Ill Will

by Dan Chaon

“There’s a lot of bad influences in Cleveland, I’m starting to think. It’s a shithole, you know? I think if I’d been born in a nicer place I wouldn’t be such a fuckup.”

If she could send a message back in time, that would be all she would say. I did my best. Sorry.

“Honey,” she said. “I don’t think being hopeful is a good idea. Let’s not be the kind of people who are hopeful.”

It seemed that he had found some kind of powerful formula that allowed him to unremember things; it seemed like he was—what? Better? Cured? Free?

A certain kind of loneliness magnified inside me. A kind of terrible, unsolvable homesickness—for the home that doesn’t exist.

When someone you love dies, you die, too, of course. There’s a freeze frame, a pause button, and you’re stuck in an endless GIF, the same fifteen seconds looping around and around in your head.

What happens when you are not there, but someone from real life sees you?