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E D Detetcheverrie

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Reflections IV
by E D Detetcheverrie
Monday, October 18, 2004

Rated "R" by the Author.

       
Recent stories by E D Detetcheverrie
· Indian Chief Part 4
· Indian Chief Pt. 3
· Indian Chief Pt. 2
· Indian Chief
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· Terror Bear
· Trumpet Of The Unicorn
           >> View all 29


     Part Four, "Quest For Love"
Donovan, the young man seated before me dressed all in black, claimed to not know what love was. He admitted having been in love before, but said he’d never known “true love”.

“What is it?” He asked, reaching for the bottled beverage he’d brought in with him this late afternoon. I watched him take a quick swig to wet his throat, saw him set the bottle back down absently as he focused on the words he needed to describe his thoughts to me. “True love, I think,
is when you and the person you love are in love at the same time with each other. That’s what I’ve never experienced.”

“Would you like to?”

His expression went slack, but his eyes glittered sharply. I heard his voice take on a distinct slow, precise, soft volumed tone. “I don’t think so. Not now. It’s too late. I’m not going through all the accompanying bullshit anymore.” His features were almost colorless today. He was more awake and alert than usual, but also more resigned. I wanted him to feel relaxed so he would speak the truth rather than what he desired the truth to be. Abruptly, he rose and shook the emptied
bottle as though he needed to know for certain it was totally empty, then he departed mumbling something about needing to use the bathroom.

I knew he had started romantic/sexual relationships rather late in life,
and that it had taken its toll on his severely low self-esteem. He’d undergone a terrible two-year depression he’d somehow managed to pull
himself out of, and then his ego had plowed ahead in a totally different
direction, making him feel superior to those around him instead of like
a self-described “loser”. He called himself a “weirdo” now...”strange”.
He preferred this method of thinking and appreciated seeing people like
him succeed in the public eye. It helped justify his new tack on life.
Instead of cowering from life, he now faced it boldly, daring it to
challenge him, caring little for the consequences. What he assumed was a
better path might just prove to be a different route toward his ultimate
self destruction.

Donovan returned wiping at one nostril with a knuckle, flopping down into his customary swivel chair heavily, already slouching. There was an arrogance to his flippancy. He seemed both completely comfortable, yet ready to spring to action at a moment’s notice. His posture dared anyone to correct his attitude. He could be easily ignored, yet attract attention all at the same time.

“I think I’m catching a cold.”

I knew he didn’t use drugs. He’d been tested and come out clean. Of late, he’d been making efforts to improve himself physically through diet and exercise. His near superiority complex drove him to attain a sort of passable version of perfection. “That won’t go well with your COPD.”

“No shit,” he muttered with a brief cough of a laugh. “Whatever. I’ll
deal with it. Love, huh? Love and sex? Just love?”

I said nothing, just waited patiently for him to begin.

“I had my first crush when I was five years old. On a TV star. What does a five year old know about love? Five year olds know desire. They desire a puppy, a father who plays with them, a mom who cooks and takes them places. I desired an actress. I didn’t know what I’d do with her if I had her. I guess I’d try to impress her with my artwork. Play board games with her. Go places with her like the movies and the park. She was...I dunno, in her early thirties. I’d get so excited when her show came on. I’d dance to the opening music. I’d tell everyone I could what
had happened on that episode.”

“Who was she?”

“Jeannie. Barbara Eden. I didn’t know her real name. She was beautiful and funny...and she could do absolutely anything.”

“What if she hadn’t been beautiful or funny?”

He smiled, watching the floor. “What if she couldn’t do absolutely anything? I dunno. I don’t think it would have mattered. I saw her do little stints on a couple of other shows and I was still nuts about her. I knew she was not Jeannie, and not those other people she portrayed. I knew she was pretending. I don’t think most kids realize that ‘til later in life. Some people never seperate actors from their characters. I knew at five. Of course, I assumed she was always nice and funny and
beautiful.... I know better now. Not that Barbara Eden was nasty or anything. I now know that actors portray what they are not. There’s
often some of them in the character they’re doing, of course. It’s their
version of how they think that person would behave, which personalizes the character. I didn’t know all of that at age five. I wasn’t too far off, though.”

“Do you see any of that character in what you now seek in a partner?”

“No. I guess...If I was gonna actually go looking for anyone to spend time with...I guess I would pretty much just go looking for a female version of me.”

“That sounds a touch-”

“Narcissistic?” He asked. “So? It doesn’t matter what your ideal is, odds are, you’ll never find her. She’ll never fit it exactly.” He shrugged. “Who cares? People should always just be who they are. I don’t
go looking for women. Never have. The dolled-up honey with too much makeup and cheap, flashy clothes washes her face sometimes. She gets sick. Things piss her off or make her sad. Her weight might fluctuate. She’ll age. Who cares?”

I tried, “What attracts you?”

Donvan inhaled deeply. There was amusement on his face. We both knew
this was the wrong track. “I like brunettes, mostly. Dark hair. Well-kept, but not necessarily pampered. Actually, preferrably not. I couldn’t maintain that kind of lifestyle, nor put up with it long. She should be fit, but not necessarily so. If she eats all day or smokes or does drugs or something, I’m not buying it. If she’s ugly, but can’t help it, I’m cool. But, she has to be nice for the most part. I know she can’t always be, but she should have a good heart. She should be willing to try new things. She shouldn’t be a daredevil, though, or easily bored. I like a girl who’s sophisticated, but innocent. Vivien Leigh could smile and be almost dopey and look like her pig was at the county
fair waiting for a ribbon, but then she could tilt her head just so, conceal her teeth, raise that one elegant eyebrow and you knew that under that pinafore was a leather bustier and fishnet stockings and her whip wasn’t too far off. My ideal woman would be as fun as the neighborhood tomboy who doesn’t know how beautiful she is, but be able to fill a dress and strike a pose that would make even a gay guy look
twice.”

“Have you ever met this brunette?”

The amusement vanished, and his temples twitched as the arrow I’d launched struck home in his heart. It took him awhile to mutter, “I don’t know. Maybe. It doesn’t matter.”

It was my job to dig up his past, but not to strike him with the shovel.
“Who was your first official girlfriend?”

“Gloria,” he mumbled, making a face like the name had tasted bad on his
tongue.

“How did you wind up with her?”

“October is National Mental Health Month,” he informed me, sounding almost like a commercial. “They were having free depression screenings at the local hospital. I figured I was depressed pretty bad. For a year, I’d been doing almost nothing but sleeping. My grandfather had come to die at our place and finally did after Mom had finished giving him back what he might’ve given her in her childhood...I dunno for sure. He’d lost his mind over time, but they said it wasn’t Alzheimer’s. Dementia is what I’ll guess it was, but nobody told me for sure. He didn’t know who he was or where he was. He called me Joe. I don’t know why. His other daughters couldn’t care for him any longer. One lived in an
apartment. She was a swinger. She didn’t have time to care for an elderly person. She was almost never home. The other had lost her husband, and her kids were grown and had moved away. She took care of him for a couple of years, but then she couldn’t handle it any longer. He was incontinent. He refused to eat. He had to be bathed and dressed.
He smelled like rotting roast beef from the deli. So he came to live with us. It woulda made more sense to place him in professional care, but the swinger was a gambler and spent her winnings on frivolous crap, the other daughter lived off money the government sent her after her husband died, and then there was us.

“It was terrible. It wasn’t him. I could tell his soul was hanging by a
thread like a loose tooth. It wasn’t going back in. It needed to be severed and set free. It was like living with his corpse. We fed it and talked to it...until talking to it just became pointless. But Mom would scream at him the way she used to scream at me. She’d shake him like she did to me when I was little. There had been an incident...when I was seventeen...she struck me as usual, but instead of cowering away, I just took the blow, turned my head back toward her and looked at her like she’d never struck me at all. It threw her. She didn’t strike me as much after that, but she still screamed at me, would still grab me by my hair and pull me around the house after her while she screamed at me, still tried to choke me once, still threw objects at me... But it wasn’t quite the same. She knew then that it was only a matter of time before
something turned the tables on her. I stopped protesting after that. I’d stay silent while she screamed at me and tried to hurt me. Grandpa was an easier target to take her rage out on. It was sickening. If I tried to stop her, she’d turn on me, screaming at me...and I still couldn’t stop her. I’d just leave the room. I’d hide behind a door or go to my room and cover my head with a pillow while she screamed downstairs and I could hear him crying...” Here, his features took on a pained, innocent
expression. His breathing became ragged as he recounted the abuse. “Grandpa came to take the brunt from me... I just realized that now. I’d been plotting on killing her for years. It was eventually going to be her or me. His coming to stay with us eased the shit directed at me, but it also showed me what kind of monster the stupid bitch was.”

Donovan’s left hand came up and he stroked his upper lip as though he had a short mustache there, partially concealing the lips that were beginning to redden as his heart rate increased. I said nothing as his troubled gaze darted about, but within a very small field as though he was witnessing something particulary terrible on a very small screen TV.

“I never thought of that before,” he repeated in a whisper. “It makes
sense now. I always wondered why he’d had to suffer like that before dying...I loved him. He wasn’t really there anyhow. It happened to help
relieve the bullshit. To prevent me from killing myself or her.”

I let him think for a few minutes. “How close were you to killing yourself?”

“I thought about it all the time. I kept trying to think of the most efficient way to do it. We didn’t have a gun in the house. People who slit their wrists get brought into the hospital and released again all the time. I might survive a fall. I couldn’t hurt another person by driving into the path of a semi or anything. I knew I’d fight to survive instinctively if I tried to drown myself. Poisoning sounds too imprecise, too painful and messy. Hanging doesn’t guarantee death--at least not a quick one. I didn’t think I could honestly cut my own throat. I needed something fast and complete. Everything I thought of
could fuck up somehow, making me crippled or otherwise dependent on her
for survival. I couldn’t tie the knot tighter...God knows I’d go crazy if I was stuck permanently in her care.

“Your fear of her kept you alive.”

“I also knew she wasn’t worth going to jail for or dying over...but then I might get off if anybody believed all the shit I’d been through. Except I knew there’d be nightmares. I couldn’t go through the nightmares. Couldn’t see her alive again in my dreams. And, what if I fucked up and she lived? It had to look like an accident, but be precise
and complete also...”

“And, how does Gloria fit into all of this?”

“Oh. Grandpa eventually died. And I kept hiding in my room and sleeping all the time so I wouldn’t have to listen to the screaming or him crying. I mean, I was still doing it even after he died...hoping if I did nothing and stayed out of everybody’s way, then no one could blame me for anything and hit me or scream at me anymore.”

“Did you ever think to explain all of this to anybody?”

“I called The Life Crisis Center Hotline more than once. They kept telling me I should get psychiatric counseling. That it was based on a sliding scale and she and I could get weekly appointments. I kept trying to tell them that she was taking almost all of my paychecks, and that she’d never go for it anyway. They always just told me to stay with a friend or relative. I had no friends or nearby relatives. I called Social Services on her twice when she was abusing Grandpa, and they said they’d send someone out and investigate, but they never did. They told me she was just stressed after coming home from working all day, then having to take care of him. They justified his abuse! She’d cram
forkfulls of food into his mouth to force feed him and the blood would run out of his punctured lips and gums! She’d scream at him for shitting his pants, then haul him to his feet and propel him toward the bathroom, and sometimes he’d hit the wall instead and his skin was like tissue paper...it was always bruised and scabbed from hitting the wall or from when she’d grab him and snatch at him. He would shake his fist and threaten her, then cry and tell me he was going to run away someday. It horrified me. I wished I could have killed him quietly with a pillow or something just to end his pain...but I loved him...even though it wasn’t him anymore....”

Again, Donovan was visibly upset, so I allowed him to collect his composure.

I tried, “Gloria worked at the hospital.”

“Yeah. I went in a year after Granpa died. For the depression screening.
They told me I was severely depressed and should go to the emergency room right away. I was frightened, but I was relieved, because I then knew what was wrong with me. I had a brain chemical disorder. Maybe they’d keep me at the hospital or lock me away. I’d be free of the yelling and screaming and bullshit. I didn’t go to the ER. I went home. Just knowing it was true and having a name for it made me feel so much better.”

“Why didn’t you seek treatment?”

“I couldn’t pay for it, and I was afraid Mom would try and take me out
of treatment because it didn’t fit in with her magazine perfect life she tried so hard to maintain. I told my co-workers because I could tell they thought there was something wrong with me anyway. I think it made them feel a little better, too.”

“Why do you think they thought there was something wrong with you, Donovan?”

“Because I’ve never had any real friends. Most people don’t like me, or
could really care less about me one way or another. I tried to make friends, but I’ve never been much good at it. I can’t seem to keep them long anyway. Obviously, there’s something wrong with me. I can’t have spent my whole life around a bunch of other people who all had something wrong. My co-workers would go out after work, but never invite me. They’d talk to me sometimes at work, they liked it when I was funny, but I was never invited to any parties or anything. I was a tolerable
co-worker. That’s all I’ve ever been.

“Anyway, for a year I believed I was suffering from a brain chemical disorder. They’d said at the screening that it was sometimes hereditary, and knowing your family history in this area could help determine what treatment worked best. I wrote to the doctor named on my birth certificate and asked how I could learn anything like that about my real parents...but the state I was born in still keeps all that stuff sealed and I’ve heard the court battles to access it are costly and time consuming as hell.”

The young man ceased speaking for some time and remained motionless, breathing audibly through his nostrils. He stared at a point where the floor met the baseboard, but his eyes were sharp, keen, as though he was remaining still while waiting for prey to come by. I waited until his breath became softer, and then I tried to encourage him to speak again. “Donovan...?”

Very softly, he admitted, “I finally struck back. I hit her. I struck my
mom.” After another moment’s pause, he leaned back in his chair and decided to watch the ceiling for awhile. “I told you the house was falling apart. We’d moved in when it was a model home for the whole line of new rowhouses, twenty years before. It was finally showing its age. The carpet was worn, the paint cracking at the corners from where the
place was settling...windows sticking...and...and I’d put my fist
through the walls in a couple of places. I lied about it, but she
suspected anyway. I’d spent so many years there crying and screaming and
bleeding and cowering...it was all coming to a head.

“She’d started spending money on new wallpaper and furniture and was painting the malfunctioning appliances. It was all about looks with her. Nothing mattered beneath the surface as long as everything looked all right. She was getting everything done in the house...except my room. I slept in a nine foot by nine foot room...the size of your average jail cell. I slept in the same too small bed with the same stinking mattress I’d had since I was four years old. I was twenty three at the time... She had two double closets in her room full of clothes, a large dresser my father used to own, a chest of drawers full of clothing, and a
jewelry armoir. She had mink coats and shoes that matched every outfit--some of which she’d had custom made--and stupid pocketbooks that matched all the shoes... I had one double closet with a lot of the same clothes I’d gotten when I was thirteen, fourteen. Nothing fit me well. I’d get new shoes as soon as she realized my old ones were literally
hanging from my feet by the laces, my toes sticking out, the seams frayed. If I liked something and wore it a lot, she’d get mad at me for not wearing my other clothes and throw my favorite shirt or jeans out. I hated my clothes. They were either ill-fitting gifts from relatives who hadn’t actually seen me in years, or they were the horrible things she’d insisted on buying for me to wear after our yearly trip to the mall to humiliate me in front of salespeople. I wasn’t allowed to pick out my own clothes. I wasn’t allowed to choose my own hairstyle. I could never,
ever be myself...except through my artwork.

“My closet doors were falling from the hinges and had even struck me across the head and my shoulders before. I tried to remove them completely, but she wouldn’t allow me to have no doors on the closet in my room. So I kept trying to nail the hinges back up. For awhile, I even nailed one door shut, but she found out and pried it free and made me nail it back up by the broken hinges again. I was in my room doing
something or other and one of the doors fell and grazed my arm before striking the bed. I was so sick of the stupidity of it all! I marched downstairs and out into the shed for the hammer and three-inch nails. We didn’t have wood screws or glue or anything I could fix them better with. She was watching TV. I started back up the stairs and she called out, ‘What’s your problem?’ I grumbled that the door had fallen and
almost hit me again and went ahead on up to work on it. As soon as there was a commercial, she charged up the stairs after me. She didn’t like my attitude. I was always supposed to look at her directly and smile pleasantly when I spoke to her. She stood in the doorway and started yelling at me, telling me how stupid I was since I could never seem to fix a simple closet door. She was always telling me I was stupid and
ugly and that I would never get anywhere in life. You know I thought of
burying that hammer in her thin little skull. I had COPD because she was a chronic smoker who refused to roll down the windows of the car when she drove, or open a fucking door now and then to air out the fuckin’ house. The whole house stank of nicotine and cat piss and old lady oils and powders and perfume. She had this thick glass ashtray she carried with her from room to room. You have no idea how many times I could see myself smashing her fucking head open with that damn thing, then sitting on the floor beside her bleeding corpse lighting up cigarettes one at a time and putting them out in what was left of her brain matter. She’d
already dealt me a death blow. She seemed intent on ensuring that I’d
suffer right up until the moment it overtook me, too.”

“You think she hated you?”

“Well, Jesus!” he blurted, and though he laughed, his look was too cunning, very dangerous just then. “She sure as hell treated me like it, didn’t she? But she kept my money, my paychecks, and told me daily I was stupid and ugly and worthless...so I’d never leave her. See? I think she knew her life was fucked before her divorce and she was afraid of being alone all her life. So she tried to convince me I could never leave her. She tried to brainwash me for twenty three years into staying with her and taking care of her. She tried so hard to make me into the companion she needed and wanted for the rest of her life...but all she ever did
was make me hate her, make me need to leave her at all costs. Did she hate me? She told me she loved me all the time! She’d say it, and then minutes later she’d be screaming that she was going to kill me, and minutes after that, ‘Oh, come over here and give me a kiss and sit by me, okay?’ She was a God-damn freak-ass bitch! I never knew when she’d go off or be calm or what...that’s why I hid from her all the time. In my room. That’s how I figured out I didn’t actually have to do a damn thing, but she’d still find reasons to scream at me and treat me like shit. She was wacko, man. It wasn’t me...

“But I didn’t know that at the time. I suspected it, but she kept trying to go out of her way to make me think I was crazy. I was the one who had something wrong. And I thought I had clinical depression...so maybe she was right after all.

“She told me to try gluing the nail holes again. I rolled my eyes because I’d put so many holes in the wood that the closet doors hung crooked anyhow. It needed replacing, not endless half-assed repairs. I tried to walk past her out of the room to get the glue, but she’d seen me roll my eyes. She grabbed my arm, dug her nails into my bicep as I
tried to leave and find the glue, she tried to shake me, started screaming at me and my attitude...and the next thing I knew, I was breathless and my left hand stung. I had backhanded her across the face. Knocked her glasses crooked. She took one step backward in shock, but
still held onto my arm. I had the hammer in my hand and I knew there was
a damn good chance I was gonna use it...

“I was terrified. I’d imagined killing her so many times before...and here I was so close to actually doing it...but I broke away from her and ran for the bathroom. She didn’t know I was trying to save her miserable little life by getting the hell away from her fast. She tried to push into the bathroom, and I slapped her across the face. I knocked her false teeth askew. She slapped me, and I finally forced her out and locked the door. She was screaming at me from the hallway. I saw myself in the mirror...my face was red and splotchy, my eyes too bright. I was
breathing so hard. I was terrified I was about to become a murderer. I had reacted so fast each time, it was like it hadn’t even been me. Like I’d been watching what was happening from above and behind myself, and everything was moving so fast I couldn’t process all of it fast enough. It was like I had lost all control. I knew I would have killed her if I hadn’t made it into the bathroom. I would have strangled her or used the hammer or thrown the both of us down the stairs...just beat her to death with my bare, bloody hands.

“She went downstairs. She was still screaming. My nerves were shot. I was shaking from the adrenaline. She told me to get the hell out of her house and never come back. She’d said that to me at least a few dozen times before...and I put my fist through the bathroom wall by the mirror. I waited, listening. I couldn’t hear anything but the TV. I
waited until my breathing calmed down. And then I ran out of there. I knew she’d have taken the keys to the car she’d bought for me. The shitty-assed used car she’d bought for me. She’d done it before and I knew they’d be gone. I just ran down the stairs and I ran out the door with her screaming at me to never come back again.”

Donovan swallowed and seemed as relieved as if he’d just made it through
that door into the dark, night-shaded streets.

“I was supposed to be at work in an hour...but how could I just go on as
though nothing had happened? The hospital was closer than my workplace.
I decided it was time to get professional help before I went ahead and killed one of us.

“I reported to the emergency room. Told ‘em I suffered from severe clinical depression. They took me into the back almost right away. Back into the psyche ward. Five different doctors saw me, spoke to me. They asked me all sorts of questions like, did I ever see things or hear voices? How often was I constipated? And they asked me about the
depression screening I had been to the year before. Turns out the whole thing was a scam. Some drug company rented a building on hospital grounds to host this “screening” which was actually nothing more than a ploy to get you to ask doctors for their specific brands of drugs. After four hours of questioning, they told me I wasn’t suffering from depression at all and that I was very sane. It was my mother they wanted to talk to. They asked me why I hadn’t hit her a lot sooner. Seemed surprised I had held out as long as I had. They suggested I go to the
police, then get myself to a homeless shelter until I could save enough money to live on my own. Trouble is, the job I worked at the time started at three in the afternoon and let out after midnight. You could only come and go from the shelter between six in the morning and eight o’clock at night. They turned everybody out at six to find jobs or go begging or something. What was I supposed to do until work started? I wouldn’t be able to return when work let off anyway. Too late. I felt so much better, though. Finally, I had the proof I needed that I was not
crazy or stupid, that it was her all along and not me. The ball was in my court. I still wanted to get the hell away from her, but maybe this news would knock her back a peg or two, make her ease up on me at least a little bit.

“Gloria was a nurse there. She’d been sitting with another patient when I was brought in. She kept talking to me between rounds with the doctors. She seemed pretty nice. She was an artist, too, she said, and she showed me some cartoons she’d done in an old notebook she killed time with. Funny thing is, one of the doctors who came in to see me was a kid I’d been one year ahead of in high school. He was also an artist.
Better than me. He wasn’t doin’ too much since he spent all of his time at the hospital. I tried to convince him to keep up with it, because it’s an ability you can actually lose if you let it lay dormant too long. He was too good to lose what he had. He said he’d think about picking it back up again.

“They were getting ready to discharge me when Gloria slipped me her phone number and told me she knew I was okay ‘cause the doctors had told her I was perfectly normal and sane. No one had ever given me their phone number before. I was stunned and a little thrilled by it. She was small and almost athletic with short red hair, tons of freckles, and pale blue eyes. Actually...she wasn’t terribly attractive, but she seemed awfully nice. She had this gentle giggle she used quite a bit, glancing down as she talked like she was excited to be near me, but still just a little bit shy.

“When I exited the hospital, a police car was waiting for me. They had come to take me home. Stupid bitch had called in a missing person’s report when my boss called to find out why I hadn’t made it to work. They told her I hadn’t been gone long anough to be missing, but they could keep an eye out for me anyway. I’d never ridden in a police car before. They radioed in that they had located me and were taking me
home, then started asking how I’d ended up at the hospital. I told them
everything. They asked if I wanted to press charges. I didn’t know where I’d live if mom was locked up in jail or the nuthouse. I said no. They told me there is no statute of limitations on child abuse. They told me I could call them anytime.

“I got out of the police car and started toward the house. Mom was there, crying, and when I came through the door she wrapped herself around me, hugging me like she was gonna crush me. She choked, ‘I’ve been worried sick about you! Where have you been?’ I just stood there stiffly and I told her very clearly, in a very steady voice, ‘I was at the psychiatric ward. They want to speak to you.’ She released me and just stood there, looking at nothing. I walked past her and went up to my room and went to bed.

“I had a dream that night that I was standing in a hallway surrounded by
elevators. Some went up, some went down, some went sideways or diagonally. Some opened and shut too fast to get on. Some stayed stuck open and went nowhere. Some went so fast they were terrifying and some moved hardly at all. Some shook violently. And one was just an empty shaft, the doors stuck open, a sparking wire dangling over where the car should have been. I knew what it meant. I’d reached a major fork in the road of my life. Where I went from that moment was entirely up to me. I suddenly had the power to choose which way my life would go.

“When I got up the next day to go to work, Mom was sitting on the back porch swing. That’s where we’d found Grandpa when he died. He was sitting on that swing. Now she was there, sitting still and staring at nothing. She had her nightgown on. It was obvious she’d never left for work. I grabbed my sketchpad and started out the door, walking to work. I’d obviously finally dealt her a blow she’d have to come to terms with to get over. I think it was a sunny day. Maybe it wasn’t, but it might as well have been. I told everyone why I’d missed work the night before. They all seemed kind of glad for me, but kind of reserved about it, too. I mean, how else would you react to something like that? Something you
knew was going on to some degree, but did nothing about yourself? Whatever. Mom stopped talking to me after that. Didn’t say a word for the longest time. Didn’t acknowledge my existence at all, but didn’t impede me in any way. A week later I finally got the courage to call
Gloria. And that’s how I met my first girlfriend and eventual fiancee...in the psychiatric ward.”



Continued In Part Five: Gloria

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Reviewed by April Smith 10/19/2004
I'm eager to read more an see where Donovan's life takes him! Great job so far...I'm still hooked! :-) APril

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Three Days of Darkness: The Final Secret by S. A. Teller

After Satan negotiates a pact with God and unleashes his army of demons, a secret sect battles a diabolical prophecy that threatens humanity. Release Date: November 21, 2018  
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In the End: Apocalyptic Poetry by Debra Kraft

In the end they'll all be dancin'--all them ones that didn't die.... Dance with me in the shadows amidst the lightning and the thunder, and all that nu-cu-lar debris. See the big bang from the other side, and then open that cellar door. Go down into  
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The Dead Effect by Terry Vinson

Tales of The Zombie or for soap opera fans, perhaps 'Days of The Dead' might be more appropriate.  
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