ISAAC FOLLOWED LISA from the bedroom into the living room still shouting the half demand/half plea that he had been for the last two days.

“Please, Lisa, you don’t have to do this! I don’t understand what is even so wrong that you feel this is even necessary.”

“I shouldn’t even have to explain this to you, Isaac, the reasons are all pretty fucking obvious at this point. “

Isaac had been renting the apartment long before he had even met Lisa three years ago almost to the day. She had come walking into the café where he worked and came right to his register with a smile, and with much luck she was still sitting at the same table when his lunch break came. His approaching her so abruptly was not something really in his character, but for a time she brought out a lot of things in him he hadn’t been aware of before, confidence being only one of them. Either way, that was a long time gone and there had been plenty of stagnant water under the bridge since then and now the bridge was being ripped from its foundation and carried downstream.

Isaac continued following her from room to room watching helplessly as she tossed her things forcefully into bags and boxes. In his mind he was trying to grasp for something that would tell him exactly why this was happening right in front of him. As a tight sob tore through his guts he suddenly found himself on the floor trying to undo her work, tossing her things violently back out of their containers in the floor. As soon as Lisa caught him in the middle of this she was there trying to stop him and for a moment it almost looked more playful than serious until something hard hit the floor and bounced a few times with an incessant tapping sound. That caused them both to stop in their tracks and share a glance first at the pregnancy test with results side up and then at each other in tear stained silence.

“I hope you know, at least, that my losing the baby was a good thing in the long run.”

“How can you just sit there and say something like that without any feeling? You know as well as I do it about killed us both!”

With that, Lisa began to sob openly all the while slapping away Isaac’s reaching hands seeking to give her comfort. He’d always felt this sinking feeling she somehow blamed him for what had happened but neither one of them had ever come out and said exactly that. It just clung to every moment that followed the event and darkened the time they’d shared for the last year. They never really understood why the miscarriage had happened neither medically nor in regards to fate, or at least Isaac never did.

The shrill din of the sirens came rushing toward him in what felt like nanoseconds, the deep red of the fire trucks clashing with the simple white and black of the state troopers with both sets of lights flashing and competing in the autumn air...

“I can because I’ve seen what’s happening to you, Isaac. No child should have to grow up in a house where one of their parents is only there physically while inside they’re unraveling. I just wish you’d see it for yourself for once and see someone like I’ve begged you to since the moment I moved in.”

He was looking into her grayish eyes (no one had eyes like that) glassy with tears as tiny gasps ran through him. The taste had left his mouth as his tongue ran completely dry in under a second. Was it just him or had someone cranked the heat up? He had sat there in silence only a few moments before she continued.

“Every single day I have gone to work and you’ve been off since they cut your hours I’ve worried about what I’d come home to. You don’t ever sleep at night so I don’t know how you function during the days you do work, you pace, you’re drinking more and you smoke which you never did before. Then you do like you are now where you seem far away. You snap out of it and say things that don’t make sense or else they aren’t words. Your bursts of unexplained anger scare me…you broke your hand in a door frame because I hid the liquor from you. You cut yourself in the bathroom on purpose and I know you do because I keep finding your razors with dry blood hidden in the back of the closet. You start crying over nothing. You go out and don’t tell me where you’re going or when you’ll be back…one time you were gone for almost two days and showed up right as I gave up and called the cops. You hear things…”

Slowly her voice faded into the distance as that somber music he was so accustomed to hearing in moments of stress began to swell. A slow, shape shifting single note drone as if there were a train whistle blowing without pause through an open window. There, of course, was no open window and the closest train tracks were miles away. The floor suddenly dissipated beneath him and he floated still sitting upon his bent knees in the great nothingness as the walls vanished likewise. Pretty soon there was nothing else in the universe but him and that swelling and pulsing ominous note which was soon joined by one then two more notes all pulsing together into a mildly horrific and morose tone. A serpent like grin slid across his face for a brief moment as he hovered in the darkness neither content nor really sad. He was just kind of there and nothing more. He often wished that he could truly be that way forever, devoid of stress or a single thought.

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The great, slithering chord built up and began to distort to the point of being unrecognizable. It slid into a sound that could only be described as both intense and anxious. He was no longer smirking as a sudden overwhelming feeling of fear ran its bony finger tips up his spine with an icy caress. He heard a voice echoing somewhere behind his eyes and he swore it was repeating his name. Contorting images began to dance before him in a variety of unnatural colors and began to float closer. He saw what appeared to be Lisa’s face letting out an unheard scream first in a flickering purple. Funhouse mirror doctors were racing with her on an absurdly misshapen stretcher all flecked with a darkened orange in the next. In the third, all caked in the deepest of crimson he’d ever seen in all his years was…

“Isaac? Are you even listening to me? See, this is one of those things I was talking about. I finally say what we’ve both been thinking and the stress of confrontation shoves you somewhere else.”

Isaac muttered something incoherent beneath his breath and shook with a mild force as he came back into the light of the dusty living room.

“I’ve been terrified for your safety, and then I started worrying about my own with your anger, and then when I knew I was pregnant I couldn’t enjoy it because I was so stressed about the safety of the baby. At your best you’d be a great dad….but your best has been few and far between for years now. You won’t do anything to get well, and likewise won’t do anything to better you financially. By the way, aren’t you going to be late?”

As she said this she slipped out the front door and down the stairs having realized Isaac wasn’t going to respond anymore. A few seconds passed and a trunk and then a car door slammed shut with a hint of anger. The distant whir of a battered old engine started up and then it faded as the car slipped up the street out of range. Isaac’s head slumped forward, his chin almost touching his chest as he slid his hand up like deadweight onto his knee. His eyes rested out of habit on his wrist where his scratched up watch clung to his arm buckled haphazardly faintly ticking. The darkened hour hand’s position on the face pulled him to his feet with a sudden alertness despite the tired eyes of a man whose life had just strolled out the door.

“Oh shit!”

He tore out the door so quick he almost left it standing open, turned, and slammed it shut and locked it with acute force. Taking the stairs two at a time like an old cop movie he was in his car and headed in the opposite direction of Lisa in seconds flat. He was ten minutes late by the time he hit the main highway, his only option living out in the country like he did with no interstate on ramps for miles around. He cursed under his breath and punched the wheel when he saw the near wall to wall traffic that awaited him. He sat in total silence the entire time with nothing but his thoughts, a Black Flag tape permanently jammed in the cassette deck of his beat up Taurus killing the entire stereo. It didn’t matter anyway as the speakers had gone long before that and he didn’t much feel like hearing anything not even the name his brain insisted on repeating over and over…

The traffic picked up slightly and he was moving now thinking he should probably call ahead and let them know something. This was quickly shot down by the additional notion of his many excuses for all the days he’d been late in the last few years. It had reached a point where he had started showing up at least thirty minutes late almost every day he was scheduled about a month ago after being an occasional thing that popped up from time to time. He had been warned about it but it never really ceased and somehow he still had his job. Along with Lisa it had been his one saving grace, the one thing that he could at least say wasn’t coming apart at the seams all around him. He had been lying to himself about Lisa, obviously, so he now wondered if he was lying about the job, too. Telling himself untruths was one of his many talents, if you could call it that.

Isaac’s eyes stared through the smudged and cracked windshield out at the never ending stretch of road between him and town as the engine in front of him seemed to grow louder and angry sounding. He began to sense that familiar drone creeping back in and he shook his head hard to try and fight it off.

(Not now, not while I’m at the wheel)

His eyes watered over as he swore the dark place was starting to fight its way into taking him over once more, tears of desperation to maintain his grip on the here and now. His heart racing as he saw little dark clouds puffing up in front of his face two and three at a time. He was gasping now and the sharp intake of air was making him light headed and more anxious which only intensified the dread. His hands went clammy against the cracked plastic of the steering wheel in a matter of seconds as the taste once more disappeared from his mouth. A few more seconds and his hair would be soaked and he’d be in that other place. Somewhere in the background something was chanting his name and it was reverberating all around him. That’s when he noticed the true source of the dark clouds swirling all around his point of vision.

He pulled off the road onto the gravel of the road’s shoulder as the smoke began to give way to crackling blue and orange flames just around the edge of his hood. He pushed the door open with extreme force all the while cursing himself for not having the oil checked when Lisa had told him for the first of many times. There was no time wasted in dialing in the emergency on his cell phone completely out of breath as he watched another part of himself go up like it was nothing. There was no saving it now and he certainly wouldn’t be taking it the rest of the way to work even if it could be extinguished in time

The shrill din of the sirens came rushing toward him in what felt like nanoseconds, the deep red of the fire trucks clashing with the simple white and black of the state troopers with both sets of lights flashing and competing in the autumn air for dominance. He was asked to step back as the men in their heavy jackets and helmets leapt into action trying to hit the source without any chain reactions. The last thing any of them wanted to see was an explosion, even if the car was pretty much a lost cause by this point. A lost cause….pretty much…lost…cause….lost cause….last thing….pretty….lost…

Isaac stood by a patrol car talking to the officer about what had happened and admitted he had been meaning to have the car serviced for a while and had been negligent. He also let it slip about the kind of day he was having, about waking up to Lisa’s packing, but not about being almost an hour late now. Even with his unprepared sob story he knew the cop would still slap him with a ticket for the out of date inspection sticker, and he was right. They hear this shit all the time from every single person they ever have to stop, so he wasn’t quite sure why he expected them to have any sympathy.

The flames were gone and replaced with just a few stray streams of steam and smoke lifting off what was left of his hood as the wrecker showed up and loaded what was left up. Isaac watched in slack jawed disbelief from the sidelines smoking a cigarette he’d bummed from the mechanic at the blackened heap he’d escaped from. He had quit smoking back when Lisa had told him she was pregnant without even being prompted, and now he wished he’d reminded her of that. He hadn’t changed for the good of them both by much, but he had at least done that much. What better time to take up a bad habit again than after a day like this? The mechanic wiped his hands on a deeply stained rag he’d kept dangling from his back pocket like some kind of gang member and approached him.

“I meant to ask you, Isaac was it? I’m heading back into town with your car to take to my shop if you need a lift to where you were headed.”

Isaac took him at his word and pointed the way there, which as it turns out was on the next street over from the mechanic. He began to think that maybe one thing today would actually go right and he was certain that his boss seeing the wreck of his burned out car go by would give some weight to his reason for being so late. He was actually pretty surprised that no one had tried calling him by now to ask him what was going on but he wasn’t about to push his luck by calling the store an interrupting the afternoon rush. He was chain smoking from a pack the old mechanic had extra floating around in his glove box now and actually laughing at some of his wild stories about scenes he’d been called to before. All in all he’d let some of the worry and sadness drift away for this brief moment where things were actually okay and he could let go.

The old truck pulled over the curb just a few doors shy of work and he hopped out thanking the man at the wheel and shut the door more carefully than any he had today. It was only when he watched his destroyed vehicle round the corner at the light that the anxiety returned. He hadn’t even considered how he would manage to get home and if he took a cab all the way that’d be the last of his check and he hadn’t even paid rent yet. A sigh burst from his lips as he began to head up the block towards either a sympathetic ear or an absolute tongue lashing and dreaded either one. He was two doors away when he noticed that the alleyway he had watched many a stray cat escape human contact through was now boarded up with a thick primer white set of what looked like two by fours. He had only been here the previous evening and hadn’t noticed this, could they have really thought to do this and shoved it into place that quickly? A faint glow of light poured through the only hole in one of the wood blocks out at him. For a moment he felt an unshakable urge to peak through it to the other side as if it were the keyhole on a door between him and hidden temptation.

“They put that in this morning. The fucking neighborhood kids were going down there to shoot junk and try and catch those cats for god knows what.”

The sudden, unexpected voice had startled Isaac out of his reverie and he spun in the direction of its apparent source. His eyes met with the bluest ones he’d ever encountered. There weren’t any oceans or skylines in the world this blue. They belonged to the slightly disheveled (in that mildly chic way that most baristas fall into) face of his least favorite coworker, Ben. By the look of it he was just now leaving and none too pleased with the fact that he should have left over an hour and fifteen minutes ago.

“You’re late and I’m not surprised but fuck it, Mark let me finally cut out so he wouldn’t have to shell out too much extra on my next check even though he is swamped. I’m already in the red on overtime for some reason and can’t go any further. Wasn’t that your car I saw being hauled by?”

Isaac didn’t even answer Ben because the only way he could think to reply was by breaking his fucking jaw with a right hook. Instead he turned on his heel and ran the rest of the way to the café’s door and swung it opened to the room filled with more people than he thought possible. The only other time every table was taken like this was during the Friday night shows they had with local and sometimes national acts in a wide range of styles. This was the first time he’d ever seen it packed just because all the office people simultaneously had gotten the itch for caffeine. Thankfully there was no one standing at the counter so he could talk to Mark. Unfortunately, the direction their conversation would go was written all over Mark’s face.“You don’t even have to say it, Isaac. I saw your car go by and knew you were here BUT you didn’t even bother to call and tell me anything was going on. As for Lisa, I already knew about that, too. She called here after you left last night and filled me in on what your morning was going to be like today. I’m guessing she had hoped I would just take it easy on you, but you know good and well I’ve been doing just that for the last year. You started showing up later and later and when you are here you look like shit and give the customers the creeps.”Isaac felt his pulse rising as he clenched his fists at his sides as Mark laid into him. He started to speak to defend himself in some way, but Mark just waved his hand through the air to stop him. It wouldn’t be half as bad as it was about to be if Isaac didn’t have every suit and coffee shop hanger on staring at him now as he was ripped to shreds right in front of them.“Look, I feel for your situation but at the same time I’ve got a business to run here and the stress you put on my shoulders and Ben’s shoulders when you don’t show up like you’re supposed to is frankly unnecessary and it’s getting more ridiculous every week. You always have some limp excuse like a high school kid who shows up without his essay, but you’re not in high school anymore you’re twenty four. Today is the one time where I can see being late, and if it were the only time I wouldn’t be this pissed.”Isaac knew what was coming and the heat of both embarrassment and anger swelled up his spine and through his every bone and he felt himself vibrating. The drone was slipping back into the scene and coming close to droning out Mark’s every word. The floor felt ready to give beneath his feet but he could still clearly see where he was at this point in time. Mark’s voice vanished but his lips still moved with a growing swiftness that only came about when there was news to deliver of the utmost importance. Isaac only took his eyes away for a second to study his fingers which were slowly caressing the side of a glass ashtray that sat upon the table usually reserved for the admission box on music night. The droning chord was bursting all around him with growing intensity and he felt himself sweating and grinding his back teeth so hard they felt ready to shatter. It was at the moment he heard Mark say his name again that he snapped back to looking into the face of his employer and the droning ceased.“Isaac? Did you even hear what I said? I said that even though I’m obviously packed to the walls here I don’t need you. I don’t think I need you Friday or Saturday either. Just do what you need to get back home or your favorite, hitting the bar around the corner, and get out of my damned sight.”He didn’t even think about it, one minute he was clutching the ashtray on the table and the next it was shattering against the wall behind Mark’s head. Nearly every patron in the place had hit the floor and ducked beneath their tables in the off chance he had a gun or started throwing chairs at them next. He kicked the table over and was pushing the door open and darting out into the faint early evening air as Mark snatched the phone off the counter and screamed something about him being crazy and calling the police. Great, maybe mister unsympathetic ticket would make another appearance to finish ruining his day for him.He was moving back down the sidewalk without being really sure where he was going to go or if he even intended to hide from the threat of jail or worse, the hospital loony bin. The sky was that dark off red color that it gets as the sun goes down in that time of year blanketing the entire street in deep shadowy purples and blacks as he moved. The sun dropped out again and was replaced with the ominous chords filtering through his every thought. For the first time since this had started happening he actually thought the question of where the fuck that music was always coming from. The notion of his always imagining this tone seemed too crazy to be the truth. He wasn’t crazy! No one would convince him otherwise!The clanging crawl of the repetitive chord was crossed over by a shrill whining single note run that would rise and fade time and again. The whole world seemed to be shaking and falling apart around him. Buildings seemed to crumble and crack and the sewers exploded into the skies with extreme force and it all grew dimmer and darker every second. All this did was accentuate the destruction and the fiery apocalypse the day had wrought. Had it really all built up to this? Was this really what his life and his world had boiled down to? Why can’t there ever be any solace anywhere, he thought.With that notion something poked at his periphery, that of single stretch of beautiful light shimmering through the darkness at him like a rose crawling through concrete. He turned his head only slightly and he swore the rumbling in his ears disappeared. He found himself staring at that same small hole in the boards slapped over the alley, the light gushing forth from it. Some strange gravitational pull was guiding him without a single thought towards its detached beauty. It was as if it desperately wanted him to peak, but what was this unknown it? It was at the moment he found himself directly in front of this strange doorway that the echoing and familiar voice first swam into his ears.“Isaac….Isaac, I’m over here…hop over and see for yourself.”Where did he know that voice and how, exactly, was he supposed to just scale this slick piece of wood without anything to step up on? He looked up at the towering height of hastily attached obstacle which stopped a few feet over his head but not at the lip of either building’s roof on either side. The voice continued calling him in a simple mantra. The voice was simply beckoning and female, something in its tone sounding just like home to his ears. Without giving it a second thought he back up and then ran and in jumping up attempted to kick off the wall slightly to propel himself further up and catch the top. It took him three attempts to finally grab hold and another four heaves to finally pull his self high enough to peer over.What he saw on the other side of the wall was the stuff of fairytales. C.S. Lewis couldn’t have imagined anything wilder or more vivid in the back of a thousand wardrobes. Stretched out for as far as his eyes could reach there was the most beautiful sunburst and lush green spring day he had seen in years. For a moment his mind lost sight of the fact that it was currently October as he was too enraptured with this scene before him. The sky was an almost watercolor light blue with perfect white clouds dotting the corners and stretched down the middle. There were etched brown paths through the center of the hill a little more directly below him lined with overwhelming large and fantastically healthy trees. You could never see the tops of the limbs for all of the deep green explosions clinging to each one. You’ve never seen trees like this before, as if sculpted by the steadiest hand with caring eyes to match in the world.“Isaac, I’m down here!”That voice, again, where did he know it from? Isaac tilted his head down the hillside to just beyond the base of the wall he was clinging to. The sight his eyes landed on next almost made him gasp and lose his grip for a moment, and he all at once made the connection. There beneath the shade of a pine tree sat Lisa in a long, flowing summer dress and dark army jacket clutching a blanketed bundle in her arms. He really wasn’t sure what to make of this, and he wasn’t helped by the sudden tremor that ripped up the wall and shivered through his every bone. The drone was flooding back in although distant, but he tried to fight it and hang on to now.“What are you doing here?”“I’m waiting for you, Isaac. We have so much to discuss and I knew you’d be here, eventually.”He gave a puzzled expression for a moment. He knew she caught it immediately because that same old familiar smirk she used to get anytime he did so slipped over her lips in an instant.“What happened to earlier today? You finally walked out on me, remember? Even Mark knew it before I did and he still fired my ass.”“I know, and I’m sorry. I’ve really sorted things out since then and realized what a mistake it was. I can’t live without you, Isaac. WE can’t live without you.”As she said this she slipped part of the blanket off the top of the bundle in her arms to reveal a tiny, cherubic baby girl’s face. She was only about a year old if that and Isaac felt his lips tremble as he did the math in his head. She was the right age, alright, but the right age if things hadn’t gone so horribly awry.“How…how is that even possible? You lost the baby, I know you did…and we never got far enough to know what we were having.”“I know it seems strange, Isaac, but it will make so much sense if you just come down here and let me explain everything.”He didn’t budge from his perch except for when he instinctively reached with one hand for the cigarettes and lighter in his jeans pocket and fired one up. He exhaled and gave her a little shrug when he realized she watched this act with a slightly disapproving glare. There was still love in that expression, though, love he hadn’t seen in her eyes in a long time.“I would but all of this is just so much to take in. I have things I need to do over here, too, I don’t have a car anymore as of earlier this afternoon.”He suddenly noticed that that high pitched squealing note was suddenly becoming louder and much closer to his field of hearing. A sudden burst of intense dread overtook him again for a moment and he felt very small and alone in the world. He had this sinking feeling that things were unraveling further or about to become even more complicated. The whirring and descending note was all around him now and it was a sound for which he felt he knew just as well as he had Lisa’s own voice. The cigarette was burned almost to the filter, now, and screwed deep between his lips as he went a little pale and clammy.“Isaac, please don’t make me beg you. Do you really need convincing to merely come here and talk to me and meet your little daughter, Dream? I gave her the name you always wanted, even though I used to pick on you and call it too hippie. Besides, don’t you think it’s a lot nicer over on this side than it is over on yours?”Her saying this finally led him to face the fears he had about the source of all the commotion he’d finally come to acknowledge was coming from nowhere else but behind him. His fears which were immediately actualized when his eyes widened at the sight of not one but three patrol cars with their lights flickering in front of him. Some of the officers standing by their rides had their trigger hands hovering on their holsters while they stared directly at him. Standing stoically behind the middle car was the head of this operation with the back of a bullhorn glued firmly at his lips. Any doubt they were here because of him was quickly replaced with confirmation the second the horn crackled to distorted life.“Isaac Chase, this is Officer Monroe speaking. Come down from there easily and without incident and put your hands in the air. We just want to talk to you and get you some help. We do not want anyone to get hurt or have to be subdued.”(Subdued, my ass, they all have their hands ready for their tasers or worse)Isaac’s mouth went dry again and he felt the dreadful notes creeping back in as things shifted into darkness on this side and buildings continued to topple. Why didn’t the cops seem to notice the whole fucking world was coming apart? Didn’t they think this fact was a lot more important and deserving of more attention than the single violent act of some guy having a shitty day? After all it’s not like the ashtray actually hit anybody. His hair went slick with sweat and he began to gasp for breath and felt like this panic attack would be one of the ones that made him pass out. He suddenly turned his neck back over to the other side of the wall completely captured in the hardest decision of his life.There she was still waiting on him, as beautiful as always. Dream was the spitting image of her just like he’d always imagined she would be. She even appeared to be waking a little now and he hoped it wasn’t because of that entire racket being made because of him. God, it was almost as if the whole world around the two of them was just the glory of their spirits shining outward and coloring every single thing. He suddenly felt angry for all the commotion the pigs were making and keeping his child from being able to sleep while their parents discussed an important matter. His face showed utter contempt as he suddenly whipped it back around to let the boys in blue know just what he thought.“Can you guys keep it down? My daughter is trying to sleep over here!”(He bounced his head back on his shoulders towards the wall to emphasize where he meant)“There’s a child in the alley? What child are you ta…”Before the sentence could even be finished, Isaac made his final decision known to anyone who happened to be looking. He turned his head away from the standoff scene and pulled himself up the wall with both arms and kicked off with his feet so he was now sitting perfectly on top of it in a crouch. He let out a small yelp as he leapt from his perch down towards paradise. Down towards the only thing that ever truly mattered to him which had returned to him when he needed it most. The only important thing in the world now had a personification of her importance. A personification of the love they shared which could never be torn away no matter what problems either of them might have had in their separate lives.He seemed to freefall for so long it was as if time had slowed down in that instant he chose to join them on the other side. He wasn’t distracted by anything else in his world as he was entirely focused on the target of his need and his desire. He didn’t even notice the horrified screams of several of the police as he had gone over. Not even the terribly distorted don’t jump…fucking suicide from the mouth of the bullhorn that filled the air with a morbid air. None of this mattered as he clung to the sky as he sailed downward and began to brace himself for the landing. Lisa looked up at him and smiled as she scooted herself and little Dream (now awake and cooing up at her daddy) backwards to make room for him to hit the ground just right.Everything changed in an instant as he met the ground with a loud crack instead of deep thud like he’d anticipated on that soft grassy hill. His legs bent into the strangest L shaped positions pointing in the opposite direction of each other at the knees as they both shattered on impact. Part of the bone of his left leg was protruding violently through the flesh of his shin before his ass had even touched the earth. He let out an otherworldly shriek as the horrendous pain shot straight through him and he wobbled on his lower back holding himself sitting halfway up with his hands. His eyes struggled to peer through a veil of heavy tears to make sure little Dream hadn’t seen this awful act but suddenly there was no one where either she or Lisa had been.The glorious springtime scene was gone, now, and in its place was the bleakest stretch he could imagine. The grass beneath him was the grayish tone it takes when the cold frost has strangled the last drops of life from its roots. Every single tree from a few feet away all the way up the hillside had lost every last one of its greenery. Some were even swaying with the eerie wind which blew through the almost cemetery still air all around him. They were completely burnt black looking as if they hadn’t seen a single drop of rain in decades. The painted perfect sunshine was now replaced with an ugly green full moon with very faint grey clouds beneath staring down on Isaac’s agony. Everything that was once so delightfully illuminated was now blanketed in a shroud of shadowy darkness. The only sound his ears could make out was that same droning sound which had followed him for so long in his darkest moments.The worst sight of all was saved for last. His head slumped down to his chest and he simply stared in front him into the shade of the tree. There barely revealed by a stray patch of moon glow sat a set of slightly cracked tombstones side by side in the darkness. One stone dwarfed the other in a fairly substantial way. It was obviously guarding the grave of an adult whose age was not revealed in its simple R.I.P. The one next to it, however, the smaller one….“Oh, God….Oh, fuck….no…wasn’t losing her once enough?!”A deep sob ripped through Isaac as soon as he made the horrible discovery. A tattered scrap of blanket sat just slightly atop what would be the tiny tomb. The tears flowed in as if someone had thrown a tap all the way around. His body shook with the force of confrontation of pain both psychic and physical and somewhere, somehow he heard Lisa’s voice echoing in his mind as it repeated an earlier phrase.

“I can’t live without you, Isaac…I can’t live without you..."