Those We Left Behind, and Other Sacrifices

by Brandon Applegate

Because often what scares us isn’t actually the ghost in the dark, but the guilt and personal failures that manifested it. Because even when the sun comes up, those fears will not abate.

When it comes to books, you don’t skip the extra stuff. You linger in the forewords, the introductions, the prologues, the epilogues. You loiter in the story notes.

I’m afraid of the choices that lead to them—turning a blind eye to a child’s pain, giving in to anger and bitterness, making the wrong decision in a crisis, failing to see what needs to be done.

It’s such a mistake to put all your happiness in someone else’s hands like she has in mine. I am clumsy and don’t know what to do with breakable things.

She winds back and slaps him hard across the cheek. Albert cries out in shock. “You asshole! You always take things from me.”

Kick her in the face

Maddie laughs, a flute-like song drifting through the branches. She wonders again if he can hear.

Little shit

“What’d you write about?” “Wizards and monsters and dragons and kings.” “Doesn’t seem right, an old cowboy like you.” “Ain’t always been an old cowboy,” said Merle. “Ain’t nobody ever always been one thing.”

At first, it was like the veins in the inspector’s arms had come alive, twisting beneath his skin, up to his elbows, his biceps, his shoulders. The tendrils gathered in ringlets and shot buds up through the skin. They crawled up his neck, toward his spine.

He began to sing. The OSHA man’s voice was a beautiful tenor. Other roots extended from the wall, wrapped around him and embraced him to the rock. He no longer fought.

The blade bounced off the root and sliced Suarez’s chest. There was no blood. Instead, the skin bulged. A cluster of tiny tendrils snaked from the cut, each tipped with a tiny, snapping mouth.

“Mickey, have you ever seen that man before?” “Yeah.” I feel cold. “Where, baby?” “In my room,” Mickey says. “He likes to watch me sleep.”

BRO

“It is the secret nobody ever tells you about being a tree. First you must be small and weak and frail; if you can survive this, you can survive anything. In that way, I think being a tree is very much like being a man.”

Emily tilts her head to the side and smiles back at me. “Daddy, don’t be such a fucking drama queen,” she says, dragging the syllables out like music. Her first words.

Wow

He was the one who cleaned up after whatever disaster. Death, flood, earthquake, deities descending from the sky to rain cleansing fire; good old Timothy would be here with the broom, the vacuum, the phone book full of contractors’ numbers.

"I don't know what's going on in your head, and it's okay. I'll be here when you're done," he says. "I'll always be here when you're done."

thank you for loving me enough to try.

In fact, the thing that finally made him put a bullet in her skull while she slept was the snoring.

She sounded like she was tickling a pig in their bed every night.