Heather K. Alexander

excerpt from the preface: The stone read LUCAS JARED MATTHEWS BORN: 1987. DIED: 2007. It was a marble stone, rounded, with his picture shellacked into it. Looking at it brought tears to her eyes. “Why, Luke, why?” She cried, as she put her sobbing face down upon his stone. “Do you have any idea what you have done to me? Any idea at all?” Her voice was getting louder with every outburst, until she found herself screaming. She hated herself and everyone one around. She wanted so badly, to start digging and pull up the man that she loved and just beat the shit out of him. “Do you know everybody thinks I have lost my mind? Huh? They do! And I think they are right!” She blubbered. She drank deeply from the bottle, and swallowed. “I miss you so bad Luke! You really have no idea how much!” She wrapped her arms around his stone and just let the tears roll. Feeling the wind pick up, she raised her head just as a crow landed on Luke’s stone. She jumped. “Get out of here!” She screamed. “He’s already dead, and buried!” The crow just sat there and looked at her, as if saying ‘I know what you are up to, you can’t fool me.” Looking at the crow, she thought to herself. ‘He looks as if he’s smiling.’ The eyes of the crow was as black as the approaching darkness and it blinked at her, as if daring her to make a sudden move, though she really didn’t care. She knew what she wanted to do, and was going to make sure that this time, nothing would stop her. Standing up, she took one final drink from the bottle, and poured the rest on the grave. “Here you are sweetie. Drink up!” She said, watching the contents fall onto the ground. The crow started cawing, and the young woman threw the empty bottle at it, missing the bird, and smashing it on a stone on the other side of Luke’s. The crow flew away. “Screw you bird!” She yelled out, and sat on the top of the grave. She opened the pill bottle, and downed a handful. She sat there humming to herself, and let the Oxycontin, and Jack do their stuff. The light-headedness was taking its toll, and she laid her head upon his stone. The thought of finality was drifting through her head, and she knew that she was crying. She knew her pain was almost over, and that in the next life she and Luke might be together. She tried to think of the good times that she had with Luke, and all the other things that made her happy, and found herself focusing on her family. She would miss her mom and her brothers, and she knew that they would miss her, but this was the only way that she could get rid of her pain, the pain that just kept coming, promising no relief, just the ongoing feeling of doom. Her life! She could feel herself drifting out of consciousness; she opened her eyes one last time and could see a pair of headlights turning into to the cemetery. She was glad that at least the vultures up above wouldn’t be able to pick her clean, and then she drifted off, to unconsciousness.

excerpt from chapter 5:   Katie Osborn was nervous. She sat at her computer desk, not really knowing how to proceed. This wasn’t her idea, but she needed to show that she was getting a handle on things again. Being mostly deaf since she was 4 years old, had kept her from having many friends. She wasn’t one who liked to speak much, because she couldn‘t usually register how loud she was talking, and she didn‘t like drawing attention to herself. People could usually tell that something was wrong with her. The thing was, that if you were handicapped, in anyway, most people thought that you were also mentally challenged. Katie was on anti-depressants, and she suffered from low self-esteem. She had always heard that her senior year would be her best year in high school, but so far it had been nothing but torture for her. In the last three months, so much had happened, and she found that she didn’t even care so much about anything anymore. She was always an A student, but her grades had slipped. She still did her homework, but she wasn’t always as accurate as she used to be. The days that she lived were filled with dread, thinking every minute about him. There was no time for anything other. She spent most of her days crying, on either the inside or the outside. Inside for the times that she couldn’t publicly display her emotions. When she wasn’t in school, she was in her room, or in the library where she could be anything or anybody she wished herself to be. Her books were her best friends! They always had been. Katie was the youngest of four children, and the only girl. Her oldest brother was 18 years older then she was, and her youngest brother was still ten years older. Her father had confessed to her when she turned sixteen, during one of their many arguments, that she was an accident. She and her father hadn’t gotten along in years. She knew that he felt contempt for her, for all the money that he had had to spend on her. At the age of four, they had found tumors in both of her ears. They had eaten both her eardrums, and the little bones behind them. Katie had to endure 12 surgeries to remove the tumors, and for the reconstruction of her inner ears. She felt that her father never forgave her for making him waste money that way. She knew that her surgeries cost him 100’s of 1000’s of dollars, and knowing her daddy, he resented every bit of it. Meeting people was hard for her. Most people thought she was retarded because of her hearing, but that was far from the truth. Katie had an I.Q. of 155. She still had every book she was ever given, and was constantly reading. She had rode Black Beauty, soared the heavens with Peter Pan, and even been through the depths of Hell with Dante. She started reading when she was Three years old, and by the time she was in Kindergarten, she was reading Fifth grade level. Her teachers were very impressed by her and wanted to skip her ahead. Her mother refused. Her reasoning was that she had a hard time socially the way it was, and that if she was skipped, then she would never make friends. Most of the other kids thought that she was weird because she couldn’t hear them very well, without looking at them, but she didn’t care. She had all the friends she needed anyway. They were all in her room, and they were, by far, a lot more fun then any of them could be. Katie turned on her computer. Her wallpaper was of ‘Hello Kitty’. It had a Pink background, with Kitty in a purple dress, and matching bow. Katie thought it was cute so that’s what she used. ‘Hello Kitty‘, and ‘Strawberry Shortcake’ were her favorite shows when she was a little girl, and so she thought it was appropriate for her wallpaper to show her personality. She clicked Internet Explorer, and was taken to her homepage. Which was Yahoo. At the top of her screen said “GOOD EVENING KATIEKAT”