Chapter 5 - I Have To Go

“I have to go, I have to go. Your hair was long when we first met.”

            How do we get to these places? How do we get stuck between a rock and a hard place? You think back on the decisions that brought you to this point and you trace your steps back one by one. Didn’t want to go to college, worked at a coffee shop, upgraded to a bar at twenty-one, started taking online classes, bought a cat, learned to cook, bought a bus pass.

            You go to leave work like any other day and you’re not thinking about what happens outside your country: about world issues, and the big picture. The things that you read in the news and watch on TV seem very far away: like a fantasy. The terrorist and religious crusader in the paper? He makes you feel a stricter loyalty to your country, and if there was something you could do then of course you would do it, but a plan of attack doesn’t often cross your mind. What you’re really thinking about is what recipe you’re going to try to make tonight, if the litter box needs to be changed and what pocket you’ve left your keys in. Then one day you close up from work and a regular walks up to you and tells you they need you to go above and beyond.

            Samson had seemed like a fantasy and now she knew why: he was the man in the paper and on the news. He had told her that his God had given him unnatural strength, and she had brushed it off when he told her there was something he must never do in order to keep it. But now she believed him, and she would find out how to stop him.

            How do we wrestle our way out of these places? With silence. With blank eyes and a blank mind. With deep breaths that shake loose the truth from where every defense mechanism has been holding it down. With a cigarette. With anger, no answer, it’s not true, I never loved him anyway. I can’t do this. With tears that won’t come and a cold resolve. With much waiting. How could he? I know what I need to do. I will do what must be done. I am the kind of person that can do what must be done.


*

            She stood outside her apartment door. The smell of breakfast was wafting past its edges and she could not move—until finally she could and she unlocked the door and walked in. Samson stood in the kitchen in her apron cooking a late night breakfast and sneaking pieces of bacon to her cat crouched on the counter. She could not smile. Oh God, she couldn’t smile. He turned to her.

            “Hey sweetie.” She smiled. She walked to him and looked between him and the cat. He gave her the bacon and she walked to the dining room table.

            She had never planned on staying with him forever anyway.