The rest of the night was a series of nightmarish snapshots taken from a house of horrors photo album—from the drive to the medical examiner’s office to his return home, where he found himself staring at the snow dancing across his television screen.

      He had watched himself mindlessly follow the short, pudgy doctor with tufts of hair protruding from his ears down the long, dull gray corridors, the effort of walking zapping his strength like the grip of quicksand. The only sound was his own heavy heartbeat, thudding like tribal drums in his ears. A thick metal door ahead swung inward to reveal a frigid, stark and sterile room with bright white walls bouncing off highly polished stainless-steel instruments and blinding him to where he really was, projecting the illusion of virgin purity. He cringed as teeth-gritting sounds of metal hitting metal played a chilly tune to the backdrop of the whir and hum of unseen machines and the snap and pop of rubber gloves, while technicians went about their business of uncovering the mysteries of death.

      The motion of the doctor removing the stiff white sheet from her face flashed repeatedly like that of a high-speed camera shutter every time he blinked. Wrapped in a sheet like dirty laundry, with a tag for pick-up dangling over her exposed, pink-polished toenail. Something deep inside of him gave way, and he seemed to choke on his own air. Icy fingers of disbelief ran down his spine and he shuddered. Instinctively he reached for her, seeking the warmth and assurance he’d always known, come to expect. Her hand, it was so cold. All the life and the warmth that was Lacy was gone. Her face was just as peaceful and pretty as it had always been, except for that deep, dark, black hole in the middle of her forehead that could have easily resembled the blessing marks from Ash Wednesday.

      But he kept staring at her, rubbing her hand, begging her in the silence of his heart to just get up so they could get out of there. Out of this place that was too quiet, too cold, too lifeless, with its stainless-steel tables and rubber blankets, the stench of embalming fluid more pungent to him than the odor of the back alleys. Lacy didn’t belong in a place like this. She was too full of life, too full of energy. So why was she so still? Why wouldn’t she just get up, so they could leave? Dread swept through him. He wanted to run, to scream at her to get up. But the words wouldn’t come.

      So he tried to blink the vision away. But it remained, unchanged. She could have been asleep, just as he remembered from tiptoeing into her room as a kid to tug her ponytails. She’d looked as though she’d open her mouth at any moment and make one of her smart-ass remarks, like when they were growing up and everyone always said how much alike they looked. “I’m just prettier,” Quinn would say, and Lacy would remark, “But my boobs are bigger.” And they would look at each other and crack up laughing. That’s all he wanted to hear. Just hear her laugh, tell him to eat and not stay out too late. He wanted to watch her face glow with pride when she read his work or listened to him play.

      He wanted to tell her how important she was to him. How she’d made life bearable after their mother deserted them. How much it meant to him to hear her words of praise, and how much he loved her.

      All he wanted was for her to be asleep so he could walk across the hall and smell corn bread baking in her oven. Then everything would be all right and this sick, unspeakable torment that had infected every inch of his body would go away. His fingers dug into his palm. When had he told her he loved her?

      From his eyes they fell, silently, trickling onto his clenched hands. He looked down at the unbidden wetness, blinking, momentarily confused. “Big boys don’t cry,” he could hear his mother taunt. And Lacy would whisper in his ear, “It’s all right Q. It’s okay.”

      It would never be okay again.

      “Comin’ home from church,” he moaned, the force of his sobs shaking his powerful body. “Church! Praying to her God. Where were you tonight? Huh? Why weren’t you watchin’ over my sister, like she said you always did? ’Cause there ain’t no God. You ain’t real. I knew that when you nevah brought my mama back. But Lacy kept believin’, ’cause that’s just the way she was. So why her? Huh? Why? She ain’t never done nothing but good. And you took her. So whatta we got now, huh—God?”

      Suddenly he lurched to his feet, staggering, his legs stiff and heavy from hours of immobility. He stumbled toward the window as the hazy orange sun began its ascent above the rooftop rows of tenements and high-rise projects.

      Then, as if conjured from the depths of a personal hell, the agonized wail of a mortally wounded soul screaming to end its inhumane torture ripped from the bowels of his being, as his foot crashed through the curtain-covered windows.

      “N-ooo!”