Like Light for Flies by Lee Thomas

Author:Lee Thomas [Thomas, Lee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: weird, Thriller, Short Stories, gay horror, Horror, awardwinning
ISBN: 9781590210260
Publisher: Lethe Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Nothing Forgiven

You drive south on Kingsley. At your back, the funeral of an uncle and the irritation of the family home, chatting uncomfortably with the strangers you call mom and dad and Aunt Lois. Beyond the windshield low buildings approach—shops and restaurants—all pasted against a sky of granite. Like familiar melodies, long unheard and thought forgotten, memories of youth return, rising from the houses, the road and the street signs marking familiar intersections. So much about the city is different, but even more is the same. After thirty-three years, details you thought long eroded emerge in sharp relief, chasing you from one landmark to the next.

Long ago, you made a promise, swore you’d never return to this place. What you did here—what you allowed to happen in order to escape—was just too much to accept. You put the events down to dream, to delusion, to a mind soused with liquor. You saw things that could never be. And for many years, you blocked it out entirely. Jody. Bobby. They were hardly considered over the years. Now though, with your promise broken and the past’s topography rising, they return, joining you in the car like phantom passengers.

A pang of guilt cuts your stomach. You search the row of low buildings for a bar, hoping to numb the ache with a shot of single malt. The drive to Newark is long enough without the company of such needling companions. You certainly don’t want them sharing the flight back to Dayton, back to Susan.

Your wife is already furious with you. She resented your desertion, reminding you time and again that you couldn’t afford such a trip. The house needs a new roof; the toilet leaks, needs replacing; there is mould in the basement. Right up until you left for the airport, she reminded you how many times you claimed to hate the city of your birth. But you know her concern isn’t for you. These days, it never is.

You can’t blame her. How can you? The accident was such a terrible thing. An evening run, a reckless driver. An active, beautiful woman paralyzed, the prisoner of a wheelchair. Her emotions were bound to be as broken as her spine. And though you can help your wife adapt to the physical limitations of her new condition, you are helpless to stop her depression, her anger, her fits of destructive rage.

After three years, you are as much a captive of the accident as Susan.

You go to work, come home. You try to make her comfortable, endure her irrational outbursts, her phases of black despondence, sometimes weeks long. The settlement is spent.

Your lawyer was lazy, taking an insufficient sum, and the bills keep coming. Month after month, check after check, you never seem to make a dent.

Susan was right; you can’t afford this trip, but you need it. You need to experience something beyond her disapproval and the pile of bills on the kitchen table. Yes, you hated this place. Returning was simply an excuse, a

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.