Julia Jeremiah, 1999
The hospital bed looked odd in the living room, like one of those paintings of the clocks melting in the desert. Joey busied himself with tasks that had piled up, chief among them was giving his wife her medicine that wasn't working. But it felt good to be giving it, to be doing something.
Baby Angela, two years old, babbled and toddled around the hospital bed, little smiling face. She didn't get it. Her brother Craig, 11, fully got it. His eyes were deeply shadowed, giving him a bit of a concentration camp look. He hadn't been eating. Of all of them whose lives would have a gaping hole where Julia had been Joey felt the worst for Craig.
His wife lay still in the bed, every bone visible, her cheeks sunken in. She had been so beautiful. Joey went over to her, held her bone thin hand and felt the skin like paper. She took the rattling last breaths, her eyes closed. She hadn't opened her eyes for days.
Albert Manning, 2003
He pulled away from the curb fast, the tires squealing and screeching in protest. He gritted his teeth, thinking about Craig, his face streaked with tears and blood and twisted in anger. 'It won't change!' he'd yelled, and Albert felt the truth of those words pierce him. He'd tried for nearly a year to change, to get a hold of his anger, to get his son back. And at the first provocation what does he do? Reverts to old patterns.
Driving fast, the cars parting around him like water, his foot on the accelerator, making it touch the floor. He loved Craig. About that there was no question. But he made him angry. He made him lose control, despite all the anger management classes in the world.
It wouldn't change. He'd hit him again, like he did tonight. He'd failed. He had no control. The car went faster through the traffic, weaving in and in. And when the turn came and the cars came at him he didn't turn away. Maybe it would be better this way.
Maude Santos/Manning, 2004
Warm underwater world. Floating and twisting in the amniotic fluid. Little fingers outstretched, little toes flexing. Tiny bending joints, tiny hairless head nodding to some half heard lullaby. Dark warm world, and what dreams? Never to know, never to be.
Maude was whisked away, the air that entered the uterus ending her.
Rick Murrey, 2004
Maybe Jimmy was dead. Good. Blood spreading slowly beneath him. He'd set it all up, he'd made sure he was alone in the lightening round, he'd ruined everything. He wanted to kill the rest of them. Emma for flirting with him, for leading him on. Cock tease. Spinner for shoving him against the lockers and into the dumpster. Jay for punching him in the alley. All of them.
Walking slowly down the hall, the paint and feathers long dried. Every footstep was deliberate. The gun was heavy in his hand. The sunlight looked weird on the floor. Funny he'd never noticed those big squares of sunlight before.
He saw Emma, Sean, and Toby. Toby used to be his friend. He didn't have any friends anymore. They stood together and looked scared as he leveled the gun at Emma's head. She was on his list. Sean stepped toward him, talking in a soothing voice but he couldn't make out the words. It didn't matter what anyone said anyway.
Sean grabbed his hand that held the gun as he was about to squeeze the trigger and the gun went off and he felt the incredible warmth of the bullet as it entered his body.