Previous Volumes
Volume 3 No. 1
The Crack in the Ceiling
by Sam Sawnick
Alone. If he had to reduce the past three years to one word, that's the one he'd choose: Alone.
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Unchanging, unforgiving, unliving. All contenders. But Alone really captured the emptiness.
Everything was worse than it had ever been.
Had it ever been good?
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Surely something had been good. There must have been good things. But the past was blurred beyond recognition. If anything had been good, it didn’t matter now.
People had encouraged him to take time for himself. “Get away. Give it time.” The steady refrain.
So he got away and he gave it time. And isolation. And alcohol.
He'd managed to avoid drinking himself to death, but only because good whiskey was expensive.
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Everyone would understand it if he drank himself to death. No one would be shocked. No one would probably even be particularly sad. But miserable as he was, he couldn't convince himself it was fair to do it. More likely they'd say things like "What with everything that happened, it's a wonder he lasted as long as he did."
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The most important parts of himself had been ripped clear out of him. Whatever life he thought he'd been living, he hadn't been. The betrayal stung and poisoned memories that only a short while ago he'd held dear. Now, the past felt like someone else's life. A fool's life. Nothing was what he thought it was. So he wasn't who he thought he was either.
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People had told him that they couldn't imagine it but he knew: They imagined it. From a comfortable distance, in illusions of karmic protection, they considered the horrors.
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