Dripping Sin

The Letter C

I couldn't sleep.

I lay in the dark of Angela's spare room and stared at the ceiling and thought about one letter.

C.

Just that. One letter sitting in my chest like something with a heartbeat, expanding every time I tried to push it down and think about something else.

C.

I turned onto my side.

I turned onto my back.

I looked at the ceiling.

The thing about running from something for six years was that you got very good at not thinking about it. You built walls around the thought and you learned which directions not to look in and you got so practiced at the avoidance that after a while it stopped feeling like avoidance and started feeling like just the way your mind was shaped.

And then someone said the letter C in a quiet kitchen and suddenly the walls had a c***k in them.

I pi