Jamila Mikhail - Dont Let Me Go

Copyright

Copyright 2018 Jamila Mikhail

A ll rights reserved . No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the authors imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Cover image, Fence Landscape Away Nature Sky by user FelixMittermeier on Pixabay available under a CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication license Used with permission.

In Memoriam

This book is dedicated to my late grandmother Gertrude (1937-2018) who is the only person who never stopped supporting me when I decided I wanted to be a writer and most importantly, the only person who never let me go.

Acknowledgements

A bove all, I want to thank my grandmother Gertrude (1937-2018) for everything from raising me to always encouraging me in my writing endeavors despite that she couldnt read any of my works. You were my life in more ways than one and Im still trying to figure out what the hell Im going to do without you. I hope they have books somewhere between the sky and heaven.

Secondly, I owe the greatest gratitude to my loyal friends who have also been by my side through the many trials of my life, most notably Julien, Leo, and Daniel. A big fat thank you is also in order to Team Golfwell for their support and entertainment (despite that I really dont care for golf) and Dave for our long conversations, the periodic intellectual stimulation for always filling my mailbox with postcards and vintage photographs, among many other things.

Thanks to my cat Squeaker for being both my best friend and the love of my life and for sitting by my side for hours on end while I was typing up this book. I am proud to call myself a cat lady because of you.

Thank you as well to all the people who have somehow contributed to making this project a reality, in both big ways and small ways. You are numerous in number but you all know who you are. I could not have done this without all of you. It takes a village to write and publish a book, any author can testify to that.

It would be erroneous not to thank my dolls as well considering the subject matter of this book. My two favorite little guys dutifully watched over me from the shelf above my desk as I typed each word of this book.

Last but not least I need to thank my snail mail penfriends who have been with me for many years. I know that Ive been a handful at times but Ive shared some of the best friendships of my life with you, particularly Beth, Jenni, Duane, Joel and Andrew.

Thank you to you, the reader, for even making my writing career possible. Happy reading!

Chapter One

T he water splashed up against the rocks as I looked at the civilization in the distance. On the other side of the river there was a small factory and a water treatment plant on the industrial lot next to it. Passed that there was a lot of greenery with only the tip of the skyscrapers poking the distant skyline. The water was especially blue considering the fact that it passed through industrial land, but then again the town wasnt called Bluepond for nothing.

There wasnt a single cloud in sight and it was a beautiful day but I lacked the capacity to appreciate it. The cars going Nascar fast on the highway behind me were nothing but a dissonant hum in the background of the day. Some birds sang somewhere in the full scope of things too, but I couldnt see them as I kept on looking at the buildings in the distance. I couldnt believe that things had gotten to the point they were currently at. I couldnt wrap my mind around my own life anymore, if I had ever been able to understand it in the first place.

I got down from the railing I had been sitting on for hours and hours and walked back towards town before my mother got some idea in her head that I ran away because I hated my stepfather and stepbrother. I wasnt exactly on good terms with any of them, but I also had nowhere to run away to. I didnt really know where I was going to begin with, and I didnt want to get lost either. I especially wasnt looking forward to starting school in a new town either, albeit not a completely unfamiliar one. Id spent a couple of my summers in Bluepond with my grandfather when I was younger, before he passed away. I also knew that a few former schoolmates from Redmont had also relocated to Bluepond but that brought me no comfort. I hated school and Id never made any friends there.

My only friends were my dolls. The only friends Id ever had were my dolls. I began making action figures a couple of years ago after venturing out into a flea market being held in the basement of an old church and finding arbitrary parts. I thought it might be fun to recycle neglected and unwanted action figures and turning them into handsome little men again and it certainly was endless creative fun. What started out as an experiment became a steady hobby, and that hobby eventually turned into a passion. I ended up crafting everything from movie characters to soldiers of the Second World War to real people in my daily life.