Free Preservation by Phillip Tomasso

little shoulders. She fell into me and cried.
    Cash looked at his sister and touched a finger to his mouth, like he was thinking. He was only four years old.  “Mommy?” he said.
    “Daddy and I need some time apart,” she said. Cash wasn’t going to get it. He couldn’t. Not at four.
    “Daddy isn’t going to leave,” he said.
    Charlene shook as she cried. Her tears felt hot as they soaked through my shirt. “No, Daddy. I don’t want you to go,” she said. “I don’t want you to leave.”
    I wasn’t going. I wasn’t leaving. She was making me. I couldn’t say that. I couldn’t point fingers. The kids didn’t need that. They didn’t need to be in the middle of anything, especially shit caused by their parents. “I’m not going far.” I was crying, too. Hard. I held my daughter, and couldn’t wipe away my tears.
    We stayed that way, on the couch, holding our crying kids for nearly thirty minutes. Cash cried himself to sleep.
    When I stood up, Charlene in my arms, I kissed Cash on the top of the head before Julie laid him down on the cushions.
    I hugged Charlene tight. She wrapped her legs around my waist, like she knew what was next. That I’d have to set her down, and about to walk out the front door and leave . That I was going .
    “I’ve got to go for now,” I said.
    She squeezed me with her legs. Her arms around my neck cut off my air.
    Julie put her hands on Charlene in an attempt to remove her.
    I spun away. “I got this,” I said, seething.
    “Stay with us, Daddy.” It was whispered over and over in my ear.
    I don’t remember setting her down, or handing her over to her mother. I don’t remember walking out the door and getting into my car. My brain blocked out that portion of the memory. A possible defense mechanism that kept me from losing my mind. I don’t remember anything until I found myself in a gas station parking lot buying my first pack of cigarettes in nearly a decade.
    Their voices begging me not to go, and to stay home with them has haunted me from that moment on. It reoccurred in nightmares. I heard it always for years. Still hear it all of the time, and it is always like a machete chopping through my chest and splitting my heart in half.
    Then their mother was a zombie on a bed, crawling toward me. I was swinging the edge of a shovel at her head. Her skull was splitting open and spraying gunk all over hardwood floors.

 
     
     
     
    Chapter Ten
     
     
    I opened my eyes when my stomach dropped. I opened them wide. My mouth was open wide, as well. I think Charlene and Allison were both screaming, but it was hard to tell for sure over the sound of my own screams. I didn’t think the descent should have occurred so abruptly. The plane jostled up and down and from side to side. We were either hitting pockets of turbulence, or we were not just low on fuel, but out.
    Someone yelled, “Brace yourselves!”
    I still held both my daughter and girlfriend’s hands. I knew I might be squeezing too tightly, but could not help it, could not stop. I was scared ; terrified. The fact that it felt like we’d been falling for several minutes, and continued falling, was disheartening to say the very least. With each foot we fell, we picked up speed. I wondered if my stomach would stop dropping. It didn’t. Catching my breath was difficult, except for screaming. And we continued to, what felt like plummeting towards earth.
    I kept thinking about the landing gear. Did it go up when we took off? Had it been lowered as we fell? Were we pointing straight down? Would we just smash and explode on impact?
    Closing my eyes and keeping them closed made the most sense. I couldn’t do it. I needed to see what was happening. I did not like not being in control. Sitting back here and not up at the controls irritated my OCD.
    I turned my head to look at my daughter. Her eyes were tightly shut. Her mouth was pulled down into a frown , and then opened wide into an O. She might be screaming, but I