Maggie Meyers

When my sister announced her pregnancy, my mother was disgusted and my father was horrified. After the pregnancy was announced, I would sit in my bedroom for hours and hear the whispers on the other side of my bedroom door, wondering if Autumn could hear it, too.

When they found Arthur Tremhold, he was sobbing wildly beside his delivery van, covered in blood. He was questioned profusely and kept in captivity for some time, where he was then transferred out of his holding cell and put directly in my care for a time period of one day. In one day’s time, I feel like Arthur and I made many revelations.

“Are… you hungry?” she continues to ask, a small smile forming on the creases of her face. “Is that what it is? You’re hungry?”

The lady introduced herself as somebody who worked at a hospital that was a halfway point between our home and Samantha’s university. Apparently, Samantha had gotten into an accident two days prior to us receiving the phone call.

There were dozens and dozens of tapes inside each of the drawers, each labeled with a corresponding number in an order that was easy to pick up on. Mindy had a tape recorder, but all these tapes? When did she find the time?

But the problem was, ignoring the problem didn’t make it go away like other problems might.

One Saturday morning only a month after the break-up, my routine was cracked wide open when a police officer knocked at my door.

They told me that memories are a good thing, seeing as I just began to lose mine. It’s a mean old trick that age plays on you as it corrupts other parts of your body along the way.

You’ve probably heard the story before: (Cue the reporter voice) Who wants to pick this lovely fresh-out-of-college ex-degenerate who finally got her life together for a real world, actual, working job??! Yeah…didn’t think so.

There, as if peeking out of the blackness, were four to five sets of blinking, terrified eyes.

My father was a man of rough edges, not like I remember most of those edges when all I can remember in my child’s mind is being read bedtime stories at night, eating snacks together, and watching the news while…

It was obvious, from the start, that my poetic, writer-of-a-future-wife had placed notes for me.