A View From Forever (Thompson Sisters Book 3) Read online

  Shit. Time to go.

  I turn back to Alex, meeting her eyes one last time, and I bring my fingers to her face with a feather touch.

  Then I leave her, with two last words.

  I promise.

  Nickel Mines

  (Crank and Julia Wilson, 2006)

  A one room schoolhouse

  Fields of grain

  Soft sounds of rural life

  Creaking of leather straps and wagon wheels

  Manure and hickory smoke

  The wind blows metallic terror

  as a truck backs up into a nightmare

  A man

  torn by

  something?

  “I’m trying to find something he says”

  to disarm

  then he brings out the guns

  The clatter of rounds in the chamber

  A threat revealed

  Some escape

  Some are let go

  adults with babies, and all the boys

  hot with fear and sweat

  but the girls are kept in quivering terror

  zip ties cut into the flesh

  trembling faith stretched thin by evil

  Some real or imagined offense

  far in the man’s past

  brings murder to Nickel Mines

  take me first, says one girl, that the others may live

  a second girl asks for the same

  One shot, two, three, then four. Five and six. Seven.

  Eight. Nine.

  Ten.

  Naomi and Lena. Mary Liz and Anna Mae. Marion

  all dead

  I would ask

  did the killer believe in Jesus and

  if so, was he whisked straight to heaven?

  How do you get justice when someone kills themselves after murdering children?

  When it was all over

  the families sought out the wife and children of the killer

  and touched them

  offered help

  reconciliation

  love

  for the families, how is it that the first thing they did

  was

  forgive?

  Going Home

  (Dylan Paris, December 2007)

  My thoughts are sharp, battering

  through the mind.

  Over the roar of engines I see sky,

  grey as tensile steel. A shiver.

  Breath is like a phantom,

  waving in its white loneliness,

  going nowhere.

  The roar becomes a scream,

  a scream in my heart,

  magic turned cold.

  Tears.

  Over the pitching roar,

  my life is torn apart,

  the heart cries injustice.

  As the rain begins.

  Shambling on the plane,

  sleep is welcome,

  covering the bleeding void,

  cool sweet darkness sweeps over,

  anesthetic and warm.

  A View From Forever

  Copyright 2015 Charles Sheehan-Miles

  Published by Cincinnatus Press

  PO Box 814

  South Hadley MA 01075

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN 9781632021199