For the month of February, each writer’s post will begin with the same line, which we’ve borrowed from Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five.
All this happened, more or less.
They left me alone in the cabin. Josiah and Charlotte, teenagers of neglect and meth and hand-rolled cigarettes, and the hulking mutt of a man they called Turf, who was Charlotte’s brain-damaged brother and Josiah’s punching bag until tonight, when Turf had lunged across the room like a dog that finally snapped its chain, his eyes rolled back and red.
“Use a fucking ash tray!” Turf had screamed.
They left after that. Turf to sleep off a quarter-handle of whisky in the main house, which was every bit as rugged and electricity-less as Josiah’s cabin. Charlotte to appease Turf, who refused to leave Charlotte and Josiah alone together. Josiah to protect Charlotte until she could lock her bedroom door, where she would sleep with an open knife under her pillow, as always.
And now I was alone.