A-Void by Babak Govan (phonics readers txt) 📕

one comes running to my side with you in their arms. I wish I could have fought for you. If I could have just one more day, I would do my best to stop the sun from setting. And if I failed, I would hold your hand right before midnight, so that I would go with you to wherever you were to go.

I miss you. Somewhere, someday, sometime, I will see you. Wait for me.

All of my love,

Billy

Kayla raked my hair and paused to wipe the tears falling on my shoulder. Her tears exposed the pink flesh underneath her eyes. She sang to me, “You’ve done enough today. Now it’s time to rest.” Then she died. I stayed beside her warm body, kissing her lips and neck. As I moved over her nightgown, I kissed her breasts and stomach, which would never bear our child.

I walked out before she died; before her eyes closed, before she drifted away, sparkling like glittering diamonds lost in a sea, before I lost the last moment of intimacy.

Will I see her again? Will I live with Jasmine or Kayla in the afterlife? Or will I live with them both? What if I cannot see either of them again? Are they alive if they are alive within my mind?

Cleveland barks, breaking my recollection. I wipe away my tears and look into the distance that he is facing, to the mountainside opposite the cabin.

I see a bear about hundred feet away.

“Shhh, Cleveland! Shhhh!” He quiets to a snarl. I pull him by his collar and attempt to crouch behind a thick pine against the slope. I peer past the trunk and immediately find the bear standing on his hind legs, staring straight at us. He falls forward on his forelegs, jumps a boulder, and begins toward us.

I reveal myself clearly, jumping up and down, waving my arms overhead. I yell as loud as I can. Cleveland is running at the bear. “Cleveland! Cleveland!” I retreat for the cabin, fumbling as I imagine his slaughter, and then he darts past me.

After clearing a meadow, I climb up the return slope. Cleveland is already up a third of the way, crouching atop a boulder, barking. I look back and see the bear approaching about fifty feet away. The Universe can hear my heartbeat and somehow, somewhere inside I know, but do not believe, that this will be my death.

The noise from my heartbeat is deafening and my eyesight is failing. I struggle to find footing to crawl over a boulder. The bear is starting up on our mountainside. I have no choice but to leap for a groove on the top of another rock. My fingers take hold but I knock my knee against the rock. For the first time, I hear the bear.

As I ascend over the rock, I hear splashing. I turn around and see a fawn running along the creek. The bear turns in that direction. I climb diagonally to Cleveland.

Together again, we search for the bear and see him sprinting up the opposite mountainside. Before him is the fawn. The bear lunges at it. With a paw on the fawn’s back, he brings it to the ground. On its back, the fawn kicks at the bear. The bear bites into its face, and the legs go limp.

I am panting. My clothes are soaked and muddy; I snap the sweat off my face. I still feel my death is coming, but when the bear drags the fawn behind a boulder, I sit down and caress my knee. The pain grows rapidly and I breathe to kill it.

“Cleveland,” I say with little breath, “come here.” I find it strange to hear myself, to hear language. He sits beside me, his paws printing on the boulder, emulating cave drawings. I can hear the bear devouring the carcass.

Why did the bear change course? I was probably the easiest to catch. Something whispers in my mind, “Arrogance is the prey most likely to die.”

I wonder if we should go now for the cabin. Finally, I lean on my right leg, pull at Cleveland’s collar, and begin ascending while watching the bear eat. Cleveland seems to understand and follows without barking.

The cabin is very close now. The bear stares but continues to gnaw at its carcass. I quicken my pace to a jog, and even though my knee is hurt, I leap up the steps of the porch. I recover my Organelle v463.2 and run through the side door. I kneel to look through the window. He did not follow.

I take another bath, massaging my reddened, tender knee and worrying about the bear finding its way into the cabin. New York City is only a few miles away. Whatever is left that can happen, will happen there. Tomorrow, we will go to New York.

When I leave the tub, I put on two bathrobes, one over the other. I feel very sleepy and fall into a bed upstairs.

A hungry, bloated stomach wakes me in the middle of the night. I use one of the compartments of the multi-microwave to cook a frozen pizza for me and another one for Cleveland. If this is to be my last meal, it is going to be a decent one.

Afterward, I return to the porch with a new bottle from the cabin and my bat. I cannot stop thinking about the bear chase. Was it luck, instinct, something I did, or a divine plan that saved me? How about the fawn? Would it have an afterlife?

I retrieve my Organelle v463.2, open its Projector again, and begin writing:

I close the charts I have drawn and lean back with my head against the cabin. I drink some more and get lost within the billions of stars. I can now see things in the dark that I could never see before. The same voice in my mind whispers, “We made the wrong assumptions. In the final analysis, we learn