But it was not hateful bile that was thrust from me, it was an angry hatred that can only come from those that I had been repressed over the years. It was just subtle cracks that were forming and that was my response coming through. I spoke about the lies that she had subjected the family to, and her gross laziness, expecting Dad and now me to drop everything for her, were she could just as easily get here. And no she can not say I may not be in as this was essentially a night job. It was always the same old role that she wanted to play, the wounded wife and mother, by those that supposedly loved her but this was a self opposed persona and I told her as such. I do not know who was more shocked by the change in me, me or mother. What was shocking was mother's response, that Dad had always called me the specially impossible child, mother had always focused on the impossible part, but now she could finally see why Dad had thought I was special as well. It was a moment of rapture that was disturbed by the book demanding attention, or should I say the person in the book was demanding attention? And with that the spell was broken and mother returned to her normal self, bemoaning that if I did not go visit her soon that I would be written out of the will and I meekly said I would visit soon.

Despite the horror, we survivors were endowed with a will to survive. Or instinct. Or maybe it was faith.

The deal is this. You be the hero. Come down here. Unarmed. Come inside with your hands on your head. I'll let everybody go. Then I'll blow your fucking head off. Sir. How's that for a deal? You buy it?

As survivors and procreators, we unravel stories that at their root are not dissimilar from the habitual behaviors seen in nature. But as beings who know they will die we digress into episodes and epics that are altogether dissociated from the natural world. We may isolate this awareness, distract ourselves from it, anchor our minds far from its shores, and sublimate it as a motif in our sagas. Yet at no time and in no place are we protected from being tapped on the shoulder and reminded, __ou__e going to die, you know._ However much we try to ignore it, our consciousness haunts us with this knowledge. Our heads were baptized in the font of death; they are doused with the horror of moribundity.

Will you be able to touch me again without thinking about Sean? I don't want you to be disgusted by me.

I love you, Skye. You__e in my heart, in my head, under my skin. You__e my present and my future.