The Achilles Heel

THE ACHILLES HEEL

K a r y n R a e

Published by Karyn Rae Publishing
Visit Karyn Rae’s official website at
www.karynrae.me
for the latest news, book details, and other information
Copyright © Karyn Rae, 2014
Edited by: Samantha March of Marching Ink LLC
Cover Design by: James,
GoOnWrite.com
Ebook Formatting by
Guido Henkel
This is a work of fiction. However, many locations throughout this book are real.
The names, characters, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or
are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual person’s, (living or dead) or events
is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no
part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form
or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.

This book is dedicated to my family:
Lance, Max, and Mia
Without you, I would have no life perspective

Life’s tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late.
-Benjamin Franklin

The Achilles Heel

ANNIE

D
on’t put your hat on. Please don’t put your hat on.

Crossing my fingers like a grade school child wishing for a snowstorm in August, I
watched him take his time as he gathered what looked to be papers, but I wasn’t quite
sure. He took in a deep breath and let it out slowly while grabbing his hat from the
dashboard. For some reason, I had the notion if he didn’t put on the hat to complete
his uniform, this visit would be somewhat less official. He noticed me standing in
the sliver of the window framing my front door. He paused, shut his car door, and
straightened his trousers a tad‌—‌when one goes from sitting to standing and is between
pant sizes. Finally, he put on that goddamn hat.

As he walked towards the door, gravel from the driveway crunched under his heavy black
boots. Streaks of sweat ran down his sunlit glistened face. His heavily starched shirt
sported a soaking wet “V” on the chest connecting to the wetness under both arms.
With record high temperatures in Kansas City reaching 106 during the first week of
June, I was secretly glad he was hot, and it almost made me happy to think he might
be suffering a bit. Our eyes made contact when he reached the red-brick porch steps,
and I knew. He could have turned around, got back in his police car and never said
a word to me; his eyes told me the whole story. Maybe his eyes didn’t tell me the
entire story, but they certainly implied the most important part‌—‌the ending. As
he stood on the opposing side of the window, the glare from his name badge which read
GRADY shone in my right eye, causing me to wince.

“Ma’am,” he asked through the double paned glass. “Are you all right?”

I just stood there, staring blankly.
Why is he here to ask me if I’m okay? Is this guy a fucking idiot? What cop comes
to someone’s front door, scares the hell out of them, and opens with a question like,
“Ma’am, are you all right?” I was doing just fine before he pulled into my driveway.

“Ma’am,” he started again, as he tapped on the window trying to get my attention and
break the paralyzing trance holding me motionless. “Are you okay? You’re bleeding!”

At that moment, I tasted the blood. As I mentally calculated his every move from the
car to the door, knowing he wasn’t here to give me stellar news (cops don’t randomly
show up at your house for no reason) I hadn’t noticed I was biting down on my lip.
It must have been hard, because the blood was now running down the side of my chin.

I tried to answer, but only felt air pass between my lips; my voice lost in translation.
I nodded my head up and down in a “Yes” motion.

Officer Grady asked, “Are you Annie Whitman, the wife of a Mr. Jack Whitman?”

Again with the up and down, “Yes,” motion.

“Could you please open the door?” he asked. “I’d like to come in and speak with you
for a moment.”

I reluctantly but automatically obeyed, and the creak of the screen door was synonymous
with a horror movie. Apparently, I was the main character.

“Ma’am, your husband was in an accident on the highway this morning. There were no
survivors. We believe he was killed upon impact and have launched an investigation
into the crash, but unfortunately, we don’t know many details yet. I’m so very sorry
to bring you this devastating news. Is there someone you can call to come be with
you right now?”

“No, no, you’re wrong,” I croaked, with a broken and raspy voice like someone infested
with the forty-eight hour flu. “My husband is at work, and this is a mistake.” I tried
again, but only fragments of sound spit into the air. I wasn’t forming recognizable
words. “I’ll just call him, and we can clear this up. You’ll see it’s just terrible
mistake,” I stammered, as I pulled my cell phone off the deep-chested entry table
and tried to will my hands to stop shaking enough to dial the number.

“Oh, no, Jack, no,” I whispered through gritted teeth when the call went straight
to his voicemail.

I dialed again. “Shit. No. Please, no,” my voiced squeaked as I paced back and forth.
With my right hand barely sturdy enough to hold the phone to my ear and my left hand
tucked tightly under the opposing armpit, I filled my fingers full of skin, pinching
down as hard as possible in an attempt to divert the pain of feeling my heart rip
apart.

Officer Grady extended his arms and shifted his feet each time I shuffled near him,
initiating words of comfort, but quickly realizing his efforts were powerless when
dealing with someone who’s rapidly sinking in the quicksand of denial.

Finally, he stepped into my path, and with a tight grip on both slumping shoulders,
softly turned me around to face him.

The fact that I had bitten entirely through a small portion of my bottom lip seemed
to startle him, and while the stream of blood continued to remain constant, he gently
took control of my breakdown. “Mrs. Whitman,” he whispered. “Who should I call? You
need someone with you right now. Please, is there someone I can call for you?”

This time a small and childlike “Yes,” escaped through my bloody lips. I felt like
it shouldn’t take so much effort to say one little word, a word we use a hundred times
a day, but it
was
hard and completely exhausting. It was as if the sound from this three letter word
had held my lips apart just long enough for my soul to escape.

He pulled out a bandana, applying pressure to my mouth, and in exchange, I handed
him my cell phone with the contact name Jamie lit up in blue letters on the screen.
Someone would need to tell my brother-in-law that his older brother Jack was dead.

As Officer Grady took the phone from my hand, a tiny, purple orb slowly drifted past
my line of vision and across his chest. Confused, my eyes followed the speck, only
to see it suddenly multiply a thousand times, and then each orb began to swell. The
purple color faded to the outside of the circle and a bead of light replaced the center
like the dimmer switch on an LED bulb. Trying to blink the beacons away only seemed
to make them brighter, and within moments the fluorescent illumination blinded me.
The weight of my body became too burdensome for my legs, even my hair felt heavy.
As if I were riding on a roller coaster and cresting the highest peak, I closed my
eyes to the brightness just as I felt myself plummeting to the ground.

My name is Andrea Whitman and those were the last moments of
this
life as I knew them.

KESSLER

W
e stood underneath the stage feeling the ground shake‌—‌the floors pulsing and vibrating
in a rhythmic, stomping pattern. The noise was deafening, like a freight train rolling
at full steam right over our heads. This was the final concert of a six month long,
twenty-two city tour. The band huddled together backstage for what, unbeknownst to
them, was going to be my final show
‌—‌ever
. Drew, my drummer, gave the pep talk tonight about living in the moment and doing
our best, like our lives depended on it.

“Those people out there worked all week and spent their hard earned money to come
see us play here tonight, so don’t any of you fuck it up for ‘em!” he yelled over
the crowd screaming in the stadium. “It’s the last show of the tour, so let’s blow
their fuckin’ minds! All right? Now, everybody get your hands in and let me hear it
on three.”

Six hairy, snarled, middle-aged, yet talented hands stacked one upon the other as
we all screamed “boo-yah,” while throwing them up in the air.

I had to laugh. Drew was never much of a poet, but he could give one hell of a pep
talk. Our usual routine for this tour was to have the band already set up and out
on the stage before I made my grand entrance, but for the finale we’re making a change.
Tonight we’re all taking the stage together; one family, one band of brothers, one
last time. We crowded onto the pitch-black elevator, collectively took in a deep breath,
and then I flipped the switch. As soon as the crowd saw us rising up from the floor,
it was
on
, for all of us.

We always start out with a few favorites to get the crowd pumped up. They responded
exactly how we had hoped; everyone went ape shit. Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City
is one of the best places to do a show; Midwestern folk who love country music and
know how to throw one hell of a party. Fans started arriving in the stadium parking
lot at nine o’clock in the morning, and the opener wasn’t set to go on until six in
the evening. People who love to spend an entire summer day baking on the black asphalt
in the scorching sun, fishing out beer cans from the truck bed cooler, and smoking
BBQ, just waiting to hear some live music, are my kind of people. I’m glad this is
the spot for the final show‌—‌
my final show
.

During the first set as I looked out into the audience, I could see about ten rows
in front of me from anywhere on the stage. I used to
always
look for the most beautiful girls, and inevitably, I would spot a couple in every
city. I’d send my roadie out to the seats to ask them if they wanted to come backstage
to meet me and the boys, have some drinks, and party for a while. This was an extremely
useful tactic in no-strings attached one-nighters, and there were many, many one-nighters.
When I was younger I was so proud of myself, thought I was the shit, a real big deal
that all these girls wanted to sleep with me. A few years ago, I finally realized
our night together was just a story to tell their friends or an article to sell to
the tabloids. I don’t regret the girls or mistakes I’ve made because they’re part
of my journey that’s led me to this point, but I’m ready to move on now.

Tonight there’s a group of six women having a ball together. I’d say they were mid-twenties,
sitting in the third row, all of them singing along and cheers’sing each other after
every song. I sent Randy out to schmoose on them during the set break and ask them
if they’d like to come backstage after the show. That invite certainly revved up their
engines, because I got all kinds of “fuck me” eyes during the second set.

A sixty foot screen flanks each side of the stage allowing a front row view from any
seat in the stadium. This only amplifies my seduction of the crowd when Lacy, my camera
girl, fills it full with images of just my ass‌—‌sixty feet (one-hundred and twenty
if you count both screens) of my ass over and over again. I get it though, whatever
sells tickets. My schedule over the last five years had become less about the music
and more about the money my image brings in. Singer/songwriters, authors, actors,
and anyone in “the business” have been bitching about this for decades. I went to
Nashville to be a songwriter, and fifteen years later I’ve become sixty feet of ass
in tight white jeans.

I always told myself, that when this dream of mine became too mechanical and I couldn’t
give every part of myself to the fans, I’d hang it up. It’s been a great ride and
only a handful of people have been with me from the very beginning. Those are the
people who deserve all of me; they’ve earned it, but I can’t give one hundred and
twenty percent anymore. Don’t I deserve a normal life again? I’ve earned that, too.

As the last song of the encore performance wrapped up, the spotlights put on a magnitude
of a show and the fireworks shot up into the sky like rockets in flight. The crowd
howled with gratitude for a job well done. Anyone who has ever had major success in
business, particularly in finance, says, “Buy low and sell high,” and that’s exactly
what I’m doing here tonight. I worked my ass off playing dive bars and LSU frat parties
for years, eating at Taco Bell and Popeye’s Chicken whenever I could afford it, and
excited I had made the money to do so. Now, I’m playing in a sold out arena with fans
screaming my name, singing my songs, and girls still wanting to come back stage to
meet me.