It was four thirty in the afternoon
on a warm summer afternoon and Kasni Vittuli was thinking about calling it a day.
She was supposed to work on her writing until five o’clock, but being an
author she was her own boss and could make her own hours. When you write in an old garden shed
behind your home, it doesn’t take long for the commute home.
She sat there enjoying a slight breeze wafting in through the screen
door of the shed, staring at a vase of wildflowers that sat on her desk,
gathering up the energy to make the trek up to the house. As her eyes rested on her unfinished
manuscript, she felt a pang of guilt for stopping early. She knew she had a deadline and it had
to be finished by the beginning of September. Yet, when the storyline was based on her own life, it was
hard to relive all of those experiences day after day, even though she was
tweaking the facts and changing scenes to make that fact less recognizable.
Why had she thought this a good idea, to base the novel on the
happenings of her life? It hadn’t
been easy to live through the events in the first place, why would she want to
rehash the painful memories that lingered long afterward?
She pushed back her chair and stood up, going over to the screen door to
look out over the yard leading to the house. The lawn stretched lush and green up to the gardens that
surrounded the house, with wildflowers and roses tangling amongst the shrubs
and bushes. She made an effort to
begin closing the windows, but paused as the phone began to ring. She hesitated a moment, wondering if
she should just let the machine pick up, but then picked it up and answered.
“Kasni?” a somewhat familiar male voice responded to her
greeting. Her heart beat faster at
the sound of his voice, but no, it couldn’t be, not after all of this time.
“Garan?” she questioned softly, “Garan Karl?”
“Kasni, I’m in trouble. Can you help me?”
“What is it?
What has happened?”
“They put me in rehab.
I’m going crazy here. I
need to get out of here or I’ll lose my mind.”
“Garan, if you are in rehab it’s because it is what is best
for you. I don’t want to interfere
with that.”
“Kasni, I thought you would understand how this is. You are the only one who ever
understood me.” His voice relayed
his desperation, and sounded nothing like the confident Garan of old.
“ I don’t know about that, Garan. I’ve never understood drug use.”
“You would’ve never done this to me. Come and get me!” Suddenly the call was terminated and
she was left listening to the dial tone.
She had no intention of getting involved with him again, especially in
this situation. But the afternoon
had suddenly changed, the sunshine darkened somehow, and her comfortable life
disturbed from this call out of the past.
Perhaps that was what she deserved for dabbling in the past in her
writing.
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