After I Got the News About Jack
An excerpt from "My Life" by Ennis Del Mar as told to Soulan and annotated by Jack Twist.
As I stared at the big block letters it was like I'd been pitched off a high, high cliff and was falling, falling, falling head first into a void though I was standing stock still in the middle of the street. The blast of a car horn yanked me back and stopped me from smashing into the earth. My legs carried my unfeeling body to the pay phone on the corner and I watched my fingers fumbling with the coins as if they belonged to another's hand.
After Lureen hung up on me I drove back to my shack, numb, the brilliant sun in the cloudless September sky mocking me. It should have been raining. I crawled onto my bed and curled into a ball under the blanket and there I stayed for two days and two nights. When I was awake I felt buried alive, crushed under a great weight. When I slept I dreamt of ashes, of trudging knee-deep through them, breathing them in as they swirled around me and coated my skin and lips. Before the second dawn broke I knew what I had to do.
__________
Fuck. Now I understand why he Oh Ennis.