My name is Caroline Hines. I am a murderer. A real life man-eater. I was the willing participant, and you’ll see what I mean later. And by the time the moderators reading this post get around to realizing that this isn’t a joke, and if it is, maybe a non-emergency police welfare check just to be safe, it won’t help. Here’s what the authorities will find once they track me down and search my apartment: the sexiest corpse they’ve ever seen, along with a large, transparent plastic bag full of the truth: it was me, it was all my fault, and you’re all terrible at your job.
At this point, dear readers, you may be thinking: There’s no way this is real, or, Why here? Why now?
I suppose there’s no way to truly convince you, not on this platform, where most people lie, and where text is the only acceptable outlet. This might just be pointless. But there is some solace in the fact that, if it comes down to it, my smell will disturb someone else’s peace. And then I will be found, and so will the bag, and so will this computer full of confessions.
And to answer the other question, I’ve got terminal cancer, 2 months left, stage 4 or 5 or whatnot. It’s not important to this story, yet. And it just makes more sense for a murderer to end in suicide, doesn’t it? As an added bonus, I get to cause a stir on my way out, even if I’m not the best writer. I can put the words together just fine, though, because this is the only story I’ve ever had to tell. But when it comes to all the rules, formatting and punctuation and stuff, it’s never been my strong suit (buckle up, I’m a huge fan of commas). Anyway, now that all the formalities are out of the way:
His name was Clyde Pitts. He was 47 years old, with a wife and kids, and he was a trucker.
It was late summer, the turn of the season, 1990s. I was 18 years old and graduated high school almost a year prior. A lot of my friends from high school ended up as construction workers because we were raised in a trailer park and none of us went to college, either couldn’t afford it or were just too burned out to keep on. Not a lot of options were open to us, either way. Most went into construction or factories or some other form of hard labor. But I didn’t want to destroy my body for $25/hour. I’d seen what a life of blue-collaring does to a body on my grandpa, who was 6’3” and stood hunched at 5’10” before he died.
So, prior to graduation, I was asking around for a good paying job that didn’t require higher education or self-destruction. A friend of a friend told me trucking goes for upwards of $40k a year, $100k for truckers in private fleets. I already had my regular driver’s license, which is the first step. I flew through the other steps, which I won’t divulge in too much detail for the sake of keeping your attention, but when it came to the ‘final exam’, Finishing Program, it was called, I met him: my instructor, my victim: Clyde Pitts.
I was called to his office for some sort of pre-Program meeting. I walked in, he shook my hand, and formally introduced himself. “Hello there, Miss Hines. I’m Clyde Pitts. I’m glad you could make it to my office. There’s just a few things we need to go over before you can start your Finishing Program. Boring stuff, but it shouldn’t take too long,” He laughed. He was wearing a plaid button-down shirt and khakis. It was as close to formal as I’d seen on any trucker since I started there, at the center. He had a beer gut and a receding hairline. He held himself like he knew he was forgettable, which he was. But I could feel his eyes crawling up and down my body like a pair of snails, leaving slime wherever they went.
He gestured toward his chair for me to sit. When I did, it felt like every part of me was being watched. In an effort not to squirm, I looked around his desk for something I could start a conversation with, something to fill this awkward, observant silence. A computer, a “World’s Best Dad” mug holding a cluster of pens and pencils, a file with my name written on it in pen, and a family photo, turned away from him. I commented on how nice his family seemed, how wholesome. And it was true; they were all warm, happy. He thanked me awkwardly. He picked it up, smiled at it, and put it off to the side. It made me feel even more exposed, like I had crossed some sort of line, even though it was facing me like he was showing them off.
“So,” he began, “we have a lot to talk about,”
“I thought you said this wouldn’t take too long,” I said. He didn’t laugh, just opened my file.
“We don’t get many young women around here,” He ran his finger over the lines of ink. “Miss Caroline Hines, 18 years old, fresh as a daisy.”
I didn’t respond. I had no clue what to say.
“May I ask,” He licked his lips, shifted in his seat. His face twisted to show something close to sympathy, although you could tell a part of him was enjoying this; a man in power helping a lost little girl. “Why did you give up so soon?”
“Pardon me?”
“Well, it’s just that usually, this is a last resort sort of job. For people who are too old or too unfit to join the army,” He shrugged and his lower lip jutted out, proclaiming both pity and superiority.
That wasn’t true, not even back then. The way I saw it was, that as long as I wasn’t driving through Indiana, I got to see the most beautiful parts of our country while getting paid $40k a year and not having to go to college. But men have always had a funny way of projecting this idea onto me that because they were attracted to me meant I was stupid. But I needed to be nice, just this instance. So I said,
“I don’t see it that way, sir,”
“You don’t?” He was intrigued. You could tell that anything other than outright agreeance from a woman was foreign to him.
“No,” I wasn’t in the mood. I’ve never been known for my patience.
“Well, I saw that you grew up in a trailer park,”
Have you ever felt a sense of dread so intense that it turns into a dense sort of solid in your stomach?
“I know people like you,” he said, as if we weren’t neighbors, “don’t have many opportunities. It’s not your fault. It’s the system, it’s the man, or what have you. I don’t want you to give up. If you’re really set on this, I can help you. If you’re not, I can help you find other paths. Either way, I want to see you succeed.”
At this point, you may be thinking that he sounds nice enough, although self-righteous and a little creepy. That there was no reason to kill him, especially not without any guilt. But I did feel guilty, for a long time. It took years, decades, until I accepted there was really nothing I could do about it and moved on. And then, naturally, came the diagnosis. But I’m not here for pity, and if you recall, by the time anyone’s finished reading this, I won’t be here at all.
So I told him I was sure, that I belonged in the driver’s seat of a semi-truck. And so he helped me. He explained what the week-long Finishing Program would entail: 4 days of training and 1 driving test on Friday. Every morning that next Monday was spent practicing, sometimes moved during lunch hour so I could practice driving in heavy traffic. I know where you thought the story was going, but that’s not what happened. And on the final day of that week, Friday, it was time for my last test before I was assigned my own truck. He even got a little teary-eyed when we met in the parking lot for the first time, saying he was sad to see me go, that he was proud of me.
That moment might’ve been touching if I wasn’t so anxious; dark grey clouds were rolling in, the news that morning had mentioned a possibility of severe thunderstorms. And it was unnaturally cold, even for autumn. I still remember that, not because I’d never been cold in the midwest before, but I could swear something in the air felt wrong, like something sinister was in those clouds, staring me down. He’d assured me, and told me it was just room for some extra credit. Then he patted me on the back. I asked for a rain check, but he insisted that it wasn’t that bad. His exact words were, “It’s hard to hydroplane in a semi-truck,” then he laughed.
Even stupid, young 18-year-old me knew that was wrong. But I considered that he, a regular family man, would not put his own life at risk. So we got into the car. We had about 10 minutes of driving until we reached the highway. He started up a conversation as soon as we left the parking lot.
He asked me, shifting around in his seat, “Are you familiar with our local urban legends?” I could hear a smile in his voice, but also something else. Anticipation, I think.
“I guess,”
“Which one’s your favorite?”
At this point I was getting annoyed. He knew I was scared, in fact he’d just spent ten minutes calming me down in the parking lot. So I didn’t answer.
“Anyone home?” He laughed. He always laughs.
“Shadow Man,” I replied. I can’t stand his jokes, so I said the first thing that came to mind because I could tell he was gearing up for another one.
“Shadow Man?” He shifts around again. There was something so aggravating about that, hearing him move. “I like that one, too,”
It was all I could do not to snort. Instead, I told him, “What’s your favorite?”
“The Scarecrows,” There was barely concealed excitement in his voice.
“Scarecrows?” I frowned, feigning confusion, but I didn’t care.
He accepts the invitation. “Not many people have heard of them. You see, our town has a long history of paganism. The Scarecrows were seen as Gods, or rather, were erected as vessels for the divine beings,”
“Divine?” I ask. We got stuck behind a red light. I twisted towards him. “Like, Heaven?”
“Oh, no,” He laughed, again. He was practically cuddling the door, looking out the window. “Not Heaven.”
I followed his gaze. There was a large knot of particularly dark grey clouds hovering over the forest right by the highway, part of it extending downward in a cylindrical shape. Right near us.
“That’s a demon,” I said, an expression my mom had always used for bad storms. And it did: it had a thick, spiky trunk, nearly reaching the treetops. It looked like a giant ghost, an amputated tornado, but it wasn’t spinning. Yet. “A twister, I reckon. We should head back.”
“No,” He said breathily, letting it fog up the window like he wanted to be a part of the storm. “Not Heaven.”
“What in the high hell are you talking about?” Now I was angry. It wasn’t safe, plain and simple, and here he was, acting like a kid outside a candy shop. I was just as mad at myself for being talked into all this.
Then he turned towards me. He moved silently as if he had a hinge attached to his bottom, pardon my crudeness. His cheeks, normally pasty, were blotched with an ugly shade of red. His eyebrows were raised. His smile was a little too wide, his crooked, yellowing teeth a little too displayed. His middle-aged skin had trouble accommodating all that stretch. I remember thinking about how huge his pores were.
“We’re not turning back,” He said. It was a matter of fact. I side-eyed the ‘NO U-TURN’ sign with contempt. I would have to go on the highway first, exit, and then turn around, as he wanted. “You can’t.”
I was angry. I don’t even have the right words to tell you how I felt at that moment. But it was violent, lunatic. I had never been so angry before, and have never been that angry since. It was something about the storm, about not getting my way, about being put in harm’s way because I happened to get stuck with a wannabe version of those tornado-chasing fanatics you see on television (that never drove semi-trucks, by the way). Something inside me just frayed loose. So what followed was first a moment of silence, as all that anger set in and was coming to a rolling boil, and we sat there, with rain tapping the windows, God yelling in the distance.
Then I punched him as hard as I could, aiming for the nose. A car horn blared behind me. Annoyingly, the light had turned green. I turned slowly, with more caution than the light rain called for. Why the hell were there other cars on the road anyway?
He was breathing heavily out of his mouth, wheezing, one hand planted under his gushing nose, the other searching in the glove box for a napkin.
“What the hell’d you do that for?” He yelled. His voice was nasally as he tried his best to avoid swallowing too much blood.
“You realize I can just stop the fucking truck right?” I was yelling too. “I could just pull over and turn on the fucking hazards and you won’t get your fucking way! We will wait out this storm and I will kick your fucking ass!”
“Language,” He gives up his search for a napkin and pulls his shirt over his nose.
“Oh, you’re not a fucking priest. Suck my dick and balls and taint.”
“Right. Well, that won’t be necessary. Won’t change anything,”
“Won’t change anything? I’m not DYING just because you wanna get your rocks off chasing some fucking storm,” I pronounced my syllables as solidly as I could, I was furious. And I was gearing up to punch him again when the engine sputtered, burped, and we started slowing down in spite of my foot on the gas. “Oh, Christ. Oh for Christ’s fucking sake.”
After I’ve pulled over, hazards on, he says, “Told you,” I can see the smile in his crescent-shaped eyes, a vibrant maroon flower blossoming on his shirt. The car by then smelled like pure, metallic blood. It was suffocating. I felt sick. Angry and sick, like I was rabid. At that moment, I wanted to kill him. I wanted to rip his eyes out and throw them out the window and give them to the storm as he so badly wanted and wait as his screaming stops and the storm dies out. But that’s not ladylike.
“What the hell are we even here for? I thought you wanted me to have a bright future! For Christ sake, I thought you liked me!” I was screaming.
“I know. I did, I do like you. Honest to all Gods, I didn’t see this coming, really,” He looked at me with sympathy, somehow, after being so excited just a few moments ago. “It’s just… bad luck.”
“My God, what are you talking about? What the fuck are you talking about?” If I wasn’t panicked before, I was at that moment. It was dark as night— we were right under that demon. And lightning, the way it made everything light up like it was afternoon for just a split second, that always disturbed me. When lightning flashed then, and brought the security of daylight into and around the truck and then just vanished, gone, it was crushing to me. Because monsters hid in the dark, and under this canopy, they wouldn’t have to hide anymore.
“I can’t help it. They must want you,” He was slowly becoming frantic, looking around through the dark, blank windows. “I can’t do anything about it. It’s out of my control!”
“Who? Who the fuck is they?” Lightning flashed then, brighter, flickering for a few moments. Long enough to make out the poles spaced out equally along the highway. “Why the fuck are the streetlights off? What the fuck is going on?”
Thunder came, punctuating, loud enough to shake the windows. Lightning brighter, thunder louder, it made me feel like something was coming. Everything about that storm felt like a warning, but not a good-hearted “be safe” warning, more like “we, the something, are coming for you” with an undertone of “no matter what.”
“Oh, in all this excitement, I completely forgot who you were, Daisy. I’m sorry,” He was panting. He dropped his shirt to put his hands on his head, which was now almost completely red on the front. The bridge of his nose was slanted at an ugly angle. Blood still poured from his nose, which he resigned to let stream down his face, into his lips, around his mouth. “You’re too young. God, I should’ve been more careful. But it’s my first.”
“Your first..?” Thunder, louder; lightning, brighter, blinding, a perversion of daylight. After all these years I still remember my exact train of thought:
They Something Shadow-Man Clyde “Trucks-Don’t-Hydroplane” Pitts Pagan Pagan Sacrifice Pagan Scarecrow Scare. Crow.
Then, loudly:
GET HIM FIRST.
Clyde was blubbering, whining, his whole face red and looking swollen. “God, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Forgive me,”
I looked into his eyes. Brown, small, shiny, bloodshot, ugly, animalistic. “Scarecrows,” I said. I remember there was a moment of pure red: rage, murder. I wanted him gone. There was pressure growing on the sides of my head.
“I’m sorry,” He was shaking his head, his hands in front of his face, praying. “God, I’m sorry,”
“Get out,” My thoughts started clearing. The pressure on my head worsened, pressing down, clearing everything out. Then there was no fear, no anger, just clarity. I ignored everything besides the blubbering, red mess beside me, the 3 PM midnight, the storm, the sense of Something.
This time, the thunder and lightning were inside. But they had not introduced themselves as a sudden interruption, or as a jumpscare, but as something familiar, a powerful heartbeat, a flash of life, the Something. I had been removed from being Caroline Hines; evicted, cleared out, mind emptied to make room for the tempest, the Tempter.
“God, I’m so sorry. She’s as fresh as a daisy. God, I renounce these pagan daemons! I give myself back up to YOU, God!”
It unbuckled me. We turned towards him. My, our, body creaked as it turned, sounding strained. He didn’t notice. We stared into his pig eyes, which were now pointed towards the roof, to his audience. Clyde became an animal, in my mind. I was separating him from his humanity, softening the psychological blow, because I knew what was going to happen. I embraced it– this feeling of death, of autumn, of Harvest, of power.
“God, forgive me! I am only mortal! I am human! I wanted human things, I wanted abundance!” He paused, looked at us, whimpered, then raised his voice, “But I now know only a kind, loving God can grant me such things! I am sorry!”
You’re expecting me to resist because after all he’s done, he’s still human. You think I’ll do the better thing, fight the demon, eventually lose, and watch in horror as it makes my hands kill him and break his family. Here’s what happened instead:
“I abase myself before you, God! Clean me out! Punish me so that I may one day enter your Kingdom!”
“Punishment?” It, we, croaked. It felt strange, physically, like there was straw rubbing together in my throat: long, dry strings pulled taut and vibrating to produce this voice instead of my own wet, squishy vocal cords.
Clyde’s fervent prayer finally stopped. He turned to us. The part of his face that wasn’t smeared or streaked with blood was ghost-white. I must’ve looked terrifying.
It cocks my head, joints rustling, and said, “I believe the correct term is ‘Judgment’.”
We smile. Clyde shook his head, moved his torso toward the door, and before I realized what he was doing, it moved to lock the doors.
“Clyde Pitts. Tsk, tsk,” It hissed on the ‘s’ sounds, I remember that. Deep, husky, snake-like. “I believe you knew what you were getting into.”
“I-I didn’t know you were- I asked God to-“
“You and I both know he doesn’t answer you.” The contempt in its voice warranted a lowercase ‘he’.
“Yeah, but I also know from the books you need a willing participant, and-“ His eyes widen and he blanches at us, at me.
I, the willing participant, felt myself coming to the front. My flesh tingled everywhere, re-moistening, and I was Caroline again, for the time being. But I could still feel autumn, behind and around me, a pressure on my head, waiting for its turn. It had graciously let me speak, if only for dramatic effect.
Surfacing brought on human emotions. And before me, I saw a human, with a family. A human that was going to kill me, or someone else, as a sacrifice, who was only sorry when faced with the reality of it all. He disregarded not only me and my family but his own, too. The rage was so immediate, so intense, that my tongue turned to stone. My face and mouth worked around the burning tightness in my throat, and I found myself lamely repeating the god’s(?) words,
“I believe you knew what you were getting into.”
Nonetheless, the words found their mark. I felt smug seeing his reaction. His jaw dropped. What little color he had left in his face was draining still, right out of his crooked nose. As I faded into the background, flesh drying and crackling, I remember thinking, God cleaned him after all.
But I didn’t stop fading. The god, deity, or what have you pushed me out completely. Probably a mercy. I was unconscious, left in the deep recesses of my mind which were oddly bright, contrary to what one might think, with a small tinge of pink and red somewhere near what could’ve been the bottom, but there was no tangible sense of direction. I thought I was in Heaven. The edge of Heaven, more like, with what must’ve been a minute glimpse of Hell. I spent what could’ve been 10 minutes or 10 hours calling out to God, or to an angel or seraphim or something that could lend me a little direction. Nothing. I felt in-between, blank. It wasn’t peaceful. Rather I felt restless, uneasy, like someone would turn up and push me off the edge because I’d welcomed a pagan deity into a body God had created.
And then, I fell a short distance onto wet pavement, and my arms had been wrapped around my head. It was bright, and for a second I thought it was lightning, but daylight had returned. The storm was gone, leaving only a cold drizzle and a breeze. The streets were too wet for many other cars to venture out; the world was still and peaceful. It would’ve almost been easy to believe that everything had just up and resolved itself if it weren’t for the taste of blood in my mouth.
Not just blood, but it felt like there were pieces of food stuck in between all of my teeth. It was so much; it felt like those chunks were trying to force my teeth apart. I ran my tongue over all of it, and the squishy bits of meat tasted like metal and pork.
I started sitting up, but then I became aware of how sore I was. Every single part of me, including my fingers, had that hollow ache you get the day after you exercise. It was like whoever it was left bits of straw lining my flesh. It made me feel like I was in that pure white mass again, staring over the edge, wondering whether or not I had done something terrible.
I reached up to start picking my teeth free, and the second my finger touched the enamel, pain shot up and down my finger and arm. I remember making an animal-like noise, somewhere between a scream, a gag, and a flock of birds behind me fluttered away.
There’s no flowery way to put this. My nails were shredded. If they were’t completely gone, they were torn in ugly, jagged pieces, blood caked up underneath and over them. One of them even twisted downward and dug into my skin.
I had no idea what to do. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before. My brain had no clue how to react. The tears came first, then the laughter. Some place in the top rear part of my brain was fizzing and bubbling up, giving me that peculiar feeling of lightness that always accompanied hysteria.
“Oh, God,” I was laughing, crying, rocking back and forth. “I’m going to jail.”
As soon as I said that, I stopped laughing. I remembered Clyde. I remembered the taste of blood and huge chunks of meat in my teeth. The pork.
“I’m a murderer,” I said. I vaguely remember drooling.
I stand up on shaky legs. I look around at the sleepy world, the vibrant green leaves, and the absence of Clyde Pitts. I searched for him, crying and not laughing, for 20 minutes before I gave up and got in the truck. The only trace I found of him was a dark red stain on the pavement, invisible unless you knew where to look, soon to be washed away, and the wreckage of my body and mind.
I looked in the mirror for the first time. There was red smeared all over my pale, cold face, heaviest around my mouth and under my nose.
“My name is Caroline Hines. I am a murderer,” I stroked my chin. I was rendered stupid, my mind far away, gazing into that miniature echo of Hell. “A real life man-eater.”
I stared long and hard until I came back to myself. I knew even then that I would never see my family or friends again; not that I would miss those bitter old white trash drunks. But still, for the first time, I would be completely alone. Alone. Because jail was not an option, not for me.
So I turned on the heat. I used my wet strands of hair to wipe the blood off my face. I grit my teeth against the pain in my fingers, then I drove until the highways were dry and the gas run out.
I ended up about three states over. The highway cut through a beautiful meadow, still holding on to the last bits of summer.
I got out, left the keys, and tied my jacket around my waist; the air was warm and sweet with pollen, with a nice breeze rolling through. I walked on the safe side of the white line until the truck was out of sight, then and only then did I thrust my thumb up and out towards the road and waited for someone to pick me up.
In God’s terrible way, it was another trucker that picked me up. When I got in the passenger, I smiled and tried my best not to scream when I stuffed my hands in my pockets. He was balding. He had a beer gut. There was a small picture of his family displayed in a sort of Christmas ornament that hung from the rear-view mirror. This time, I decided not to comment on it.
We crossed another state border until he dropped me off at a bus station, as I asked, and he left me with a pack of cigarettes and wished me luck. From there, I found my way to a homeless shelter.
They gave me medical attention and demanded to know what happened. I told them my parents hit me, and I broke my nails scratching the floor when they tried dragging me away. That night, I was called ‘dear’ more times than I could count. And I nearly kicked one nurse lady to next week when she pulled that nail out of my finger. She forgave me, fed me animal crackers, flossed the meat out of my teeth, and simply threw it away.
Later, after lights-out, I fished those pieces of meat and kept them. I remember reading somewhere that the same chemical they used to keep dissection animals from rotting was also found in cigarette smoke, and that it was very scary and we should therefore stay away from it. So I unraveled all those cigs, lit the innards, and placed the chunks of Clyde over it. I kept it in a small brown bag that stayed on my person at all times, which is now in that clear plastic bag next to me.
And that was the end of Clyde Pitts. All that came out of it was a missing person report for the both of us that turned cold only a month later, even after they found the truck. His family was featured on state news a few times: a distraught woman holding a baby, begging for information about the father of her child (which I did not provide), and another showing a week later, where she was spitting-angry telling everyone that her husband was not a murderer nor was he having an affair and running off with the missing 18-year-old girl. And then nothing else of Clyde Pitts.
But every year after, at the end of summer, a tornado would hit that one same town, claim one life, then vanish. A new family was featured on the news every single year. It made me sick as a dog with guilt. One survivor, whose girlfriend was taken during the tornado, said there was a fat man that seemed to have been scratched and chewed apart, just standing in the middle of the road, a willing participant. She swerved to avoid him and made them crash similar to how other crashes had happened on that same stretch of road each year prior. I remember each crack in her voice as she explained how she sat there for an hour next to her dead girlfriend, waiting for the storm to pass. I remember how angry she got when the reporter harshly asked her why they would be driving during a storm anyway, to which she yelled and said she was escaping from her girlfriend’s Christian parents who tried to harm her when she found out she was a homosexual.
That night, and every night since, I had nightmares about it, where I was there, watching them crash over and over until I walked towards them and just stared at that scared little girl. The dream always ended when we made eye contact. Everything was vivid minus the red haze making everything unearthly. I felt like power, like autumn, that undeniable connection binding me to that deity forever.
As gruesome as that was, I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t help. I knew I would just be a vessel again. And, quite selfishly, I didn’t want to go to jail.
I spent the last 30 or so years working at McDonald’s, living in a shitty apartment, perpetually staring over the edge, waiting to fall over into that red smudge. I never married; I could never trust a man again. I never had children; I couldn’t afford it. Most of my checks went towards liquor. I became so nasty and mean-spirited and religiously fanatic out of unattended trauma and fear of being punished and cleaned out like I thought Clyde had been, that I never made more than one friend (who has graciously put up with me for 3 decades).
Thank you, Grace. I’ll never forget that night 12 years ago when we were grabbing a drink together and I made some stupid remark to which you replied, “If the only thing keeping you Christians from doing bad things is punishment, then how in God’s name do you think you’re still good people?”
You gave me the strength to look away from Hell. In the months following, I realized I wasn’t evil: I was just a vessel for it, at that moment. That if anyone had to seek forgiveness, it was God, for he watched it all happen. That I wasn’t the one who set loose all those tornadoes. That week, I took off my cross necklace for the first time since I bought it. I took down all the wooden crosses hanging on the wall. I was set free.
And then, of course, the second I became happy, I get the news.
Grace: I’m sorry I told you it was just insomnia making me tired all the time. I’m sorry I told you being bald was my own choice. I’m sorry you had to find out this way, though you always had a way of knowing things; I remember how particularly nice you’ve been these past few weeks since the second I decided it was the end.
Even you knew there was no stopping it.
So thank you, Grace. Thank you for setting me free. Thank you for being the only one to realize there was still some good left in me after all; thank you for bringing that good outwards.
I hope I don’t see you for a long, long time.