Fine Flu Journal Fine Flu Journal- june 2014 | Page 13

wife crawls from the hole and shakes her finger at me. My eldest son, who has
not spoken to me in over a decade, walks slowly out of it, his head hanging
down in disappointment. Even my dead dog whimpers from in there, dragging
the frayed leash that broke one day, allowing him to run into the path of a
teenager’s charging pickup. But I don’t feel guilty, when I wake up from these
dreams. I don’t feel remorse for the way I’ve lived my life—the way I treated
Michael, and everything that came after.
What I feel is relief. Actually, relief isn’t strong enough. I feel redemption,
when I wake up. Saved, is what I feel. Because I can still remember how
terrified I was, lying there in the dark with only the owl hooting outside,
imagining I could hear my tormentors gathering around me. And how glad,
how terribly happy I felt when the flashlight finally clicked on, and it was
pointing at someone else, and not at me.

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