The White, Chapter 2

I am posting chapter 2 today so that you can get a feel for a bit more of the story and then I will publish these on Sunday mornings until the novel is published. We’ll see which comes first.

If at anytime during this process you decide that you want to be an editor or beta-reader, just let me know and I will send you the working draft. I will acknowledge you in the book and you’ll receive a free copy when it is published.

Photo by Claire Kelly on Unsplash

Authors’s Note: Chapter 1 is available in a previous post. Events and characters are fictitious, mostly. I have panicked about the narrator’s name who you met as Dan. He has been Dennis for almost 12 years and then I posted chapter 1 yesterday and changed his name because my dad’s name is Dennis. Dennis, the character is based on real people, neither of whom are my dad. The name works best, so I am reverting back. Sorry for the confusion.

The White, Chapter 2

Mickey lay tangled in damp sheets, sweating through the middle of a Michigan fall. Colder than usual. The days getting shorter and shorter as a reminder that winter will be really fucking long this year. That’s how these things begin—quietly, in the dark, when no one can do anything about them. He was always a good sleeper, always dropped like a stone when his head hit the pillow. Rachel used to joke he could sleep through the Rapture. She had to shake him awake more than once. But she wasn’t there to shake him anymore. Not since the funeral. Now, it was dysania that did the shaking—an ache in the bones, a weight in the chest. Twenty minutes until he had to be out the door.

Never did he think that until death do us part would occur in his 30’s. He found himself thriving off the worst-case scenarios after Rachel died. It was the loneliness that was killing him. People were meant for companionship. This is what his pastor would say when Mickey was feeling alone and dejected. Mickey had a talent of surrounding himself with the smartest and most loyal people.

The sixty unread emails are mostly from concerned students. He bowed his head again to regain focus, “your kingdom come, and your will be done, whatever that is, because if I’m being honest, I have no fucking idea anymore if you have a plan or a will, or whatever, but do here as you do there.”

The sun was an orange-pink glow that backlit the sap-covered pines. He thought it had snowed already; there was a dusting on the leaves. The sun wasn’t yet bright enough to illuminate the small town secrets. “Give me another chance today, and provide for me...give us our daily bread. Lead me away from whatever temptation is caused by grief and loneliness, and help me forgive the people who think they’re helping.” Mickey didn’t much care for the snow, each flake feeling like some critter biting his face, blanketing everything until all the leaves die, and hiding the flowers and animals, and people until the warm weather returns. It was a white, cold loneliness that Mickey suffered in the winter, a reminder that death comes to everyone, and there is no hiding from it. He reached for the gloves and put them next to his wallet. “Lord, I love you with all my heart, mind, and strength. I love you more today than yesterday. Go with me. Give me comfort, make me lie down in green pastures by still waters even though it’s freezing. Bless me so that people will see you haven’t forsaken me in this dark hour. I have no idea where the fuck you are, but I know you’re close. I don’t know what to do now, and it feels like I’m for sale, I’ve lost everything and I will cling to anything and do my best.”

The cold doesn’t bother everyone. Some people play in it and find beauty in it. Children especially find the pleasure of it; school closings, snowmen, sledding, skating, skiing, and even ice-fishing if you’re insane—just sitting in the cold with a total do-nothing, wait-for-the-fish to bite mentality. He hung the scarf on the back of the chair so that he wouldn’t forget it.

He reached blindly for a tissue on the nightstand and pressed it hard against his face, trying to relieve the sinus pressure. The headache had crept behind his eyes, the nausea curled low in his gut. It was the wrong morning to be sick—his first week as a janitor and the last thing he wanted was to call in weak. He still feels the shame of telling his friend who was a custodian that the one thing he would never do is clean toilets. His skin looked off in the bathroom mirror—greyed out, eyes bloodshot, voice like gravel—and still he dragged himself through it: a shot of cough syrup straight from the bottle, a cold shower, too much coffee with too little honey.

“Dear God in heaven,” he muttered, half-prayer, half-inhale. He shut his eyes for a second. “Holy is your name and you are worthy to be praised…” Then he opened them and added, “I hope.” It was the kind of prayer you say when you’re trying to believe the version of God that used to make sense. He didn’t think God had changed. Just the world around him.

Since Rachel’s death, he hadn’t eaten properly. Grief had dulled his appetite and frayed his routines. He was a decent cook—capable, at least—but Rachel had always done the homemaking. She liked it. Found purpose in it. Mickey preferred the outdoors, the stillness of reading, the clarity of fresh air. Dishes, laundry, dusting—all those endless domestic tasks—felt like running a treadmill through molasses.

Outside his bedroom window, the trees looked brittle. A strange dusting of white clung to the outer edges of the leaves. Not snow. Not frost. Just... white. Another early sign, though no one knew what it meant yet.

And somewhere, on the morning radio, a man who used to be a TV clown was polling even with the sitting president. His followers had started painting their faces white in public. Some said it was symbolic. Others said it was something more. Clown sightings in the woods had picked up again—first in Ohio, then in Missouri, and now just north of Pontiac. No one could say for sure if it was political, performative, or something else entirely. But the timing was hard to ignore. Mickey was more susceptible to sickness because he had not eaten a proper meal since Rachel died. He was a fine cook and probably capable of taking care of himself. Rachel enjoyed cooking and working around the house. Mickey was the opposite, he’d rather be outside or reading. He didn’t like the Sisyphean tasks, especially the ones indoors.

He stepped on a shoe, losing his balance, almost knocking over the only thing in the house with any life left in it, A Peace Lily that he gave Rachel the year before she died. A fifth year anniversary gift, slowly dying. “Come on Lil, I’m not gonna let you die like this. Get up there.” He was genuinely confused to find out that not everyone names their plants. Most people name their pets, but Mickey is…different, unconventional, a little fucked- up. He packed the dirt back in the pot, grateful it was just the top layer of dirt. “Sorry to scare you, pup. I’m just clumsy. Let’s go eat.”