Right Back Where I Don't Belong

I used to sit around late at night, mulling and wondering, and watching dark things scuttling through the long shadows on the floor. I would try, try, try to get the story straight, my story, but the thing was no longer capable of running anything but crooked, and it ran through some thick patches of brush and fog. I would lose it for months at a time.

I more than once saw that story disappear into a cold, black river in the moonlight, and watched as it climbed right back out on the other side and rambled off into the darkness.

One time I surprised that son of a bitch as it was sitting in front of a campfire, but the instant I sprung out of the woods it dove directly into the flames and disappeared in a shower of sparks and smoke.

It was months before I managed to catch up to my story again. I’d received a tip that it was holed up in a trailer on the Orange Blossom Trail in Orlando, but by the time I could get there aboard a Greyhound bus it had already pulled up stakes. I did, though, find an address for a motel in East Memphis, scrawled on a grocery receipt on the kitchen table.

In Memphis, I barged in on the damn thing while it was asleep in bed. After a strenuous wrestling match I was able to climb back inside the story and inhabit it for eight months before it once again slipped away from me.

I guess folks would say I’ve been lost ever since.