A Dark Matter - Revised Chapter One

Steven Orlowski
Apr 26, 2018
3 min read

I love this chapter. I got emotional writing it. The spirit of the unborn girl was not part of the plan. She came to me, on the page, as I wrote it. When I was finished I felt blessed. What was to be a straight thriller became something more. Now to write 99 more chapters just as good...

A Dark Matter

Chapter 1

When Jen died I didn’t know she was pregnant; neither did she; nor did her killers. The knowledge that she had been pregnant intensified the loss for me. She was my wife, my heart and soul, my motivator and inspiration. I thought I had everything before I met her. I learned otherwise during our time together and certainly after she was gone.

They killed my wife and my baby.

I see my baby girl’s face all the time. I often wonder how I know she was, is, a “she”. Mostly I just accept it. I don’t know how I know, I just know.

I often feel her with me; a little baby trying so hard to tell her daddy that it’s O.K. That she’s OK. That he should be OK. An unborn child who never learned any earthly means of communication, who never met her father, but desperately wants to comfort him.

I feel her hands in mine when she reaches out to me. I smell her breath when she speaks to me, the beautiful perfect breath of an innocent. She loves me. She wants me to know it.

I do.

I marvel at her and wonder if all souls have such drive. She died in the womb. An unborn baby who in death misses the life she never had as much as her surviving father misses the child he never held. Both my girls are dead: Jennifer, my soul mate, and Jessica, my beautiful baby girl.

Jessica fades out as the bus jerks to a halt. With tear dampened eyes I assess the dirty terminal through the bus’s smudged window. The homeless are out there waiting, waiting for me to join them. Some are sleeping on benches. A few are hiding in corners. Others shuffle by with black plastic garbage bags securing all their worldly possessions.

I wonder how the homeless feel. Are they truly stuck there, no way to get back to a normal life? Or do they prefer that lifestyle, basking in the lack of responsibility and the abject anonymity? If it is anonymity they have then I want it too.

I am now one of them.

I check my blurred image in the stainless steel mirror of the bus depot rest room. I drag my fingers through my beard. It itches and annoys me much of the time. I don't like it but I also don’t recognize me. I’m a stranger.

This is good.

I’m just some average Joe in a flannel shirt and a windbreaker traveling late at night with nothing but a small, cheap nylon duffel bag, my garbage bag, with what are now the extent of my personal belongings, with no trace of my former life.

The world wonders about me. I can’t wait for them to forget me. I’ve sold nearly everything I owned. I gave up my company. I don’t care what happens to it. I have deposited all my wealth in obscure places. I access my funds on a need only basis with the aid of one person, she who is perhaps my last friend, the only person who knows if I am truly dead and if not, where I am. I have money in accounts that bear strangers names. My access is limited to Western Union style wire transfers from her, my final friend. I carry no belongings. I want to be alone.

I wasn't sure it was possible. I didn't know if it was necessary. But I was compelled to disappear. I carry fake ID but no credit cards, only cash. The address on my ID doesn’t exist, but if anybody does a search of me, of him, the new me, they get the confirmation they seek. The new me exists in computer databases. The real me is gone.

I’m the new Howard Hughes. Except Howard hid where everybody knew he was. If only he knew how to hide in plain sight. I’ve done it and I don’t know if I’ll go back. Richard Darker isn’t dead, but he’s gone.

I am off the grid.

The killers will be mine.

#Thriller #Paranormal #Supernatural #Mystery #Revenge #Vigilante #Love #Afterlife