Mud Vein

Isaac turns his head to look at me. Instead of avoiding his eyes, I catch and hold them. He has such a piercing gaze. Steely.

“I haven’t told anyone that story. I can’t for the life of me figure out how someone would know. That’s why this room seems more like a coincidence,” I say.

He doesn’t reply, so I carry on. “You told someone though, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

He lied to me. He told me he hadn’t told a soul. Maybe I lied, too. I can’t remember.

“Who did you tell, Isaac?”

We are breathing together, both sets of eyebrows drawn.

“My wife.”

I don’t like that word. It makes me think of frilly aprons with apple pattern and blind, submissive love.

I look away. I look instead at the death that adorns the horses’ lacquered manes. One horse is black and one is white. The black has the flared nostrils of a racehorse, its head tossed to the side, eyes wide with fear. One leg is furled up like it was mid-stride when sentenced to eternal fiberglass. It is the more striking of the two horses: the determined, angry one. I am endeared to it. Mostly because there is an arrow piercing its heart.

“Who did she tell?”

“Se

I push myself to my feet and walk barefoot to the first horse—the black one. I trace the saddle with my pinkie. It is made of bones.

I am not fond of the truth; it’s why I lie for a living. But I am looking for someone to blame.

“So, then this is a coincidence, just like I initially said.” I no longer believe that, but Isaac is withholding something from me.

“No, Se

“I’m looking at them right now!” Why am I shouting?

Isaac jumps up and rounds on me. When I won’t look at him he grabs my shoulders and spins me ‘til I’m facing the black horse again. He holds me firmly. “Hush and look at it, Se

I flinch. I look just so he won’t say my name like that again. I see the black horse, but with new eyes: non-stubborn, just plain old Se

“The date that it happened,” I say softly. “That’s what will open the door.”

The air prickles, then he runs. I hear him taking the stairs two at a time. I didn’t even have to remind him of the date. It’s cut into the fleshy part of our memories. I wait with my eyes closed; praying it works, praying it doesn’t. He comes back a minute later. Much slower this time. Plunk, plunk, plunk up the stairs. I feel him standing in the doorway looking at me. I can smell him too. I used to bury my head in his neck and breath in his smell. Oh God, I’m so cold.

“Se

Yes. Sure. Why not?

Part Two

Pain & Guilt

Chapter Eleven

It was December twenty-fifth. Consequently, that day came every year, and I wished to hell it wouldn’t. You couldn’t get rid of Christmas. And even if you could, all of the hopeful people in the world would find a new day to celebrate, with their cheap tinsel and stuffed turkeys and lawn ornament bullshit. And I’d be forced to hate that day, too. Turkey was disgusting anyway. Anyone with taste buds could tell you that. It tasted like sweat and had the texture of wet paper. The entire holiday was a joke; Jesus had to share it with Santa. The only thing worse was that Jesus had to share Easter with a bu

My a

On the morning of that Christmas, I didn’t feel like jogging my usual route along the lake. A person might hate Christmas, but still feel the necessity to do something significant on it. I wanted to be in the woods. There is something about trees the size of skyscrapers, their bark dressed in moss, that makes me feel hopeful. I’d always thought that if there was a god, the moss would be his fingerprints. Grabbing my iPod, I headed out the door around six a.m. It was still dark, so I took my time walking to the trail, giving the sun some time to rise. To get to the trail I had to cut through a neighborhood of cookie cutter houses called The Glen. I was resentful of The Glen. I had to drive past it to get to my house, which was at the top of the hill.

I glanced in windows as I passed the houses, eyeing the Christmas lights and trees, wondering if you’d be able to hear the children from the sidewalk while they were opening presents. I stretched just outside of the woods, turning my face toward the winter drizzle. That was my routine; I’d stretch, will myself to live for another day, secure my ponytail, and let the beat of my legs begin. The trail is bumpy and precipitous. It borders the cookie cutter Glen, which I find ironic. The whole thing has been rutted by time and rain, woven with rogue tree roots and sharp flints. It took concentration just to make it through in the daylight without a sprained ankle, which was precisely the reason it had few joggers. I don’t know what I was thinking ru

At 6:47 he raped me.

I know this because seconds before I felt arms wrapping around my upper body, crushing the breath from my lungs, I glanced at my watch and saw 6:46. I figure it took him thirty seconds to drag me backward off the trail, my legs kicking the air uselessly. Another thirty seconds to throw me down at the base of a tree and rip off my clothes. Two seconds to hit me hard across the face. A minute to turn the sum of my life into a violent stained memory. He took what he wanted and I didn’t scream. Not when he grabbed me, not when he hit me, not when he raped me. Not even after, when my life was irrevocably soiled.

After, I stumbled out of the woods, my pants half pulled up and blood trickling into my eyes from a cut on my forehead. I ran looking over my shoulder, and right into another jogger who had just gotten out of his car. He caught me as I fell. I didn’t need to say anything, because he immediately pulled out his phone and called the police. He opened his passenger side door and helped me sit, then turned the heat on full blast. He had an old blanket in the trunk that he said he used for camping. He said lots of things in the ten minutes we waited for the police. He was trying to set me at ease. I didn’t really hear him, though the sound of his voice was a soothing constant. He wrapped the blanket around my shoulders and asked if I wanted water. I didn’t but I nodded. He a