Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 72853 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72853 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
I pour the hot water into the press and let it brew. There’s probably only one thing I’m truly addicted to in life, and that’s good coffee. I went so many years without it. There were never care packages from home. Never like what the other guys got. Jace, though, he knew. He knew about my coffee snobbery, so he started getting his mom to get me the beans I liked. And she’d send them over. I don’t know how he figured it out because, at best, the java we drank was usually about as good as toilet water. I won’t ever forget the day he shyly offered me the package of beans.
“Jesus, man. Getting sentimental over coffee here. That’s what lack of sleep does for you.”
Apparently, it also does for me in the form of talking to myself.
I pour myself a mug and drink it standing. It’s bitter as hell and goes down just right. It also burns a little when it hits my stomach because it’s been more than a few hours since Aspen made dinner. She made pasta with buttery, garlicky shrimp, some cream sauce she made from scratch, and asparagus that she perfectly charred.
She has spent the past three days feeding me while I’ve spent it cleaning out this house.
There are a lot of rooms, so it takes some organization and research to find the right places for the stuff to go to. I act like I don’t care, but I want someone to make good use of it, and if the money is going to help other people, then that does matter to me.
Aspen’s early misadventure with the burned eggs hasn’t been repeated. I’m so used to eating food and not even tasting it, but the things she’s made over the past few days have changed all of that. I’m starting to be one of those people who actually feel hunger…and feel it with some anticipation. My training is deserting me, and it’s not even happening slowly.
Right now, my mind flashes to a painting at the top of the stairs that’s been driving me nuts.
I finish my first cup of coffee and try not to think about it. Then, I finish a second. And a third.
If it’s weird to be tanking down the blackest, strongest java at just past two in the morning, I wouldn’t know. I’m not going to sleep anyway. I’m not doing this because I don’t want to pass out. I’m doing it because I don’t want to dream. Because I don’t want to go back there. If I dream the right dream, I will like it, but there’s plenty of shit I wouldn’t like to relive. I’m not afraid of the nightmares because I hardly ever have them, but when I do? The good, the bad…it’s just a part of who I am. Of what I’ve done. I know there’s no going back. But what about going forward?
What now?
The question, asked in Aspen’s innocent, sweet voice, haunts me.
That painting. That damn painting.
I tried to reach it with a ladder yesterday, but the ladder wasn’t tall enough, and I don’t have another one. The stairs going up meet in this weird bend in the middle. The ceilings are so high, and someone mounted that beast of a painting way too far up. It looks awkward. It always has. There were others below it, but I’ve plucked those off and sent them away as part of yesterday’s pile. That one is going to one of the hospitals here that puts on an annual charity auction every winter.
I know it’s the middle of the night, but I’m quiet. I find myself standing on the first stair and looking up at the beastly beast. It’s even more awkward now, marooned up there on the wall without anything to bracket it. It didn’t make sense before and it’s a thousand times worse now.
“Ugh. You won’t make a mockery of me,” I grumble.
I could go out and get a taller ladder. Or order one in. I could also hire someone to get the damn thing off the wall. But that would all have to be done during the daylight hours, and I want it down right now. Maybe I’ve had too much coffee, and it’s late. Or maybe it’s the lack of sleep and the past few days rolled into one moment. It could be a lifetime of training, but then I decide right here and now that I will not be defeated. Least of all, by that ugly monolith. It is slashes of black paint on a white background in a black frame. It looks aggressive and mean, and I want it out of this house. I want that wall swept bare.
The ladder is still propped up on the other side of the wall, where I left it after I took the other paintings down. I’m extra quiet retrieving it and setting it up. The stairs might look like they’re magically popping out of the wall, but they’re the same as any other stairs that jut around at an angle. They have a big landing step, so the ladder fits. Mostly.