As I come into the front room of our house, I hear man’s voice whisper something — a single phrase, very distinct but unintelligible.
Cleaning up in the back bathroom, I hear voices pitched in an argument — just a few lines back and forth — again, distinctly audible but no words can be made out.
I find myself on a tour of a city somewhere in Eastern Europe. It is a dank, darkly industrial place — all smokestacks and ornate spires, brick walls stained with soot. Tagging along with a friend from junior high — he has made this trip many times before — I wander through the streets and shops, taking pictures as I go…
…the market, full of cheap knockoffs of western products and strange gummy candies, bright as chemicals…
…a flock of pigeons, black with soot, taking flight into a smoke filled sky…
…the rushed tour through a defunct governmental building, paper-strewn floors and broken skylights, a crudely mimeographed guide handed out — rough paper decorated with crayon scrawls and stupid jokes about American super heroes. We join an Australian tour group, twenty or more strong, demanding their money back . . . but the scam artists operating the tour lock us out…
…tagging along with the Australians, safety in numbers, despite the growing signs that they hide dark secrets — hints that they’ve been on this same trip for decades, damned and doomed to wander in a forgotten corner of the world…
…gathering together in a crumbling courtyard for the night, an old movie shown on a sheet hung up on one wall . . . I am horrified to see a young girl, her wits damaged in some way, mutely servicing one of the Australian men with her hands while the movie plays, casting a sickening constellation against the jacket of the oblivious woman in front of them…
…edging out of a brick archway, strewn with vines — no interest in seeing how the movie turns out, wanting to escape their company before the evening reveals even more distasteful secrets…
…standing in a darkened alley, taking a picture of clothes lines fluttering overhead. Two men pass along a narrow opening. They pass by and, after some hushed t ones, they return — demanding my phone and whatever money I have. One of them is dark and menacing, the other blonde and aloof. Despite the danger, I refuse and, somehow, make my escape…
…spending the night in an old flat, the women there gray with age and disappointment…
…the men burst in, having tracked me to my little haven. Somehow I get the upper hand…
…the dark man is kneeling, hands bound behind him. I slap his face roughly once, then again. His eyes raise to me, full of hate, and I pull back my balled fist…
…and then I wake in the cold light, bare branches outside my window and my daughter murmuring across the hall.
[This is directly transcribed, without changes or edits, from a journal entry dated January 6th, 1997]
I stand in the front window and watch as the car makes its second pass, making myself as visible as possible to the men inside . . . letting them know that there are people home and they’ll have to find someone else to rob.
On their fourth pass, I make eye contact with the driver and I know then that this is no normal robbery. They want me to see them.
We stand there, watching the pass and I realize that we’re being diverted.
Misdirection.
Someone is already in the house, I know. Someone came in the back — the car had been empty? The car had been full on the first pass, but the last few times, I could see that the men inside were not so cramped; one of them was gone.
They were already in the house.
Through the house I go, searching.
Passing by my room I see that the french doors have been kicked in.
Someone is in the house.
In a back room, my teenage daughter’s room, I find them. He is sitting at the piano, holding a gun in her face. She sits on the bed, crying.
With a broken crystal candlestick, I stab him in the back — just to the left of the spine — before he can turn.
Push the splintered end deep into him, glancing off the shoulderblade, scraping against the bone.
He breathes once, heavy, and then dies.
When the car passes by the window again, I am there — his head in my fist, raising it high, my fingers in his hair.
I see the eyes widen as they see his glazed, empty gaze.
I meet the eyes of one in the car as it speeds off — that is the one, I know, who will return for revenge.
The car drives off into the night and I drop the head, realizing that — for the first time — it is snowing in the Midlands.
[2013 Addendum: This is a odd one to look at now. In 1997, I did not have a daughter. Now I have two. And, for what it’s worth, my bedroom (four houses and sixteen years later) has French doors. That’s not going to help me get to sleep any easier.)