entire life on planet earth?

CHAPTER 16

The next morning I put the candles back on their stand to burn down, light three others for Lily, as I do religiously each day, and then take new ones out for today's prayer. This time I'm a bit more humble, perhaps because I'm desperate and don't want to piss God off. The words come to me naturally after having repeated them a hundred times. All I have to do is get through today's prayer without getting angry or depressed and I'll be just fine.

"My God is real. I am a child of the light. He will remove me from this rotten place. My God is real. I am a child of the light. He will remove me from this rotten place. My God is real. I am a child of the light. He will remove me from this rotten place."

I pause to take a deep breath then continue when I calm down a bit. But I only make it to fifty. How can I continue when I don't believe these words? Remove me and put me where? In another more rotten place? Not that it matters. That's all I've ever known since that fool cut my collar off. Look! Maybe I should just continue even though I don't believe. I promised myself to get to one hundred, didn't I? Another twenty in, I pause again. Her stupid battery-operated candles I can tolerate, mostly because I can't afford batteries anymore. But it's her memory I want to keep trapped in a dungeon. And certain things trigger it, tug on the keys of my mind and allow her hand to pull on the gate, or her face to rip through the mask I drew to keep her hidden. I hustle to the end to delay the inevitable, blow the candles out quickly then throw my back against the wall.

Good. I don't see her anywhere. I don't feel her hand ramming down my throat to cut off my will to live. Inhale. Exhale. That's right. Stay where you belong, woman. Stay behind your barbed wire and overgrown bushes. I already buried you. Stay dead!