Another session had gone by, and the only thing I could think about was my family.
They were haunting me, and I wanted to forget it -them -all. I longed to kill those lingering memories of the days we shared, those times we created together: both the sad and the happiest ones. But I couldn't. Each of them still echoed in my thoughts every second, forming endless rings of ripples of sadness through my heart.

I fought earnestly to throw those thoughts away. I didn't wanna remember it. They were all gone... My husband, kids, dead and they weren't coming back.
Forgetting, was the only way I could heal the pain and this deep dark chasm from their absence, which only seemed to grow deeper and darker by the second.

I resented it so much that I failed to notice the strength it gave me, and that my survival is codependent on those bittersweet moments that fueled my very soul.

The pain, the fear, the burden, was just too much of a punishment, I wanted it all gone; to disappear with the wind, or fade away with the clouds. What happens in the movies are certainly true, when you lose the ones you love, it hurts even more than hell, and I had been living this hell for more than the thirteen months I spent in Graceland psychiatric home; the name was their way of screaming to the world "We've got a horde of elegant and rich lunatics in our asylum."

Well, even my steps back to my 'confinement cell' as I call it, were heavy with sadness. I noticed a tear picking its way down my cheek, and before the men beside me noticed, I ripped it away from my face.

"We're here!"
Deep baritones struck my ears, and drew me from the depths I had began to fall into.
I turned to the him, and back to the other staff member, sliding his keycard under the sensor, which forced the door to slide open.

There were no handles to these sorts of doors, making it impossible to force it close once its open or even the other way around, and the few seconds it takes the door to jam itself close, those two men remained stationed outside, watching the whole preview.
They were just being cautious, and I couldn't really blame them.

With them gone, I was caught in the slumbering arm of memories once again, but this time, it wasn't just any memory, it was the very first of how it all began, what led to the shooting and how I was confined to the asylum for over a year. As I laid on my bed, it all came rushing in.
I couldn't fight it back anymore, and chose to let it flow.

For me, casual was borne into my very fabric, and there was nothing more casual than that morning, one like every other week day. I recalled the slow chimes of sizzling warm heated bacon in the pan, which were what stole most of my time that morning. Although any cereal with warm milk would've been a good choice for breakfast, but I had woken up too early to prevent any form of rowdy food eaten in haste.

Still fixated on my crappy breakfast schedule, and every effect a poor morning meal could cause, the telephone rang, drawing me out of my enchanted dream of the classiest foods I could prepare for a more balanced breakfast.

"Roasted beef?"
Meat crossed my mind the second I lifted the phone to my ear; I immediately snapped out the thoughts of a deeply tanned beef, sprinkled with rosemary and thyme, baked in a beautiful caressing heat, gently turning the redness to dark brown and black: the warm vapor that attacks the nose the second you slice it open. Oh! How Heavenly!
"The Jefferson's residence -" I quickly buried the thoughts of food, to respond to the unknown caller. "- who's on the line please?"
I sounded as polite as I could.

"Oh dear!" I exclaimed, still unaware of the caller, but I was certain he wasn't one to be taken lightly.
"Could you please hold on? I wanna get him the phone. " I pleaded, and he heeded.
"Jeremy!" I called out. "Jer, there's a call for you... I don't know for certain... Answer it from your end. I'm busy."
I took the phone from where I had safely clogged its bottom end with my shoulder, to my mouth.
"He will answer the call right away."
I placed the handset back in its spot.

Standing the mini second I did to think about the caller and his reserved tone, made me oblivious to the fumes rising from the pan behind me.
"Good Lord!"
I quickly squinted to the blackening bacon, and its crisping breaking sound.
"Oh no!"
Without haste, I threw the whole thing into the sink, turned on the tap, watched it flush into the bowl of tar. Then I immediately rotated the burner regulator, extinguishing the flames that'd set me ablaze in frustration.

I hadn't noticed the lingering smoke with my hands over my saddened face, and the second I took them off, those pungent black fog, began to choke me. That was the day, I admired the jobs of fire fighters, their long pipes, and their Bob-the-builder truck.

With my nostrils in captivity, my unrelenting arms waved about to clear a path within the veils of smoke, but it couldn't fight for too long, as it began to ache.

"No!"
Jeremy's cry stole my attention from the my kitchen lightly covered in soot. And with that, he went silent. He might've noticed his outburst, which certainly were products of his emotion. But that emotion wasn't anger.
I know my husband pretty well, and that certainly wasn't that kinda plea.

And like the good wife I was, I rushed to the telephone to do a little eavesdropping, which I wish I didn't.

"You have until the end of the day," The man over the phone said, and he was definitely angry. "Or else you and your two little kids will pay heavily for it."
What I heard next were spontaneous beeps; he'd ended the call.

My whole body shivered in fear... Nay, I was shocked. I was both surprised and afraid.
I went numb for a while after placing back the phone.

"What is going on?" I asked repeatedly in my mind, but this Naomi isn't omniscient, so there was no way I would've known.

The first pounce of foot down the stairs, forced me to feign a cough, a faux one, as I waved my arms to clear away what remained of the smoke, which was my attempt to make less obvious my act of spying. Listening in on another person's conversation is bad, and that was me trying to hide the fact that I did it.

"This is so unlike you." Jeremy rushed over to where I stood. "How did you burn breakfast?"

It worked. He was so caught up with the situation he met, that he didn't see me slide away from the phone.

"Silly me, " I smiled. "I honestly don't know how to explain what happened. One second I was flipping the bacons, and another, it was burning."
I explained.
"I think I might've underestimated the fire, and made it a little too hot."

"Yeah! That's logical."
The grips of skepticism was fading with each steps he made to the dinning table.
"So, just pancakes?"

"With an apple juice, that's if you don't want the choice of a fresh table water."
I joked.

"The kids?"
He ignored my humour.

"They're set for school."
I was so glad my innocent act was working, and he didn't suspect a thing, even though I was writhing in fear and suspicion.
"I'll just drop them off, once I'm done with you."

"I'll take them myself. What day is it?"
I could see how nervous he was, even with his futile attempts to hide the pulsating nerves. Honestly who wouldn't? His voice was shaky, there was a huge wet ring under his arm, his was face literally coated with sweats which he occasionally swiped off, and he even adjusted his tie, and never took his eyes from the pancake he had been staring at for more than five minutes. He was not just nervous, he was afraid, and that made me more scared.
The whole room was dressed in a rigid concrete blanket, suffocating me in fear. Even the walls were closing in, pulsing the way my husband's heart must have sounded.

"Fr-fr-friday."
He noticed my stutter, and turned to me.
"Don't you think we should make some barbeque this weekend?"
I walked away from him, stopped at the sink, and began examining the noir pan and its burnt bacon.
"It would be just us and the kids, watching the huge red steak burn, and I could even add a sofritto to the menu..."
I noticed his attention was back on the food, even the fork he held was shivering.
"We could use melted chocolate." I tried teasing him. "It tastes great on chicken, I don't see why it won't on beef."

"I don't have time for this Naomi."
He jerked out of the chair.
"Tell the kids to meet me in the car."
I watched him storm out of the house.

And those were the last words Jeremy ever said to me. One of my regrets after the accident, was why I let him leave on an empty stomach.

His first step out the door, was the first step that led me on this vengeful quest, and the same step that offered me my first near death experience, but technically, my problems all began with a phone call from a stranger, the one who inspired that very first step.