Absit Insidia

They say that it might have something to do with forgiveness then; that I have not totally collapsed in on myself and gone insane like so many others because these things I do are not done out of hatred. It's no secret you know. When they say it takes a stone cold psycho to be a killer they aren't kidding. Hollywood was never creative enough to come up with something so prophetic. I have seen it happen. I have seen guys walking naked down highways begging for the police to come get them because they couldn't live with what they had done anymore. I have seen hard-assed leather skinned tattoo monsters break out in tears when they are finally confronted with what they had done in a way they could get it out of them, get it off of them.

I do nothing out of hatred.

I do nothing out of anger.

I know nothing of jealousy or pity or rage.

I am kneeling on a hard wooden kneeler, elbows on the pew in front of me, my eyes front and half closed as I say an act of contrition to the empty, dusty church. The last rays of the setting sun cut through the stained glass windows and make pretty patterns on the dark wooden pews and on my clothes and on my face but I notice none of it. I focus only on the words.

I focus only on the air coming in and the words sliding out.

I focus on the light on the inside and keeping it bright. It is all I have ever done. It is all I have ever known how to do. I have a light. I keep it bright.

A love of you, amen.









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The girl is in the phone booth that sits half way between the Double Axle Roadhouse and Tavern and the highway. I am sitting in my Chevy sipping a Fresca and watching her. The sun has gone down and the air is starting to cool; the damp cool you get in the fall to let you know that summer is over and the cold days are about to set upon us. I can hear crickets, I can see stars. Nights like this are beautiful. I loved them as a child. I love them now. They always make me wish I could be sitting with someone pretty, wrapped up in a blanket by a campfire. Maybe there would be some beers.

Some beers and someone pretty.

That would be pretty awesome I think.

The girl is standing in the phone booth and she isn't happy. She keeps kicking at the ground as she talks and the hand holding her cigarette keeps stabbing at the dark air like she wants to teach it something. She is nineteen years old and her name is Karen Markham. She works twelve to fifteen hours a week at a book shop in Maynardsville and volunteers at the Church's Youth Counselling services. By all accounts she is a good kid, but she hates her life and her life hates her.

That's why I'm here.

I just want you to know this.

These things, they have to happen.

I bear no ill will against you.

This is about you, and the blade, and the blood.

The moon.

Those stars.

This room.

That dark.

Goodnight.