The ants found me before my parents did, drawn to the sticky sweet blood dripping from my head onto the stump, following the line of my chin. Suicide is nothing to fuck with. I know that now.
I had been drinking peach schnapps and getting gradually braver and more depressed. I looked out the window for the umpteenth time at the ugly sharp stump three stories below. It taunted me.
It was just a flower. A familiar flower with an outdated name. But as I stared at it, my skin grew clammy and I felt my chest restricting. My breath coming in and out in wheezing gasps. I ran.
When I was 7, my parents were killed on a camping trip. I was with them, and I survived. I was missing for two days until I was found, wandering, beaten and bloody and mute. I was clutching a small bouquet of wilted wildflowers. I had no memory of that time. Until now.
When I was small, no one would look at me for long. Their eyes would flick up, then flit away like a startled bird. I didn’t realize until I was about 6 that people found my looks… disturbing. There was a mixture of pity and revulsion teetering on a beam of required social behavior. Except for my Mother. She never shied away from looking. Her smile made me feel beautiful. She touched me as well, which other people seemed afraid to do. Of course, children were altogether different. They not only looked, they stared, mouths agape. They didn’t just touch, they poked and prodded… and sometimes chased.
2017
I stood near the river, assessing the old bridge, afraid to get too close. It had been 19 years since I had been back, had been this close to the bridge. My stomach knotted, and I questioned why I was here. I had done so well, making sure to never come near, rarely ever coming back to Mandrea Springs, much less this close to my childhood nightmare.
After I got “better”, a systematic act of pretending to forget, it was still too fresh to think of returning. Besides, my parents had moved me halfway across the country and there was no longer a reason to go back. No one believed what I remembered anyway. They looked at me with pity, calling it trauma. As the years slipped by me, it became more of a measured reaction, a plan, an obsession really. To keep myself from sinking again. Now I was 32, and I reasoned that I had nothing to prove, I had come back from there. But the bridge still called me sometimes, in my dreams and in waking hours. Sometimes I couldn’t help the needing to know, the sharp desire to understand. It sat like a small rat in my belly, gnawing just frequently enough to remind me it was there. I was no longer living halfway across the country.
I grew up in a small town, so I was never afraid of playing outside, even alone. Once I had a child, I felt comfortable with her playing outside as well. Our lawn was partially fenced and opened into a small expanse of woods. Sammy was a smart, independent 5-year-old, and knew not to stray too far. Maybe it was wrong, but I let her play in the backyard alone. I checked on her frequently, and there had never been a problem. It was a sunny Saturday, warm for Spring, and she asked to go out just as soon as she was done with breakfast. As a freelance artist, I had a lot to do, and welcomed a break. She bounded upstairs to get dressed.
I have a habit, maybe more of a hobby. I feed animals. I feed the birds that come to my lawn, the cats that show up at my door, the squirrels that hyperactively dart to the bird feeders. Hell, I even put out old bread for the possum that sneaks under my fence. I feed the strays, and I always have. Not everyone thinks this is a good idea, but I always believed there’s no harm. I’m a sucker for creatures.
Living in a small town, you get used to having a garbage day, and to putting your stuff out on the curb damn early. I paid for a refuse company to get my garbage and recyclables, so you can imagine that I was not happy when my neighbor started to sneak a bag or two into my pile every week, for me to pay for.
