Tattooed Moon by Tiana Laveen

what they’d seen. Mom lived alone. There were no witnesses to the manifestations, only a burnt pan that was now airing out and cooling down on the patio. Her father had died several years prior, and Milan was all the woman had. After a couple days’ deliberation and a few more exhausting disputes, she took her mother to the doctor. During the visit, she couldn’t believe her ears. No, she must’ve misheard… Her heart sank somewhere lower than her knees, her feet, and the soil beneath them. It travelled to the lowest place on Earth and her faith soon followed suit. Katrina Parker was diagnosed with dementia and it was also determined, she’d had at least two recent mild strokes. Milan gasped and lost her footing at the revelation, slumping onto the wall, clutching the fabric of her white and pink polka dot shirt.
    How could it be that this woman, so full of life and with a heart of the purest kind, was going out like this? No, she wouldn’t let this happen! Milan and Katrina fought, side by side. Determined to beat the odds, resolute to keep ahead of the vicious, unpredictable tide—but it was no use. More strokes came, and soon, Mom could barely speak. The doctors didn’t know what was causing them, this was a great mystery with no conclusion, never to be solved. It was apparent that her mother was unable to care for herself, and at times, she even grew violent during forgetful phases. How could this be? Her friend, the person she was closest to in this entire wide world, was losing her grasp on reality and an enriching existence, right in front of her eyes. How could survival be so punishing?
    This caused Milan to question life, period. She went into a dark purple tunnel and came out coated in tar-covered debris that clung to her emotions, dragging her away within its depressing clutch. She wrapped herself in it like a blanket, despite how it tore at her need for relief. She would not speak or eat for quite some time. What the hell was there to say?
    Why did good people die in painful ways, while the bad people slipped away of old age in their sleep? Who was making these rules?! Who was responsible for allowing these sorts of injustices to take place, all day, every day? Was it the same God that demanded to be worshiped, while simultaneously snuffing out the woman that had praised him for the majority of her life and made sure her one and only daughter did, too?
    We’ll understand it by and by?
    No! Milan wanted an explanation right NOW! Yet…God wasn’t answering. He was the same God she’d read about while gripping her Bible and reading the scriptures in Sunday school. He said all she had to do was ask. She asked that her mother be healed. Did God lie?
    God, how did you let this happen? Is this some sort of game? Perhaps a joke?
    Here was the same God that allowed her childhood best buddy to be molested by her stepfather. The same God who sat back and watched her father have a heart attack while later that evening, a mass murderer got to enjoy a three-course meal with tax payer dollars. Was it the same God that allowed the innocent to be damned, and the damned, to be declared innocent?
    As she contemplated all of this, a tinge of poker-hot anger moved inside of her. It sparked internally like a flung cigarette spark, leaving a hole inside of her heart. Where are you, God? Just curious…
    She burnt up with antagonism, and was destined to be a mountain of molten ashes. Actually, that was only what she told herself so she could simply survive her current lot in life, day by day. Rage over the whole, sordid mess was Milan’s gasoline. But in reality it was more than a damn twinge of anger; it was a full throttle apparition that had walked across her room, in its murky form, an embodiment of her own hatred for a Creator that was so pitiless and brutal, one she vowed to not have anything further to do with. Once a deeply spiritual person, and believing in the golden rule, she tossed that aside while the grieving