Hide Me in Sheol by Matthew Erman (top 20 books to read txt) 📕

immediately a nurse rushed into the room and puts all of her weight ontop of her. She grabs a needle of something and puts it in her arm.
"Calm down, Doctor! Doctor! Calm her down! Calm down!" She is kicking and rioting around. She is finally mounted by two nurses, holding her down with every once of pressure they can muster. A doctor rushes into the room. He is prepping a needle. She begins to resist again and then she kicks the doctor and the nurse pushes hard and the doctor grabs the needle and sticks it quicklyinto her arm. She begins breathing slower, and she closes her eyes and she goes asleep
She wakes up hours later. There is a doctor in front of her. She is calm and more understanding.
"Where am I, what happened, where is he? Where’s is he! I want to see him where is he!"
"Allison Mirek, you lost consciousness shortly after the car crash outside Tokyo, you were transferred to De Pere after insistence from the movie studio and parents. You are going to be fine."
"Where is he? Where is he! You fucking tell me where he is!?" A nurse moves to the side of the doctor and they whisper something and he nods and looks behind him at the door and then back at Allison.
"Your husband didn't make it. He didn't reach the hospital in Tok--
“No, no, no no, no.” She shook her head violently. “No…no, please. You’re lying. Why are you doing this to me?”
"Allison..." The doctor moves to her side and grabs her hand. "I'm so very sorry. There was nothing the doctors could do. We...just received the report this morning from the coroners in Tokyo. He died with you in car. The attending doctor said. Allison's horrified cries were now silent, but her gaping mouth and squinted eyes said otherwise. She grabbed at her face, trying to express an emotion deeper than sadness, deeper than crying, which seemed to greatly understate her pain.
Allison quit her job on the movie following the accident and stayed in Wisconsin at her father's house. She stayed with them until the funeral, which took place in my hometown in Ohio. Not many came. It took Allison roughly two years to get back onto her feet. When she hit thirty three she was hired to do a movie on a big budget film, and this netted her several awards for cinematography. She decided to dedicate them all to me, and my passing. At thirty five she began to see a local man, he wasn't a writer, and had two children from a past relationship. He was a musician, popular locally and had a day job of a small restaurant owner. Before this she thought about me every day, and after she met the new guy, I became a background thought, there but never haunting.
It was one morning after having moved in with the new suitor that she went on a walk. She traveled much, yet settled in Wisconsin. It was near the holiday season and she hadn't been hired on any projects for sometime. She was engaged and wore on her finger a small, white gold ring with a square ruby placed on top, much like a cherry. Allison walked that morning, past the hickory chopped piles of wood, stacked neatly next to comely houses. She pressed a light and bounced weight into a powdered snow, flattening to packets. She dragged the tips of her feet, kicking the snow in front of her. It capered for several seconds before snagging onto the wrinkles of her pants and coat. She didn't feel any of the melting snow; she wore ribbed black tights underneath. Her fingers faintly snowed in a trembling frost, attached like sleeves to each finger. She could barely close her hand and when the tips pressed into her palm they left circular red marks. She thought back to try and remember the last image of me then. She couldn't, so she kept thinking back to what I smelt like, and it was only a faint whiff of natural air and cherry lip balm that she placed on herself. She thought harder back to my image only to be left with sincere regret and sadness. Straining then, she could remember the vague and fleeting sense of warmth she received from my smile. She fell to the ground on the sidewalk in front of a busy intersection. She lay there, crying at the fact it took her now several minutes of hard thought to picture my face. Several minutes of thought, sensations just to remember what I looked like. If I were there I would have told it was okay, but I wasn't. When she arrived back home, she took a hot bath. Several times she tried holding her head under the water, she lasted until her lungs and chest began to hurt, she rose and sunk in again to try again but she couldn't.
After Allison’s break down, she came to terms with her new life without me. Although she never felt I’d been replaced, she began to think less of me, and in the way one moves on, I could safely say I was in the back of her mind. She’d return to me at night when she woke up from a nightmare, or couldn’t sleep. She’d go to the window and stare outside. Sometimes she’d close her eyes and think of me during sex, or when she was being held. She missed her life as an artist, at forty now, she had left the business. She tried to write a screenplay, to film but never could get it start. Stating to herself, ‘it was far too difficult, emotionally.’ Her relevance in the industry had faded. She had opened a studio near by, and worked on a freelance basis, taking wedding photos, and high school portraits. She liked her life, she didn’t love it, but she liked it and convinced herself that she would be fine.
One night she wrote a poem to me, she was no writer, but in my first life I was convinced that if one felt something so intensely for a long time, they’d find the words to say what they meant. It was a lovely poem, one that she kept in a folder in a box no one knew about but her. I don’t believe her husband ever found it. The poem read:

From my window,
our highway;
our chests;
Reaching outwards
and upwards into our skyline.
His reflection
shows me arms crossed
over his breast
pale, sunken sockets
and pronounced cheeks;
for weeks and weeks…
I finally remember
his face with shaking from
my hands, placed firmly
on his tight jaw
“were as such to be
hard to breathe”
under his tender crease
in such doubtful pieces,
I was left to become
an only child.
In our eyes of jealousy,
regret,
nostalgia;
In our eyes...
He would see where we go
When we both die.

Allison was nearing fifty, and decided to visit my grave on the twenty year anniversary of our marriage. She went alone, and brought nothing with her. It was in the fall and a blanket of colorful leaves had covered my headstone. It still was brand new, soft cut marble, on it read some meaningless tribute followed by my name. She wore earthy tones, browns and greens. A quiet scarf fluttered behind her, with her hair that acted like strands of long, swaying Velcro that stuck in clumps to her wool scarf. She clutched her hands, together, only one of her gloves was off.
“Hi. I haven’t seen you in awhile, and I know you haven’t missed me. I’ve missed you. I wish you were hold-“Her lower lip began to tremble, “holding my hand right now. I can still feel you in my chest. I just miss you so much. I wish I was better at this.” Tears had begun rolling down her face, coming to a point on her nose and dripping off into the pile of leaves. “Do you mind if I sit…? Of course not. You probably wouldn’t mind if I just hopped inside with you. I just want this to be a joke; I’ve wanted this to be a practical joke for so long. One day you’d show up at my door you know, I wanted you to come back so badly and sweep me off my feet again. I’m not young anymore though. I’m an old woman, you’d probably hurt my back trying to lift me.” She laughed. “Oh, I want this to be over, I’ve been trying to wake up for so long, and just say to you ‘I had a bad dream.” She wiped the tears from her face. “I suppose you’d like to hear about me. I remarried, don’t be mad. He’s a nice guy; he has two girls, Emmy and Lily. I don’t work anymore; I live a nice, quiet comfortable life away from the business. I was, well, I was entertaining the thought of going back to Japan for a bit. I don’t think I could emotionally handle it though. The last time I saw those places, you were alive and with me. To be there alone, without you, it would break my heart even more.” She lay down on her purse, using it as a makeshift pillow. She took a comfortable nap for an hour, and when she woke up the sun had just started setting. “I don’t want to leave, this feels like home. I could do this every day and be happy. Knowing you’re here makes everything so much easier. I have to go though; I guess I’m leaving now. I will be back soon, don’t go anywhere. I love you. I love you.” She kissed the headstone where it said my name. “I love you.” She got to her feet slowly, and walked back to her parked car, she kept her head down as to not look at the other graves, she refused to acknowledge where she was.

*

I graduated from college with a bachelor’s degree in business and an associate in English. It was during a business trip to Chicago when I saw a familiar girl on the plane ride. She sat with a young man; his hair was blonde and medium length. He sat next to her, they held hands and behind my ribcage I knew that I knew her once. Her face, almost hiding behind another head or seat, and I tried often to get a good look at her. To see her better and work up the courage to speak to her. In my head, I was constantly playing out a scenario, one I couldn’t muster up the strength to enact. I finally stood up though.
“Do I know you?” I asked, passing her to the restroom. There was an empty seat across the aisle from her, and I waited for her to engage me before I would sit.
“No, I don’t think so.” She said smiling, flattered that someone would recognize her.
“Well, what’s your name?”
“Allison and yours?” She asked, I quickly muttered my name and she extended her hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” She said.
“As to you.” I took a seat next to her, but quickly asked, “Do you mind if we chat?”
“Oh not at all, my fiancée always takes a handful of Quaalude and drops into a coma on these things.” She said, before she looked down at her engagement ring. It was a pretty topaz on top of white gold.
“When did you get engaged?”
“A few months ago, are you?”
“Oh no.” I said looking down with a quite smile. I moved my feet closer to each other.
“Hmm.” She nodded her head in a beat of awkward silence. Seeing her face stirred a terrible longing in me, it