So Help Me(Jason James Parker) She done took our boy when she left. The door was open apiece and I watched her pack up the wagon. I felt kinda’ dirty about the whole thing and my skin crawled. The cabin commiserated creakily. When they disappeared over the horizon, dust swirled about in little eddies just before sundown. The earth seemed to mock the gaping hole where my life used to be. I kicked and thrashed and convulsed like a crazy man. Night creatures sang out to each other and I felt more alone than ever before.

The image of my son’s face haunted my thoughts through the night. Every flash brought with it a mule’s kick to my guts. I’d have killed for a fifth of whiskey, but out in the territories there ‘aint no satisfying a whim. Only thing I can hope for now is that death finds me quickly. I can feel the reaper watchin’ me, hovering above and licking his missing lips. I stare at my wife’s library of books—the titles of which I can’t read. She left a good deal of her life here with me; just none that counts. There are jars, bottles and dried plants all over. The place still reeks of her: it’s like old paper mixed with the memory of smoke. I can’t stand it.

The place groans again—drooping like one of them hot air balloons with the air all escaped. It sounds like there’s scratching at the door, at the window frames and from under the floor. I’m normally a man of even temperament, but I’m losing my grip and I’m fixin’ to scream. Shadows gathering in the corners make my skin prickle. The damned woman left me here to rot. I managed to pick up some stray charcoal off of the floor so I could write this on the sheets. Forgive my penmanship—the chains don’t afford me much movement.

I’m sittin’ here on the ground, lashed to a beam like a misbehaved whore. The godforsaken scratching: it grows closer. I can’t reach anything save for the bed, so I write that others may learn what kind of woman deceived me. Rahab Červeňák—as she were known when I first met her—was as impossible for me to know as the Latin in her books. She was dutiful enough in the beginning and eager to make a child: a need that I was only too willing to fulfill. It was after the boy was born that she began acting crazier than a bald man in a barbershop. She’d chant over his crib, draw strange things in chalk on the floor, hell, I even caught her feeding him goat’s blood one time.

You find these writin’s, please see fit to have people read them. Let them know about my Isaac. God grant me forgiveness; she's taken him away to meet some hideous end. She’ll sacrifice him to something unnatural and eat his flesh; she told me as much before they left. I’ll meet the same fate; these accursed rats have started to feast on my body, so help me.

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