Yellow Mama E zine

LIVED MY LIFE TOO FAST

 

by Elizabeth Dearborn

 

 

            School bored me, so I worked the carnival. Up and down the coast for three years as the water bozo, insulting people until they angrily purchased a chance to dunk me. Spent it on drink and ink, mainly Sherrie the tattoo artist. We got married on the Wildwood boardwalk, robbing the venue as we took off.

           Fast forward six years, then Sherrie flew off the back of her other man's Harley going 80 mph. Depressed 23-year-old me wrote a confusing graphic novel, then another. Self-publishing wasn't risky compared to other things I did. There was no drug I wouldn't try; my favorite was morphine painted on a cigarette. Armed robbery? Why not? A threesome would have been the next adventure.

           Eventually I found out my parents wanted me to come home. I rode a Greyhound almost eleven hours, and after all that, my mom wasn't even sure it was me. “Are you my son Randy? You're so thin. Did you break your nose? It's crooked!” My father asked how I was doing and then pretty much ignored me.

           “Yeah, before I got sick. Long story.”

           “Why don’t you tell me about it some other time? I don’t like the sound of that cough”—she yammered on about how I could move back in, go to the doctor, finish school, blah, blah. She was a Capricorn, I had planets in Capricorn myself, and I was sick of the Underwood Motel. I told myself I was a published author and needed a mailing address.

 So I moved into my old bedroom and let them pay for nursing care around the clock, supposedly against my wishes, because of my misplaced pride. “Lived my life too fast,” I whispered to nobody in particular.

  

 

       Elizabeth Dearborn lives near the Canadian border with her disabled veteran husband. Her fiction has been published in Flashshot, Burst literary ezine, the Drabbledark anthology, the final B.O.U.L.D. anthology, Punk Noir, and elsewhere.

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     Bernice Holtzman’s paintings and collages have appeared in shows at various venues in Manhattan, including the Back Fence in Greenwich Village, the Producer’s Club, the Black Door Gallery on W. 26th St., and one other place she can’t remember, but it was in a basement, and she was well received. She is the Assistant Art Director for Yellow Mama.