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Hunting Muskie Preview: Meet Laurel from “Scars of Humanity”

October 21st, 2017 by Michael Dyet

Scars of Humanity

In this post, we listen in on moments of self-analysis by Laurel, from the story “Scars of Humanity” in “Hunting Muskie: Rites of Passage”, for a backdoor sneak preview into the story.

Hmmm, how did I get myself caught up in such a peculiar situation and crash land on the guilty end of a tragedy?

It certainly was not in any way predictable. There were no signs of any such inclination at any earlier time in my life. I was happily married and unequivocally heterosexual, or so I thought. So how do I rationalize having an affair, let alone a lesbian one?

Kate said it was because of the Columbia space shuttle explosion that happened a few days before we met. She believes the sudden realization, that life can be so arbitrary, unearthed latent desire in me.

She may be right on some level. Something like that is not supposed to happen. We expect the Hollywood ending like Apollo 13 – hanging on the edge of the unthinkable and then saved by the bravery and ingenuity of the white knight.

But of course, it was much more complicated than the repercussions of that single event. As much as anything, it was the synchronicity. The stars aligning our lives – mine and Mission Specialist Laurel Blair Salton Clark’s – before her life was snuffed out in that horrible explosion in the sky over Texas.

The more I look at it the more predetermined it seems. How else do you explain the electrical blackout – the Northeastern and Midwestern U.S. and Ontario all going dark at the same time – hitting Mississauga just as I was in the elevator after leaving Kate’s apartment?

If I had been one minute earlier or later leaving, I would not have been caught in the elevator with that desperate man. Destiny would have been rewritten. The tragedy would not have happened and I would not be burdened with this terrible guilt.

But can I really dismiss it all as cruel fate? Surely I have to take responsibility in some way. I made a conscious decision to say yes to a temptation I did not understand. I rewrote the rules so I could acquiesce and believe I had no choice.

And then there is that shocking confession that Kate made to me. She shared the darkest, most painful experience of her life, and still I walked out. I should not have let her push me away. If I had had the courage to stay…

If, and if, and if again. Each time, a choice I made to turn away rather than own what I had got myself into. A succession of irrevocable choices. History denied and reimagined, promises carelessly made and recklessly broken, all aligned like telltale constellations in the night sky and all leaving behind their own telltale scars of light.

Scars of humanity, indeed.

~ Now Available Online from Amazon, Chapters Indigo or Barnes & Noble: Hunting Muskie, Rites of Passage – Stories by Michael Robert Dyet

~ Michael Robert Dyet is the author of Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com or the novel online companion at www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog.

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