Image CC-BY-NC-SA by japi14

Ten thousand voices scream out for life–for death–for ten thousand, ten million, different things.  I am seven of those voices, and, unbeknownst to my clients, I am weaving a tale of my own.  It’s a tale nobody will read, nobody will ever be able to put together, except me–for my seven voices have no connections to each other but me.

They haunt memorials scattered across the globe; on servers, some that now have more dead than live, keeping journals, posting pictures.  Living.  And not just digitally–hundreds of “wailing walls” have been fabricated, built on ley lines (only the fattest internet pipes), pushing message after fabricated message, indiscriminately, to the skies: these shrines to death, to the dead, range from morbid spectacle to brilliant outcry.  This is where my novel is written, where my play is acted, in a hundred different guises.

Tammy–dead at fifteen, the sober passenger of the drunken driver, her boyfriend not “old enough to drink”, but old enough to do so anyway and survive the crash himself.  It’s his prison-money that keeps her voice growing, changing, living.  I have her applying to colleges, though she can’t quite decide what she wants to be: lawyer, doctor, social-worker.  I left her the incident with her boyfriend, left him dead and her scarred, just a bit.  It’s had a profound effect on her psyche: it could have been her, after all.

Bert–beloved father of four.  Each of the four take turns chipping in to keep me going, sometimes with a prayer in one direction or another, but for the most part they expect nothing more than reminiscence.  My story gives him Tammy as an illegitimate daughter that, after certain changes in his life, he cares for with all the love he wished he could before.

Jim–dead in the last war, a decorated hero.  He seems a bit player in my drama, exchanging letters with Tammy through a high-school program.  But he has the best words of wisdom of them all.  His wife always thought of him as wise beyond his years, and so he must remain.

Abraham–a domestic violence case.  The state pays for his upkeep, and nobody really checks up on him.  In my world, he’s Governor of Arkansas, and tendering a bid for President.  There’s some clever intrigue going on, if I do say so myself, with his now-ex wife.  He’s taken a shining to Jim, and is polishing him up to take over the Governorship, if things go well.

Jillian–SIDS made her a nearly blank slate for me; her mother pays for her upkeep on the sly, despite their having two more after.  I’m supposed to work her into their daily life, but at the same time only the mother knows what’s going on.  I’ve made her a contemporary of Tammy’s–best friends with her, in fact.  Though she has a dirty little secret.  You can guess what it is, but you’d probably be wrong.

Jason–died in his sleep.  He was a bus driver for fifty years, had retired for five–I imagine he always hated his retirement.  His wife paid for his upkeep for a while, but she passed on as well, and they had no children to carry after.  But his voice is integral to my story, though, so I keep him going.  He’s a bus driver, of course.  Mostly for the high-school, but he also does charter runs–he’s done a few for Abraham.

Mike–that’s me.  My life goes on, as well.  I can’t help but weave these people in and out of it, for I know them better than they ever knew themselves, better than I could possibly know anyone else.  I write stories for a living–stories that keep memories alive.  Stories that give new memories, and new meanings, to the lives that have been handed me.  I have my sights on Jillian.  And I’m putting money aside to make sure that our story will never end.