The Beginning of the Second
Dillon almost fell downstairs as he ran, trying to scream her name or any words for that
matter, and simultaneously feeling the rush of disappointment at his inability to do so.
Bursting into his parents’ room sobbing and hysterical, he finally yelled out, “M-
Scanning around the room, he met eyes with both his parents sitting on their bed talking,
with his father still in his day clothes, his mother, in her pink robe and matching pajamas. They
both shot off the bed and ran out, neither one bothering to try to listen to Dillon, as he stood there
sobbing, his arm pointed towards their bedroom door, trembling.
He knew.
Even as he heard them clamber up the stairs met by the older children, with yells back
and forth explaining David’s deathly sleep, he knew.
He fell to his knees at that moment, alone in his parents’ bedroom, looking up at a
painting of a little girl on her knees praying to God on the wall in front of him. Copying the
pose, Dillon put his hands to his face in prayer, his fingers still trembling. Feeling the separation
on the way down the stairs, almost causing him to fall forward, the pain felt like someone was
tearing flesh off his backside. It was as if a part of his soul was being pulled away, pushing him
down those stairs. Not wanting to think about his closet door slamming shut as he ran out of his
bedroom, Dillon tried to meditate in order to keep from screaming out. The searing pain was
worsening by the second, but he wouldn’t break his pose or stop his praying to grab at his chest.
Dillon remained kneeling on the floor. Hard as he tried, he couldn’t break his stare. That
painting drew him in. The mysterious girl with the small halo above her head and her eyes
gazing upward into painted clouds had become a much needed source of comfort. Her childlike
face, the devotion in her eyes, allowed him to disconnect from the chaos upstairs. With eyes
closed, he could only see red. The pain was becoming too intense. So this is what it feels like to
die? Fine then…now I know what it feels like to have life ripped and taken away.
Even as the police arrived and the ambulance came roaring up Terry Street, followed by
the media lights and crews, Dillon didn’t move. Hearing his mother wail and scream, his sisters’
cry and the coroner and the Chief of Police talking in the kitchen hours later, he didn’t move. As
the officers taped the area around the house, walking by the window where he remained
