Those Games

Friday's final word count: 21,043. I'm caught up again - almost.

Excerpt of the day:

The tiny, fragile body of his little boy, mostly covered by sheets, didn’t even look real. It occurred to him that maybe someone had replaced him with a wax figure and was just playing a cruel joke, that the real Kevin was hiding in the next room and would suddenly jump in and shout, “Boo!”

But life doesn’t play those sorts of games. It takes the coldest, darkest moment of your life and drags you through it face-first, drawing out the suspense and the pain and the anger until you think you can’t take it anymore, and then it keeps pulling you until you can’t even think anymore.

Many hours had probably passed before Joyce slowly pulled her cell phone out of her purse and dialed the funeral home. Gainor watched from his place on the ceiling, over his own head, while she told them to come pick up the body. He could scarcely believe it when they showed up only seconds later. Gainor’s body exited the room with his wife and his daughter. His heart stayed behind, locked in that room of horror, and his head made itself conspicuously absent.