Write! with Peter Hering

That incredibly hollow and paralyzing pain of loss shot through my body, infiltrating every atom of my being; this was the pain of love lost that I had never known.
“Where is Christopher?” the black man asked me, the white’s of his eyes bearing down on me, invading my air space. I sensed a certain sedated giddiness about him, as if he knew that this was going to be best day of his professional life; a career-changing kind of day. Truth was, it wasn’t every day that the TTPS could handle a case that had garnered so much public attention. The rest of his colleagues seemed to be a bit overwhelmed.
“He’s dead,” I answered keeping my eyes on the small wooden table separating us.
The black man – who had the very Irish name of O’Hallaran – didn’t flinch. Instead, he took a deep breath and exhaled methodically.
“I’ll give you one more chance, Mr. Burrows,” he said, sitting down across from me. “Where is your other son? Where is Christopher?”

Excerpt from: ‘Promises from Tobago’
L. Jerome

I couldn’t hear Owen anymore; the sounds of a dirty summer scratched at my nostrils and dug the sand from beneath my memory. It was cold there.
“Where’s Owen?” I asked.

Excerpt from: ‘Promises from Tobago’
L. Jerome

The Tobagonian jail was cramped and the walls were wet. They’d already transferred Owen into another room; for safekeeping, they’d told me. I heard him crying – screaming even – from where I was now seated, in a small – at best – 35-square-foot room that contained a small, fragile table and two uncomfortable chairs. Strangely enough there were two pictures hanging on the wall – one of an abstract summer landscape, the other portrayed a dark and sinister night at a nameless harbor-front hotel, probably in Scarborough. Both pictures exuded a non-chalant family charm; they made me shiver, I had no family anymore.
“Mr. Burrows?” a rugged black man, who looked like a base jumper, asked, entering the room. He was dressed in a dark suit minus the tie. His head was cleanly shaven and the lines crisscrossing his face suggested he was most likely on the wrong side of forty.
“Mr. Burrows,” he repeated, sitting down across from me and lighting a thick Cohiba. “Where is your other son?”

Excerpt from: ‘Promises from Tobago’
L. Jerome

There were two black men unmistakingly clad in the official uniforms of the TTPS.
“Peter Burrows?”
I nodded.
Owen slipped between my naked legs, poking his head through.
“Daddy…”
His voice trailed off and evaporated into the crisp Tobagonian morning.
“Please come with us,” they said, stepping towards me.
There was a brief moment of silence. I heard the sounds of Tobagonian wildlife springing to life.
“But my daddy’s still naked,” Owen said, grabbing tighter hold of my leg.
“We’ll give you 15 minutes to get ready, sir,” the taller of the two policemen replied.

Excerpt from: ‘Promises from Tobago’
L. Jerome

They didn’t ring the doorbell; it didn’t work anyway because I’d disconnected it, needing to ensure that the apartment’s intermittent supply of electricity was stored for boiling the water, or using the phone. They knocked and kicked at the base of the fragile plywood door, sending me to the floor of my 300 square-foot apartment.
“What was that?” Owen asked me, the fragility and fear in his voice causing me to wince.
I was still half-asleep; and, for a moment, my thoughts took me back to Waco, Texas where I was once a graduate student at Baylor University; so many years and failed attempts at resurrection in the past. Back then, someone had kicked down the door of my cockroach-infested Speight Avenue apartment; this sounded like that.
I stepped toward the door. Even before I opened it, I knew who it was.

Excerpt from ‘Promises from Tobago’
L. Jerome