Midnight Is the Darkest Hour

by Ashley Winstead

While the librarians were sometimes careless, I was always alert, books being my only lifeline. I was as hungry for stories as the Low Man was for souls, devouring every book that wasn’t a spiritual, each one proof another world existed outside the one I knew.

We call it the Medusa, because long ago, Everett and I decided we would give our love to villains. We know all too well how easy it is to become one when you’re misunderstood. Our love is a corrective measure.

But joys are few and far between in this life, so I can hardly bring myself to feel guilty.

“Pain is how you know you’re alive, Ruth. It’s not something you should bury.”

That had to be the worst kind of prison—the one whose bars were buried under your skin, invisible cages around your heart and mind.

The truth breaks wide open. I belong here on this good green earth. I’m part of it. Not a sinner or a saint—just another creature. Mud and pollen and teeth and sinew. If there is a God, some higher power, it’s here in these woods. In the beautiful strangeness of being a human, an animal wandering the world with soul-deep yearning. I belong here, and nothing can take that away from me.

And sometimes a person is more than a person. Sometimes they’re a lifeline. Your ticket out, not just of a house or a town but an invisible prison whose bars are in your mind. Sometimes they’re a key in the exact shape of the lock that cages you.