Everything I Am
By A. J. Brown
“What can I give you that you don’t already have?” William asked. He stood in the white glow of a streetlamp. His body cast a black shadow at his feet that copied his arms out in frustration gesture.
She stood in the darkness, outside the circle surrounding him. “Your heart,” she whispered, her voice a soft breeze in his ears.
“My heart?”
“It’s all I ask.”
“It’s everything I am.”
“Then I want everything you are.”
His shoulders slumped. The shoulders of the shadow at his feet does the same thing. “Someone else already has it.”
“Yes,” she said, “The one who left you?”
William looked down at the shadow trailing from his feet. He nodded as tears slipped from his eyes. Then he turned and walked away. A moment later, the streetlamp winked out.
***
“Love is a treacherous thing,” William said into the empty glass in front of him. A scrim of froth clung to the bottom of it.
“What are you on about?” the bartender asked. He took the glass and replaced it with a full one.
William looked at the older man. He had a bald head, and gray hair in his ears. A dirty dishrag was slung over his shoulder. His white shirt had a stain just below the left breast pocket. It could have been ketchup from a burger eaten years earlier. It could have been blood.
“Love,” William said. “That’s what I’m on about.”
“A sticky subject there,” the old man said. He pulled the towel from his shoulder and wiped the bar between them.
“I guess so.”
“Broken hearted tonight?”
William shrugged. “Yeah.”
“Your girl leave you?”
William took a deep breath. Tears formed in his eyes. He swallowed the knot in his throat. “No. I mean, yes.”
The bartender slipped the dishrag onto his shoulder and put his hands on his wide hips. “Did she or didn’t she?”
William licked his lips, then wiped them. “It’s been months since she left.”
The bartender nodded. William picked up the glass and took several deep swallows. It was cold, but not refreshing.
“You need to move on, Mister,” the bartender said. “You only have one shot at this life. Mourning the loss of a relationship will only bring you down. Find another person to give your heart to.”
William laughed, a sound with no joy in it. “That’s the sad thing about all this.”
“What’s that?”
“I did find someone else.”
The old man smiled, showing he was missing one of his lower front teeth. “Then why are you here, drowning yourself in booze and not out with her?”
William ran a finger along the top of the glass several times before answering. “She wants my heart.”
“Everyone wants someone’s heart.”
“You ever give your heart away?” William asked, his finger still running the edge of the glass.
“Once or twice, I reckon.”
“How’d it work out for you?”
The bartender shrugged, a simple up and down of the shoulders. “The first time, not so well. The second, well, we’re still together, so I guess that one turned out okay.”
“Second time was a charm?”
“You could say that.”
“I should probably leave now and go find her—the second woman, not the first—and give her what she wants?”
“What do you have to lose?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then, what are you waiting for? Give it to her. It’s not like it will kill you to do so.”
William stood and placed a ten on the bar. “Thanks for the ear, man.”
***
William heard her calling even before he made it to Itsover Lane.
William, why won’t you come to me?
Her voice was haunting and hypnotizing, and was that desire he heard? He wasn’t sure—he hadn’t heard that tone from a woman in what felt like years. Still, he listened to the pull of her voice, to the seductive promise in it.
We can be together, forever, William. Just give me your heart.
William stepped into the road. Just as he did, the streetlamp came on, lighting up the spot where he stood. His shadow appeared at his feet.
“I’m here,” he said, a quiver in his voice.
You came back.
He nodded.
Are you going to give me your heart, William?
“Yes,” he said and slipped the gun from his waistband.
Just take my hand and I’ll take care of the rest, she whispered and stepped from the shadows. She wore a black robe with a hood that concealed her face. She stretched out a thin hand.
Tears fell from William’s eyes. His chest was heavy, and he was suddenly very tired.
Do you give me your heart, William?
“Yes,” he said and took her hand. As he did so, he saw the blade in her hand …
… and the gun went off.
A moment later, the streetlamp winked out.
________
So often my stories come from singular thoughts I have. In this case, an image of a man with his head down and tears in his eyes popped into my head. It was a black and white picture in my mind. He stood in a white circle, his shadow hooked to his heels. All around him the world was black. Reaching from the darkness was a thin female hand. It was like a comic strip image. Above his head was a thought bubble that simply read, What do you want from me? Another thought bubble appeared, and it read, Everything.
My brain spoke up with a question of its own. What is everything? Well, his heart, his love … his life.
I sat and wrote Everything I Am that night. After I finished writing it, I realized the story wasn’t so much about love, but about desperation. So often love makes us do desperate things, things we wouldn’t normally do. In the case of William, there wasn’t another woman. He was still heartbroken because of the one who had left him. The other ‘woman’ who lurked in the shadows and had a thin, white hand and a black robe was the only way he believed he could get out of the depression and heartbreak: death.
It’s a painful story. It’s a painful reminder of the power of love, and the ruin it can bring if things end in something other than happily ever after.
I hope you enjoyed Everything I Am. If you did, please like the post and leave a comment letting me know you liked it. Also, please share this to your social media pages and help me get my stories out to other readers. Thank you for reading.
A.J.
I guess you could say life, in and of itself, is horror. After all, some of the things people do to each other is far worse than anything a writer can conjure up. One such story is Broken Birds, by Pete Molnar. In his debut novel, Molnar delivers punch after punch in a story that feels all too real.
Pete: I started out writing as a “pantser” because I had read Stephen King writes that way. It was a mistake to have stuck to that approach for so long and for such a simplistic reason. Then I signed up for James Patterson’s Masterclass. Drafting a “flexible outline” had confounded me for the longest time, until Patterson laid it out in plain language and broke it down into something less intimidating for me. I am now a sworn “plotter” after having written three previous novels the other way, and Broken Birds was the first novel I wrote using an outline. I used to think using an outline would rob the writer of the magical experience of telling the story to themselves. Now, I swear by this approach, because even with an outline, characters are still going to do whatever they want and they’re going to surprise you no matter what.
I could leave it at six men and four women and it wouldn’t matter to you or really anyone else. But I’m not going to do that. Here is a breakdown of those regulars: three white men, three black men, one white woman, one Asian woman, two black women. No, race doesn’t matter, nor does their gender, but I’m going to try and make a point here. Now you know a little bit about the ten people who show up at the post office at the same time every morning.
One of the issues I feel we, as human beings, have, is we don’t see people outside of our own little world. Sure, we see someone, but we don’t take a second or two to consider that the person you see is someone’s child, maybe a brother or sister, mom or dad. That person has feelings and hopes and dreams. That person may be going through something terrible right then. That person may be thinking of someone he or she loves. That person might be just trying to get through a crappy day and all they want is to be home so they can rest.
That’s a cool review, but it was what he said in a conversation that described my writing in a way I never could. George called it horror with heart. Horror. With. Heart. I thought about that a lot, discussed it with Cate and then asked George if I could use his words as my new hashtag for social media. With his blessing #horrorwithheart was born.
There are other issues with Amazon that I won’t go into here. At the end of the day, I’m tired of dealing with them and their lousy customer service. If I can work it out—and I’ve been researching this—I will sell all of my self-published books directly from my website. I wanted to pull all the books from Amazon. I didn’t want them to have any of my books, but as it was pointed out to me by another author, many readers equate Amazon with a writer’s credibility. Essentially, if your books are on Amazon, readers take you more seriously.
Let’s talk books for a minute here. My collection, Voices, came out on Friday, April 13th. It is dark, disturbing and awesome. The book contains 15 short stories that deal with the darker and very real subjects of life, such as cutting, neglect, sexual assault, prison, murder, loneliness, love gone awry, demons, bullying and betrayal. It’s not a book for the squeamish.
A.J. Brown’s latest. Voices, is a collection of short stories rooted in psychological torment and the horrors that can unfold as a result. Each story is rooted in the darkest elements of humanity that, when broken down, don’t seem too far fetched at all. These tales are inspired by domestic, sexual and mental abuse, as well as neglect, bullying, death, sorrow and the harm the can cause. It’s not a light collection by any means, but it’s certainly effective and deserves your attention if you’re willing to confront horror rooted in reality.
No, this is not your typical interview session. What I want to do is make each interview like a story, one that continues until we reach the end. Some of these are going to be short. Some of them might be long. I don’t know. Like you, I will find out just how long each interview is based on the questions Lisa provides me. I don’t know the questions ahead of time and neither do the characters.
“Yes, Ma’am. I ain’t got nothin’ to hide, so you go on ahead and be … what’s that word you said?”
Dave smiles. It’s not a bad smile. Sure, his teeth are slightly yellow, but many people who are not homeless have yellow teeth. Smoking or coffee or not brushing can cause that.
Type AJ Negative 