Chapter 1 - Julian Barimen

Chapter 1.19 – Gone

…just gone.
Several weeks have passed since David’s birthday at the beach. They spent the entire day together playing, fishing, walking… Bebe remembers thinking that it was a dream come true, how much Julian had changed. When he first rolled into town, Julian was a different person. But recently, he had become such an amazing and attentive father, husband, and lover.
 
They had come back home late and gone right to sleep after putting David in his crib. Then, in the morning, she woke up alone. At first, she assumed he had just gone fishing. But as the day progressed, he still had not returned. And when it was time for him to work, his ride came. But there was still no Julian. That is when she became frantic. Calls to the police station and hospital failed to find him. The warehouse where he worked did not know where he was. Julian Barimen was just plain and simply …gone.
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She just cannot understand what went wrong. Did something terrible happen to him? Or did he just freak out and decide to go back to his old way of life? None of it made any sense to her. He seemed so happy at the beach on David’s birthday. He had even expressed to her how much the day had meant to him.
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—
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It has taken until now for her to finally come to terms with the fact that he is not coming back. David is the only thing keeping her from falling apart completely. She teaches him to walk, talks with him, and sometimes just watches him sleep. The sleepless nights of alternating crying and prayer eventually give way to just a couple hours of it. And eventually, just a prayer before a restless night’s sleep.
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Bebe’s mother, Dorie Hart, comes to the cabin often to visit. She has aged into an elder, and thoroughly enjoys spending time with her only grandson. Bebe’s father Gus, who is likely in his final days, has sunk deep into his own world of insanity and spends his days watching re-runs of “Bowling for Simoleons”. When Dorie is not with Gus her own insanity seems very mild. Bebe actually enjoys their mother/daughter time for the first time she can remember.
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And most importantly, Dorie just listens to Bebe. She does not gloat about being “right” in her warnings regarding Julian. Her mother seems actually lucid and empathetic to her daughter’s plight. Dorie assures Bebe that she and Gus will always be there for her and David will never be lacking for love. Bebe knows she is right. Her mother and father had been very loving parents. Unfortunately, they both had always been a few cards short a deck.
Bebe has saved up a good sum of money from her artwork sales. With it, she could begin making a few improvements to the tiny cabin and give David a respectable place to live. The thought of beautifying the cabin makes her happy, but at the same time, sad. No matter what it looked like, it would always be Julian’s cabin. And without Julian, it would always be empty. She takes these thoughts to bed with her. In the morning she would begin drawing up plans for improvements to the cabin.
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Unfortunately for Bebe, somebody else has plans for the cabin as well.
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And these plans have nothing to do with home improvement.

4 thoughts on “Chapter 1.19 – Gone”

  3. For much of the “scripted” stuff, I use an alternate copy of my main game. For this one, I moved Julian’s father into the alternate game so I could have control over his activities. The positioning of the shots takes liberal application of the pause button 😉

    It really doesn’t take a lot of time, unless I’m trying to recreate something I was too slow to capture in the main game 😛

    And thank you for the comments!

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