Chapter 46
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An elderly man, already forgotten by his family, bent over his morning tea. The blood from his fingertips filled his saucer, seeping across the Formica table’s surface as I continued to extract the details of his life.
A waitress, still in her apron, crying silently from the corner of the room. Her hair matted against her skull, and her shallow rocking left bloody imprints on the wall it would take me hours to clean away.
An engineer in Detroit. A blues singer in Tennessee. A second-rate chef in New Jersey. Each one a blot removed from history. Each one had bled for me, though not all of them had been willing.
Each one faded away, lost to the annals that would record mortal history, taking a small part of me with them, never to return.
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