Your voice. It’s haunting and beautiful at the same time and it travels through me as if I am a tree in the woods. You make me do things that some people would consider terrible but because of your voice, I know I am doing right. You know that I can never come to your side of the bridge. It is perfect over there and seeing something as beautiful as you would be like seeing the face of god. No. I will keep my distance, listen to your voice, and do as you say. Nobody knows that I murdered Jimmy. I didn’t want to. I liked Jimmy. But you told me to do it so I know that it was right. I’ll never tell them about you. This will be our little secret. I won’t stop until you tell me to. I’ll come to the fifth floor every day, listen for your life giving voice, and stay until my work is done.
The day you’ve been waiting for has finally arrived.
A lifetime of anger and a hurt so intense that no amount of medication could mask, is about to be erased.
I found you. You left me without a second thought and put me in a place that made hell look like utopia. Did you know what kind of orphanage you were leaving me in? Did you care? No one wanted a 7yo boy. Apparently I was ‘too old’. Not too old for the priests though - they told me I was pretty. They wanted me all the time. I cried every night for you but you never came back. By they time I was sixteen I had stopped crying, or laughing - or even smiling and all I could feel was anger. No one even suspected me when father Tony ‘disappeared’. The whole community was so concerned about their beloved father that murder or foul play never even entered their minds. They would have never thought that someone as innocent as me could have chopped up his body and buried it under the chapel. But I did. After the funeral I left the only home I had known for the last nine years. I thought living on the streets would be easier than the orphanage and it was to a point. At least the sexual abuse stopped. When I had the needle in my arm, I forgot about you for a minuscule amount of time but the memories always came back.
Your house is beautiful. It’s much better than the one that I remember living in with you. Who is that woman in the photos and where is my mom? I don’t understand why you kept your other children instead of me. I was a good boy and I tried my best.
I know you’ll be home soon. 5:15 just like clockwork. I bet you’ll be glad to see me. I’m not such a good boy now and I like to punish people that treat me badly. I know that you’ll understand that I need to punish you too. It’s pitch black in your bedroom closet but it’s still better here than on the streets. I promise, you won’t feel a thing. I’m not the kind of person that wants to drag out the pain and I won’t chop you up like the last two because I love you. I’ll stay here and hold your hand until the ambulance comes. I know that once you’re gone, my agony will go with you. It’s 5:10 now. I’ll see you in five minutes.
“What’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve believed?”
I paused for a while. Knowing that David was a religious man and had been most of his life meant that I had to consider my response. David was also a good man and someone I called a friend.
“Belief in God” I said.
“Knowing what I know now and having experienced 60 years of life on earth, I believe - and I know - that god does not exist”
David put down his scrabble tile that he was about to play and looked at me like I was a stranger.
“I had no idea” he said.
“I mean, I know you hadn’t been to church for the best part of 12 months but I thought you were having a break.” “You don’t believe in God?” He said. As if repeating it made it sink in for him.
“Are you sure?”
“Hear me out” I said.
“Firstly, you’re a good man David and I consider you my friend. Pastor or not, you’ve been a person who I consider genuine, loving and kind so please do not attach my personal beliefs to the bond that we have because even though mine have changed, it hasn’t nullified my respect for you.”
“Over the last five years I have been on a journey of discovery. After Alzheimer’s took Angelas life in the most undignified way, I started to question things that I had always accepted. Like why would a loving god take my beautiful wife away from me”.
David sipped his coffee and listened like he was learning something new about me. His facial expression hadn’t changed since my first revelation and rather than debate me he chose to just listen.
“There are an estimated 10,000 religions worldwide” I said. “45,000 of those Christian. What makes us think that we are obeying the right god? There has never been any proven existence of any gods. Existence based on faith is not enough for me. If he or she did exist, where were they when 6 million Jews died during the Holocaust? If you created a race of people would you continue to watch them kill themselves, die of horrible diseases and live miserable lives?”
“I know you’re faith has wained but God moves in mysterious ways and soon this wicked world will end and we will all…”
“Bullshit!” I interrupted. “I’ve been listening to the same old lines for years. It means nothing to me now”
David could sense my anger and asked me if I wanted him to leave? “No”. I said taking a deep breath and pausing to think of the right words. “Do you remember how I told you about the headaches and vomiting my grandson was having? And how he had started having seizures?”
“Of course” David said.
“Well, it got to the point where he’d been to a dozen doctors and specialists but this morning we got a definitive answer about the issues he was having” I noticed that my voice was starting to crack with emotion.
“Brain Cancer. Fucking brain cancer. He’s 6 years old and he has brain cancer. That is the ultimate proof to me that god doesn’t exist”
David’s eyes had welled up with tears. He opened his arms and stood beside me and we hugged. Both of us with tears streaming down our faces.
I’ve known Roy for thirty years. He was my best man at my wedding, an uncle to my two children and the best friend that anyone could ask for. Two days ago, Roy asked how I was doing and as usual I complained about my job and how I needed to make more money. Roy listened without judgement like he always did and put my worries and fears into perspective. The things that I was anxious about then seem so trivial now. Even when Roy moved out of the neighbourhood he rang at least twice a week. Who would have known that he was the one who needed help? Did I ask him if he was ok? My best friend Roy was so depressed that he decided to commit suicide. All the note said was “ I’m sorry”. Roy had nothing to be sorry for. I was the selfish asshole who didn’t notice that Roy was struggling to cope with life. Now I’m sitting here unable to move with a hole in my heart and a heaviness that’s consuming me. I wish I could go to sleep and wake in yesterday - like one of those time travel movies. I’d tell him that I loved him and hug him and he wouldn’t kill himself and everything would be ok. But now I’m frozen and consumed with self dread and wondering how someone can be here one day and gone the next? I’ve lived my life without regret - until today.
Travis Cook is a broken man. He’s worked the same job for two decades, been in the same unfulfilling relationship for too long and doesn’t know how to break the cycle except to end his own life. He knows who’s to blame - his deadbeat father - and he wishes he was never born. After being locked in a storage cupboard at work as a prank, Travis knocks his head and wakes up in the year 1971 - the year before he was born. He now knows what to do to end his bloodline and end his misery forever…. Kill his own father.
Last week they bought in another patient in the bed next to me in ward 13.
That’s not an unusual event at a hospital and since my recovery after the accident, there’s been at least a dozen new faces in this ward alone. Mavis is her name. Looks to be in her 80’s, five foot if she’s lucky. The first thing I thought when I saw her was that it looked like she belonged in palliative care rather than this ward. I’d seen enough people die to know that when a body is ravaged and as weak as this woman’s, there isn’t a lot of time left. I wonder whether Mavis has had a similar experience that my mum did before she passed. She went from a fit and healthy specimen to a shell of herself in three months but by the time her cancer was diagnosed it had spread through her organs and into her bones. By then there was little chance of any other outcome than a quick degrading death. My grandfather also. He was a large, dominant man who stood at 6 foot 6 and weight 230 pounds. He was a shell of himself at the end of his life. He needed help to perform the simplest of tasks. His booming voice - which you could hear for blocks - became a whimper. Mavis seemed unable to speak. When the nurses came around to check her observations and monitor her she seemed to understand what they were saying. She communicated with a weak nod or lifted a finger in an attempt to point. I had never seen the nurses that tended to Mavis either. There were staff shortages, but to hire three new nurses that only tended to one patient seemed unusual. Often I tried to make small talk with them and they ignored my friendly banter so I gave up. The two other male patients in the ward gave me strange looks when this happened so I presumed that they also found it unusual. Mavis had large hazel eyes. Either that or her sunken cheeks and bulging eye sockets made them appear that way - it was hard to tell. When she looked at me, I noticed that her pupils were small. It was like someone had placed a small dot on her eyes with a fine tipped pen. Whenever the curtain around her bed opened, she was looking. Not out the window, where she was next to, and not at any of the other two patients opposite her, but at me, ALWAYS at me. I tried to engage with her but there was nothing, just the staring. Maybe Mavis was only comfortable lying on her left side? Was she staring or was I paranoid? At least when she slept I got some relief from the uncomfortable feelings - or that’s what I thought. 2 nights ago I woke to a piercing scream. The kind that wakes you with heightened senses even when you’re in a deep sleep. “Jerrrrrry, Jerrrrrrry”. Jesus. How did Mavis know my name? “Jerry Dawson! Leave here now!” “Jerry Dawson. I am here”. I wanted to jump out of bed and shake her but after my back operation, it was painful enough to sit up. What the hell was happening? How could this woman talk? How did she know my full name and why was she telling me to leave?
I was surprised at first, but looking back, it all makes sense. All this has corresponded with my brothers phone calls asking me for money. His husband had left him 12 months ago because he couldn’t deal with the crippling gambling debts and the business that they had started together had withered away due to pandemic shut downs. But why would he go missing? Has he been abducted? Has he finally done what he’s been talking about in jest forever and dropped “off the grid?”. I know he owed his bookie money, and his dealer, and his…. Hell, the list of creditors is that long, I don’t know where to start. I’ll say one thing though. My brother and I always keep in contact. Even when I found that weird religion where I knocked on doors to convert people and I tried to convert him - he never gave up on me and he never stopped talking to me. That’s why I know something is wrong. Where is he?
