My body stopped working.
All of it, my fingers and toes stopped functioning like fingers and toes are supposed to. My heart decided to switch things up and fly rather than beat. My blood–once warm and abundant–froze and dried up. If there hadn’t of been a mirror, I would have assumed my face swapped locations with the bottom of my foot.
It’s not like my life has been simple.
Up until this point my life has been anything but. In fact, it’s been verging on insane since that day with Deacon in the woods. And, to be honest, if that hadn’t of happened, all this would have been easier.
I would have been able to chalk it all my to my own loss of mind.
If that’s all this were, if I were just a little coo-coo, I could’ve lived with that. ‘That Albany, she’s one crazy chicken’. Hey, and maybe I am. Maybe I can still hold out hope. Maybe this is all just a dream, or a delusion, or maybe my brain has turned into cottage cheese, and maybe it’s catching.
Maybe that’s why Deacon’s right here with me.
Deacon could’ve caught my crazy. Or, perhaps, I caught his. It’s completely reasonable when you think about it. Deacon and I should never have become friends in the first place. The fact that we even speak, beyond name calling or throwing fists proves this theory. We’re both crazy, and so is his old man.
It’s the only logical explanation.
Yet, still, my body isn’t working. Nothing is working, and I don’t think Deacon’s guts are working to well right now either, judging by the smell of urine, that I am ninety-nine percent certain ain’t coming from me.
“Pa?”
Deacon’s voice sounded like it was in a funnel, and a weird image of Deacon being trapped inside a funnel cake springs into my mind. “You’re not real.” I whisper, as Deacon’s old man raises his hand with a solemn smile.
“No, honey, I’m real. It’s everything else that’s the problem.”
Deacon’s old man doesn’t move. I can hear Deacon whimper something that sounds like “but you’re dead. You died.” His old man only shakes his head, sticks his pointer finger in his mouth then raises it into the air like he’s testing the wind. He nods, then says, “It’s time.” He turns, and suddenly my body is working again, and we’re following him into the woods.
