Novels
CLAIRVOYANT
They’re coming for me, gaining ground with every stride. If they catch me, they’ll tear me apart just to see what’s inside. The path—if you can call it that—is uneven and dark. I strain my eyes against it out of habit, but there is no light here. I run faster, propelling myself deeper into the darkness until I hit a wall and fall to the ground. My hands stinging from the impact, I stand up and begin to feel around. Slowly, while listening for my pursuers, I move right and then left until finally my fingers find two cracks. Both are wide enough to fit my small frame. I know that one will lead me out of here away from danger; the other will trap me in its depths just long enough to be found and killed for everything I have done and everything I have yet to do.
I hear a thudding separate from my own heartbeat. They’re close now. Time to choose a path, but which one? How would you choose? Eeny, meeny, miny, mo? Takes too long. Coin flip? Can’t call what you can’t see. Guess? Maybe you, but not me, and that’s why they want me. Thanks to a hiccup in advanced psychopharmacology, I know which crack will open into a tunnel wide enough for a Cadillac, let alone a 5’ 2” middle-aged mom playing superhero, and end in an open field on the other side of the border. I’m not worried. I know how this ends. I know how everything ends. I see the future.
It started with little things. After a few doses, rare moments of serendipity became almost imperceptibly less rare. The boulder I’d spent years pushing up a mountain while Lululemon-clad members of the PTA threw rocks at me, felt a little lighter or like I’d stumbled onto a smoother path, one with more cover. Either way, my boulder became less of an imposition. At first, I chalked it up to rising serotonin levels, relieved that finally something was working, and working the way it should, without the fine print: In six weeks, your suicidal thoughts should lessen in intensity. You’ll be able to stay awake for most of the day and maybe sleep through the night, perhaps with fewer, slightly less macabre nightmares. You should be able to hear and respond to your children when they speak and have the wherewithal to perform simple tasks like buying stamps at the post office, shopping for groceries, and maybe even eat a meal without an intravenous drip of encouragement and reminders from your long suffering partner…
BUT—here comes the fine part—you’ll be intensely itchy, perpetually constipated, at least 15 pounds overweight, and totally uninterested in sex with your husband, yourself or anyone else… ever. To be clear, Henry Cavill and Michael B. Jordan, or whoever your fantasy equivalent happens to be, could show up together at your front door with detailed engineering plans to achieve and sustain your personal ecstasy for as long as you can stand it, and your first response will be to ask if you can bum some ex-lax and cortisone or if they know where you can score a stash on the down low. Fan-fucking-tastic!