So, I've been thinking, after an exchange RE: Bernie Sanders I had earlier, about racism. About how when black people and white people talk about racism, part of the disconnect is we're often talking about two totally different things. I think white people, a lot of well meaning white folx, have a problem identifying racism because they have no idea what it is. And this isn't wholly their fault. America has dedicated a lot of effort to sanitizing, washing its history. It can be hard to see if you don't live it.

Hail rained like tossed marble pebbles from a graying sky, clattering against the metal hull, dull thwacks in the dark, barely penetrating the quiet of the two hidden below deck, who feared the storm no less than they feared each other. Blood trickled from countless small wounds. Twinned wheezing breaths, each one accompanied by the crack broken ribs, broken people in a broken room. Scattered about was detritus, ash from fire, molten plastic and metal pooled on the wall and floor, cinders of flesh, a limb, two.

And at the center, the staggering fighters.

His home was still burning, wood warping under black smoke. He sat, watching from a distance, as the rest of village peered out from the trees, in anger, mistrust, but came no further.

The words of Chieftan Dani came to him, succor like a breeze from the past. She had come to him, after his parents... committed their shame. Stood by him a while, lay a hand on his shoulder.

She let him sob, tears evaporating on the sand, their pyre burning out over the sea of clouds.

30 minutes passed, an hour, before she spoke

Traveling between islands on God's Stilts, I think of my father and mother, as I always do when burdened by the legacy they gave, the role they left me to play: messenger on a dying world.

I look down at the clouds, dark, gaseous poison, and imagine their bodies stare up at me. It is easy to feel free, to forget the translucent shackles that bind. When the wind tousles your hair, when you launch yourself forward one impossible step at a time. When you see the sun, your saviour, and damnation, shining down from above, its heat reflected again from below.

Fights between families are never about the individual quarrel of any given moment, the inciting incidents linger in memory, the scars and slights accrued over decades: some petty scratches, some gangrenous wounds. They can be ignored only so long before resentment boils over. Hence, the vacation of a family as old and powerful and as steeped in disagreement of the Gonurlys was a powder keg. Each member held a match. Be it the eldest daughter playing second to her younger siblings, or the son, the namesake, struggling under the yolk of expectation.

The storm following Maggie up the coast chased her into dreams as shivering in the dark, warmed only by the prospect of reconciling with Jerome, she slipped into troubled dreams. She closed her eyes, opening them back in her own bed, strong hands rubbing her thighs in the dark. "Is this all right?" A familiar voice asked. Rome's velvet tongue followed where his hands had traced before. Maggie gasped.

"This all right Mags?" The smile in his voice, the scoundrel already knew the answer.

"Oh! Rome," She moaned, closing her eyes, giving in to the warmth.

Jerome led Maggie up a winding flight of stairs, each step groaning with their passing. The sun had set, and Maggie could feel the wind begin to blow. Storms followed her up the coast to where, it seemed, she was meant to meet doom one way or another. Still, she did not despair. A miracle had occurred. A small hole in the clouds opened, allowing a bright shard of light to pierce the darkness haunting her these past 10, 15 years. A detente in the pain she had caused by her rejection of her son.

Jerome, she rejoiced inwardly, he called me Mom!

Any hope she had of the gap between them faded in the light of the silent fury left in the wake of Duncan's departure. It was clear to her now: only his husband's presence had restrained how angry her son was. All this fury directed at her? After all this time? Maggie despaired. "So, Duncan seems ni-"
"No."
"Son, I'm just trying to help."
"We aren't doing this Margaret."
"We're not doing... what?"
Jerome pushed his chair back from the table and stood, all in one sudden motion.
"How did you think this was going to go? You come waltzing back into my life?

Dinner that night was a hushed, awkward affair. The three of them sat in a dining room which--Maggie noted gratefully--lent itself to Jer's preference for violet hues and starlight in its decoration than Duncan's taste for the occult. Still, the whole house felt like a shroud. She also noticed that neither Jer or Duncan had once mentioned the murders plaguing Autumn Lake, she found that particularly troubling, given that Jer was the-

As if reading her train of thought, Duncan quickly derailed it with an interjection.

"So, has Jer told you yet?"

A man stood at the doorway, arms crossed, as Jerome and Maggie trundled up the walk with her bags. His expression as they approached was inscrutable, a shadow for a brief moment as his eyes met Maggie's, but turning to Jerome, his expression melted into sunlight. Maggie knew that look well, having felt it on her many times before when Rome still lived. That lingering look of love. Jerome dropped the bags in the foyer and they embraced quickly.

"Margaret," Jerome said, not facing, "this is Duncan... my husband."

Once, after when, while in high school Jerome confessed to his parents that he was an atheist, Maggie asked him "How do you remain humble without God?

They walked, as they often did, around a park near their home at night. At the question, Jerome smiled and looked up at the sky. "Easy, Mom." He took her hand, answering in his typical eloquent way, "Look up at the stars. The vast night between them. Look up and think how even the smallest of stars can fit 1500 Earths inside it, and countless trillions of people."

Tears streamed from his eyes as he spoke.

To picture the quintessential New England suburb is to picture Autumn Lake, Maggie thought as Jerome pulled off the highway and, on a series of narrowing streets, eventually came to the town's edge. Idyllic, stately homes, painted either in white, or soft tones, hemmed them in. Maggie was inherently mistrustful of towns like these, knowing all too well how people... like her have been shunned since time immemorial by these supposedly enlightened folk. Those who turn their noses up and think, well, yes, everyone deserves equal rights. Just... not here.

The car ride passed in silence. Maggie wondering at how long she would suffer the unendurable half-life of forgiveness, Jerome an exact copy of his father, down to the moody inscrutibility. Neither spoke, Maggie for fear that the spell might break and Jerome would send her home. On the highway, rushing South of the city, the aging baker finally felt like she could breathe again. And was just gathering her bearings when her son finally spoke:

"How long?"

She didn't respond.

"How long Margaret? These killings. It's too dangerous for a-"

"An old woman?"

The train pulled into South Station under clear skies, no sign of the storm, nor the handsome conductor who transformed and fled under its auspices. Maggie stood, groaning as she pulled her luggage down from overhead, and thought of her son, Jerome, and the distance between them. How clearly hindsight crystallizes your mistakes. Maggie closed her eyes, seeing herself 15 years before, knocking on her son's dormitory door. There was a quiet rustling within, a muffled voice.

"Jer? It's your Mother..." And she entered, changing their relationship forever.

Peals of rain wailed against the train windows, hitting with such force they sounded like hail. Maggie wrung her hands as she tried and failed, to sleep. She wished she was home, busying herself in the kitchen, recreating the sounds and scents that recalled a more pleasant past. Fog hid the landscape rolling by, only brief flashes of lightning pierced the clouds and darkness. Had Maggie not known better. She would have sworn it was night. She blinked. It was far, far too dark out there. Almost as if...

...she closed her eyes, cloaked in quiet despair.

Tuesday morning came in a flash. Maggie found herself, as always, running late as she rushed to pack for her trip north. The departure time was just 45 minutes away when she finished. All her clothes into two large suitcases, along with a well-worn copy of the book of the dead. Piling her suitcases into the Lyft with the driver's help, she shot a quick text off to Bill, explaining she had been called out of town on short notice for family business, telling him the spare key was was in the flower pot on the front porch and to call if he needs anything.

Leafing through the newspaper, it didn't take Maggie long to find what she sought.

THREE MORE DEAD AS STRING OF GRUESOME KILLINGS CONTINUE, POLICE BAFFLED The article itself was sparse on details. Just that a young couple, or what remained of them, had been discovered by a neighbor. A neighbor who died from a massive myocardial infarction soon after dialing 9-11. Googling the incident, Maggie was able to find photos of the scene.

Later that night, as her rhubarb pie lay wrapped in foil in the fridge with all but one slice uneaten, Maggie wrestled with her nightmares.

They began, as they always did, pleasantly enough. She and Rome luxuriates in the grass behind their first home, enjoying a picnic lunch. Rome had his strong hands wrapped around her waist, his head lay pressed against her distended stomach, her eldest, Brianna, desperate to be born. He smiled and laughed as the baby kicked inside her. It tickled Mags, to see him so happy, so excited for their family to be.