Many ghosts watch me. They are specters from a life I lost. They were loved ones but now they are tormenting aberrations, painful memories given form. My husband, his ghost leans over me when I'm on my back with the sergeant from Kansas. I feel his shadow cast itself against my bare flesh, and I know that's his specter looms in the doorway. Witnessing his wife giving herself to the conquers of the land he died for at the price of bread and cigarettes. The pain my betrayal causes me is compounded by knowing the misery it inflicts on the soul such a dutiful man. I am the demon that tortures my loved one in death. Desperation has banished pride, and life is only survival. I have not the luxury of being Gretta, the wife, a mother, and the German. I am just a rat scurrying through twisted blood-soaked ruins. My only solace comes from the thought that maybe when he sees my flesh wither around my bones, and he sees the whiskeys twinkle in my glazed over eyes his love for me instant
This is a collection of anecdotes from the fringes of reality, a tapestry stitched together from our dreams as well as our nightmares, from the fears that haunt the collective imagination. These are the symptoms of the sickness known as the human condition.