Page 14 of Prometheus Burning

I always physically worked this way. Leaning forward in a chair as I wrote, unaware of my poor posture. Even before Dave had taken my mahogany office desk and leather chair with sparkling, spinning wheels in the divorce. No wonder there was a consistent sharp pain running down the right side of my back.

My eyes remained glued to the laptop, though my attention turned to the beating of the rain against my roof. Head buzzing, woozy from the combination of alcohol and stress beating down on my brain.

Falling asleep with someone while it rains... the most beautiful experience ever.Jamie said that to me once. Back at Stony Point. During our fleeting moment together. Back before either one of us realized we had a problem, mentally speaking.

My phone chimed once again from the floor… I chose to ignore the messages, refusing to even glance down at it other than to look at the time for fear I’d become even more distracted than I already was.

Thunder echoed in the distance, reminding me of other writers exactly like me who lived for the moments they too could slave over their computer as a rain storm ravaged outside, producing words in the most classical fashion.

Another crack shot through the sky, and I jumped in my chair.God fucking dammit.I took a deep breath and checked the time on my phone.10:30 pm. I’d been sitting here for three hours. And I’d rewritten a whopping total of... 200 words.

Fuck rewrites.

I stretched out my arms and linked my fingers, bones cracking around my shoulder blades. Far above me, a stack of yearbooks lay against a shelf I’d attached to the wall a few years ago. Another remnant of the Dave years—he didn’t want to be bothered with taking down the wood, apparently. So, I got to keep my library space.Yay, me.

I wrapped my palm around the coffee mug sitting next to me on the laundry basket surface, but as I subconsciously brought it to my mouth to drink, I stopped. The heat from the liquid had long dissipated, and no one wanted to drink lukewarm coffee. Sighing, I released the mug and clenched my eyes shut and then jerked them open, mourning over words that would not translate onto the nearly blank document.

Let’s see… where to start… where to start…

So far, in a book about a woman who was suicidal—autobiographical books positioned as fiction, am I right?—I’d reached the point in the story where the woman starts to learn to live again and blah, blah, blah all that jazz. But what was supposed to be the dark moment of the book, the death of her father, the instant that pushes her back over the edge and makes her reach for the knife… apparently couldn’t happen now because of a stupid ass editorial comment from an agent who suddenly didn’t seem to get my vision.

I rubbed a hand across my temple, massaging the area in an attempt to remove some of the pressure constantly hanging above my frontal lobe.

I grabbed the wine bottle by my feet and downed the remainder of the liquid inside the glass. Not much left to be had. But I’d had it, anyway.

Nineteen days. Nineteen days. Nineteen. Fucking. Days.

My high school yearbooks continued to stare back at me. Somehow, despite Stony Point being a place I associated with my own suicide attempt, a faux hope resonated with me in those bound books. They served as a reminder of a time when there seemed to be so much goodness left. An open canvas of opportunity waiting to be filled.

An open canvas of hope that never existed in the first place. Though now, with the hole of death sinking into the cavities in my body, still fresh even eight months after the pain of a funeral I never expected to attend at this age, I longed to go back to my days at Stony Point. If only to see Jamie one more time.

We all get older and start to feel nostalgic for our youth. But as for me, the writer who had been analyzing the shit out of things since her father died, my nostalgia only grew heavier after Jamie’s passing.

Aww, fuck it.

I lifted from my seat and grabbed a yearbook at random, wobbling as my hands landed on the book from freshman year. The year before Dad died. I skimmed through the pages, reminiscing on the different world where I’d come from. Somehow a lonely world that hadn’t felt as bad as the one that I now lived. Entirely different from the place where I currently subsisted.

Happy, smiling, youthful faces haunted me on the pages of that yearbook. Making me feel as if I’d never left.

I reached the freshman year class photos. I skipped through, briefly stopping on my own picture. A teen girl with braces and an open-mouthed grin looked out at me. Face full of a healthy gloss, sans bags beneath her eyes, and the innocence that comes only from lack of pain and hurt and age and plenty of dark nights. She didn’t know the heartbreak that was in store for her. She hadn’t yet discovered death as her only option.

My stomach tightened, knowing all too well what the girl had coming for her. Waiting in the shadows, full of hollow, lonely nights. Her demons lurked there waiting to tear her down until there was nothing left for them to reach.

My current life was one hell of a grand finale. One divorce, a book with an ending worthy of a rewrite, and living all alone in a two-bedroom house.

As I went to toss the book back onto the shelf, I stopped.

Jamie’s picture gave me pause, and I stared at his blond hair. Inspecting his expression for any signs of what was to come in the future. But his smiling face was just as convincing as mine, masking all his problems— if they even existed back then.

Had they?

Truthfully, in the year and a half that Jamie and I were friends, I’d learned very little about him. And he’d learned very little about me.

A sinking feeling entered the pit of my stomach as I slammed the book shut.

Chapter Thirteen

Awakening

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