S M Bailey

Straight Ahead, In the Dark S M Bailey

This is a story of resilience and grit and triumph."See those clouds there, Shorty?" Dad asked, pointing at a cloud cluster in the sky."Yeah?""That's where Mommy has gone to live.""Why?" I asked. "Didn't she like it here?""Yes, Shorty, she did. But she had to go away. And when people have to go away, they live there," he pointed. "She's not coming back, OK?"I remember I wasn't too upset about my mother going to live in the clouds. How could I be upset?... It was simple because I had no idea what "she's not coming back" had meant. It was simple because I was still simple, and everything was simple when you were four. Shorty Benton is driving down the East Coast to start a new life. Along the way he recalls twelve years of physical and mental torment at the hands of a controlling stepmother who separated him from his older siblings, an experience with drugs that causes crippling déjà vu episodes, and searching for a motherly figure in a doomed relationship with an older woman. Disoriented by a life of rejection, hurt, isolation, and loss made more unbearable by the déjà vu, Shorty attempts to search for balance and regain simplicity through drugs, alcohol, and sex-until a visit from someone in his past complicates his life all over again.