Unlike Etta

a short story
at Loch Raven Review

...now we are three and the older man tries to chase away my sadness cause he hates crying. Got I hates crine. C’mon, boy, it’s all right. Only it sounds like he says it’s all rot. I’m exhausted and wet and pained and I’m in and out, sometimes hardly doing my own walking but I think I know where we’re headed when we are joined by a young man who moves so fast it seems like I blink and he’s behind me and I blink and he’s at my side and I blink and he’s up on the corner under the street lamp kind of yellow now, long like the lamppost, and he makes me dizzy so I close my eyes hard, shake my head then reopen them and he’s in my face saying something strange like How you justafine or How we justafine or We justafine and you walking clean now but like a dead man later man. Way you taking him Arnie, shit, like he can’t believe it. “I’m sorry,” I mutter and close my eyes again and leave them closed, let the men carry me some, waiting to reopen, hoping he’s gone like a lemon in a slot machine, gambling and I win...Read the full story.