Benny
Every night, my mom reads to me and then cries in the living room when she thinks I’ve gone to sleep.
For the past month, we’ve been reading The Sea of Monsters, second in the Percy Jackson series. I don’t tell my friends that a 13-year-old still has his mom read to him every night. But I love Percy and my mom says my dyslexia makes me listen better than most people. I think she’s right. I don’t know how to explain it, but I can see a book better when she reads it.
When we get to the part about the Sirens and their songs that make you see your deepest desire, I can tell she is thinking about my dad. He used to sing all the time. When he was doing dishes, when he was cutting grass, when he was watching TV. Between kisses with mom, during hugs with me. He’d sing anything, but most of all he’d sing into a cheap karaoke microphone with songs that he’d just made up about how beautiful the morning was or how spotless the counter was after mom—his “sweet Rosa”—had cleaned it.
“Write that down, write that down,” he’d say. “I think that’s my latest hit.”
Then he’d keep singing the song while I transcribed it. His voice was loud and not perfect, but it made me happy. Afterwards, he’d ask me to read the lines in my head a few times and then I’d have to perform it back to him.
“We’re going to make you a crooner. A regular old Bing.”
Mom stumbles over the words she’s reading now and says sorry. Thalia’s tree has just been poisoned and Camp Half-Blood is vulnerable. I don’t know what to do, so I just hold her hand. Tonight, she falls asleep in the bed beside me instead of crying in the living room.
James
I’ve never heard a voice like his. I mean, most of the people I see, they’re either old ladies who talk your ears off or they’re very dead—or very close.
We made it to the crash pretty quickly. Dispatch said man on a bike, hit by an SUV. We were already in the area and shook our heads that we wouldn’t have enough time to prepare to see a head exploded by a tire or some mangled legs. Instead, we pull up to a man lying on the pavement, singing. The driver of the SUV is standing by her door in shock. Absolutely no idea what to do. And he’s just lying there singing. I’m not joking! Damndest thing I’ve ever seen.
“Sweet Caroline, bum, bum, bum,” he crooned from the sidewalk. Sounded like Neil Diamond himself. For a second I even wondered if I was misremembering what Neil looked like. Maybe this was really him.
“Sir,” I said. “How are you feeling? Can you move?”
He continued singing. I swapped a look with Shannon.
“Sir, are you okay? How can we help you?” Shannon asked.
Then, and I couldn’t believe this, he stops singing and looks up at us like we’ve done something wrong. Like we’re the ones who hit him and ruined his day.
“I’m in pain and I don’t think I can move,” he said.
“Okay, can you move your fingers?” Shannon asked.
“No. I can’t move anything but my lips.”
Slowly and carefully, we got him in the ambulance and strapped him down. He was dead silent the whole time and painfully pale. No more crooning. I knew what was coming. Shannon knew too.
“How are you?” I asked, seated beside him in the back as Shannon drove.
“Will you sing with me?” He asked back.
What a request. I hate singing, truly. No voice of an angel over here. But what are you going to do? He went ahead and started the tune back up anyways. I had no choice.
I joined in with him as he grew quieter and quieter and then coughed up some blood. He lost his voice then. I kept going while I cleaned him up and he just stared at me between coughs.
Pretty soon he passed out and was gone for good. ER nurse told us later it was internal bleeding and multiple broken vertebrae. Shannon told me I did a good thing but—that man ruined that song for me. Life never seemed so good, my ass.
Marjorie
Why do men hold you and tell you lies like “I will love you forever” and “your lips are the sweetest I’ve ever tasted” and “I have to go home to my wife and kid but I’ll only be thinking about you until next time” then they just up and die? When I read the news story online, I thought it was some elaborate, sick joke. I thought she’d found out about us. “He’s dead, now disappear!” But no, I’m being delusional and he’s, literally, not alive anymore.
I only tell my roommate Susanna because she’s the one person who knew about him. And she just says, “I’m sorry.” What the hell am I supposed to do with that? What if her boyfriend died? And what if he was married, so she had to just mourn in private? Would “I’m sorry” be enough for her?
I’ve started eating out of anger. And sadness. I eat so I don’t remember. Susanna asks me if I’m okay. It’s nearly as bad as “I’m sorry.”
I miss that wonderful baritone voice. I miss the songs he would sing. “Marjorie, my love,” he’d crooned just a few nights ago, while taking my shirt off. “Marjorie, my darling. Please kiss me, my dear.”
I can’t even go to the funeral. Instead, I’ll cook lasagna. Enough for two. And I’ll eat his portion. I can’t show up to the church and see that woman. What will I tell her? That I wish it was her and not him? That that would make life so much simpler?
Cassandra
I swear the light was green. And they told me they won’t press charges. So, it doesn’t matter anyways. He was in the wrong. I swear it was green.
But why did he have to sing? Who sings, in a moment like that? Clearly an insane person. Maybe I did the world justice. Maybe he was a lunatic. I don’t even want to know what he was like.
But the song haunts me now. It’s been haunting me. Maybe it already haunted me.
I just stood there, like a log. Like a crazy person. Like a psychopath. I couldn’t even answer the EMT’s questions.
I mean, what are the odds? I kill a man and while he’s dying he sings my first dance song? One of my favorite memories of Robert. Ruined.
But his voice was wonderful, wasn’t it.
I killed Neil Diamond. I killed Sinatra. I killed Bing.
And I swear that light was green. Please believe me.
Rosa
When I feel Benny fall asleep tonight, I push myself out of the bed and quietly tip toe across the house into the garage. There are two bicycles, one adult- and one kid-size left, standing against the back wall. I take them out in the street and I go back into the garage and I put my headphones on and I grab a hammer and I walk back out into the street and I beat the life out of these bicycles. I dent the metal chassis and I rip the tires clean off and I break the pedals into a million pieces. I go back inside and I take his phone that somehow survived the crash that he couldn’t and I bring it back outside and I look at those text messages one last time to some girl named Marjorie who thought she loved him more than me and I throw it on the ground and I swing the hammer at it and it cracks and I swing again and it busts and I swing the hammer over and over until it is anything but a phone. I go back inside one more time and I grab his karaoke microphone off the kitchen counter and I bring it out into the street and I lift the hammer to swing. But I can’t. Because Benny will forgive me for the bikes. But he wouldn’t forgive me for this. And it’s all I have left too, I guess.
I sit down on our empty street. I turn the microphone on in my hand. I hear the wind come through its tiny speaker. I imagine he is here with me, leaning over my shoulder and whispering into my ear “Will you sing with me?” It is the best version of him. Not the one that lied and cheated and died in an ambulance. He is here with me and we are singing the song together and his hand is reaching out and it is touching me and the hurt runs off my shoulders.
Joshua Trent Brown is a writer from North Carolina and a fiction editor at JAKE. He has been published in more than a dozen cool lit mags like HAD and The Dead Mule. He also has a novella that he hopes you’ll want to publish after reading this <3. Find him on Twitter @TrentBWrites.
JMWW 