Patrick

Home flashes on the cell screen; too late for a lie. Cheap room at the Big Surf, Ian’s mom 2 floors up. Neon fires on the counter, white light, and cloaked in unfamiliar dread I answer the call. The hours pause, did I scream at the phone? Get me to a hospital. Tiny crystals danced into milky pirouettes before he was gone. His gaze cut through me like a chrome hornet as the firemen carried me out, a ghost of pre-dawn.