Savanna Redman

“It’s all in the past where the past should stay.”

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Amanda has stepped around the darkest shadows where the demons of a traumatic childhood lurk to build a normal life for herself; satisfying career, married, owns a comfortable home with a backyard just big enough to throw a Frisbee. Even with the recent events of her husband losing his dream job and his father, and her mother flying off to Vegas to remarry, she's optimistic things will improve. 'This is normal. Focus on work — everything will be fine.'

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But in the back of her mind, a haunting premonition dream from her childhood plays like a TV left on too loud, day and night, in an apartment down the hall. She tries to brush it off as nothing more than a nightmare of a damaged child. But her premonition dreams have always come true; sometimes like a newsreel flash before the event, a literal play-by-play, and at others, they need a bit of deciphering.

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In the dream, she was a child hiding in the hydrangeas, watching her own funeral.

"So tragic," a mourner said, "only thirty-two." At eight, thirty-two was a lifetime away.

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Amanda J. Wilde turned thirty-two on Christmas.

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On a humid August morning in Chicago, she’s awakened predawn from a deep sleep under the oak in her backyard by her old dog and a ghost from her childhood.

The vivid nightmares, premonition-dreams, and sleepwalking have all returned, along with Ghost and his cat — who woke her as a child when her life was in danger.

 

She can no longer ignore the dream.

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Within a matter of days, tragic events cause the thin walls between the present and the past to blur with sadistic twists. Amanda heads down a dangerous path, clinging to the slippery edge of a mental breakdown, where she's forced to untangle the damaging psychological events of her childhood from the life she's built as an adult.

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The clock is ticking on the year of her death.

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Rich with emotion and driven by suspense, Tumbling Down reminds us that life is often forged by events that threaten to destroy us.

 

*Contains violence, alcohol, and profanity.

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*Published briefly as Butterfly Bones (2015), Tumbling Down (2021) includes deleted scenes to follow the author's original manuscript and intent.

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Amanda's journey continues in Refuge.
 

Amanda J. Wilde series reading order:

Disruption (a short story - prequel)
Tumbling Down (novel)
Refuge (novel)
Asylum (novel)
gifts from the gods (a short story)

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EXCERPT:

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 TUMBLING DOWN: page 209 

*In this scene: an unconscious, Amanda is having a conversation with her younger, mouthy self.

 

A cloud passes over the parking lot, dimming the sun on the glaring white gravel. She lies there, staring up into the blue sky, unblinking, flat on her back like roadkill in the dirty parking lot, her hands in front of her face. I notice a slight movement, a twitch of life, as she lets a butterfly walk across her fingers, moving it from hand to hand as if it’s climbing stairs.

“Remember that time, when we were sick with a flu, and Daniella brought home the yellow kitten?” I remember. “He told me his name was Jass. But she insisted, since he was left behind the club, his name had to be Jazz. He told me the best stories that week — how he used to live on a big old sailing ship, then on a little island with a girl. He had lived way more than nine lives. He said he never understood where humans got that silly notion. Daniella said it was just the fever talking, but I know it was Jass. He was so beautiful with those big bright green eyes of his and yellow tiger stripes. When he curled up on my neck at night and purred me to sleep, he’d just melt my heart like butter.”

She kicks rocks. Kicks the dust up from the gravel, angry, scuffing toes hard into the dirt under it, “They took him! Fuck.”

After a few minutes, walking around with the butterfly riding her shoulder, she calms down. “Nothing’s permanent, you know? Nothing’s really what it seems. We create rock-solid illusions for imagined security.”

She stops and watches the butterfly flutter on her shoulder. “But we were happy with Daniella and Zita. We laughed so loud. Remember laughing loud?”

“Just a kid—”

“True. Just a kid. A month and a day, before life went all catawampus on our ass, and Hell arrived with the Devil’s runny eyes glaring from the rearview mirror.”

She has her hands on her hips while walking around in a circle, talking more to the butterfly sitting on her shoulder than me. “There’s a chance we were a part of a mad doctor’s experiment. I mean, they know damn well, by the time we’re five, our view of the world and how we fit in it are set like Jell-O. A bit squiggly and wiggly, but pretty damn solid. You can slice and dice it any way you please, but it’s still going to be Jell-O solid.”

The butterfly flaps its wings, testing them before taking flight.

As it flies up through the trees, she waves goodbye.

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TUMBLING DOWN: page 277

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She skips across the gravel, turns to approach me, extending one foot out high, and wobbles. “You’re supposed to say, take one giant step. Then I say, Mother May I? And you reply, Yes, you may.”

She takes a big step toward me. “No? You really should play along here.” She turns and stomps off. “That’s life! One fucking Mother May I step at a time! Screw it up, and you lose!”

I close my eyes to the parking lot’s sunny glare, to the ugly old whitewashed church, and her shouting, allowing cool darkness to pool around me.

“You know,” she shouts, “if dreams are the children of your soul, you’re an unfit parent! You thought you had it all together. You didn’t. You thought the past was scrubbed out. It wasn’t. All you did was put sweet icing flowers, sugar bells and a bridegroom on top of a pile of stinking horse shit!”

“Can you leave? Please.”

“Fuck no. And you don’t want me to. Deep down, you know I’m telling you the truth. You know you don’t have the damn answers of how to fix this shit. You showed us all that when you wrecked our sweet car. My point is— Your way of covering up the shit, trying to make it smell nice, does not work! This ain’t kitty litter we’re standing in.”

“I have not covered anything up. I’ve moved past it. It’s all in the past. Where the past should stay.”

“You’re not here or there. You’re both. Different time. Different day. Don’t you get it? You just winced at the pain of that belt. Why did you wince if you were not there feeling it?” She waits for an answer, but I don’t have a logical explanation. I feel bruised and taste blood.

She rubs her hair up, then grips handfuls of it as if she wants to pull it out. “Every day, you make a new choice for who you are. And you—

You just go along with what they want. You’ve invented a you, that isn’t us. And it is not working. It can’t work. Ever.” Her voice catches. “You amputated me, and your whole creative soul with a chain saw. I’m a bloody stump!”

“A little graphic.”

She exhales loudly and walks away. “The butterfly was a clue — a gift. Remember how we used to dream of flying away with our own butterfly wings? Beautiful wings that would take us up and far, far away. For a while there, I could feel those butterfly bones growing under my skin. They itched. I just knew our wings were going to pop out and grow so big.”

She picks up a handful of rocks and starts throwing them as hard as she can, one at a time, into the woods like a physical exclamation point after every word. “But, then, one, day. Smack! Just, like, that. You’re all wrapped up in a homemade straitjacket. You decide you have had enough and quit. You give up. Give in. Quit on me. On us!”

She takes a deep breath and sits on the gravel as if she’s surrendering.

“And now — look around. Look where you are. You’re bleeding to death on a poor old tree. There was a time you would’ve preferred to climb it. You know it will probably die because of you.” She sighs and bats at the hem of the dress. “Do you think suicide is inherited? Any lemming tendencies? No? But stupid might be, huh?” She snorts a laugh. “That was a trick question about lemmings; the myth is a cruel Hollywood creation.”