Misty Manning

A DEEPER WAY ACROSS the true story of how my decision to end my life saved me   I drive the road home. Around me, the mountains rise and fall in an unbroken expanse of gray and grayer. This is heaven. This is hell. Part One: I Came Here to Die W hen I speak of Clear Creek, you may recall the photos I shared of a kaleidoscope sky floating above the fallow fields. Maybe you remember the walls of snow that packed the Raft River Range that record-breaking winter—or the white dog with the glacial blue eyes that never left my side.  When I think of Clear Creek, I think about the road.  Straddling the border of Utah and Idaho, Clear Creek is little more than a reservoir for the rings of dust trailing the cattle trucks. The perfect backdrop for a forgotten breed of men who move like rusty automatons from one ranch to another. A mountain hamlet consisting of a handful of double-wide trailers and half a dozen shotgun clapboards clinging to antique shade and pilfered water rights. T...

Chapter 1 (July 2016, A.L. Faucher) People die. Skylar Marie Faucher died on a Friday, the last week of July. That’s the first lie of many that I’ll tell you. In my defense, Friday is the day listed on her death certificate— lazy bastards . Friday was the most unlikely of days for it to have occurred, but it was the day her landlord, prompted by complaints of a foul odor outside her door, found Skylar’s naked body sprawled across the bathroom floor.  Perhaps 'sprawled' is too generous considering the size of the room. The apartment was on the top floor of an old Victorian house that had been dissected into seven small apartments, each one a human storage locker designed for a set of people falling through the cracks to call home.  As time passed, and her blood cooled, Skylar’s olive-toned skin turned ashy purple. Purple is a hard color to take seriously, but you will not find this particular shade in a box of crayons. It is death purple, and once you see it, you can’t unsee it...