The Lazarus Effect

Chapter 2: The Fall

It was his voice projecting words onto me, "You always make promises you don't keep."

8 hours a day we spent alone, together and time ran like quicksand. I wondered if I could hold on longer if we held hands, like the tension of chains rattling against what it cuffed. 

I still hated the romance genre and John Green as a concept.  

Although, I would much rather be the reader than be read. Why not Saw or The Handmaid's Tale? Why not something-something Genesis? 

He lit a fuse off in me. He was my mirror. He told me he would take me anywhere in the world. Over the rainbow or under the bridge. 

He was an old soul. I was a little girl with red ribbons in her pigtails.

"I am tired." 

"Not as tired as me!"

a red balloon animal twisted into a 

"That does not take my sleepiness away, but I appreciate the solidarity." I checked his game list on the community Nintendo Switch. 

Hey Neighbor. Don't drive on the road or the railroad tracks.  We played Split the Room and were the only two to choose to sell their souls for love. He had reached into my chest cavity and pulled out my heart, still beating and bleeding in his hand. Why didn't he flinch or wash his hands? Did my blood blend with the rest of the red on him?

His form rematerialized first, while the rest of my vessel hissed at the light. Was I his Angel Dust? Was I Charlie or the Radio Demon? 

My shadow flickered in and out of the candlelight. I was bottle-fed. Rarely did flesh present to my suckling lips and I did not take a bite. 

I took a driving job.  When they laughed at the prospect, I sneered at them, even after the airbags went off. I hid my bruises and screams under the camouflage of the train's whistle. I walk in stride with and behind Ruby Bridges, each footprint scorching the earth into worry stones. Someone someday would recover the residue with a sieve. At the end of the tunnel, there was only the end of the tunnel. Voltaire claimed through reason alone, people controlled their destiny. I say, keep your head down and keep moving. 

He keeps one headphone off. Close enough. The car with one headlight follows closely behind, alternating between flashing its brights and brake. 

You think I'd trap myself here with you? You think I would want you to? Every time she hits the brakes, I am launched at the windshield. The car is in a loop. Stop. Go. Stop. Go. I grope for the oh-shit handle. Usually, I defended any piece of literature on the banned book list.  Count every pearl, after all. Even if the string breaks and the beads spill onto the floor. Especially, then. Though, no one wanted to finish a narrative they would have to piece back together. Well read, they called him. He did more than read the words, he absorbed them. I wanted to be under his microscope, a cell on his slide. 

Aine discovers her son-in-law eating the breast of her daughter. One man's trash.... The spaces I banished myself shrank each day. I would soon fit only into a mouse hole. I cringe at the noises in my own house. My mom dies across the room from me—or at least one version of her. Her legs rise first, not a stretch to curl off the leftover sleep, but a sharp precise yank by both heels. The force folds her body into a bridge. 

She does not shake like in The Exorcist; on the contrary, she goes still like a ruler.  The next morning, we pick like birds at our continental breakfast.