Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 111860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 559(@200wpm)___ 447(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 111860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 559(@200wpm)___ 447(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
Come with me.
I don’t want to.
But you must. If you want to be free like me, you must. Your story is here, and we’re going to find it. Together.
I don’t want to find it. It’s not a good story.
Even bad stories must be told. Especially those.
Why?
Because once it’s over, a story is only something with a beginning and a middle and also an end. You’ll see it as a whole, and there will be no need to live it anymore.
But he wasn’t living it, was he? How could he be, when the memories of it only came in punching flashes of red light and shrieking pain? Jett watched his dove fly for a moment, flapping and gliding, soaring, above and away. The forest around him dimmed, and he knew the beginning of his story was up ahead, the one he didn’t know but couldn’t forget. He had no desire to find it, but he also didn’t want his dove—his guide—to leave him behind.
A child darted from behind a tree, startling him so that he leaped back. The little boy was laughing, and his laughter both echoed sharply and was somehow muffled, as if two separate times had collided right in front of him. The boy was here, and he was there, or maybe the other way around. The boy didn’t turn his head, so Jett couldn’t see his face before he disappeared behind a different tree on the opposite side of the path.
Follow.
I don’t want to.
Follow.
Jett lifted his foot. It felt like it was stuck in quicksand. But he put it in front of him and then lifted the other, moving forward into that dark wood where the little boy had run.
The animal smells came again. But still he clomped forward, his guide never flying out of sight, only dipping and rising and soaring so that he could keep his eyes on her as she led the way.
A farm. He’d come from a farm, and though he’d vowed never to return, he was returning there now. A feeling rose inside him, a prickly mass that was flavored with salt and acid. It tasted like his tears and his pain, and it felt like a boulder that might crush his inner organs into a bloody, soupy mess.
When he wept, he felt her feathers on his cheek. Back, forth, back, forth. And he felt his feet on the ground and the beating of his heart. And then he continued on because there was nowhere else to go.
The house came into sight first, a two-story farmhouse with peeling white paint and a dilapidated porch, sitting in front of a mournful mountain that rose into the sky. He saw the old tractor sitting in the field, its seat empty. The pewter sky yawned wide, stirring up the wind that blew the tall grass so that it bent sideways and stayed that way.
Where is he?
Where is who?
My grandfather.
I don’t know.
Where are you?
Where am I?
The boy darted out from behind the tractor, running through the field. Running toward the small shed at the back of the property that throbbed with darkness and despair.
I’m there. I’m inside that shed.
Show me.
Jett didn’t want to show his guide what was in that shed, but his feet moved anyway, the soft, gentle rustling of his dove’s wings luring him along.
Again, his legs felt leaden, his steps so heavy each one made his muscles ache. A goat ran up to the fence on his right, sticking its small nose through the rails. Grief trembled. Fear. Sorrow. He recognized that goat. It was the one his grandfather had butchered because he’d stupidly shown a fondness for it. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
The goat made a sound and then turned and ran away, leaping and twisting, the way happy goats do.
Suddenly, the field was behind him, and he stood at the door to the small building, staring at the rough grain of the wood. The moan of the wind melded with his own, and despite his fear, despite the sick roiling of his guts, he reached for the door and pushed. It squeaked on its rusted hinges, opening slowly, the light trickling in to join that which filtered through the one dusty window covered in cobwebs.
His eyes tracked slowly over the contents of the shed, moving from the space beside the door toward the back. A three-wheeled wagon, a pile of scrap wood, four broken pots, one with faded yellow daisies on it. He wondered who’d chosen that pot when it was new, sitting on a store shelf. My grandmother? Did she think it pretty? Did it make her smile? Did she know what that pot would come to see when it was a broken heap of shards on a dirt floor in an old shed?
That wind again, moaning, shaking the drafty walls of the shed so that Jett wondered if it might blow over. It should. It had no right to stand.