Warning: here pages Pages 1 & 2 of peekaboo before I change a word

Peekaboo

Chapter 1

I got you.  It was the only thing Kevin whispered to Lawson leaning over the crib and now soldiering him through the ER parking lot nine years later.  The rest of the life and death game was wordless.  This is how it starts but it’s not the beginning.  It was always the middle, just past the point of no return. 

It’s getting to that point you can’t separate the words “no” and “where” or “every” and “thing” without the software lighting it up in blue-underline.  I deleted the other two sentences I just wrote about them.  I’m forced to do a wordaround.  It may slow us down in a bad way.  Maybe not.

Slowing down can be advantageous when you think you’re going too fast, and possibly when you think you are going at the right speed.  I do remember that about speed and speaking from my two public speaking classes.  One class was in high school.  It was in either junior or senior year I took the class.  Maybe I could remember if I got my yearbook out of the attic somewhere.  The second time was in college.  No accurate memory of what year that was either except it took me ten years to get my accounting degree through an unrepeatable combination of dropped courses, major changes from psychology to philosophy to accounting full-time, part-time, night-school all starting in 1979.  It was probably freshman sophomore in credits when I took the course, so before the end of mid 80s.  

The dropped courses didn’t cost money.  After your parent worked a year at the college, courses were free.  My mother secretaried clerked there first in the college bookstore, then the Athletic Director’s office, then the Admin Offices for the student center.  I can’t remember the order.  Again with the blue-underline.  You can write “clerked” but not “secretaried”.  I shouldn’t complain, you can write 'wordaround’ instead of workaround, and my complaining about words may be too slow.  I’ll write harder on wordarounds.  Holy shit, I just redlined for adding an “s” to wordaround.  Totally distracting.  I’ll stop complaining and keep the crossouts essential, but I ask two things of you. One, I need you to catch up before my story reaches you and the unreasonable dark behind you. Two, forgive me.  Already I risk you’ll risk your life and read on. 

Unbelievable, not again.  The first page last line was written too fast.  There is no reading it slow.  It may seem slow.  It’s not.  You could read it as an ‘over the top’ slow build up of a coming tension by an old writer.  It’s not.  It could be a first try at just making up a scary tale or guess of what comes next in a fiction, in your life.  It’s not.  If only either or both or all were true.  If this book and each word you read were only unknown or only a paper roller coaster ride of a fiction or fable for you to take or leave from a distance.  It’s not.  You don’t get to just read along feeling just a make-believe danger knowing deep down you’re not.  You are.  The danger is real.  As real as you.  Death by reading

Unbelievable, who am I kidding.  You may not believe me.  Correction.  You don’t believe me.  We both know it.  You would be the first at this point if you did.  Doesn’t matter.  You may already read a tad different now without knowing it.  It could happen.  Correction on ‘may’ you will.  The warning of death by reading could work its way in like you’re reading of seeing a Seth Godin purple cow.  Doesn’t matter.  Not to me.  To you it does.  I am going to write the way I need to and whether you come or not doesn’t matter.  I’ll try to write slow for fear you do read on but I can’t stop for you.  I can’t not write so you’ll catch up.  I tried that for fifty plus four forty years of lifting.  You can’t catch up.  Nobody does.

It is obvious I can’t slow or stop in one way.  The book is done.  Yet, it is more than that for both of us.  I keep rereading these words knowing it is much more for you.  I add to slow down page two.  The original page two is a page in chapter two now.  I try to slow down but I find it backfires.  I start to focus on where we are going.  I get scared for you.  I need to find the one way that warns you to go slow like your very life depended on it.  I have to before you are too blinded by the light again.  Blinded by why you should follow.  The “forbidden why”.  The one you can only remember by analogy, by covering up, by biting into an apple.  An original “why”.  Unforgettable once reminded.  Unable to return from once past.  An un-pantsed nakedness you so far have shown you cannot live with.  Not for the fear of death.  For the opposite.  A suicidal love.  An original temptation I dare not tempt you with now but I will.  But I must.  

I must for Lawson.  I must try to bring him back.  I knew this day would come.  I planned.  I waited.  I saw no one gets back.  No one I know remembers the choice.  Some who I have read push close but die missing their words, their choice.  You who read don’t remember choosing. I fear I have no choice but to.