My Writing
They Say
I was born to pain, at least the second time around I was. It’s what I imagine waking up in hell must be like; not knowing who you are or where you’re at or why. There’s nothing but the fire raging all around you, and nothing else seems to matter anyhow. It’s all consuming, and you feel you’d rather peel the flesh right off your bones than continue to face the inferno, all for that one iota of relief.
I’m not in hell, though for a time I would have waged all I have on that bet. Not that I had anything with which to bet, save for my sanity, itself in short supply, as it were.
The women in white come to visit me several times a day.
They say my name is David. They say I am with wife and child. Three children in fact: two boys and a little girl. Their names are Mark, John and Elizabeth. Do I like the name John? It seems such a common name, something I wouldn’t have chosen had I the choice. Did I even have a choice? The women say they are my children, yet their faces stir no sense of love in my heart, such as I’m sure one’s children would. And their mother, she seems a bit odd, always staring off as if distracted, her eyes awash. She comes by every day, sometimes with the children and other times with not, every time trying to convince of me my life, at least the life she says I lived.
They say I am a writer, that I have created magical lands and epic battles with naught but my mind, a blank sheet of paper, and a pen. The children’s mother even brought with her some of my work one day, or what she claimed for my work. I had nothing to compare it with, though the narration seemed lacking. She only laughed and said I always was my worst critic.
They say it was an accident. They say I slid on some black ice as I was making the bend, going just a bit too fast. They say she died on impact, not lingering around to feel the pain now coursing through my own body. I had never met Elizabeth, though the children’s mother once showed me a picture of her; she was laughing, her auburn hair too bright to be allowed yet fitting her face. I can see from my arms that I have red hair. I can see from the look in the children’s mother’s eyes that she has trouble looking at me for more than a second at a time.
They say I have amnesia. They say that had I hit my head a quarter of an inch to the left I would be dead. They say I had been drinking.
Together all of their stories seem to fit, all of their observations true. It would seem at first glance that I am the children’s mother’s husband, that these children are in fact my own, and that I had been in a horrific crash—the pain alone confirmed the last.
They say it was an accident. They say my name is David and that I am with wife and children. They say that I killed my daughter.
What do they know?