Well Done

Hello everyone,

I’d like to introduce the beginning of a new book that my cousin Mary and I have started writing together.

Oddly enough, the idea began with a simple question. After I had gone on a date, she asked, “So… how was your date?” My answer started with, “Well, I believe…” and from there the conversation took an unexpected turn. Rather than trying to explain everything I was thinking or feeling, we realized it might be more natural for me to write it instead.

I’ve never been particularly good at expressing my emotions in conversation. Sometimes I fall out of contact with the people I care about, even though I still think about them often. Writing has always been the place where I can say the things I struggle to speak aloud.

In many ways, this project became my way of saying, Yes, I do care, even when my actions or my silence might suggest otherwise.

The truth is, I care deeply. Sometimes so deeply that I don’t express it well. I don’t always give enough attention in the moment, and I don’t always find the right words when they’re needed. I’ve come to accept that growth takes time, and if time allows, I’ll keep working toward becoming better at expressing what’s in my heart.

Although this story is entirely fictional, the spark behind it was real. After that date, I was asked whether I wanted to continue seeing the person. My answer was yes. But instead of trying to untangle everything I was feeling in conversation, I decided to write. What began as a few thoughts soon evolved into characters, a plot, and eventually a story that Mary and I could create together.

This book isn’t about that person. It’s about giving myself a place to explore emotions I have often kept buried. If it helps me become more open, more honest, and more emotionally present, then it will have accomplished something meaningful before it’s ever finished.

To my returning readers, thank you for your patience. I also want to apologize for the delay in my Perception Curve series. Life and health have been demanding more attention than usual, but I’m hoping to publish the next installment tomorrow, June 30.

As always, thank you for reading and for continuing to support my writing. I hope you’ll enjoy this new journey just as much as I’ve enjoyed beginning it.

Well Done

By Corey W Harland

& Mary W

Chapter One: A Steady Flame

It was a midsummer night’s eve, and much like the referenced play, there was a playful hum hanging in the air. Birds chirped as they spun circles overhead, twirling seemingly carefree while carefully eyeing the freshly wetted ground and the return of the worms. The smell of manure and the traces of a spontaneous rain filled the country air.

There were no tractors out today.

Farmers must all be at the festival, he thought.

This year, he had decided not to attend the annual rituals of the local town. He had other plans. Plans not much different than those found among the crowded streets filled with carts, live music, and fresh rhubarb.

A week ago he would have been wandering the vendor stalls with everyone else.

Then her message arrived.

The sourness could almost be felt now, somewhere between his tongue and the soft palate at the back of his mouth. Fresh rhubarb had a way of doing that. The taste lingered long after it was gone.

Sometimes the stringy fibers would wedge themselves into the small gap between his front teeth. He’d spend half the afternoon fishing them out with his tongue while pretending not to notice.

He didn’t worry much about his teeth anymore.

They were the ones he had been given, and unless he was about to lose them over something worth losing teeth over, they would do just fine. Besides, they gave him a certain kind of uniqueness, the sort found on a charming farm boy from beyond the boondocks.

Look like a damn hillbilly.

The voice echoed somewhere in his subconscious.

Could open a can o’ corn with dem suckers.

Another voice chortled from the back of his mind.

Other than the small gap, the freshly split skin that glowed an angry red in a few places where lotion failed to calm his razor burn, and a small scar on the left side of his chin from not paying attention while disconnecting trailers a few years ago, he considered himself good-looking.

He was approaching thirty and worked as Head of Consulting at his uncle’s contracting company.

His uncle was a stern and prideful man, but he was good. Very good.

A retired nuclear engineer, he knew a thing or two about the world.

He had originally hired his nephew as a temporary employee in Human Resources, but the nearly thirty-year-old quickly found himself working next to his uncle’s corner office.

It wasn’t the human aspect of the job, nor was it the time it took him to meticulously understand his craft.

No.

It was the other humans at the office that drove him to the brink of insanity.

Consulting had come naturally to him, but the tension of the same song and dance and the exhausting hours spent closing deals that could have been settled in minutes wore on him. If the other side had simply allowed him and his uncle to save their breath, everyone could have gone home happier.

No one ever took someone at face value.

He understood that.

Communication is not your thing, those closest to him would interject.

And they weren’t wrong.

Either way, he had a steady income, a stable career, and opportunities that stretched farther than most people ever received.

He knew he was lucky.

Luck had a funny way of collecting interest. Every good thing in life seemed to arrive carrying the quiet expectation that something would eventually be asked in return. He wasn’t superstitious, not exactly, but he had lived long enough to stop counting on smooth roads.

Still, it was better not to tempt fate.

He glanced at his watch and felt his pulse quicken.

That wasn’t like him.

Most things in life met him with the same calm certainty he carried into every room, but this was different.

A moment spent thinking too long about her felt like standing too close to the heat of a steady flame.

He smiled despite himself, grabbed his keys from the kitchen counter, and headed for the door.

Halfway to the truck, he stopped.

The keys dangled from one hand while the other reached instinctively for his chin.

Smooth enough.

The razor burn was still there, angry and stubborn, but there wasn’t much to be done about it now.

He checked his shirt next. No wrinkles. No stains.

Good.

A quick glance in the side mirror confirmed what he already knew. The gap in his front teeth hadn’t gone anywhere. Neither had the scar on his chin.

Good enough.

He smelled his collar.

Soap, cedar, and a touch of cologne.

Good enough.

That phrase had followed him through most of life. Not perfect. Not polished. Good enough.

Tonight, however, he found himself wondering if good enough would be enough.

The truck started on the second turn of the key.

Rather than cut through town, he took the long way around. The festival would have every main street clogged with traffic, golf carts, and people who suddenly forgot how to walk in straight lines.

The gravel roads suited him better anyway.

Beautiful meadows stretched beyond weathered fences. Rolling brooks and narrow cricks wound through the countryside like silver threads stitched into green cloth. Cattle grazed lazily beneath scattered trees while fields of green and gold swayed beneath the endless song of the wind whistling through the the window.

The farther he drove, the quieter everything became.

The noise of work faded.

The noise of town faded.

Even the noise in his own head seemed willing to loosen its grip.

For a while, there was only the road, the summer air drifting through the open window, and the growing realization that he was looking forward to seeing her more than he cared to admit.

—————————-

——————-

Chapter Two: Voiceless

Is this me?

The question echoed through her head, lost among a thousand voices.

She stood before the mirror, studying a reflection that never seemed content to remain still. Every glance revealed someone slightly different. A stranger assembled from memory, expectation, and doubt.

A story singing a sad version of someone else’s song.

I’ve been waiting for the answers, sometimes even crippling any response that might be heard.

Searching endlessly for shelter through illusioned warmth.

Hiding beneath blankets of fog.

Yet I find myself beneath the qualified hostility of the good people of yesterday, memories drifting now like intoxicated ghosts.

The red dress remained draped across the chair.

Too much.

Too not.

Too much like someone trying to become a memory before earning the right to be one.

“Is this me?” echoed voicelessly through her head.

Do I dare to be alone?

Undressed behind the piecing together of this shattered windshield.

Though looking through, there is beauty behind the mirage of someone different.

An imprisoned reflection directing the hearse.

She adjusted her collar.

The movement felt rehearsed.

Everything lately felt rehearsed.

Even uncertainty seemed to know its cues.

The spoils of war continue to whisper through the fire.

A pure cleanse.

An ember’s glow somehow more mesmerizing than the radiance beaming from above to my residing so below.

Loosen the noise.

Adapt the cathedral.

I carry the bell’s vibration as the world I cherish burns.

Ashes into dust.

Void into form.

A victim of my nation.

The nation drooling over boiling blood.

She paused.

The room was quiet.

The kind of quiet that made every thought louder.

Poe sat comfortably among Shakespeare and Plath.

Their pages bent from use rather than neglect.

Companions to silence.

Perhaps that was why she preferred poetry.

Poetry never demanded certainty.

Only honesty.

Or at least an honest attempt.

Is the blank page truly what I seek?

Can this pen reveal what’s hidden behind every showcase?

Here lies my chance beneath reminiscing skies.

A calibration held hostage by most.

The dice of that which gamble this life reverberate trauma through every slice of pain.

Perhaps I’m just one sin away from being a star again.

A sun of sons.

I spare myself from the blazing trails.

Within sanity there is no reality without insanity.

My personal trademark of nightmares woven through the chaos of interpreting dreams.

She turned slightly, examining herself from another angle.

Not searching for beauty.

Searching for truth.

There was a difference.

One demanded approval.

The other demanded courage.

Reaching for her phone out of habit and the ghosts of notifications long since answered.

The notification had arrived days ago.

Innocent.

Casual.

Dangerous in the way hope often is.

I sail the waters of tied tongues and buried sprouts as I learn to speak again.

A secret that lies within the bending of my grammar.

So what am I but a fiend for a sunrise?

Spiraling colors of a palette the gods themselves crave.

Yet sometimes I still find my attention failing to pay the price.

Resulting in guaranteed transgressions for a humbling approach.

Sift through the bones of my collection.

There is no dirt burying fossils here.

I find modesty in the openness of my failures.

Learning to discover enthusiasm throughout my failings.

She fastened the necklace.

Removed it.

Fastened it again.

Some decisions were less about appearance and more about permission.

As I prepare through every blessing’s descent, I survive by a savage’s delight and love with a god’s intent.

An opportunity for hollow ground and the reset beneath my aching feet.

It doesn’t have to make sense.

Nor do I intend it to.

The answers were what I asked for.

The forbidden is what I remembered.

The truth is what I became.

She reached for her keys.

For the first time that evening, the noise felt distant.

Not gone.

Simply quieter.

Manageable.

Forgive me, darkness, through whom I’m conceived,

for I am now a child born of light.

——————————

————————

—————