Random Rantings of Jordan Drew

He hadn’t thought letting her go six months before would be the hardest thing he’d done in his life… he’d done it once before when she was younger, but this time it was different, and trying to live without her was killing him. She’d begged him to do it – to take the memories away – and he’d obliged a second time because he loved her and he honestly believed she was better off without him… without any of them. This time he would stay away. This time, he’d protect her better. He closed his eyes, nursing his bottle of Scotch, knowing it was this exactly that would send him over the edge of sanity. It wasn’t even that he loved her, if love could define what this was. He snickered loudly in his drunken state. “Bloody crazy is what it is,” he said to his empty bedroom. Love. Define it.

Conversations from his many years blurred together with him advising his friends and his congregational patrons regarding love. He’d told them all It wasn’t real. It was a feeble attempt of a disillusioned mind in convincing a soul to believe he was not alone. People didn’t need it, and they were better off without it… but those speeches were given before he knew her… before he’d fallen in love with her.

He held the bottle upright, licking the inside of the neck to get the last drops before he threw it against the wall and stumbled out of his room to the kitchen, down a flight of stairs. He was doing good, having only stumbled twice. Shannon kept the liquor underneath the sink cabinet so he perched his lanky body on the floor and grabbed a bottle of Shannon’s finest whiskey from the back. He swallowed much of the bottle’s contents, spilling very little on his v-neck undershirt. Without missing a beat, he opened a second bottle, squeezing his eyes shut, resisting the urge to take a breath. He had to shut her out, stop the pain. He jumped slightly as a packing box full of notebooks landed at his legs, and looked up at Shannon, for probably the first time in his life. Finn was usually the one towering over Shannon, who was over a foot shorter than he was even in his docs with the inch and half thick heel. Bloody leprechaun. He looked up, shielding his drunken eyes from the blinding kitchen light. “What’s that?” Finn asked, kicking the box with his foot.

“Something I think you ought to read,” Shannon said. His face was solemn. Losing her had been difficult for him as well. Unfortunately, his strong Irish accent made him sound far more chipper than his bright green eyes portrayed.

Finn leaned over, poking through the box of unnamed leather bound books. He pulled one out, recognizing the book as one of the journals his wife kept religiously over the years. He fingered the pages filled with erratic hand writing. Pushing the cover open at some random spot, and forced himself to look down.

“That was when I noticed the man sitting at one of the two tops next to the window. Lionel handed me my drink, grabbing my free hand and pulling me towards the man. “Morgan, this is Finnen,” was really all I heard. He stood as I got closer, bowing his head slightly before reaching out his hand to shake mine. He was tall, at least six and a half feet, maybe more… and big and I found myself wondering what he looked like without the long sleeve T-shirt… I know, it was shameful, especially for me. I don’t care what Johnny Depp looks like without a shirt on… Okay, so that’s not true either, but I couldn’t help it. We live out in the boonies. People that look like him don’t come around here often. He’s like a side-show at the county fair. “A quarter to see the pretty people!” Yes, I’m incorrigible. He looked a little older than Anthony. There were some lines on his face, around the corners of his eyes, but they served only to accentuate his face. His hair came to his shoulders, black and wavy. His eyes were ice blue, but kind, and maybe a little sad, and I got lost looking into them. He looked familiar, but it was weird. Like I’d known him all my life, and it hurt a little because I felt like I’d wasted 18 years of my life looking for him, I just didn’t know where he was, and I know it sounds stupid… it friggin’ feels stupid. I don’t know. Maybe I’m crazier than I thought.

“People spoke, there was some laughing, more talking and then somebody touched my shoulder, time passed, and I couldn’t move… I didn’t want to move. I didn’t know what was happening to me, but I knew I didn’t want it to stop… and then he smiled. The pain I’d noticed in his eyes dissipated as he held his hand out towards me. He wore a huge brushed silver ring on the middle finger of his right hand, and normally I don’t think I would have focused on somebody’s jewelry, but in the middle of his ring was a tiny cutout of an ankh. I wondered if his ankh meant something to him or if was just something he saw in a store one day and thought it looked cool. “Pleased to meet you,” he said, bringing me from my thoughts. He had a killer accent, and I’m going to assume it’s English, but whatever it was, it was enough to melt me.”

He allowed a single tear to fall before he snapped his head backwards against the cabinets. The pain in his head felt a million times better than the pain in his heart so he repeated the act until Shannon knelt down, sliding him away from his cabinets. Finn stood, shoving Shannon out of the way. “I can’t do this right now, Shan,” he said.

“No, I suppose not… but take them… just in case,” Shannon replied. He left Finn with his memories and with her books.

Finn fingered the ankh, which he now wore on the middle finger of his left hand, next to his wedding ring. He wondered if she would ever get the chance to know why he’d looked familiar that day, and he wondered if she would ever know the truth as to why he wore the ankh and what it truly meant to her and to – Stop it! It doesn’t matter anymore. Forever and eternal life were terms people didn’t have the capacity to understand… but then he wasn’t human. He hadn’t been human in almost three thousand years.

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An excerpt of book two – Awakenings is available here.

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© 2010 Jordan Drew