The Ember Files: The Closer Door

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An RJPC Studio Audio Production Written by Robert Jerome Pagan
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Performed by Jax Ember Created and produced by Robert Jerome
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Pagan This program is a work of dramatic fiction. Listener
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discretion is advised.
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Carl saw the woman the first time two years into
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our relationship Until then, he believed me. That is different
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from saying he never treated the distinction as an insult.
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Carl could believe I had experienced something without pretending he
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knew what something was.
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I loved him for it.
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It happened after sex. I mention that because context matters.
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And because supernatural memoirs are strangely committed to pretending nobody
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has genitalia between hauntings.
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We were in bed. The closet still had no door
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because neither.
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Of us had remembered where we put the hardware. Carl
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was half asleep, with one arm across my chest.
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I was awake. I often was.
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The room was dark except for streetlight coming from the blinds.
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Then Carl's arm tightened. Not enough to hurt. Enough to
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tell me he was awake now, too.
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Jax, he whispered. I see her. The woman stood inside
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the open closet. That was new.
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Usually an open closet prevented the appearance from feeling contained.
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She might stand beside it, near it, reflect behind it.
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That night, she stood where the hanged clothes should have been.
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Carl's shirt passed through her body.
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He whispered, Don't move. I almost laughed.
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The first thing she had ever told me was essentially
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the same instruction.
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Why?
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I don't know. Excellent plan. Do you want me to improvise?
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Usually no.
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The woman tilted her head. Carl sat up. I grabbed
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his wrist. Do not go closer.
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I was not. You were thinking about it.
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My face? Your entire personality. Even terrifying, he could annoy me.
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The woman looked at Carl.
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That had never happened before. She had always been about me.
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Even when Sophia saw her.
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I experienced that haunting as a connection to my history.
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Narcissistic, yes.
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Trauma is often narcissistic. Pain tells you everything is about
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the wound. Now the woman studied Carl. Then she smiled.
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Carl said, I do not like that. Neither do I.
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She raised one hand, not towards me, toward him.
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Carl's nose started bleeding. One thin line.
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He touched it, looked at the blood on his fingers,
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and said, Well, that seems fucking unnecessary.
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The woman vanished.
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I turned on every light. Carl sat on the edge
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of the bed while I checked his pupils. Blood pressure, pulse,
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and probably three other things that were medically pointless.
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Stop, he said.
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You're bleeding. I've had a nosebleed before. She looked at me, yes.
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She has never done that. Maybe she likes me. Do
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not joke. Carl went still. That was how he knew
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I was really afraid. I joke when I'm afraid. If
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I ask somebody else not to joke, the situation has
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become serious.
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He took my hair. Okay. I stared at the blood
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on the tissue. Blood had been present in other cases.
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Christian bit his tongue.
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Sophia split her lip. People injure themselves when terrified. I
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had not considered blood a pattern. Carl said, You were
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doing the thing.
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What thing? Leaving the room without moving. I looked at him.
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Sorry. Come back.
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So I did. That became another Carl phrase. Come back.
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He used it when I disappeared into research. when I
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listened to the same recording for five hours, when I
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became convinced a case contained an answer that would fix
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every previous case, when grief came later.
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Come back.
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I did not always listen. The next morning, Carl brought a.
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New closet door. I said, why?
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Because I want to test something. He installed it himself.
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Then he painted a small red dot on the inside,
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near the handle.
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What is that? A reference mark. For what? So if
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it opens, we know whether it actually moved.
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For the next month, we photographed the closet before bed
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and after waking.
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Nothing happened. The door stayed where we left it. The
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woman did not appear.
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Eventually.
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The.
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Experiment became routine, then ridiculous, then intimate. One night, Carl
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forgot the photo. I said, you forgot the closet. He
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was already in bed.
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You do it.
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It's your experiment. It's your ghost. She's not a ghost.
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Then perhaps she can take the picture. I threw the
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pillow at him. That is what I mean when I
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say Carl was home.
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He did not cure the fear. He made room around it.
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People who love traumatized people sometimes think love means removing
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every symptom. It does not.
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Sometimes love means remembering to photograph the fucking closet. Because
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the person beside you sleeps better when you do.
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Years later, after Carl disappeared, I found hundreds of those photographs.
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On an old drive. Most showed nothing.
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The closet door, red dot, time stamp. Closet door, red dot, timestamp.
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Then one image stopped. Carl had taken it at 2.11
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in the morning while I was asleep. The closet door
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was closed. In the mirror beside the dresser, the woman
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stood behind it. Carl never showed me that photograph. I
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don't know why.
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Maybe he did not see her.
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Maybe he saw her and decided I was sleeping well
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for once. Maybe he intended to tell me later. There
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are thousands of conversations trapped inside later. That is one
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of grief's cruelest cruelties. After he disappeared, I started sleeping
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with the closet door open again.
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Not because I was afraid of the woman. Because Carl
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was gone. And closing it without him felt like a meeting.
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There was nobody left to take a morning picture. After
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Carl saw the woman.
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he did something I did not expect. He got up,
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put on underwear, and turned on every light in the
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room and said, I'm not fighting a ghost naked.
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Coward. Then he walked to the closet. I grabbed his
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wrist hard enough to leave marks.
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That was when he understood the difference between my professional
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curiosity and the old.
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Fear underneath it. He did not tell me to calm
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down He did not.
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Say nothing was there. He simply stepped back. What do
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you need, he asked. The question had changed my life.
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Not, what is it? Not, how do you prove it? Not,
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what should we do? What do you need? Leave it open,
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I said. The closet?
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Yes. Okay. And from then on, wherever we lived, the
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closet door stayed open. Hotel rooms, too, if the layout
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allowed it. If a closet had one of those automatic
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closing hinges, Carl would wedge a shoe underneath it without comment.
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Years later, Clay would notice the same habit and asked why.
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Cole never asked. Cole already knew.
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I did not understand at the time that being loved
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often looked less like rescue... And more like somebody learning
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the shape of your fear without making you explain it
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every night. Carl seeing the woman changed what he believed.
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Meeting Thorne changed what he was willing to tolerate from
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people who claimed they understood her. Carl and Thorne met
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three times before they liked each other and approximately 30
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times before either of them admitted it. The first meeting
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lasted 12 minutes. Thorne arrived at the garage carrying a folder.
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Carl was adjusting a light stand. Thorne looked around at
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the cables, shelves, monitors, and one open bag of chips.
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On top of a sealed case file.
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This is your operator, he asked. Carl said no. This
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is the Vatican's satellite office. Thorne looked at me. I said,
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you started it. Carl disliked Thorn because Thorn represented an
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institution that hurt me. Thorn disliked Carl because Carl could
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make me stop an investigation by saying my name in
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a particular tone, which gave Carl more particular authority over
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me than Rome had ever managed. They were territorial about
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me in a completely different way.
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I found this irritating. And if I'm honest, flattering.
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The first real argument happened over a case involving a teenager.
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Thorne wanted an interview recorded for church review.
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Carl said no because the teenager had agreed to speak
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with us, not with a committee in Rome.
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Thorne looked at me for support. I made the mistake
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of saying, he has a point. Carl turned. A point?
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I mean, you're right.
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Better. Thorne hated losing to Carl because Carl did not
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argue theology.
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He argued practical ethics. If someone said no, stop. If
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a client wanted the camera off, turn it off.
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If a frightened person had not eaten, feed them before
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asking whether Satan was in the room. Years later, Thorne
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admitted Carl had changed how he handled field cases. Do
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not tell him, he said. I am absolutely telling him, Jax.
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He will be unbearable. This is why I am asking.
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I told Carl that night. He smiled for 20 minutes.
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When Carl disappeared, Thorne was the only person I saw
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cry privately.
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He thought I didn't notice.
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I did.
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That is another thing I never told him. The night
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Carl and Thorne finally.
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Became allies happened in a motel outside Bakersfield, which proves
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God has a sense of humor and very low production values.
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We were there for a case involving a retired teacher,
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a dead husband, and a radio that kept turning itself
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into a station that had stopped broadcasting.
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12 years earlier.
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At two in the morning, Thorn wanted to go back
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into the room because the signal had changed.
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I wanted to go with him. Carl blocked the door. No.
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Thorn said, Mr. Carl. Still no. I tried. I tried
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to step around you. Carl said my name once, not loudly.
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I stopped.
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Thorne looked from him to me and understood the hierarchy
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in real time. You listen to him, Thorne said. Sometimes,
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I replied. Sometimes, Carl said.
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Not enough. Thorne considered this and nodded. We agree on something.
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Do not make it weird.
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They spent the next ten years pretending the moment had
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not happened.
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It had.
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Thorne learned that Carl was not an accessory to my work.
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Carl learned that Thorne was not nearly the church wearing
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a human face. And I learned that two men, most
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likely to tell me no, had finally exchanged phone numbers.
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I was furious.
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The stranger part is that Carl could fight Rome on
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Friday alone. and still insist we go to Pride on Saturday.
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Carl took me to Pride the first year we lived together.
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That sentence should not be remarkable. Pride required me to
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enjoy being visible.
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Visibility and I had a complicated history.
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Carl wore a shirt so aggressively rainbow that I accused
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him of looking like a children's television network.
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He said, You are wearing black. I own other colors.
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Name one. Charcoal.
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That is black with grief. We walked through the crowd
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holding hands. I kept noticing who noticed Carl noticing me noticing.
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Stop scanning. I am not. Your awareness exists. Crowd safety.
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You're at pride, not an exorcism. Statistically, crowds are more dangerous.
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He squeezed my hand.
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Come back. There was the phrase.
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I did. We danced badly. We bought food that cost
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too much. A young man recognized me from Paranormal Salad
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and asked for a picture. Then he looked at our hands.
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You two are together? Carl said, Tragically. The young man
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laughed and told us he had watched the show with
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his boyfriend because seeing me talk openly about being gay
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and spiritual had helped him stop believing he had to
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choose between those.
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Parts of himself. I didn't know what to say. Carl did.
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He said, tell him. Tell him what? That it matters.
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I looked at the young man. It matters, I said.
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That was enough. But it was true.
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On the drive home, Carl said, That is why the
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show matters. I thought it was big plumbing.
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That too. I think about the kid.
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Sometimes when I blame Paranormal Salad for what happened later.
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The signal used the show. The show also did back.
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Both remain true.
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Pride was also the first time Carl kissed me in
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public without checking who was watching.
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I froze for half a second. He felt it. Too much,
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he asked.
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No. No.
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That answer came faster than fear. I remember that.
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Later, we stood near a cheap outdoor stage while a
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drag queen in silver boots sang to a backing track
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that cut out twice. Carl had one arm around my waist.
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Nobody cared. That should not have felt miraculous.
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It did.
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I had spent so much of my life believing visibility
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was evidence.
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That somebody could use against me.
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At pride, visibility was just whether men kissed, women danced,
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teenagers wore flags or capes. An elderly couple held a
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hand like they had been doing since before the rest
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of us learned the vocabulary.
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Carl Dean Dobrin said, You were crying. Sweating through my eyes.
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Very masculine. Thank you. He kissed my temple.
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Years later, after he disappeared, I found that stupid rainbow
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shirt in the storage bin.
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I wore it once, alone, in the garage. It did
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not fit.
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Grief is humiliating enough without polyester.
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You have been listening to Paranormal Salad. The Dressing. The
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Ember Timeline. Written by Robert Jerome Pagan. Performed by Jax Ember. Created, directed, edited,
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and produced by Robert Jerome Pagan. Sound design and production
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by RJPC Studios Audio. Paranormal Salad. The Ember Timeline are
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production's of RJPC Studios, LLC. Follow Paranormal Salad wherever you
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listen to podcasts for the next confession.