Everyone is waiting for a reason. Maybe a reason for being, a reason for doing, possibly even reasonable answers. This is not a story about reason but a story about the decomposition of reason. Some would associate the decay or reason to distinct strains of mental and moral engineering. I would disagree. Only those stricken can acknowledge such a condition, leaving the rest of us able to express ourselves in absence of some larger, and altogether fleeting quality of supernatural chaos. I would say that the decomposition of reason was always inevitable. Humans were always meant to construct their own downfall. We're just getting to the good stuff now.



I was once in love. I loved a girl that I watched love others. I spent weeks, months, years by her side, putting her back together when she was too internally disconnected to keep herself from falling apart. Most likely it was the chaos that drew me to her, I don't know. There were parts of her that, to me, epitomized everything a woman should be. The strange part was I refused to recognize any of her faults while keeping her together. Personal recognition of perfection happens as such. You see what you want to for so long and after a while you only see what you need.



I am not going to say that this story isn't truthful, it is. But I won't say that parts haven't been tampered with. The reason for this will remain my burden to bare. The only thing that really matters is that I was absolutely in love with her. Some time... years later I would come to realize that love is only a perspective. As time goes on, it really doesn't have anything to do with romantic notions of the heart or anything mushy like that. It has everything to do with status quo. Someday you'll wake up and come to the realization that most of your life is over and done. If you're lucky, you'll have someone laying next to you that will be tell you where your life went. That someone will only be a hollow shell of the individual you used to know. They won't remember who you really were either. The both of you, despite the hopes and dreams of youth, will end up lost in a sea of complacency and “adulthood”. This isn't a story about the decomposition of reason. Ultimately it's a story about failed justifications.



There are occurrences in every life that will be constantly reviewed over and over again as gigantic misjudgments. It would be hard to say that my love for this girl was a gigantic mistake but that's basically what I'm aiming at. No matter my bitter animosity, I doubt I'll ever concede that it was a mistake. How could any of us possibly do such a thing? Self-justification is a knack that we monkeys have excelled in. We're so good at it, that in fact all history as we know it has been effected, over and over again, only because someone, at some point and time, wouldn't accept the truth of themselves. Instead they justified. Admitting that you're a fool is very easy. Accepting the realization that you'll always be a fool is the hard part. As a people, we have yet to accept that we are thoroughly and abundantly foolish. Who in their right state of mind is willing to admit to such? Most would spend the remainders of their lives trying to prove contrary. When you do happen to get there, take a quick look around and see where its gotten you.



Let's begin by acknowledging that alcohol had a large amount to do with everything. And when I mention alcohol, I'm referring to hard liquor. Not anything nambi pambi like beer or wine or the such. I'm referring to good old fashioned, fall on the floor, piss your pants, booze. I happened to be one of those closeted alcoholics that no one really ever suspects. Most of my closest friends never had any idea that I was a drunk. Honestly though, even I eluded the notion for longer than most could possibly believe. My destructive dance with booze came to a head one night when some old shit made the mistake of rear ending my car. It had just recently snowed and the roads coated in a thin layer of ice. This fact escaped me... I SNAPPED. I jumped out of the car, took an old rusty crow bar out of the back seat, and proceeded to beat the living shit out of his windshield and hood. Later, I would be arrested for assault and driving drunk. Thankfully, I had yet to use the lucky horseshoes that had been hiding up my ass since I was born. As luck would have it, the old man had been driving without a license and refused to press charges. I had also played baseball with the arresting officer's son in high school. So he only kept me locked up for a few of hours and sent me on my way. That same night, the girl I loved was with another guy. My best friend, to be exact about it. I used my one phone call leaving her a message that went straight to voice mail. I have no idea what I said that night, but I seem to remember that it was quite convincing. It would take me almost a decade to admit to myself, but that night distinctly marked the beginning of my irreproachable persuasion of Danielle Elizabeth Andrews
Hi, nice to meet you.

Chapter 1
To Be Continued

Let's talk about Bob. Because Bob had a lot to do with this. Bob was Dani's father. Big Bob Andrews, he used to own his own insurance company but now is just a mediocre car salesman. In the early to mid nineties Bob had his own agency, raked in almost five hundred grand a year, and fucked more bimbo secretaries than you'd care to imagine.. well unless you're into that sort of thing. In the early nineties Big Bob was a millionaire before millions were handed out by Regis Philbin in prime time. It afforded luxuries such as waterfall swimming pools, four car garages, and expensive vacations. It also assured Bob of his very own fully stocked bar located in the basement of his very own fully stocked house. Bob spent a good part of seven years in that very same basement methodically drinking his way from the top of the insurance game down a dark path to General Motors dealership show room.

For some strange reason, society tends to regard alcohol in the highest of respects. You can go to the bar and get absolutely shitfaced, but God forbid you smoke in one. You can be asleep in bed when your girlfriend beats on your window in the middle of the night covered in blood after being beaten with a lamp stand by her drunk father , and no one gives a flying shit. But get caught smoking weed in school and Jesus Christ himself can't fucking save you. When push comes to shove, the silent majority looks the other way when it comes to alcohol abuse. At the end, one of two things eventually happens. Someone dies, or someone spends most of their life wishing that they were dead. Problems that are easily tackled are always the ones brought to the forefront. Smoking, for example, is such a problem. It's easy to tell people they can't smoke in various locations because the law says they're not allowed. It is not against the law to purchase alcohol. Nine times out of ten, the law never finds out what problem result from alcohol. So smoke up mother fuckers. That way you can only blame yourself when your lungs fill up with blood... Not your father.

When Dani was very young she used to lay in bed and listen to her father beat her mother. It would go on for hours. Over fifteen years of beatings, the neighbors only ever called the police once. Dani's uncle Bert always used to tell her mother that he was going to kill Bob if he laid another finger on her... he never did. Bert was a big talker but definitely not a man of action. When things were going good, Bert was always around. When things were bad, he stayed the fuck away. They were all like that. I used to call them the flying fucking Zelnicks. It made Dani very angry. Ana Zelnick, Dani's grandmother, was a quiet woman. She was so quiet that she used to whisper things to Dani's mom who would, in turn, repeat it to everyone else. Anna's husband, Frank, had died of prostate cancer several years before I had come to meet the clan.

The Andrews were another matter altogether. Grandma Andrews was a victim of the loving backhand herself. Every time Bob's dad would raise his voice she would go rigid from head to toe. Dani's mom did the same thing. Come to think of it, so did Dani. Harvey Andrews was one of those gruff types that likes to call Asians 'chinks' and Mexican's 'spics”. He found that sort of thing hilarious. Besides Bob Connors, I've never met a man I'd like to kill more than Harvey. He used to wander around the house in his underwear when they were down visiting. He was the walking definition of a disgruntled white male. I guess his son was his sidekick.

Towards the beginning, Mrs. Andrews liked me I guess. When I would come by to pick up Dani I'd sit with her in the kitchen and talk while she knitted. I was half blasted most of the time, but to Mrs. Andrews it was normal for men to have that hazy look in their eyes. For the most part, I always thought she tolerated me because she figured I was a smart kid and Dani could do with spending some time with me. I wasn't sleeping with her daughter then, which might be one reason why she was so nice. After Dani and I started having sex, things around the Andrews house got pretty tense. Like her daughter, Mrs. Andrews eventually came to realization that I was an idiot. And, on each occasion I came to visit thereafter, she made it her mission to remind me that she'd figured it out.

So there's the thought process. Personally, I had no excuse for my behavior. And since then, I've never tried to explain it. Dani, on the other hand, had plenty of excuses. And for all the years she endured her father, she never felt the need to use any of them to her advantage. Her time would come. And in her mind there were only two acceptable outcomes: either he would kill her - or he wouldn't.

When I was younger I used to spend a great deal of time reading. I read anything I could get my hands on that seemed interesting. My father, to his credit, kept a rather large collection of books in our attic. So, from time to time, I'd sneak up there in the middle of the night, grab a book and go back to my room, and start reading. I must have read everything from IT to Welcome to the Monkey House before I was fifteen. It was amazing. This, obviously, had its downsides. I was never all that good at making friends. Instead of putting forth an effort in this area, I would just sit in my room and redraw maps from atlases. I've drawn the entire planet four time over in my life. Every river to every village worth being included on a national map. Any idea where Vidz'yuyar is? Didn't think so. I may be the only American born person who does.

The way it turned out, the key to unlocking my social skills was booze. In Junior High a couple acquaintances introduced me to Vodka. My father, it just so happened, was a lover of Vodka. Especially the good shit. So these guys would come over after school and we'd raid the old mans liquor cabinet. By five forty-five, around the time my mother got home from work, I was more than three sheets to the wind. However, I always had enough time to drink a glass of Scope and convince myself that I was in control. Most of the time it worked. The rest of the time my mother just thought we were being fourteen, I suppose. Either way, it started getting out of control pretty dramatically after that. By my the time I turned sixteen, I was putting away half a bottle a day. By my seventeenth birthday I was past the point of no return. As any alcoholic will tell you, that's where you just have to drink just to feel normal. At that point, you're not really drunk at all. You're just even.

That's not to say that drinking made me Mr. Personality or anything. I was still mostly an introvert, it's just that I found it much easier to deal with strangers than I normally had. I met Dani at a house party when I was sixteen. We were both really drunk. She stormed up to me and asked me what my problem was. I told her I didn't have a problem. She disagreed and said that I did. I told her that she was my problem. She kissed me softly and nodded. That was the last time that I touched her until we were close to twenty.

In the months that followed, Dani and I became friends. We were the kind of friends that never spent much time in groups. Instead, we'd drive around in the middle of nowhere and just analyze the world. All the while I had only one thing on my mind. At the same time she just wanted to make sure I didn't screw things up by acting on those thoughts. In the end, Dani's problems were way too much for me to handle by myself. By the time we were twenty her issues had almost crushed me to death and turned me into someone that I no longer liked or recognized.

As an aside, when you're supporting a massive drinking habit it's always best to be creative. One cannot always decent liquor, so you have to think outside the box. We did this by inventing a drink that, to this day, has yet to be duplicated - except, possibly, by a handful of true West Virginians. This drink consisted of the following. We called it rat poison.
- one half bottle of shitty grocery store vodka
- one fourth bottle of Jhonnie Walker Red
- mix vigorously in large Tupperware container and consume

You might be wondering why vodka and JW's Red were the liquids of choice. As funny as it might sound, they were the two most common types of booze found in the clearance bins. Thats about it. From time to time the discount liquor would get changed around, so you might have to put up with pineapple rum, cheap wine or whatever they were trying to get rid of that week. But vodka was always the constant. There was always vodka. And if you made friends with vodka, it never let you down.
After I graduated from high school and started working full time I suddenly realized that I could afford Jack Daniel's on an almost daily basis. I was in love. Jack Daniel's is made in Lynchburg, Tennessee, by the way. Lynchburg is in a dry county. You have to drive to the next county if you want a bottle of Jack. America is fucked up.

Besides drinking, there wasnt much else to do. Wake up, go to school, go to work, come home. Rinse and repeat. Sometimes I would wake up in the morning and decide that the best thing I could do with my day was to conceive some kind of awesome and fucked up way to kill myself. It was a great idea for just about thirty seconds. Thirty one seconds after the fact I came to realization that death would hamper my ability to listen to Led Zeppelin. And that would end that. I possessed a thirty second limit of self pity. After that I decided there were better things to do with my time. Like masturbate, for example.

If anyone ever had a “good” reason to drink, Dani definitely did. She got a shit kicking on a regular basis. You would think she would take comfort in the fact that she had alcohol to wash away the ugly side of her life. Nevertheless, she had a rather heartbreaking outlook that came along with her nights of drunkenness. She'd always say 'Like father, like daughter', with a broken grin on her broken face. She wore it as a badge of pride that, at the age of seventeen, she could drink almost as much as her father did. Although, she also thought it made her a hypocrite. Back then I wasn't much of a philosopher by nature, so the best thing I could come up with was 'you'll never be like him'

How thoughtful of me...

The worst thing about the past is that it never changes in your head, always unwilling to transform when you decide the time has come to alter it to your advantage. The human brain is both a terrible and wonderful thing. Best to make it sound complicated than admit it causes more trouble than its worth. I have been of the opinion for quite some time that, without memory, life would be filled with nothing more than a series of ridiculous and happy accidents. There would be no other way to define the past. It would be nothing more than a jumble of all the days prior to your current state of ignorance. If only things were that simple. If only we didnt have so many shameful memories lingering about in hopes of learning from our mistakes. What useless bags of meat we truly are.

I am a cynic. I am a cynic because, like God to his idiot puppets, Dani fashioned me in her own self image. You may find it hard to believe, but there was a time when I was care-free and could easily be shaken from his bad moods by the nonsensical hilarity of others. Unfortunately, having spent my 'impressionable years' both intoxicated and in the company of professional degenerates, the boy that I was would not re-emerge on the other side. Only this worn body and this fool's head, would be left. But I can't really blame her for any of it. Try as you might, there are only two things in this world that influence decisions, despite what most people think. The first only effects the males of the species. The other, unless that is you've been in a coma since 1984, is yourself. I realize that most people would love to have some sociological long-lived, magical scapegoat to materialize and save what little dignity you thought you had left – but sorry, no dice. There's no turning back, I'm afraid. You're stuck with your past, everything you were and everything you've done.

When I think of Dani now, I try to think of her as she was before everything went horribly wrong with us. After all these years I still try to fixate on one specific image of her, one of which I often daydream. It is an image of her walking down a flight of stairs in a cheap, Italian restaurant. It was our first real date. It was really, all that I could afford. She left the table, went to the bathroom, and when she returned I watched her walk down the stairs. In that brief moment, my mind took a picture. A picture of her smiling at me as she never had before and I'm not sure if she ever did again. It was as if, for that one split second, the world had stopped. Armies put down their weapons and decided to make peace over a game of kickball, the worst little league teams in every league in America won by enormous margins, families that had nothing just won the lottery, and I was standing in an openness so large and spectacular that I was reduced to nothing more than a mason jar filled with air saved from when dinosaurs walked the earth. It was, in a word, rapture. You may think that sounds silly or unlike me to say, but I sincerely hope that in your life each of you will get to experience that magical split second once.
Besides that, Dani was average by most measurements. At the time she was maybe five foot six and weighted about 125lbs. She always had curly shoulder length brown hair, hazel eyes, and crooked teeth. At that point, she was still a over a year away from getting her braces removed. When she smiled she pressed her lips together so that you couldn't her braces. That always made me sad because the few times we were alone and she really smiled, it seemed to light up the entire world. She only listened to music when she was alone or driving in the car. When she went swimming she always wore shorts and a T-shirt, never a bathing suit. She liked french onion soup, pears that come in a can with juice, and frito corn chips. Her favorite movie was Romeo and Juliet, the one with Leo Dicaprio, her favorite singer was Alanis Morisette, and her favorite color was purple. She liked cats not dogs, hated eating fish, and despised people that smoke. I apologize, but the rest stays with me.

Now, you may be wondering why I keep referring to her as if she were dead. The truth is that I'm not really sure where she is. I have no idea if she's alive, dead, married, a mother, in a cult, or a dictator. I haven't spoken to her in years. (I was having a problem with tenses just then. The past and present tense always confuse me. It bugs me when things of that nature seem like they're intentionally trying to fuck you. It's the main reason I gave up on my dreams of writing a series of novels about a time traveling stripper and her arch enemy, Martin Lube-her-thing JR.)

As I mentioned before, on our first proper date I took Dani to a cheap Italian restaurant. It was called Alfonso's. It was the kind of place that looked like it might be expensive but was actually very, very cheap. It was a restaurant owned by regular middle class people who catered to those who were hanging on to the bottom rung of middle class status. It was a split level place with a small balcony. It also had thousands of bottles of cheap wine stuck inside of those red, octagon shaped clay things that Italian restaurants find so appealing. Back then it was a big deal for both of us. We even went so far as to even dress up for the occasion. This meant that Dani wore a regular black sweater with a skirt. I wore a white shirt and a tie under my dad's oversized suit jacket.
You must remember, by that point in time Dani and I had been friends for over three and a half years. We were nineteen when we went out that night, having spent two years discussing whether or not it would be a good idea. After dinner we went to a movie. We saw Finding Nemo. Following that we walked back home, a journey of some two hours, and stopped off at the park and sat on some swings. It was there that we kissed for the second time in our lives. I remember it quite clearly. It was one of those tense sort of unions that ends with one person looking away afterwards and the other laughing. Dani, who always had a flare for the dramatic, turned her face away from mine and looked down the road, playing at one of her commonly overused personalities. I laughed - and she hit me with her hand bag. Totally uncalled for.

That night on the swing set marked the beginning of the end for Dani and I. After everything that we'd been through, the strain of having to put up with each other on a romantic level was just too much for us to handle. A few months following that magical night we would make the horrible mistake of moving in together. After that, it was all just a matter of time.

Now all of this might have led you to believe that the two of us were somewhat fucked up. This was not true. Despite the fact that, most of the time, we looked like we had no clue what was going on, we were actually extremely organized, if not altogether ritualistic. For example, we would only drink at specific times and in specific places on weekdays. Never earlier than our study hall and never if we had to drive somewhere later in the day (which, as you might have guessed, only ever applied to me and never her). Dani would get very angry if I had started drinking before we met up at study hall. To her it was one of the constants in her life, something that never changed. Even if I was sick she would walk down to my house and sit in my room with me. For two years, minus summers, it went like clock work.

Another thing that was like clockwork was the ever changing state of Dani's upper extremities. There were times when even I was surprised that she hadn't been hospitalized because of her wounds. You know, Bob once hit her with a pipe, if you can believe it. He did it right before he left for work one morning. It was lying in the garage and he had tripped on it. He got angry, called her out to the garage, made her pick it up and hand it to him, and then hit her in the forehead with it. The night before, I had left it there by accident while we were rooting through some old boxes looking for an air pump for my bicycle tire.

In our first year of high school, Dani's councilor dared to inquire as to why Dani's face was often bruised. Sarcastically, as if Dani thought someone with a crackerjack box psychology degree should know better, told her that she played a lot of sports and had a tendency to over commit. As time passed, everyone knew that Dani's stories and excuses were horse shit, but they also realized that she was not the kind of girl that you could lecture. During those years, I spent a couple of hours each week taking with the guidance counselor , Mrs. Hopkins, about what went on at the Andrews house. Mrs. Hopkins believed that I was one of the few things that Dani had that mattered to her. I would often nod in agreement, wondering secretly to myself if we were talking about the same person. Because if her theory was accurate, then Dani sure did have a funny way of showing it. Like sleeping with most everyone that I knew, for example.

The night that I was arrested for attacking that old guys car was a typical example of her behavior. If I had a nickel for every time I discovered her with some guy in a bedroom at a party, in a parked car, closet, bathtub, whatever - let me tell you, I'd have a shit load of nickels. You might think that I was a wee bit obsessive about it, busting in on her like that all the time, but that wasn't the case. I was simply making sure that she was alright. Because, on occasion, some of her fuck buddies got a little carried away. Dani did not fight back. Dani had learned to take it. I, on the other hand, was frequently on edge when it came to her safety. There might not have been anything I could have done about her father, but I wasn't about to let some horned up asshole knock her around. I am not a violent man usually. But let me just say that there are some things that I do not stand for. And when such circumstances arise, I am not one to play at punches. Just baseball bats and such.

But you see, that was the frighteningly weird thing about it. Ninety nine percent of the time I would simply find her with some guy, make sure everything was okay, and then I'd wait outside until she was finished. I would sit on couches, stairs, the floor, and wait. In a way it almost became my identity. On more than one occasion, the guy that she was with would pop his head out the door and tell me that she wanted to go home. This was my cue to either go start the car, call a cab, or figure out which mode of public transportation we would be taking. She would then appear and we'd leave. Most of the time, not two words passed between us on the journey home. It was almost as if she knew it hurt me but couldn't bring herself to admit that it was that exact aspect of our relationship that she liked. Some things are better said with the lights out, it seems. Just not to me.

So that's the way things went for us. She walked a thin line between physical abuse and causing herself enough emotional abuse to ensure that she didn't have to deal with it, and I just kept my mouth shut and did what I thought she wanted me to do. As it turns out, all she ever wanted me to do was take her away from all of it. But you see, when you're only nineteen, and not that bright when it comes to girls, you aren't exactly knowledgeable in the ways of double meanings and the behavioral perplexities of women. Come to think of it, what man ever is?
I'm going somewhere with all of this of course. It would be pointless for me to continue wallowing in such pathetic description. In the future remind me to make sure that I simplify things somewhat. Like this, for example:

-Girl
-me
-booze
-bad dad
-love
-rip off
-slut
-not her fault
-car
-kill
-accident
-haven't seen her since…


See. That works out Much better.

moar writing Chris ...

So here's the crux of the matter. After a quick and relatively successful bout of dating, the two of us decided it would be a good idea to move in together. We had discussed it at length for close to a year, so it wasn't as if we hadn't had time to figure things out. These were the details…


1. I would drop out college and get a full time job.
2. Dani would get a full time job or two part time jobs.
3. We would buy beat up, second hand furniture, and rent a "fixer-upper" type apartment that was cheap.
4. We would scrape every dime together so Dani could go back to college.



That was the entirety of the plan. And that's what we did.


For almost nine months after graduation the two of us worked almost non stop. Besides money for alcohol, which had been slowly moving down the priority list by then, we saved every dollar we made. Neither of us bought anything except the basic necessities. We didn't rent movies, go to the movies, go to bars, nothing. We stuck to the plan like a fly sticks to shit. And then, one warm spring day, the plan worked. For the first ever we left home. It was for Dani. But as I would come to discover, the memory of getting beat up by your dad for most of your life doesn't simply vanish just because you're no longer within a punching range. No matter what, you're always within punching range of your own brain.


For the first couple of weeks everything was pretty great to be honest. The monotony of every day life along with ludicrous amounts of intercourse. There’s something amazing about the first time you end up in an environment that is without any kind of parental oversight. We fucked so much that it was literally tiring to get out of bed every day. It wasn’t that the sex itself was overly strenuous or anything, it’s just that we just did it so often, 10:55pm- 1:04am - 3:55am - etc. Not exactly the smartest thing when you’ve got work at 5:30am the next day. There are very few jobs in this world that don't require much alertness. I can tell you one thing, unloading shipping containers is not one of them.


As time went by we both began to realize that the grand adventure of living on our own wasn’t really all that great. Besides working insane hours trying to make end's meet (for that is what newly teenagers get paid when they’re limited to a specific pool of jobs), we were forced to spend our free time and weekends doing terrible, unthinkable things like laundry, grocery shopping, fucking up home improvement jobs in our shitty apartment, all the while trying to come to accept the fact that the birthplace of the worlds black ant population was located somewhere beneath our floorboards. This left no time at all for things such as heading out, getting loaded, and/or having a good time in general.


The one truly amazing thing about this time in our lives is that we were so distracted by need to keep our heads above water financially, that we forgot to somehow be complete alcoholics. I’m not saying that we didn’t booze it up here or there, we just didnt every hour of every day like before. It was incredibly bizarre. I remember getting out of bed one morning and realizing that I hadn’t had a drink in close to two weeks. But even though our lack of alcohol consumption seems like a good thing now, back then it was terrible. You see, for the first time in her life, Dani was forced to deal with her abusive father as a sober member of society. And let me just say, despite the fact that I loved her more than anything, I would have rather been getting fucked by a polar bear in the North Pole. Either there - or skinny dipping two miles below the surface of the earth…in a bunker…in the middle of a lake made of fire…guarded by evil leprechauns. It didn't happen all at once. She’d do strange things like toss and turn violently in her sleep and wake up screaming at the top of her lungs. This led down the path to other unpleasant things, like discovering her shaking in the fetal position in the bathtub at 2:00am . Trying to talk to her when she was in one of these states was pointless. Sometimes she would throw things at me like a bar of soap or her shampoo. She once gave me four stitches after whacking me in the forehead with one of those sharp plastic foot scrubbing dealies. Those nights were the worst. She was distraught and unbearable. At the time I was too young and too freaked out to deal with it. The only times I had seen her anywhere close to that was when she’d come over to my house after Bob had beat the shit out of her. I had some experiencing consoling her, but when it came to being viewed as her enemy I started to resent her. I understand now that it was an awful thing to do. It would have been so much better to just stay close to her and make sure she didn’t do anything harmful. But I just never seemed to have enough time to figure it all out or anything. In the heat of night, as it were, I just wanted it to stop. Most of the time it would happen in the middle of the night and I was literally barely conscious. So I did the only thing that I knew 100% would work. I would get her shitfaced drunk.


When I was younger my father would often leave me with a specific phrase after he had finished yelling at me for some wrong doing. He would say "Buddy, when you grow up some day, I hope you have kids that act just like you. And all of a sudden you’ll realize how little you knew now". God damn right, Dad. God damn right.

Chapter 6


The night that it happened was just like any other night. I went to bed around 10:30, slept for a couple hours, and awoke to the familiar sound of running water. So I rolled out of bed with a groan and walked across the hall, all the while looking for indications of how bad a state she was in (as she had an odd habit of scattering clothes all over the place when she was particularly freaked out). So there I was, standing quietly with my hand on the doorknob and my forehead resting against the door, pausing in an attempt to collect my thoughts and come up with a plan. From what I could tell she wasn’t scrubbing herself because she always made whimpering noises when she did that. You see, from time to time I would discover her in the shower rubbing her arms and legs with one of those green brillo pads. You’d be surprised just how much skin they can rub off given the chance. But luckily that wasn’t the case. I opened the door to discover her stretched out in the tub, feet resting on either side, a can of Orange Crush resting on her stomach. At first glance I thought she was asleep. So I started to lean over to grab the can when I discovered that she was merely fucking with me. She let out a yelp and started flopping her limbs all over the place, obviously making fun of the fact that I expected her to be freaking out. She laughed a little, flipped the wet hair out of her face, and said ‘hey there sailor’. I responded to this by sliding into the tub, ripping the Orange Crush from her hands, and dumping it over her head. So we laughed a while, talked some, and then decided to go back to bed. A that point I thought I was out of the woods. I thought maybe she’s taking a turn for the better. We even went so far as to engage in some of the unspeakable contact, which we hadn’t done in some weeks. So, after all was said and done, she went into the kitchen to make some tea and I fell into one of those dreamy sleeps that one always hopes will consume them.

When I got up the next morning Dani was nowhere to be found. Usually this would have concerned me to no end, being that I had turned into a very controlling and possessive asshole by that point who often chose not to believe anything that she told me. You see, she was the one who threw fits in the middle of the night and was on the brink of losing her mind. I was the one in control. For some unexplained reason I felt that it gave me the right to act as if I were her lord and master. I can admit that now. At the time, I figured I was just providing stability and acting accordingly considering that she was prone to a variety of perplexing behavior. But on that particular morning I wasn’t at all concerned that she was missing. I knew full well that her friend Alison in town and that she had most likely gone over to spend the day. So I spent the morning in blissful ignorance. Then the phone rang and it started raining shit bricks the size of basketballs.

I have come to the conclusion that there are six different types of phone calls.

1] Those that are bad and you know are before you pick up the phone.
2] Those that are bad and you answer like an idiot because you think it’s a friend calling you back.
3] Tele-Marketing.
4] The kind of call that makes the hair on your arms stand on end because you know it’s your mother in law.
5] Normal phone calls.
6] The kind where you don’t say anything.

I had been reading and watching television when the phone happened to ring. Directing your attention to the chart provided in this section, know then that I endured a number 6 with subtle undercurrents of number 4 for good measure. For you see, it was a policeman on the other end of the phone. And, from somewhere within five hundred feet of his position, I could hear Mrs. Andrews wailing in the background...

It took me fifteen minutes of trying to find a way to put this to you, but I can’t seem to figure it. So I’ll just say this: I dropped the phone.

Chapter 7

On June 22rd, 2005, Danielle Elizabeth Andrews killed her father. She did this by dropping the break in her beat up old car while parked at the top of a sloping driveway. She maneuvered the car down the driveway and slammed Bob Andrews to the back wall of the garage as he was taking out the garbage. The blunt force of the impact was so intense that Bob’s legs were essentially removed at the knees. He died a few hours later at the St. Anne Memorial Hospitall from a combination of ruptured organs and overall blood loss.

When the ambulance and police showed up at the Andrew’s house, Dani was still in her car. Her mom was trying desperately to get Dani to start the engine and drive off. She just sat there with the doors locked. About ten minutes after crushing her father, the police broke the passenger window and removed Dani from the car. She was not arrested at first and basically in a catatonic state. She was taken to the same hospital as the body of her nearly dead father. Mrs.Andrews spent the next three hours demanding that her daughter be sent to prison for the rest of her life. Having initially having lied to the authorities about what she saw, Mrs. Andrews told police that Dani had intentionally driven the car into her father with the engine was running. Dani was formally charged by the police later in the afternoon. I was called right around noon and I drove straight to the hospital.

I showed up only to discover that everyone had was gone. Having been quickly looked over by a doctor and shortly examined by someone that barely passed for a hospital psychiatrist, Dani was shipped off to a police station to be interviewed. It took me almost an hour to try to figure out which station they took her to. The nurses, not having any idea about the years of abuse that Dani had suffered from her father, were absolute cunt bitches and refused to help me, especially when they found out that I was the devil woman's "concerned boyfriend" So I did the only thing I could think of, I called every local police station in the phone book.

Despite the fact that she had yet to speak to a lawyer, she decided to tell the police absolutely everything. She told them she left our apartment at around 3am, drove to her parents house, and sat in the driveway. Her mother, who was questioned at the hospital, told the police that she KNEW Dani had been drinking. This, of course, was a bald faced lie. Dani was completely sober. Unless, that is, someone had tampered with the ingredients of that Orange Crush while it was sitting unopened in our apartment refrigerator. Other than that, there were no doubts that Dani knew exactly what she was doing. The police charged her with first degree murder. That, in case you were wondering is the murder of the "premeditated" variety, the type of murder that if found guilty, could get see you swing from the gallows or some other form of crude life ending method.

And so that’s exactly how it happened. The death of Big Bob Andrews... a little mundane I’m afraid.

At long last

The conclusion coming soon.... ish

Final Chapter

As the days and weeks came and went everything seemed a recurring pile of pointless hours. Basically, for all intents and purposes, Dani had gotten away with it. I think she knew that she would, maybe even before she actually did the deed. She realized that when the truth came out, and boy did it ever, the state would have a very hard time sending a twenty year old girl to prison for killing a man that had been beating and sexually abused her since she was a young child.. And that was the part that shocked me the most.

Dani had never given any inclination that Bob had done anything beyond getting her drunk and doling out an ass kicking. I had no idea there was another vile component to this whole distorted clusterfuck. When it all came to light that there were multiple levels to Bob’s abuse, and by “come to light” i mean that the prosecutor's office got copies of certain home videos that Bob had been making for some time, any desire the state had to pursue a conviction fizzled, especially when the local media learned of these videos existence.

Dani’s mental state at the time could be justified, she had had enough. Most everyone agreed that to make her relive her past in court would most likely have driven her to suicide, her mother even had a change of heart when she realized that to push this case further would result in the death of the only person other than Bob who gave have a shit about her. So ultimately Dani plead out to some bullshit charge one step above jaywalking and everyone got to go home for Sunday dinner.

When she finally got to come home she seemed distant about the fact that everything had been revealed and would often get angry and leave the house when I tried to get her to open up to me. Sometimes I would get pissed and yell at her, something i regret now. We spent a few months pretending that everything was ok and that life could go back to the way it was before, but it became apparent that her heart just wasn’t in it any more. It was around that time that I came to realize that I had pushed her into loving me from the start. As hard as it was to adimt, there was nothing left but to admit that she would never look at me the same way again.

I guess it was possible that I was nothing more than a constant reminder of the past that she wanted so badly to forget. Instead of being civil about it, however, my stubbornness and pride came out. In my opinion, I had paid my dues, I had put in my time. All I wanted was some acknowledgement for the years I spent being there for her in her darkest times. Even though in a way, I was partially responsible for her destruction. I honestly believed I was the main thing that kept her sane and alive for all these years leading up to the ultimate death of her father. But like I’ve said, I ended up becoming nothing more to her than a reminder of her previous hell instead of someone who wanted nothing more than to save her from it.

In the late fall of that year, Dani decided that it would be best if she went to live with her Aunt in upstate New York. I was completely against it, of course, but there was nothing I could do to stop her once she made up her mind. And that was when I realized that our life together had come to an end. We spent the last two weeks together before she left sleeping in different beds, we changed clothes behind closed doors.

During that time we came to hate each other in spectacular ways that neither of us knew we ever possibly could. To this day I still can’t understand how two people can go from being in love to the amount of contempt we felt for each other during those last two weeks before she left. I guess that’s the reality of love and wonderment. It stays with you for such a brief time that you might actually have something beautiful to keep you lifted up during the darkest time awaiting the rest of your life. In some strange way, maybe it’s for the best that such things are static and fleeting. That way they always remain the secret perfection inside of us held there like a reserve power source for when we need it the most. I will always see myself idealized when I think back to that time. Mostly because even after all this time and everything that I have supposedly gained, I would trade it all for just 15 minutes in a lousy Italian restaurant and to see her beautiful crooked smile sitting across from me as she ordered her spaghetti and meatballs.

We talked on the phone a little for a few months after she moved but after that our lives started to get more and more separate and ultimately I guess we just lost touch. My current mood of starry eyed nostalgic recollection aside, it would be a lie if I said that it ended well, because thats the furthest thing from the truth. It ended terribly. It ended with words, accusations, and untrustworthy thoughts that can never be fully erased or forgotten. You have to understand, that was just how we were though. Being us at our finest.

I think about her a lot every now and again. Sometimes when a certain song comes on the radio or I see a young pretty girl with a crooked smile or some other random thing that reminds me of the past and it feels like I’m struck by lightning in my head so hard it almost brings me to my knees. Just like certain sights and smells remind me of childhood camping trips or Christmas with my family. But theres more to it when the memories involve Dani, there’s a dull regret that comes with it, a knot in my stomach that I know won’t ever fully go away. It’s hard to put these feelings to the side and come to the realization that there is no trace of the person left in me that made love to that beautiful, broken women on the floor of our old apartment with Chinese take-out boxes strewn about while we laughed and held each other until the sun came up. That person died a long time ago. I am now a grown man, no longer a confused boy, and yet no matter how hard I try the memory of this woman comes to me during the most unexpected times, like a punch in the gut from a championship prize fighter.

Deep down I know I’ll never see her again and I guess thats all for the better, reality has a way to tarnish the thoughts, feelings and memories we hold most dear. She could easily have a loving husband and children now, living a happy wonderful life with her past behind her. The bittersweet reality is that thats the best I can hope for because usually things don’t turn out so rosy for people with a past like hers and for my own personal sanity, I’m not sure I’d be able to hold it together if I were to find out she lead herself down a path of destruction or death which seems infinitely more likely.

As of now, I try to continue continually looking towards the future, hoping that by doing so my past will continue to fade away to nothing more than a fading bad dream. Ultimately though the only truth I know in this life is myself, nothing more, nothing less. And each day I wake to the knowledge that once again I cheated death and hopefully the light of the day won’t make the dark of the night seem as terrifying as it did the night before. To say I am a broken man wouldn’t surprise anyone at this point, and you know what? That’s fine by me.

Sleep tight kids.

Cactus @ 30/6/2017 11:05

http://mugshots.com/US-Counties/Louisiana/Caddo-Parish-LA/Danielle-Elizabeth-Andrews.150817194.html

How about that

Chris25 @ 30/6/2017 12:53

Cactus @ 30/6/2017 11:05 http://mugshots.com/US-Counties/Louisiana/Caddo-Parish-LA/Danielle-Elizabeth-Andrews.150817194.html How about that

were you the juvenile