Hex

by Thomas Olde Heuvelt

Here in the dark he felt a strong sense of belonging—something that, like so many aspects of the human psyche, couldn’t be rationally explained, yet existed nonetheless.

It had broken their hearts, just as every unfulfilled dream breaks the human heart, but that was life.

You adapted, and you made sacrifices. You did it for your children or for love. You did it because of illness or because of an accident. You did it because you had new dreams

“Never believe an alcoholic,” Grim said, “except if he’s paying.”

Instead, a much more worldly thought occurred to him: that there were moments that stuck with you your whole life, and they almost always had to do with life and death.

There was no arguing with a fool’s logic,

But now they’re not crying like the little boys they still were until two nights ago; this is the crying of boys who have just become adults because of events that are too big for them to bear on their own.

Until then, the only emotion he had allowed himself to feel was a vague missing of Burak, the way you missed an old friend who’s grown apart over time, maybe even beyond repair …

being prepared for the death of a loved one dulled the sharpest edges of pain by helping people gradually adjust to the idea of losing someone precious, not only by allowing them to take in the mourning process in small doses, but also because the willingness to accept the worst would soften the blow. Psychological bullshit, of course,

But it wasn’t stupidity, Steve knew. He had done it out of love. But wasn’t that almost the same thing?

This is all it takes for people to plunge into insanity: one night alone with themselves and what they fear the most.

Damn those people. Damn their never-ending chain of selfish choices. Damn their refusal to seek reconciliation, damn their inability to love, damn their sick insistence to see the ugly, not the good.