You find work as an adjunct art professor at your hometown’s community college. You want to be grateful but you haven\u2019t been able to feel anything since the fire that engulfed your family. It seems like it just happened but it will be seven years come December since they\u2019ve been gone. You don\u2019t like to look at your own hands. They\u2019re scarred hands, the scarring that comes from second-degree burns, the scarring that goes up your arms, over your shoulders, and halfway down your back. You can\u2019t shake the image of the silver cross that burned into your daughter\u2019s chest. It was one of her gifts on her last birthday. She was eight years old. She liked collecting almost everything but she liked Lalaloopsy dolls the best. Her favorite cartoon was Sheriff Callie. She was sweet and funny. She was excited about starting a YouTube channel. You still remember the smell of her hair burning. You miss your wife terribly but a part of you is relieved that she didn\u2019t come out of the coma. Her burns were bad but the doctors said that it was likely smoke inhalation that killed her. She wouldn\u2019t have wanted to live without her daughter. She said as much many times. You chose not to tell her even though she may not have heard you anyway. You didn\u2019t want to do that to her. A part of you thinks she felt her daughter\u2019s death, that she let herself fade away. You\u2019re okay with her decision if that\u2019s true. You think about her a lot. You sleep on an old army cot because you don\u2019t want to be alone in bed. You miss her legs draped over yours. You miss her voice, her face, her laugh. The fire started when they were both in bed. You have hard drives of photos that survived the fire. You watch slideshows of your wedding, holidays, birthdays, vacations, and everything in between. People keep telling you that time heals all wounds and you want to tell them to fuck off. You want to grab them by their faces, squeeze, and scream that it will never get better. But you only nod and walk away. In the fall you\u2019ll meet a lady at the school where you work. You\u2019ll begin dating her and you\u2019ll be sure that she doesn\u2019t know that you\u2019re just going through the motions. You\u2019ve always been a good actor. She\u2019ll get pregnant. You will marry her. She\u2019ll ask you about your metal sculptures, ask why you don\u2019t create them anymore. You\u2019ll make up some excuse. You won\u2019t ever tell her about the accident that caused the fire. You won\u2019t tell her about the acetylene tank or the torch. You won\u2019t tell her about the black smoke. You can\u2019t tell her about the terror in your daughter\u2019s screams. You won\u2019t ever stop hearing those screams. You will die hearing their echoes in your dreams.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
People keep telling you that time heals all wounds and you want to tell them to fuck off. You want to grab them by their faces, squeeze, and scream that it will never get better. But you only nod and walk away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":21241,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3530],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flash-fiction","writer-james-evans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20793"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21242,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20793\/revisions\/21242"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}