Day after day I’m surrounded by the memories that haunt me
the most. Their pictures left untouched even after ten years. My lonely cubicle
is my second home, but I feel more comfortable here than in my own house. In
either place, the memories never faded like they said they would. Every day I
see the fire, the carnage, and the look on my dead wife’s face as she passed me
on her way out. I hear the noises and the screams, and some asshole reminds me
every year that they’re all dead, but I don’t show on the outside how much I dwell.
I’ve lost all of my friends and family over the years so there are fewer people
to remind me, so it’s just me now.
My job is incredibly boring. I field consumer complaints
about product defects in general, and more often, our store-brand products that
are sold in all 597 Walmart and Sam’s Club stores in 44 states. I mean, I don’t
take them all, we take them all.
I work in a cluster of cubicles the size of a city block, and
we are surrounded by offices filled with bosses and other corporate types that
I never speak to. Those offices are enclosed by walls and doors, and there are
12 floors just like this that all do similar but different customer
service-based work, 24 hours a day, every fucking day. People always complain.
Sometimes they’re right, sometimes they’re wrong, I never care. My only job is
to make sure everybody gets their money back or a new product. I told you it
was boring.
On Tuesday September 11th, 2001, my wife and I
were in New York with our two kids doing the touristy stuff. They always say it
was such a beautiful day; not a cloud in the sky. I thought it was a bit
chilly, but I resent that day as a whole.
This is where the guilt starts. We were at the foot of the
two largest structures I had ever seen, and we both commented on how cool they
looked and wondered how they were built and how they could stand like that. I
mean, they are buildings, but we had never seen anything so big. We also
thought the Statue of Liberty was 100 times bigger than it looks on TV. We were
hungry, so I told Elaine to go up with the kids (Steve and Bob were both six
(twins)) and get tickets and I would come up and meet them with some street
food because it for sure was cheaper down here than up there. She smiled at me
and said, “OK!” And I never saw them again, except for one frame.
A frame is one section in a reel of film, that blend
together to make moving pictures. Our mind doesn’t quite work like that, but
when reality happens quickly, we can lock on to one single flash of a moment, one
unforgettable pulse in time which is what I will always see of her, not the
flawless smile.
The hotdog cart took me about two minutes to get to, and he wasn’t
quite open yet so I chatted with him for a few minutes. He seemed the opposite
of most New Yorker’s and enjoyed hearing about my small town. He looked up at
the same time I did when we heard the incredible whining of the engines. I
couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing. The building my wife and children just
walked into exploded out the side and back, and rained hellfire down on to the
buildings and streets below. I was not standing near anything that fell, so I
never ran, I wish I had.
I knew the moment I first saw Elaine that I wanted nobody
else for the rest of my life. She would have been creeped out if I had actually
said that, so I kept my distance, until I couldn’t. We worked together at a
small coffee shop in a small town, so we had to talk. I often stuttered my
words, and blushed just talking to her. She seemed to notice that I had affection
for her, and she would laugh lightly at my ineptitude. After knowing her for
only two weeks I asked her out on a date, and she said yes. We went to see Reservoir
Dogs in a theater in the big city, and then we had Vietnamese food and just stared
at each other. It was love, we both knew it. My love. My heart. I will never
forget you.
I’m writing this at work because I have a lot of down time
and I just don’t care about my job or life anymore. I just got a call from a
frantic woman who said she thinks she found real poop in a pooping baby doll
toy in a Walmart store. I asked her why she thought it was real and she said because
it smelled like it. I asked if she or anybody else in her household touched it
and she said yes, that her child had ripped the box apart because it had
hardened into a brick. She took it away when she smelled that it was definitely
real, and what could I do about it? I wondered if she had tasted it.
I am so fucking sick of people and their stupid complaints.
Obviously there isn’t real shit in a baby toy, she is probably some welfare
case trying to get a lawsuit or some free money, or even a gift card from us
for nothing. It happens every day, people always want something for free, and
we always have to give it to them. But not today, today is the day. Today is my
last day. I tell her to please go fuck herself and I hang up. When I’m done
writing this, I will pull the loaded .40 caliber Smith and Wesson from my
drawer that I purchased at Walmart for a discount, and point it at my chin,
pull the trigger, and die.
The last time I saw her was about five minutes after the
plane hit. People were running in every direction, people were falling from the
sky along with metal, fire, documents, office equipment, and glass. When a body
hits the cement, the noise is deafening, and stuff goes everywhere. I reckon I
saw twenty or thirty people hit the ground in front of me that day, including
my wife. Like I said, I didn’t know it was her until she was right in front of
me, and then she wasn’t. She was everywhere. I was coated in her blood and
intestines, and her brain lay next to her open head on the curb of the
sidewalk. I swear I could see it pulsing, like the heart was telling it to
live. But that’s not even what I remember every day; I just remember the flash
of the look on her face. She looked like she was mad at me; like I had let her
down.
I know why she looked at me like that. It was because our
kids were dead and she knew I was alive. My psychiatrist says there’s no way
she could have conveyed all of that emotion and thought into one look and
specifically fallen in front of me to show me, but I begged to differ so I
never paid him. He also said it was more likely that I recognized her clothing
and hair than her face or expression, but I know what I saw. I saw it. It’s all
I ever see. But never again. I’m done with this letter, I don’t even know who
it’s for. I’m going to say a quick prayer to her, and then I’m gone. Goodbye.
I’m doing this so I
can see you again, my love. I have never been the same, and I never will be. I
hope this is quick, and I can see your perfect smile again, and we can raise
the boys together in Heaven. If I go to hell because of this, I hope you know I
never loved another woman, and I did this to see you. I wish I could have been
more of a man; I wish I could have bared the pain. Here I go, my love. See you
soon.
Kjiym,l;kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkn
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To be continued…
