About It Didn't Happen (Added Content)

Post 747:

It Didn’t Happen: A Novel (Working Title)

                                                       Part One: October 10th

Chapter 1: The Man Upstairs

            A woman in her thirties sat in the middle of the dark brown dirt of the road, unconcerned with clothing once very important to her life. She was one of a cluster going through a somber two-part motion, looking down at his picture and then back up to a curtained window where he was standing. Again and again, heads moving vertically, all with so much longing.

            “We need to get out of here. All of us. Us. But all of us.”

            “Don’t say that. We can’t go back to the beginning.”

            “Why not? There’s weird fire in those eyes. I told them not to carry around my picture. Didn’t I make that a rule?”

“It was a strong suggestion. You don’t really do rules. Pretty sure you were smiling when you said it.”

“One of my many mistakes.”

“They’re waiting is all. And they’re scared.”

“Waiting. For answers I can’t give. Imagine what everybody else out there is saying. Bet the whole world is having a good laugh. Can you imagine how the scathing takes are piling up? It’s amazing how all of sudden people with no imagination get clever.”

“Don’t spin out, PJ. You just passed judgment on humanity. The sun’s still coming up.”

“No lie, Lydia. I’m actually terrified to turn on a television or look at a phone.”

            “Give it more time. You never said it would be first thing in the morning.”

            “Guess I just assumed. How could I forget to ask?”

“It was an oversight. Oversights can happen.”

“An oversight? God. I used to do normal things. Remember normal things?” He clenched his searching eyes closed, picturing a morning like they used to have. Cereal and shaving before work. Nothing special or particular. Something average. “You could tell people, ‘My husband was a soldier. My husband’s a psychologist. He’s a good guy. We have a house on a hill in a gated community.’”

            “Stop.”

“I’m sorry. It’s just hard not for me to wish Ida Jean was dead.”

“Hey.”

“God. Another sorry. Too much honesty.”

“Everyone assumed it would be the morning. Everyone.”

            “Weird how that works. People thinking the same thing.” He dragged in a few uncomfortable breaths. The converted barn serving as their home for the last six months seemed to be shrinking. There was an ominous weight to the air, he thought, probably akin to the heaviness that hovered over those huddled inside the Bastille or the Alamo, just before tragedy amplified anonymous crappy old buildings into symbols of sad transcendence.

            Something imminent was rounding the corner.