Merkaba

Jeff Pollard
Merkaba


Death is a funny thing. I remember fearing it, but I know the truth now. I am a normal person, except that I’m dead. But Death is a funny thing. I’m re-living my life, going through all of the experiences again. I can’t change anything, but it feels just as real the second time around. I see things much differently now. Being dead changes your outlook on life. I’m up to twenty-five now. I have to re-live it all in order, but everything reminds me of something later or earlier, and I keep flashing around.

I’m driving. Oh. I’m twenty-six now. Jennifer is sitting next to me. I’m not happy, and neither is she. These were rocky times. She stares out the window blankly. My hands are sweating on the steering wheel. I have things to say to her, but I can’t. I just feel sadness. I’m staring at the yellow center line, not focusing on the road. I am dazing off, and the headlights of a truck don’t jerk me out of my daze. The road is curving gently to the left, and then the wheel jerks out of my hand. We turn right into the path of the truck. I tense up, waiting for impact, and time stands still for an instant. I don’t hear or feel anything, it’s just sudden. It’s not like the movies.

My eyes open, and Jennifer is lying next to me. I am twenty-five again. She is breathing softly, on the verge of snoring. I look at her face, and I smile on the inside. I roll over in bed, moving the pillows around to help me get back to sleep.

My eyes open, and I can’t tell what I am looking at. I feel woozy. The lights are too bright, and I squint. I try to say “Where am I?” but I can’t. I strangely realize that I am lying down. I feel like I am standing, body rigidly in place. Someone is squeezing my hand. I can’t move my head, but I can tell it is Jennifer’s hand squeezing mine. I am comforted by her touch. There is a person standing over me. He took a mask off my face, something I hadn’t noticed was there. “Can you hear me?” He asks. I can hear him, I just can’t talk. My vision blurs in and out. I feel like I am floating. I suddenly realize that I am hearing sirens, and have been since I awoke. I am wondering why there are sirens, but I don’t ask. Jennifer’s face appears in front of me. She has blood on her face, but she is still beautiful. She looks sad. Why is she sad?

I’m in bed again. It’s bright in here. Jennifer isn’t next to me anymore. I sit up and look around, not seeing her. I lie back, and wonder where she is. Jennifer walks in. “I gotta go,” she says. I tell her “Bye,” and she is gone. I wait a few minutes and then get up. Standing up, I get dizzy, not enough oxygen to the brain, and my vision narrows, knees weaken and I stumble to the ground.

“He’s suffered major brain trauma,” he says. She is sobbing. I am awake, but not really there. I feel alright.
“So…will, will he be ok?” She asks, almost unable to speak. I’m laying face down now, inside some kind of scanner I think.
“We don’t know. He is barely responsive, he could slip into a coma at any moment, he could die, he could be fine, we don’t know,” he says. I’m fine. I know I’m fine, but they don’t, because they don’t know that I am already dead. I know it. I died, but I didn’t die here, and not from this. That is a different story. I still have a while before I have to go through that again. I’m itchy all over. I think it’s whatever hospital clothes I am wearing. I turn my head to the side, and I can see Jennifer. She stares back at me rather blankly. She seems like she is not sure if she should be sad or not.
“I’m itchy,” I say.
“Can he hear us?” She asks. I laugh at her, of course I can hear.
“Yes, he is still somewhat responsive, but the swelling is going to get worse,” The tall man says.
“I don’t feel like I’m swelling,” I say, feeling floaty again. My vision blurs out. I don’t know how much time is passing. It could be seconds or hours. I feel her grip my hand but I cannot see. She whispers in my ear.


I am on the ground, back in our apartment. I slowly pick myself off the floor, having to realize that I am not injured in any way, because the accident hasn’t happened yet. But it will. I walk into the bathroom, and turn the shower on. Once the warm water has kicked in, I step into the stream. The bathroom is unusually dark, one of the two light bulbs has burnt out, but I have yet to replace it. I feel strange, and don’t want to do anything. I sit down in the shower, putting my head down. The water runs down my face and I sit there silently for several minutes.

I am walking down a city street. The streetlights aren’t all working, and it is raining somewhat heavily. The wind is blowing against me, but I keep on walking silently down the street. I hear a sound behind me. Something repetitive, like a drummer playing a simple beat. I turn back and see a man running down the sidewalk towards me. He is a long way off, and running fast. He has something in his hand, which I immediately hope is not a weapon, but I cannot tell. I stop and face him, as he is still running toward me. He looks up and sees me, he looks behind him, and he keeps sprinting. In the distance I can hear sirens. I stand there not knowing what to do, and doing nothing as he continues to close the distance.

The once hot water is now cold and I stand up, turning it off. I towel off and walk out of the bathroom. Later in the day, I decide to check the mail. I get dressed and head out the door to the elevator. I have to wait a while for the elevator, the whole time thinking I should be taking the stairs, but I don’t. It finally opens and I get into the empty steel box. I press the button for the lobby and it takes a while to get down there. The old slow elevator always makes noises. Most elevators make the same noises and they become comforting to hear the same noise every time, but this one is always making a new noise, always giving you something to worry about. I guess I should be concerned when it makes the same noise. I step out into the drab lobby. I see that it is raining outside, which I hadn’t noticed before, but it really doesn’t matter for anything. I walk the short distance down a side hall to the mailboxes. I find our box, and open it up with the key. There’s just a few things; a bill, some junk mail, and a magazine. I turn around to go back to the elevator, and there is a woman coming to check mail too. I smile at her and she smiles back. I get to the elevator and press the button for my floor. The door is about to close and I see the woman turn the corner. I quickly press the ‘door open’ button and it stops closing and opens again. The blonde woman smiles and thanks me as she steps into the elevator. She goes to press a button but stops. “Hey we live on the same floor,” she says.

I wake up, lying on the couch. I have a blanket draped over me. I don’t feel like doing anything, but I do feel better somehow. The remote is just out of reach and I have to strain to pick it up. I flip through the channels very quickly. I barely look at a channel before changing to the next one, and establish that there is nothing on in a matter of seconds. I keep flipping, staring mindlessly, hoping to see something interesting. I leave it on The Godfather Part Three, and I dose off quickly.

“Hi honey,” Jennifer says, waking me up.
“Hi,” I reply, sitting up. She sat on the couch beside me.
“What’d you do today?” She asks.

“I’ve never seen you before,” I say, back in the elevator.
“Are you new here?” She asks me, she is standing forward, and turning to look at me, I notice these things. I subtly shift my feet so they are pointing towards her rather than the door.
“I was going to ask you the same thing,” I say.
“Allison,” She says, putting her hand out, and her feet shift as mine did, pointing towards me. I guess that if you keep your head down a lot you notice that what people’s feet are doing is quite revealing.
“James,” I say somewhat reluctantly, shaking her hand. Allison is taller than me, and she exudes happiness, I feel almost happy just being in her presence.
“So what do you do James?” She asks as though she is reading from a script, or following the rules of talking to someone you have just met.
“I’m a writer,” I say.
“Of course you are,” She says, smiling. It’s almost demeaning the way she said it, but she said it gladly.
“What is that supposed to mean?” I ask her.
“It seems like everyone I meet is an aspiring writer, they just tend to leave off the aspiring part,” She says. I was looking at her somewhat oddly, and she looked down at her feet.
“What do you do?” I ask her.
“Well…” The elevator opened, the bell rang, interrupting her. She shrugged and we walked off the elevator, I went to go to my apartment, and she grabbed my hand, and pulled me the opposite way. I didn’t resist, and followed her back to her apartment. Her apartment was laid out the same as mine, but mirrored. It’s strange going into an apartment that’s exactly backwards to yours. It’s like visiting your home’s cousin. It’s not quite the same thing, but it feels oddly comfortable. She has a nicely decorated apartment. It seems that her favorite color is purple, as it is a primary theme in here. I sit down on a couch; the coffee table in front of it has several magazines. The place feels very new, almost like it has never been used. Allison sits down on a chair opposite the couch.
“It’s nice,” I say, glancing around the room.
“I bought most this stuff online,” She said, smiling, her head tilted slightly to one side. She has her face in her hands, and her elbows on her knees, like a schoolgirl. I feel old, and she can’t be much younger than me, if not older.
“So…what do you want to do?” She asks. At first I’m thinking, “Well, you brought me here,” but I don’t say it. She leans back, overtly pressing her arms against her chest to accentuate her features.
“What do you want to do?” I ask her. Jennifer is gone, nowhere in my mind, now its just Allison. I feel like I can control her, like she is just a puppet of my imagination. But, she probably just likes doing things like that. Most women are gatherers, this one is a hunter. Now it’s just flashes, quick moments in rapid succession, as the memory of earlier today comes back to me, until finally I am laying next to her, euphoric.

“Honey?” Jennifer nudges me. “Sam!”
“Yeah,” I say, startled from my daydreaming.
“What did you do today?” She asks me.
“Nothing,” I say. She is on to me. Well, maybe she isn’t. She is smart though, if I’m not careful, she will know.
“What should we do for dinner?” Jennifer asks me, sitting back in the couch. I put my arm around her shoulder.
“I’m not hungry,” I say.
“We can wait till later, I don’t mind,” She says.
“No, just do whatever you want,” I say, standing up and walking to my office to check my e-mail. I sit down and move the mouse to kill the screensaver. A few clicks and I get to my inbox. I have an e-mail from Jennifer. She sent it from work earlier. All it says is, “Thinking of you.” I click delete, and then to the next e-mail. The next e-mail is from my sister. I don’t see her often and she lives too far away to visit. Simple message. “Pregnant again, due in October, wish mom and dad were still here.” She never was one for talking a lot. Good for her I think. She has one child already, and I know she is a good mother. This one is from my publishing company. It’s very typical of them.

I am dressed in the nicest suit I have. Wearing it makes me feel so cool, as if I am just that important. However I am nervous because this is about as close to a boss as I have, and I don’t talk to him very often. I walk into his office and his secretary tells me to go on in. His office is so neat and orderly, probably cleaned every night. He is a rather nerdy looking guy, thick glasses, and hunched over in his chair that looks out of place in the nice office. “Sit down Sam,” he says. That doesn’t sound good, no hello. “I’m sorry but we have decided not to option your novel, we don’t believe that it meets our requirements for quality.”
“So you’re telling me it sucks,” I nearly say.

“What’d you say honey?” Jennifer says from the living room.
“Nothing,” I mumble. Another rejection.

Later in the evening, we are settling down to bed. I quickly lay down and try to sleep. “Sam,” She says.
“Yeah?” I say, somewhat annoyed at the interruption.
“I uh…I want to know where we are,” Jennifer says. I avoid the obvious smart-ass reply, and roll over to face her.
“What do you mean?” I ask her.
“I mean…where are we?” I stare at her eyes, at a loss for words.
“I don’t know,” I say. “How should I know,” I am thinking.
“What would we do if I got pregnant?” Jennifer says. I feel empty.
“I’d want to marry you,” I say.
“So you would want to keep it,” She says.
“Yeah, well, it would really be your decision,” I say.
“Why would it be my decision?” She counters.
“I don’t know, why is it your decision,” I respond. She is silent. “Well, look, you could choose to leave me, and keep it or not, and I couldn’t stop you. Or, we could stay together, and keep it or not. That’s the four options. I’d like to think that I am responsible and I would marry you and be a father, but I can’t tell you that I would, because I honestly don’t know. And you’re the one that has the baby, so I guess there are two questions. One, do you want to be a mother, and two, do you want me to be the father. And the answers in some combination of their degrees of certainty should tell you what you want to do.”
“You sound like you have been thinking about this a lot,” She says, somewhat stunned.
“Well, yeah I have thought about it. The future isn’t a matter to be taken lightly, and I do indeed think of the consequences and make sure I am ready for the worst of them.”
“Maybe we should just get married,” She says, after a moment of silence.
“Are you trying to tell me in a roundabout way that you are pregnant?” I ask her.
“No, I just mean, why don’t we get married.”
“Maybe we should,” I say.
“Can we talk about this later?” She asks, tired from her day of work, and preparing for the next.
“Sure,” I say, and we separately try to sleep on our sides of the bed.


Jennifer is nearly crying. Her eyes are red and reflective. She looks worn down, like a mal-nourished teenage girl. She has stitches on the side of her forehead. The doctor sits her down beside me. I am lying on the hospital bed, sore all over, and not very well conscious.
“We have gotten some test results back, and we have found some anomalies,” The doctor says evenly. He shows us a picture of my brain, from one of the many scans they have done in the past few days. “You see this region here, this is showing abnormal activity, as opposed to normal function here in this picture,” He says, showing a normal brain. Apparently my brain doesn’t fit the category of normal, that’s usually a bad sign. “I have conferred with my colleagues and we believe that this will affect Samuel’s ability to interpret reality,” He says.
“What does that mean?” Jennifer asks, angry at his ambiguity.
“Well, we believe he will suffer from a permanent state of semi-consciousness, he will not ever be truly awake or asleep, and that he may be unable to distinguish between the two. Basically it amounts to a full handicap on ever working again, and he will most likely struggle with this for the rest of his life. However, we cannot say these are certain, he may recover fully, he may die before it can affect him, we do not know enough. I’m sorry to say that modern medicine and scientific understanding is not enough to be any help to him,” The doctor says. I guess I can’t ever work again…It’s alright, I wasn’t any good at my job anyway. They didn’t like my writing before the accident. It sounds like I will be on an acid trip permanently. People throw their lives away pursuing a chemical existence, and I get to do it for free, without doing drugs, can’t be that bad. I’m smiling like an idiot, I know I am, but I can’t stop myself. Jennifer’s hand is gripping mine hard. She is talking to the doctor, but now I can’t hear them anymore. Or perhaps my brain has chosen to stop listening and I am in my subconscious divergence, or whatever he was talking about. I labour to hold my eyelids open and fail. When I open them again, Jennifer is no longer talking to the doctor, or in the room even. My mother is now sitting by my side, gripping my hand, talking to the doctor.


A Few Months Later

She is gone already when I wake up. She has been at work for a while judging by the time. The bedroom doesn’t seem like ours anymore. It’s just a room. I get up to walk to the bathroom. When she moved in, it was our room, and now it’s just a room again. I get to the bathroom, and turn on the water in the shower. I stand outside the shower, waiting for hot water, and I look over at the trash can. I can see the edge of a box, and the small portion of writing that I can see catches my eye. I bend over and grab the box, a pregnancy test. I stand there staring at it in my hand, not feeling anything. I reach into the trash to find the results of the test, but find nothing. I put the box back in the trash, trying to hide the fact that I found it. I step in the shower.

I step out of the shower and I am back in high school. I am extremely tired, waking up so early. I get ready and go outside to my car, driving to school. I feel like an imposter in my own body. I don’t know what day it is, what year it is, but I don’t have to because, I, the person I am inside of, does. It’s just a memory, but I am living it again. Time doesn’t exist in this place, and the continuity of this place is sacrificed by its audience.
There she is, sitting in the back of the room as I walk in. I walk back and sit beside her. She seems awfully detached today. Normally opening up to me, laughing at my bad jokes, her mind isn’t in the present, it’s somewhere else. After class we walk together through the crowded hallway. Arriving at a friend’s locker, the place where we all coalesce each day, she stands next to Adam. They have been dating since Christmas break. I was going to ask her out. I should have asked her to homecoming, but I am an idiot about these things. I was going to ask her out, and then I found out she was dating him, one of my best friends. I think they both know that I like her, and have for a while. She usually flirts back at me, but not today. I can’t blame him for going out with her. It’s not like I called dibbs or something, no etiquette was broken, it just so happens that I am in love with my friend’s girlfriend.
I’m back in my apartment. I’m holding the phone, wondering if I should call Jennifer at work or not. It would seem that we have something to talk about. I hold the phone in my hand. I’m working up the courage to call her. What would I say? I run through the conversation a dozen times. Then I think, “Okay, I’m going to call her,” and then I start dialing, and hang-up before I finish. Finally, I set the phone down, resolved on waiting to talk to her face to face.

I’m at Adam’s house, we’re watching TV. His cell phone rings. He looks at caller-id and presses the button on the side, stopping the ringer, and sets the phone back down.
“Who was it?” I ask, chuckling.
“Rachel,” He says. Now I have to wonder why he doesn’t want to talk to his girlfriend. A minute later his phone rings again, a quick glance, and he silences it again.
“Why don’t you want to talk to her?” I ask him.
“Cause she is stupid,” He says. In a way this brightens my day, if they break up…The phone rings again. He silences it again.
“Why?” I ask.
“She got pregnant,” He says evenly, in a dark tone. That wasn’t what I was expecting. I didn’t know they were having sex. I didn’t take her for that kind of girl, or him for that kind of guy either.
“What are you going to do?” I ask him.
“What do you mean?” He asks me. I am dumbfounded. How can I possibly continue as his friend…I want to hit him.

Jennifer gets home, and I greet her. She seems unusually happy today, but not saying why. She sits on the couch beside me. “How was your day?” I ask her.
“Fine,” Jennifer says. Her voice holds a tension that I only notice because I already know it exists. She isn’t coming clean. I wonder if that’s good or bad news.
“What do you want to do for dinner?” I ask her.
“I don’t know, I’m not feeling to well,” she says.
“I’m sorry,” I say simply.
“Sam,” She says, a somber tone in her voice.

I’m back in high school again. Well, actually, it’s a month past graduation, but it still seems like high school. Adam and Rachel are publicly broken up. He is leaving for college in a month, and so am I. Rachel is staying put, the public reason is that she is going to community college for a while before transferring to a University. Only a few people know why she is really staying home. I’m sitting in my room, my parents downstairs watching TV, and I am bored on a weekday night. My cell phone starts vibrating in my pocket. I reach for the volume on the speakers for my computer, then reach for my phone in my pocket. The caller-ID tells me that it is Rachel. My heart stops dead. I flip the phone open and say, “Hello?”
“Sam?”
“Yeah?”
“It’s…It’s Rachel.” She says, I can immediately hear her sadness.
“Hi,” I say in a warm tone, trying to comfort her, knowing that I can’t.
“It’s about Adam…Do…Do you know…” She can’t get her words out. “Do you know what he is going to do?” I want to play dumb. I want to pretend I don’t know what she is talking about. She doesn’t know for a fact that I know about her pregnancy, I haven’t talked to her about it. I want to play dumb. I am tempted to play dumb, but then again, I can open up to her…the woman I love, I can open up to her. But then again, playing dumb is easier, and I usually take the easy route.
“He is going,” I say simply, playing the part of the messenger.
“Are you sure he isn’t thinking about staying?”
“I don’t think the thought has crossed his mind,” I tell her, trying to emphasize how much my friend doesn’t care for her. She is trying to find a father, and the father isn’t one. There is silence on the other line.
“Are you going to keep it?” I ask her.
“I don’t know,” She says.
“Do your parents know about it?”
“My mom does.” More silence.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“It’s not your fault,” She says.
“I should have asked you to homecoming. I should have been your boyfriend. I wish I was the one that was a father, because I wouldn’t leave you.”
I could hear her jaw drop.
“I’m sorry Sam…I don’t think. I don’t think we have the right chemistry,” She says, for a moment thinking in terms of high school dating, and not in that of adulthood.
“I don’t think you are hearing me Rachel. I’m not saying I wish I could be there for you, I am here for you.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
A Few Days Later
I am sitting in bed, waiting for her to finish taking a shower. Jennifer comes into the bedroom in a towel, her hair wet. She sits on the side of the bed, brushing her hair.
“Are you pregnant?” I ask her. The brushing stops.
“Why do you ask?”
“I found the box in the trash,” I say simply.
“I don’t know,” She says seriously. She starts brushing again. I get across the bed and sit next to her, putting my arm around her. She stares ahead, trying not to acknowledge me. I stare at her.
“Jennifer,” I say. She reluctantly looks at me. “Marry me,” I say. Her face is blank for a while, staring ahead. She looks at me, an awkward smile on her face, and she hugs me.

I am supposed to be going to college in a week. I haven’t decided if I am or not. I am sitting in my bedroom with Rachel. “I’m going to stay with my parents,” She says.
“I want to be the father,” I say, my head lying on her stomach. “We could live together, and go to school together. I could work too, and our parents could help. I have money from my grandparents for college. It’s more than enough for five years at a university. If we go to community college for a while then to a cheap university, we could live off that money.”
“I don’t know if we should do this,” She says.
“I’ve thought about it a lot. I’m ready for this.”
“Why do you want to do all this for me?” She asks me innocently.
“Because I love you,” I say. She is silent, and I listen to her heart beating.

“James! James!” Allison screams out in ecstasy.

“I’m getting married,” I think, sitting on the couch in the afternoon. Jennifer should be home soon. I haven’t talked to her since the proposal, I didn’t talk to her in the morning. She arrived, her face oddly deranged. She sat beside me on the couch. Our smiles were exchanged. “We’re getting married,” She says matter-of-factly.
“Isn’t it wonderful,” I say.
“Like you’ve been here before,” She says sarcastically. And I can hear her realize that I may have been here before. “You haven’t been married before?...right?”
“I should have told you,” I say apologetically.
“When were you married?” She protests.
“We were eighteen,” I say in my defense.
“Did you love her?” Jennifer asks.
“I don’t know,” I say.
“How can you marry someone you don’t love?” She asks, her voice pleading, as if asking me to change the story I am telling her.
“We were eighteen…How can you live a lie?... How can you kill? These things that seem so hard until you have done them.”
“Have you killed someone?” She asks, missing my point.
“No…I mean…there are all these things that we think are enormous…but they really aren’t.”
“I don’t understand,” she says.
“How can you not tell me that you might be pregnant? It seems deceitful or something, but to you it wasn’t that hard, was it?” I say, defending myself.
“I’m sorry,” She says.
“I’m not mad about that, I am just trying to make a point,” I say. “I just mean…some things seem really bad, but they turn out to be easy to do.”
“So what happened…what was her name,” Jennifer asks.
“Rachel…”

The time to go to college has passed, and I am still home. There are these things in the future that you know are coming. You don’t know how some of them will happen, or if they will, but there are some that are certain. Going to college was certain, but it turns out it wasn’t. Convincing myself was easy, convincing my parents wasn’t. I tried to explain to them why I was doing this, but I couldn’t make them understand. Rachel seemed comforted in the idea of marriage.
We were sitting on her bed in her room. It was decorated and adorned with the things of childhood. This was a girl’s room, inhabited by a pregnant woman. We were lying beside each other. It was so cold in there. I felt like a man for the first time, making a decision that mattered for something. I think I am just tired of meaninglessness. We are staring at the ceiling, listening to each other breathe, waiting for something to happen, waiting for the other to speak.
“Will you marry me,” I say, gripping her hand, feeling her pulsate with her heart’s beats.
“Yes,” Rachel whispers. Neither of us break our gaze from her ceiling.
“Is this love?” I ask her.
“I don’t know,” She responds, in a trance.
“How do you like our family?” I ask her, putting my hand on her bare stomach. She giggles.
“What are we going to name it?” She asks.
“Do you know if it is a boy or girl yet?” I ask her.
“You’ve gone with me every-time, you know I don’t,” Rachel says.
“I guess we have to think of two names,” I suggest.
“What about James,” She suggests.
“What about Satan,” I suggest. She doesn’t laugh as I was expecting. I guess the abstract idea of naming your child is funny when you are young, but when you feel the person growing inside you the humour fades. “How about…Maynard.”
“I like it…” She says. “What about a girl…I think Katie is good.”
“What about Rachel…Rachel Junior…” I laugh.
“I don’t think you can do that,” She giggles.
“Why not, people just make up names nowadays, and they use Zs and Ys too much.

“I’m pregnant,” Jennifer says, sitting on the edge of her side of the bed, her head down. My body throbs as my heart pounds in excitement.
“I guess we should get married before you start to show,” I say, smiling but she can’t see me.
“Yeah,” Jennifer says.
“Are you going to the doctor?” I ask her after a silence.
“I’ll make an appointment tomorrow,” She says.
“Well…better get some sleep,” I say, rolling over and going to sleep.

A Few Months Later

She is barely showing now. Showing enough that I can’t help but smile whenever I look at her, knowing she is carrying our daughter Karmen. I know how Karmen grows up, I know how we become parents. I know the whole story, beginning to end, yet here I am in the middle of the story again. “What?” Jennifer asks, smiling. I am sitting on the couch, staring at her sitting on the other end.
“Nothing,” I say, smiling a little.
“Why do you keep looking at me like that?” She asks, blushing.
“No reason,” I say, looking back to the TV.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Karmen asks. She is eighteen.
“I’m just…disappointed,” I say, I’m trying not to use the dad voice, but there it is.
“It’s not my fault,” Karmen says. I want to scream at her. It is her fault. Jennifer isn’t helping me, sitting quietly, her head down.
“Why would you do this to yourself?” I ask her, although I am already all too familiar with the situation. She won’t answer. Karmen probably wants to scream at me when it’s herself she needs to be angry with. Maybe she is angry with herself, and we are just making it worse.
“I’m keeping it,” Karmen says.
“I wasn’t going to suggest otherwise.”

“Sam!” Jennifer says, and I break out of my daydream.
“Yes?” I ask softly, looking at her.
“What were you just thinking about?” She asks me. “I yelled at you like five times!”
“Oh nothing,” I reply. “I am Tralfamadorian.”
“What?” Jennifer asks.
“Nevermind.”
“Oh I forgot to tell you…” Jennifer says, “I met this woman down the hall, her name is Allison, and she was telling me about this article she read…” Jennifer trails off in my head. Her lips are still moving, but no words penetrate my ears. I just think of Allison. I don’t think Jennifer knows about us. Well, there isn’t much of an us. It was just a few times that we did that. I do regret it, especially now that we are trying to be a family. I could tell her, confess. I should tell her.

“What’s his name?” I command more than ask.
“You’ve never met him,” Karmen says, she’s no longer defiant, dejected.
“What is his name?”
“James,” She says, her head down again. “James Marshall.”
“James Marshall!!” I say.
“What, you know him?” Karmen asks.
“He’s eight years older than you!”

And now I am lying on Rachel’s bed, eighteen years old and engaged. “So have you gotten used to the idea of changing your last name?” I ask her.
“I don’t know, maybe I will hyphenate it,” Rachel says.
“Or I could take your last name…Sam Marshall…”

“I have something I need to tell you…” I say to Jennifer. She sits up and is anticipating this.
“What, did you forget to tell me about another marriage?” Jennifer protests.
“I wish…I…” I look down, not wanting to see her now. I don’t want to hurt her, and I guess that if I don’t see her face it isn’t as real. “I cheated on you.” I expect screaming, or something thrown at me, but nothing happens. I look up, and I can’t express how bad her face makes me feel. Her face is that of a terminal patient receiving bad news. I was expecting inquiries, who, when, why, and so on. I feel strange that she doesn’t ask me these things. Should I just tell her these things? “With Allison,” I say.
“When!” She asks, her tone showing a little anger. She is turning red. Hell hath no fury, she has it all, amassing inside her.
“A few months ago, just a few times, and I wish it never happened,” I say. We sit there silently. I keep my head down.

“James Marshal,” I say, opening the door, letting the twenty-six year old who has impregnated my eighteen year old daughter into my home. The whole family is sitting in the living room. James sits next to Karmen. Jennifer and I sit opposite them. “Do you know who I am?” I ask him.
“Her father,” He replies sarcastically, damn smart-ass.
“That’s not all that I am,” I say. “You’re twenty-six.”
“You told him?” James asks my daughter, angry at her. His posture…I thought he was about to hit her. Then I would have killed him.
“No! He knew somehow!” Karmen protested.
“Let’s just say I knew your mother,” I tell him through gritted teeth. I see his little mind putting some things together in his malfunctioning brain.
“No…” James stands up threateningly. “You aren’t my father, she told me his name was Adam.”
“Samuel Adam Keenan, you’re mother is Rachel Marshall, her birthday is November 22nd, and the only reason you are alive today is me.” He stares at me, dumbfounded.
“That’s sick! You are insane, this is all crazy, what the…” James rambles on angrily, he grabs Karmen’s arm, trying to pull her with him. She resists, and he yanks on her arm, nearly throwing her to the ground. I am in his face immediately.
“If you touch her again, I will kill you with my bare hands and enjoy watching your corpse burn.” I am furious, past the point of constructing intelligible threats. James leaves. I sit next to my daughter.
“Your middle name isn’t Adam,” Karmen says, confused.
“I’m not his father…” I say.
“That’s just wrong, why would you do that?” Karmen asks. “He thinks I am his sister now.”
“You almost were…”

“Why did you do it?” Jennifer asks, her eyes burning red, but no tears have yet escaped.
“I don’t know.” I reply.
“Do you not love me?” She asks.
“I do love you,” I say, my head still down.
“Then why?”
“I don’t know.”
“God damnit Sam, talk to me!” I look up at her, and she can tell I am angry, angry with myself.
“Look…okay Jennifer, let’s think of it like this. Do you believe in a soul mate?”
“I did until a few minutes ago,” She says coldly. A dagger in my heart. I consider not living anymore, the way that remark makes me feel.
“So yes, you do. I don’t. I believe that love exists; I think we have it, we still have it, but I don’t believe that there is one person out there that is right for you. To believe that is to believe that there is a divine plan controlling everything, and I cannot believe that. I believe that there are a finite number of people that are in a certain realm of compatibility that permits love to thrive, and what happens if I find one of those rare people while I am with you, someone who if I met at a different time, could be the one, but because you are here, she can’t be, am I supposed to pretend she doesn’t exist, that doesn’t seem fair to her.” Rachel comes to mind.
“You love her?” Jennifer asks.
“No! I love you, only you, but…” She cuts me off.
“But what!”
“Jennifer…I…” I shake my head, wanting to somehow communicate to her how I feel. For me this whole trial of our relationship has been over for a long time, I have gotten over it, but because she is just now finding out about it, it’s trying her.

“I am thinking about not having it,” Rachel tells me, sitting together on her bed.
“Why? I thought…I thought we were going to be a family, I am here for you, we can make this work,” I say.
“I just don’t know, I don’t know if we are really ready. What if we fail…and this child turns into god knows what, because we can’t raise it properly” She says, her head down.
“Rachel…we will not fail. You will be a good mother, and I will be a good father, I will love you and this baby, and that is all we could ever need.” Her eyes meet mine, and I feel her tears coming on.
“How could you love me?” Rachel asks, tilting her head to one side, every little thing she does is beautiful.
“I love you…I will always love you…”

“You can’t stop me from seeing him!” Karmen protests.
“I can, and I will.” I reply.
“I’m an adult!” Karmen yells.
“No you aren’t,” I say simply. “I am serious, if I ever see him again, I will kill him.”
“Then I will just run away,” Karmen tells me.
“Go ahead, run away with him, let him beat you up. Watch as he goes down that path, pulling you along, taking you and your baby with him to the gates of hell.” That shut her up. I leave her room and go to mine, Jennifer is sitting in bed.
“You can’t kill him,” Jennifer says.
“Why not?” I ask. She looks at me like I am an idiot. I walk away, go to my office, and get on my computer. I need a way to kill this bastard. I e-mail my friend Joe, he is a chemist, works on black projects, maybe he can help me.

“Remember we have an appointment tomorrow,” Jennifer says, as we go to bed. Lying in the dark, I hear her breathing change, and I know she is asleep. I try to sleep. She hates me right now, why did I do this. I didn’t have to tell her. I shouldn’t upset her. Can’t change it now.

I’m lying on my back in the hospital again. Jennifer is clutching my hand. I look over at her and she smiles through her tears. No longer angry is she. She is so beautiful, blood stained on her face, fresh stitches on her forehead, disheveled clothes, her stomach showing just enough to always remind me of our child. I am euphoric. I don’t think it’s the drugs, it’s her smile. I haven’t seen it in a while. She was angry, now she is happy, content with me for just being alive. I don’t need drugs to feel good when I can see that happy face. She is my drug. We’re getting married soon. Or, at least I assume the wedding is still on, that face is very encouraging to that prospect.

The box came a few days later. Joe came through. He told me all about it. It’s something they were working on for assassinations. The vile contains a clear liquid. It is not marked, but he told me all about it. It’s metabolized quickly in blood, so it’s undetectable. It causes the nervous system to cease functioning, paralyzing and numbing the victim, then the heart stops. It takes less than a minute. Just a small prick, a quick squirt, and he is out of the picture, one less bastard on the planet. I could do it the old-fashioned way, shoot him and claim self defense. But this seems like a safer option…for me that is. Now I just wait for him to try something.

It’s just one of those things in life. You never know how something will affect you later. You are running late and miss your flight, which promptly explodes after take-off. Those are rare, but everyone has something like that in their life, but it may be too subtle for them to realize it, at least not on their first trip through their life. I have noticed plenty of those. The accident is the best one. I don’t know what would have happened if we didn’t get in that wreck, but I know what happened as a result of the wreck. Perhaps I would have lost her, and our daughter, she might have left me. I regained her love, lying on my back, near death.

“Sam!” Jennifer wakes me up suddenly. Immediately I know something is wrong. It’s that feeling you get when something terrible happens, we all know what it is.
“What?” I ask, sitting up.
“Listen,” She says. I hear a car running outside, loud engine, and talking down the hallway. She’s trying to runaway with him. That’s the end of him. I get up, throw on some clothes quietly, I grab the small syringe from my drawer, putting it carefully in my pocket. I open the door, and see the light spilling out from Karmen’s room. I creep silently down the hallway. I get to the door, and sit against the wall just outside, listening in.
“I don’t want to go,” Karmen says.
“You’re going,” James says. That’s all I need to hear. I turn the corner and walk into her room. Karmen is sitting on her bed and James is standing in front of her. I walk around James to my daughter, standing between them.
“You will never see her again, leave now,” I say sternly. His face takes on a fiendish glee, as he reaches in his pocket. I have no time to react, and the gun fires, striking me in the stomach. I am on the floor on my side, and I hear screaming. I hit my head on the floor when I fell, and I lost consciousness for a moment. James runs out of the room. Jennifer runs in. I feel my life rushing out of me. Jennifer jumps over me and onto the bed. I am being ignored. Why would she not rush to my aide…The realization is worse than the feeling of dying.
“Ahhhh!” Jennifer screams in tears.

I am standing in the hospital, by Jennifer’s side. She is in a lot of pain. She told me that the pain would be worth it, and later she would tell me that it was worth it, but right now I don’t know if she is right, as she is screaming. She brings our daughter into the world; the happiest day of our lives.

Jennifer is standing by my side in the hospital. Karmen is dead, she tells me. The bullet went through my stomach and then hit Karmen in the chest behind me. She was dead before I hit the floor. James is gone, the police can’t find him. The doctor wouldn’t tell me how I was. I was in surgery for a long time, but it doesn’t seem like it. Jennifer is hugging me, and her arms have dried blood on them, probably from Karmen. The baby never had a chance. I’ll kill him. Maybe the police will kill him for me. That bastard! Jennifer is crying, I can’t really feel her, but she is losing her whole family in a day. Apparently I have suffered head trauma. I am not going to make it. They say you will be paralyzed, they say you will have mental problems, they say you will die. I have the syringe in my pocket. My pants aren’t on me though. Jennifer finds the syringe for me. She injects me. She stares into my eyes. I’ll see you again. She smiles for a moment as I pass from her world into another. She thinks I am dead already as my eyes go still. I can still see her, but she thinks I am gone. The poison feels strange. Death is a strange thing, so peaceful, so welcoming. I feel it.

“Are you going?” Jennifer asks me.
“Yeah, I told you I would take you,” I reply. She is already out of the shower, somehow managing that without waking me up. I am sweating and tense. The shower is soothing, and I get dressed. She isn’t eating breakfast, just sitting in the living room waiting for me. I am ready, walking into the living room.
“Let’s go,” I say. She gets up and grabs some things, and we go outside. I lock the door and we walk to the elevator. It’s a good thing we don’t run into Allison, that could have been painful. Riding in the elevator, we stare forward, not talking or looking at each other. I feel so bad about what I have done to her. I know I will make it up to her, and we will be happy for a while. But I will die one day, and I will leave her behind. We walk out of the building. The sun is barely up, enough to make the city brighten up. This is the only time of day you get fresh air in this metropolis. We walk down the sidewalk to the parking garage, our footsteps are the only sounds we make.
We get in my car, and I drive out of the lot. No music is playing; neither of us want to turn on the radio. She stares out her window, and I focus on driving. I want to tell her how wonderful she is, how beautiful she is, how I feel when I see her carrying Karmen. I want to tell her these things but I don’t open up to her. I can’t help it, I’m not good at opening up. I get on the highway, and drive on the lonely road.
“I’m sorry,” I say, not looking away from the road. She doesn’t reply. I drive on for a while.
“Well, I know what we aren’t going to name it,” Jennifer says staring out to the right. “Allison.”
“Yeah…was that on the list?” I ask her.
“I don’t think so,” Jennifer replies.
“I thought of a good name,” I say. “Karmen.”
“Hmmm…I like it,” Jennifer replies, her voice so disconnected, like we are driving to a funeral. The silence returns.

“I love you,” Jennifer says, gripping my hand, blood running down her face, standing over me in the hospital after the accident.

I’m driving still, it takes a while to get there. I’m not happy, and neither is she. These are the rocky times. She stares out the window blankly. My hands are sweating on the steering wheel. I have things to say to her, but I can’t. I want to tell her she is everything to me, but no matter what I say, it won’t help. I glance over at the bump in her stomach, and smile. We are still silent. I’m staring at the yellow center line. The road is curving gently to the right. There is a truck coming towards us. I stare at near-death, at the moment that saves our lives. I hold the wheel firmly in my hands, and we slowly venture across the center line, to the sinister side of the road, into the path of the truck. I tense up, waiting for impact, and time stands still for an instant. I don’t hear or feel anything, it’s just sudden. She doesn’t see the impact coming. Karmen won’t see it either, but she will hear the story of it dozens of times. She will die in eighteen years, and so will I. My life doesn’t flash before my eyes. The moment lasts forever, and I see my whole life, beginning to end, and this is in the middle. Then the lights go out. But something is not right. This is not how I remember death. I feel death, only this time, I don’t feel the poison. I don’t feel the poison. I was wrong…I don’t feel the poison. Part of me will survive. Non omnis moriar…I hope.