Randy could see nothing exceptional in this man—a man at least twice their age. This made no sense for a survivor.
He slowly kicked open wide the driver’s door, his heart pounding against the constraints of veins. He tried to wet his lips with a dry tongue. What he wanted was a smoke. He’d quit tobacco three years ago and there was no one in the motel parking lot to bum a cigarette from anyhow.
He squatted beside the truck to ride out a wave of nausea. Sick as his insides felt, nothing came of the writhing.
Fuck it.
He was across the pavement and banging on the door where his husband and this jackass had disappeared. He barely registered housekeeping at a some other door down the walkway.
He was breathing through his mouth; his palm against the door, he felt for the vibrations of the latch lifting and the door knob turning.
Kick it.
The first kick didn’t get him through but the second one did. The two men were partially undressed, wide-eyed with panic. Randy lit into the older man, shoving him toward the floor and beating around the gray head until he realized the man wasn’t moving anymore.
His husband was in shock. He tackled Daniel from across the bed and they thudded to the floor, Randy’s fist tangled in the hair at the back of Daniel’s head.
Randy was crying. “What the hell? Why an old man? Did he feel like home?”
©2015 Sandra R. Davidson (Image)
A Layering of Perception 
Unfortunately many of us develop a need to return to replay the memories of our greatest woundings time and time again. Many often play them out with different faces in different places, at different times in their lives, each time with tragic results.
In retrospect, perhaps the greatest tragedy is that when we allow our memories of a traumatic event to define us, we lose sight of the fact that we can choose to stop.