TW: violence, active shooter situation flashbacks, suicide ideation

Alison chose to move to Asheville, North Carolina and leave her corporate career behind following an active shooter situation in the building where she worked in downtown Denver. She’d been one of the lucky ones, hidden in a pitch-black office behind a turned over desk, softly weeping as the shots rang out. Not emerging until the lights of a SWAT team member's head lamp pierced the darkness through the open door. 

In the months that followed, while in crowded public places, she lived in constant fear of a repeat incident. At dinner. The office. Networking happy hours. Concerts. How would she react this time? Where was the nearest exit? What could she use as a weapon? 

Flashes in her mind of friends and acquaintances grabbing suddenly at their necks, blood gushing through their knuckles, caused her to leave mid-conversation for the restroom or outside to calm herself with a yellow Spirit until the grim fantasies subsided.
 
Sometimes in the fantasies she laughed. Not like anything was funny, the way you laugh when something terrible happens, and you don’t know any other way to react. The way she laughed as a six-year-old the night her grandmother passed from cancer and her mom struck her violently with the back of her hand. 

“That’s my mother,” she said. “How would you like it if someone laughed when you died?” 

“I wouldn’t care,” Alison said and wandered out toward the oak tree in the front yard by main street in that little southern town to balance along the sidewalk like a teeter-totter. The lights of the cars fuzzing in her peripheral. Aware even then she was inches from stepping into traffic if she so chose. And why not? Death was only a heartbeat away.

It was only a matter of time before she had to leave Denver. 

Asheville offered a calmer pace of life. Her money stretched longer. She spent days running the holistic yoga studio she purchased. Days off driving on the parkway watching the Blue Ridge Mountains roll out smoky against the horizon. Discovering hidden waterfalls. Her feet hitting the trail. Stepping to the edge and leaping into a pool below. The Earth’s pull. The cold shock of mountain water.

She met two men. Toby and Darren. If she felt social, she asked Toby to dinner in Biltmore Village or West Asheville. Dancing and Cocktails after. If she felt like staying in, she summoned Darren for wine and a movie. The most excitement she wanted in her life was the low risk, but titillating juggling act of making sure they never discovered each other’s existence.  

On nights spent alone, she’d plucked a wine glass from the hanging rack, pour from a Richebourg or something similar, flip on the fireplace with a remote and fall into a chair by the fire. Cover her legs with a blanket. Tell Alexa to play music. 

Beyond the floor to ceiling windows that ran the distance of her home, shadows crawled across the mountains. As the fire roared and the darkness outside turned the windows to mirrors, she peered through the reflection at the lights that dotted the mountainside and took comfort in knowing that she too was safely concealed in a dot of light at a distance. 

Wilson Koewing