Free Read Friday: Destination Unknown

Photo courtesy of Olivier Guillard

Read this story from the beginning HERE!

Destination Unknown

That’s the sixty four thousand dollar question. What will happen to me after I die? Those who believe in god tell us that after death we will either go to heaven, or hell, depending on how we lived our lives. I’d always figured there was a room reserved for me in hell, and until the moment I escaped my cell, I’d never given it much thought.

But if that’s the hell waiting for me I want no part of it.

And that was just some small town hole in the wall cell, now I’m at the Polunsky Unit in Texas, waiting for my one way ride to the death house. The guards keep pretty good track of that for us, counting down the days as they pass uneventfully, they‘ve even got a wall calendar out where everyone can see it, you know the kind you can pick up at any dollar store for a buck. It has a picture of a cat hanging by one paw, with “Hang In There,” printed beneath it in big letters. So you can see why I don’t like calendars.

The guards told me on my first day here that I should feel special. The cell I’d been assigned had once been inhabited by none other than Angel Resendiz also known as The Railroad Killer, and had been executed in oh six. That information was enough to keep me from stepping across, hell it was enough to keep me up at night, I know that evil son of a bitch left his imprint on my cell, and created an alternative persona on the other side that was patiently waiting for me to step across.

I wonder what he saw as he waited for his appointment with the death chamber? Was he even aware of what lived just beyond his view? Probably not, after all, he was considered sane by those who tried him, but I find that hard to believe.

I can feel his presence in the shadowy corners of my cell where the light from my only lamp fails to reach, watching me while I try to sleep. I can hear it at night while the others around me dream of life beyond the four dreary walls of their cells.

Like rats in a wall they scratch at the fabric between our world and theirs seeking a way over. Every night I listen to them and their incessant scratching, wondering what I’ll do if they manage to get through. I know what I’ll have to do, the only thing I can do, I’ll have to step across and run like hell.

So I just wait and listen, and watch. I know on one of those calendar pages there’s a day circled in red that’s meant for me. My lawyer told me the date while promising to do everything he could to have my sentence commuted, but I can’t remember what it is. Funny isn’t it, that I’ve forgotten what day I’m scheduled to die.

But there’s always hope, maybe the lawyer will come through and get my sentence commuted, hell while we’re dreaming why not aim big, maybe the governor himself will pardon me. Or maybe while I’m being transported to the death house, I’ll just step back. I’ve never done it from a moving vehicle, but there’s always a first time.

The End

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Free Read Friday: Destination Unknown

Photo courtesy of Olivier Guillard

Read this story from the beginning HERE!

 

Destination Unknown

That pretty much summed up my life, living day to day, a nomad on the open road. I’d never had a bank account, didn’t understand the first thing about saving for the future, like I had one. Every dollar I took was wadded up and shoved into my pocket as I moved through life, staying among those I understood, and shunning what I couldn’t comprehend, like the schools of fish from that aquarium so long ago.

I thought I had it figured out, and for me I did, when my cash got low I’d check out a bank, measuring the distance from the street corner to the interior of the vault. That night I’d show up outside, slip in between, and walk into the vault. Most times I was right on target, emerging from the in-between inside the vault where I would fill my pockets with what I needed from the teller drawers stored inside, then be on my way before anything from the in-between got close.

I had to always be aware of that, those creatures on the other side, they were always on the prowl for me. Circling my last known location in a spiral that would bring them to the point where I crossed over. I never waited to see what they were, afraid if I did I might never escape.

I learned early on to ignore the blocks of new bills wrapped in plastic that were just sitting on the shelf in plain sight. Tried to bring one across but was unable to do so, and it fell to the floor of the vault where it lay until the following morning when the manager opened.  He must have been the suspicious sort as I learned later when the police pulled me in for questioning. It appears they found my fingerprints on the block of cash and wanted to know how I found my way into the vault.

There was also the matter of the missing cash from the teller drawers. Some of the bills had been marked and of course the police found them wadded up in my pocket. They hammered at me for two days, wanting to know who the inside man was, how did I circumvent the alarm system, and so on. Had I told them the truth they wouldn’t have believed me, besides that was my ace in the hole, when they locked me up all I had to do was slip across into the in-between and be on my way.

Or at least that was my reasoning. The reality of course turned out to be quite the opposite.

After a couple of days they gave up and charged me with grand theft, I’d taken nearly five thousand dollars. A mere pittance really when compared to what many of these banks made in interest and fees. I was tried, found guilty of course,  and sentenced to five to ten years at the state prison. The night before my transfer from the city lockup I decided it was time to go.

You know how they say some places give off a certain vibe? Like abandoned mental hospitals that years after their closure are still filled with the despair of their former patients. The terror and fear of these lost souls who appeared abnormal to the general public. In reality they were attuned to things beyond the understanding of the so called sane among us. Secret things and places that existed in a shadowy realm.

Jails are like that, the walls seem to absorb the energy of those incarcerated. Oozing with helpless terror, fear, and sometimes unimaginable evil. I didn’t know the history of the cell I was in, but there must have been some pretty bad shit that went down in there.

When I crossed over it was like nothing I’d ever seen before. The landscape around me was one of shadows dancing in an endless night with the screaming cries of past victims echoing all around me. But that wasn’t the worst of it. I don’t know who had been in that cell before me but they had been one evil son of a bitch. Their presence was in that dark landscape, a predator stalking its prey, and I felt it on a purely emotional level that made me feel like someone had kicked me in the gut.

It moved through the darkness, zeroing in on me almost instantly, scrambling towards me in a shadowy form that resembled a massive spider. It was and it wasn’t, if you catch my drift, I was looking at something my mind could not comprehend, so it created what it  was familiar with. It moved through the emptiness in a jerking motion, stopping and starting, then stopping again as it watched me with a multitude of eyes that all said the same thing.

We want you.

I felt its need like a thousand tiny hands clambering all over my body, pulling at my clothes, my flesh, my hair and face. It was the most frightening thing I’d ever felt before or since. I managed to get away, but I’ll never escape the memory of that nightmare landscape. It will follow me to my grave, and that is where the real problem lies.

When I take my final walk, and they strap me down to that gurney, and as the fluids designed to kill me flow into my body, where will I go?

To be continued!

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Free Read Friday: Destination Unknown

Photo courtesy of Olivier Guillard

Destination Unknown

It was only natural that someone such as myself, from the wrong side of the tracks, with little education coupled with little hope for the future, would find themselves in my current situation. After all my trip to death row was foretold on the night of my birth when my father managed to drag himself to the hospital long enough to see what his seed had produced.

Like father like son they always say, the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree was another homily that pretty much sealed my fate. From what I was able to piece together my dad had been a drug dealing, pill popping, thrill seeker living along the shadowy edge of our ordered society.  A biker with little hope for the future who lived for the moment as that was the only one that mattered. In his world there was little need for 401k’s, bank accounts, or even jobs.

He and his kind lived day by day, feast or famine, constantly on the move, never pausing for a moment except when they were too drunk, or too high to function, and even then they pushed on. Always wandering, moving from one end of the country to the other, living by their wits, accumulating only what wealth they needed for the moment through wheeling and dealing, and in rare cases by sticking a gun in some poor saps face.

They didn’t take from the man, they kept their distance from the more ordered members of society, the nine to fivers who went about their daily lives unaware of the danger lurking just beyond view. They dealt strictly within the family, that loose coalition living in the shadowy realm between good and bad. The pimps, hookers, and dealers who fed on the darker needs of an ordered society that at times became too stifling for some.

They were modern nomads roaming the land in search of a freedom that no longer existed, and they welcomed me with open arms. After being held back for the ninth grade for the third time I decided that school was not for me. There were no scholarships in my future, no invitations to visit the campus of this college or that, and even if by some miracle a college did approach me, our financial situation pretty much ruled that out.

We were nomads in our own right, the woman who gave birth to me and I, living at the very edge of society as she wheeled and dealed her way through one government program after another, her hand always extended, never once offering more than a token effort and just long enough to get what she needed. In that time we moved from one crappy apartment or trailer to the next, each worse than the one before, as we spiraled down the drain to homelessness.

I’ve often wondered as the night grows long and the others on death row with me sleep as best they can knowing at the end of the hall their destination waited. How would my life have turned out if the woman who gave birth to me had been different. Would I be sitting in this lonely cell, counting down the days to my own unknown destination, or would I have built a family of my own.

A loving wife, a couple of kids, a boy and a girl, maybe more. A family pet a dog, or cat, and some fish of course, I’d always been fascinated by fish swimming in their ordered little world. One of my childhood friends had an aquarium when I was growing up and I could sit for hours and watch as they swam back and forth from one end of the tank to the other. Staying in their groups, some holding to the center of the tank while others traveled along the outer edges.

Never aware that there was a wide open world on the other side of the glass that imprisoned them.

To be continued!

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Free Read Friday: Detsination Unknown

Photo courtesy of Olivier Guillard

Destination Unknown

Author note: Still struggling with this one as I try to wrap my mind around the details of the shadowy realm of the "In-Between". Following the original challenge of only allowing myself one hour to actually write the story I was only able to get down 460 words. As I told a writer on Facebook, I don't vomit on the page, I approach each session in a reasoned manner as I slowly uncover the gem of the story hidden from view. Still not sure where this one is headed but I sense a culmination lying out there beyond the next hill, wanna come along?

Read this story from the beginning HERE!

Every time I stepped over these creatures emerged from the shadowy depths, stalking me as they circled in to get closer. I don’t know if it was the warmth of my body, my scent, or maybe it was the spark of life I contained that drew them to me like an iron filing drawn to a magnet. I never let them get close, I didn’t want to see what they looked like.

They were always there, getting closer with every passing moment, even when I stepped back across they continued their search. Circling my last known as they narrowed in on where I’d been. I made the mistake once of stepping back over from the same place a few hours after I had been there.

You know how it is with kids, they discover something new they have to experiment with it. That was me, experimenting as I tried to understand what it all meant. After all this special talent didn’t come with an instruction manual. When I returned that shadowy realm from my bedroom they were nearly on top of me, the sound of their approach coming to me like the echo of a rock skipping across the surface of a silent pond.

Everything had changed as well, the landscape no longer resembled a shadowy copy of the world I came from, the walls of my bedroom were gone completely, along with the rest of the trailer and the other trailers crammed around ours in the trailer court.

The landmarks I needed to keep myself tethered to the world I came from was gone. In its place were towering spires of rock, columns of massive stones stacked haphazardly atop one another against all the rules of logic and physics. They moved among that forest of stone, shadowy shapes whispering through the spaces between the spires, like blood slowly seeping through torn skin, a sight I was sadly, intimately familiar with.

Within their soul they carried the spark of nightmares. Unimaginable creatures that lived in the shadowy realm of our own sub-conscious, fed by our own fears, and the self doubt that plagues us as we struggle to fall asleep. What I feared most was what lived in those flowing clouds of eternal emptiness, and they were hungry. As they got closer I detected dark shapes flitting to and fro frantically within those gloomy depths.

I came to understand later what happened. You see when I first step across I’m not all the way over into that other world, it takes time for my essence to bleed through. When I move and step back across my essence follows my movement at the same slow pace. Aside for that one time when I conducted my little experiment, I’ve never stepped back through and remained still. You have to keep moving or they’ll find you.

To be continued!

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Free Read Friday: Destination Unknown

Photo courtesy of Olivier Guillard

Destination Unknown

Author note: Still not quite sure where this one is headed, but my character has slipped over to a place I've ventured to in the past. The in-between first made it appearance in Legion of the Damned, books three of my post apocalyptic coming of age series. In it Window, who had been infected by a reaper, discovers he has the ability to slip behind the veil of reality into a place that is neither here, nor there. Just as the narrator in this story is able to step behind the curtains we imprint our reality upon. But there is a price to pay for doing so. 

Read the story from the beginning HERE!

But that didn’t matter to her, she needed a target for her anger, and since her prince charming had abandoned her the year before, that meant I was next in line. It didn’t help that the moment she went down I laughed, assuming in my innocence that it was all part of the show. She turned on me so fast I had little time to react. Transforming from a tipsy, good natured drunk, to a demon from the depths of hell in an instant.

I still carry the scars from that day, both physical and emotional. It was the day I stopped being a child filled with innocent wonder, and took my first step into manhood as I endured a torturous night that would have left many others begging for an end to their suffering.

I had no choice, there was no one I could call, no one who really gave a damn about some stupid seven year old kid from the wrong side of the tracks. If I ran from the trailer to escape from her, where would I go? The neighbors? Hell they had problems of their own with their own kids without me adding to their troubles. I was trapped with nowhere to run, and I knew if I turned up dead no one would shed a tear. Sure, my mother might face the punishment she deserved, but when you stepped back and looked at the big picture who would give a damn?

That’s what I did that night. I stepped back. As the woman who had given birth to me, she had lost the right to call herself mother, expressed her anger with the burning tip of a cigarette, I escaped the pain by stepping back emotionally, and mentally. I slipped through a door of sorts, into a nighted world that made little sense.

To a place I call the in-between.

The walls of my bedroom were still there, but they carried an ethereal, shadowy, quality. As if one could just walk right through them, which I discovered later that night was possible when I left my bedroom. The few posters hanging above my bed had been transformed into gloomy caricatures. The friendly demeanor of the teen age mutant turtles had been distorted, twisted into enraged sneers that were so like my mother’s angry features.

Was that where she came from? The in-between? Cast out into our world to live among us. Was that why I could slip across so easily? Because the in-between was really my home?

Here the sounds of the night were amplified, yet muted. It reminded me of the time I went swimming with my mom and wandered into the deep end of the pool, the bottom dropping out from under me as I slipped beneath the surface. I didn’t know how to swim and sank to the bottom like a rock. I could hear the people around the pool above yelling, but it was muffled by the water.

As I grew older it became easier for me to slip across. In no time I learned that a few steps in the in-between, translated into a hundred feet on the proper side of reality. After that first night, when I fled from my mother’s wrath, I awoke the following morning in Mrs. Ankers flower bed, her gladiolas and assorted other flowers crushed beneath my weight.

At first she had been angry, yelling at me to get out of her flower bed, but then she saw the burns on my arm and her features softened. She glanced at the trailer my mom was in and her eyes hardened, her lips pressed into a thin line. Then she took me inside to care for my wounds. I only remember all this with such clarity, thought it happened nearly thirty years ago, because of the in-between. You see every time I step back into my realty the details of the world around me come into sharp focus. Everything becomes crystal clear, as if I’m seeing it for the first, which in a sense I am.

You see, there’s a price to be paid for everything. Stepping across into the in-between does not come without its share of risks. There’s things living on the other side that make little sense, creatures on the prowl looking for a way to slip through into our world. 

To be continued! 

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Free Read Friday: Covenant Part V

Covenant

Some promises can not be broken.

Authors note:

We are nearing the end of this one, and I would like to apologize again for vanishing for nearly two months. Keep in mind this is a first draft, editing is at best very minimal, this is how I write. After the story is done and has had time to stew, as it were, I'll go back over it to adjust the narrative. 

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Read this story from the beginning to this point HERE!

Without further adieu I give you part 5 of Covenant .

But the harsh reality of what he’d experienced was right there on his hand. Maybe he’d cut it in the phone booth while he was dreaming, after all it had to be a dream, it wasn’t possible for that murky bar to be in his basement. At this he pushed open the door and leaned out to gaze at the familiar surroundings of his basement.

It was a dream, nothing more, the stress of caring for Patricia was taking its toll. The time for his decision about her future was drawing closer with every breath he took.

“Promise me!” the memory of their argument that day in the cemetery surfaced in his mind. He took a step back, just as he had that day, the ferocity of her desire threatening to overwhelm him.

What could he do?

“Archie,” her voice shrieked from the baby monitor in his hand and he looked at it as he glanced again at the watch on his wrist. This time he had been gone for nearly six hours. His heart sank at the thought that she had been left alone for so long.

“You promised,” She cried out, the baby monitor vibrating in time with her voice. 

He raced from the basement, taking the stairs at a dead run, becoming winded before he reached the top, but he pushed on as his heart trip hammered in his chest. Nearly staggering down the hallway he came to her door where he stopped with his hand on the knob as he struggled to catch his breath and compose himself.

When he pushed into the room he found her sitting up in her bed, watching him with the same mischievous expression he’d fallen in love with. Though her face was lined with age, and her hair had been bleached by the passing of the years, she looked more alive than she ever had since the onset of her disease.

“It’s about time,” she said in a perfectly normal voice as he nearly dropped to his knees at her bedside.

“You do recall what we talked about?”

He could only nod silently, his heart filled with joy and sadness in equal measures. She had come back to him, it was a miracle, and then he stopped. Or was it just an extension of the dream he’d been living in the basement.

“You understand what you have to do?”

“I can’t,” he answered honestly.

“But you must.” She slid across the bed and swung her legs over the side, planting her feet firmly on the floor in front of him, then she was kneeling next to him, her small hand hot and tender on his back as she leaned in close. He could smell her, the scent of Ivory soap strong on her flesh, masking the sour stench of her approaching death.

“Don’t let me suffer anymore, I’ve grown weary with this life, this disease has robbed me of my memories, it has taken my past. Please don’t let it win.”

A shadow passed over the day at the mention of her disease and he looked up at the window. The day that had once been bright and cheery had grown dark and overcast, with gray clouds drifting low to the ground, mimicking his sorrow. He felt first one, then another tear as they traced twin paths down his cheeks.

“I can’t,” he said, snuffling into the sleeve of his shirt, “how can you ask me to hurt the one I love.”

“Is it love to keep me like this, to let the shadows take all that I had been?”

“I can’t,” he shouted as he pushed himself to his feet, “you can’t ask me to do this.” He stepped back from her bed where she was sleeping peacefully, a serene expression on her face, the dwindling light of evening retreating from the shadows that were growing long and thick in the corners of the room.

It had just been another dream, her kneeling beside him, talking to him in that lost voice. As he watched her sleep he noticed that her eyes were moving rapidly back and forth beneath her closed eyelids. From outside came the rumble of thunder and the darkness deepened as gray clouds obscured the face of the dropping sun. From the shadowy corners of her room came low growls that grew from the night.

He turned away from her sleeping figure to find himself in that bar once again. She was standing at the other end of the shadowy room, that vibrant blue dress faded somewhat, her red hair had lost some of its luster, lying flat against her skull. Her face was gaunt, withdrawn, her cheekbones more prominent than before, her once sparkling eyes were now dull and lifeless orbs resting in shadowy basins.

“You made a promise,” she said, lifting her withered arm to point one crooked finger at him. The patrons at the bar on his left roiled and growled as she shouted. Outside a flash of lightning whipped across the sky followed by a tremendous crack that split the night sky open and sent a tremor through his soul.

The roof of the bar was ripped away, exposing the dark clouds that churned in a maelstrom above their heads.

“You promised,” she shouted over the rising voice of the wind, her rage whispering across the sky, a thick bolt of lightning that danced upon the canvas of  agitated clouds. Branching out, dividing again and again until they surrounded them in a prison of bars that caressed the ground and filled the air with the heavy scent of ozone.

“I can’t,” he replied, cringing from the dancing streaks of lightning that were now trapped in the moment of their creation.

To be continued 

 

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Free Read Friday: Covenant Part IV

Covenant

Part IV

Read the story from the beginning to this point HERE!

She stood on the other side of the glass, watching him with sparkling blue eyes, a faint smile playing hide and seek on her full red lips.  His back complained loudly as he pushed himself to his feet, and pulled open the door. She took a step back, her eyes never leaving his, as he emerged from the phone booth.

“Who are you?” He asked.

“Don’t you know? She answered before she turned and walked away, sashaying down the length of the bar to her seat. She stopped, turned, and motioned for him to follow with a crooked finger.

“Who is she? He wondered as he moved the length of the bar, aware of others on their seats, obscure shadowy shapes that muttered and groaned at each other in his peripheral vision. 

Coming abreast of where she sat he stopped and gazed at her. She looked so much like Pat when she was younger, yet there was something missing, some little thing that stood her apart from the woman he loved and had grown old with.

She motioned to the seat beside her, inviting him to sit down, and the shadows to her left shifted with a faint, yet menacing, growl, to clear a seat for him. As he sat down he realized he still had the baby monitor clipped to his belt, the hard plastic shell digging into his belly as it became trapped against his thigh. Removing it he placed it on the bar in front of him. A harsh white object surrounded by the murky depths of a bar that could be anywhere from a lonely stretch of two lane blacktop in the middle of nowhere, to the bustling center of a crowded city that never slept.

She lifted her hand, her index and middle finger pointing up, and two drinks appeared on the bar in front of them. Emerging from the shadows crowded around them. Above the bar a faint neon light glowed with a muted brilliance, its light battling the dense shadows that were as thick as smoke. From his left came assorted growls, moans, and monosyllable grunts, accompanied by the muted tinkling of glasses colliding with one another, and the surface of the bar.

“What is this place? What do you want?”

She smiled over the rim of her glass as she took a small sip. Archie followed suit, the amber liquid burning on its journey to his belly, almost taking his breath away, and causing him to choke. That was some powerful stuff.  As the heat faded he detected a nuttiness about it that left a strange aftertaste in his mouth.

“Don’t you remember me?” she said as she lowered her glass to the bar, turning to look up at him with sparkling blue eyes. Her eyes grew brighter, glowing with an internal light. They looked as if sparks were about to start shooting from them.

He shook his head as he tried to recall, the features of her face were familiar, her name playing hide and seek on the tip of his tongue, frustrating him as his thoughts became a muddled morass of shadowy images like the indistinct shapes that jostled around them.

He knew her, he knew he should know her, yet every time he tried to put his finger on that elusive name, to pin it in place long enough for him to grab it, it faded into the crowding darkness that was threatening to overwhelm him from within, and without.

Something bumped into his back and he swiveled his head around, an act that seemed to take impossibly long, and peered into the murky depths that pressed in close on every side of him.

“Hey, watch it,” he said, his words slurred as he peered into the that crowded emptiness. A hand shot out, slapping him across the face, hard, and a memory blossomed. They were supposed to have been home by supper, but hadn’t made it until after dark. He sensed fear and anger, tempered with a touch of love and caring, all battling for dominance. Something could have happened to you, the sensation trickled through his thoughts as the memory that didn’t belong to him faded into the shadowy recesses.

He spun back around, intent on finding out once and for all who she was, but she had vanished. Her empty stool remained, glowing in a soft light that held the crowding shadows at bay. He spun round on his seat searching for her in the murkiness that was gathering even closer around him. Dark shapes moved through the emptiness, bustling and jostling for position as ebony hands darted out of the shadows to snatch at him. He slapped at the shadow hands that reached out for him.

Spinning around on his stool he reached for the baby monitor as a pair of black hands emerged from the darkness to grab it.  Each finger was tipped by an ebony claw that clicked against the plastic case with a sound reminiscent of a bird pecking at a window.

“Archie,” Pat’s voice shrieked from the monitor and he struggled to pull it loose from those shadowy hands as one of the claws raked his hand, laying open his finger that bled onto the white surface of the monitor, staining it with his blood. 

He yanked on it with all he had, pulling it free, his actions causing him to spin around in his seat and slam his elbow against the side of the phone booth. Pain shot down to his hand as numbness danced through his fingers. He dropped the baby monitor with a clatter. He looked around wildly, searching for shadows that weren’t there as the realization slowly dawned that he was still sitting in the phone booth.

It had been a dream bordering on a nightmare.

“Archie,” Pat cried out again, her voice tinny, and filled with static, coming from the plastic grill of the monitor lying on the floor at his feet. 

It was just a dream, he sought to console himself. All the stress he’d been feeling coupled with his horror at his recent revelation had given him a nightmare.

“Archie,” she cried out for a third time, driving him up from his seat, and he pulled open the door of the phone booth. As he did he noticed the small cut on his finger, already starting to scab over, and a cold fear slowly unwound in the pit of his belly.

It had been a dream, right?  He sought to convince himself.

To be continued!

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Free Read Friday: Covenant Part III

Covenant

Part III

For a week he kept his promise, remaining attentive to her every need, even though it seemed she was unaware of him. Her mind having wandered to a remote place that lay beyond the edge of reason. He tried not to think about the phone booth in the basement, or the strange dream he’d had, a dream that had felt more real that imagined. But it was hard, that brief moment had reminded him what it felt like to really be alive.  That mysterious woman haunting his thoughts as he went about his duties.

Every day he brought her breakfast, lunch, and dinner at the appointed time. Every day she watched him with guarded mistrust. Like he was a stranger in her home, and not the man she had spent over fifty years with. She was slowly becoming just like her own mother in her final days, and the thought brought out another that had lain buried by sorrow.

The day they laid her mother to rest she had cornered him in the cemetery, in the older section where the stones were not as polished, and the names once chiseled sharply on those granite faces were losing their edge. Fading into the past like all of them would eventually.

“I don’t want to end like that,” she’d said as they walked among the tombstones. Her once vibrant red hair had already started to lose it luster, here and there the gray of her approaching old age had started to show through. Her steps were not as assured as they once were, and she carefully picked her way through the graveyard, ever watchful for hazards that might cause her to lose her footing.

“Like what?” he’d asked as he followed, noting, not for the first time, that the curvy figure that had caught his eyes so many years ago had softened around the edges. It was still there, just not as pronounced as it once was.

“Like my mother,” she said as she spun on him, forcing him to stop abruptly, “I don’t care what you’ve gotta do, I don’t want to end up like that.”

“What are you talking about? What are you saying?”

“You know. “ She looked at him with a hard stare, an unrelenting gaze, her blue eyes as cold as ice. He was forced to look at his feet, the ground, the tombstone to their right that carried the worn name of another. Anywhere but into her unrelenting gaze. A part of him noticed the crows feet spreading out from the side of each eye, the way her cheeks had grown just a tad heavier, her lips a little less defined.

“A bullet to the brain would be preferable to spending the last years of my life confined to bed, unaware of who or where I am, not even recognizing you or the boys. I couldn’t live with myself like that,” she said.

Archie was taken back by the sheer intensity in her voice.

“Promise me,” she said, stepping close enough for him to see the fine lines gathered at the corners of her lips.

“Promise you what?” He asked, but he knew all too well what she wanted. It was what anyone else in the same situation would want. What many already trapped in the illness likely begged for silently every day. An end to the suffering, the not knowing, the loss of self. An end to the indignity of being forced to rely on others for even the simplest of things.

“You know what,” she said, following him step for step as he backed away from her. The backs of his legs came against the curved top of a tombstone and he was forced to put his hand back to steady himself.

“What?” he said again. “Say it out loud, tell me what you want me to do.”

“I want you to kill me, it if comes to it. The doctors say I have a seventy five percent chance of becoming just like my mom. If I do, I want you to end my suffering.”

How? How could he kill the one thing he truly loved. He knew death, had walked hand in hand with it in the jungles of Vietnam, but that had been war. This was different, this was murder plain and simple

“I’m begging you not to let me suffer the same fate as my mom.”

He couldn’t respond, hell he couldn’t even wrap his mind around it, to kill his wife, the mother of his children, the woman he loved. It was too much to ask. It was one thing to kill your enemy in a battle. It was quite the opposite to kill the one you loved.

He stood at the foot of her bed as she slept, the memory of that day receding into the dark depths of his mind. It would be so easy. Hold the pillow over her face until she stopped struggling.

Would she struggle?

The direction his mind was taking frightened him and he raced from her room as fast as a man his age was capable of. Seeking the refuge of the basement. He reached the bottom of the steps and stared across the room at the phone booth as the memory of her sparkling blue eyes filled his mind. Before he even realized he was going to do it he was halfway across the room.

Reaching the phone booth he yanked open the door and stepped in to settle onto the hard wooden seat. There he sat as the stress from the past week slowly drained away and a heavy sadness settled over him. Lowering his head he cried softly, his hot tears dropping onto his hands.

It was too much to ask.

There was a knock at the door, and he looked up.

To be continued!

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Free Read Friday: Covenant Part II

Covenant

Part II

He’d found the booth buried beneath a pile of cast offs in the back of a barn on the vast Kansas plains. The owner had been a man closing in on ninety and had been happy to part company with it for the right price that Archie readily agreed to.

Archie’s dad had served in the European theater in World War II, wading ashore at Normandy on D-Day as Hitler’s finest mounted a stiff defense. Archie himself had served in the jungles of Vietnam, so he understood that need to make contact with those close to you before you stepped into the fight. That final moment to say your goodbyes. He closed the door behind him and settled onto the narrow seat as his emotions overwhelmed him.

The doctors said it wouldn’t be much longer before she required twenty four hour care, and the discussion had then turned to his options, that were becoming  limited with every passing day.

Nursing home? Absolutely not!

Twenty four hour in-home care was an option that came with a price tag far beyond his ability to pay. Even if he sold everything he had ever purchased in his den it still wouldn’t be enough. They had some money socked away, but nothing close to what would be needed to provide the care she required. She had reached the end of a life well lived and in a cosmic twist of fate was destined to spend her remaining years as a stranger.

Oh how he yearned for the old Pat, the young girl with the mischievous eyes and the quick smile. She was a flirt, even as they grew old together she had that ability to have every man anywhere she went eating out of the palm of her hand in no time. Yet she had given her heart solely to him. They’d had a good life together, raising two sons who had gone on to make both of them proud. Of course she would have been proud of them no matter what.

A rapping on the glass pulled him from his thoughts and he looked up startled. A young man in uniform stood on the other side of the door, knocking on the glass impatiently as Archie gathered his thoughts, trying to make sense of what was going on.

“Come on, Pops, I’m shipping out soon and I gotta get back, I need the phone to call my girl,” the young man said as he pushed on the center of the door to open it.

“I’m sorry, what? Where am I? What’s going on?” Archie stuttered as he looked around the room. His den was gone, as was his collection of signs and toys. In its place was the smoky interior of a tavern. A narrow bar ran the length of the wall on the left, several patrons, an even mix between civilian and military types, sat as the bar with cold drinks in front of them as tendrils of white smoke rose from what seemed like a cigarette in every ashtray.

“”Let me use the phone for just a minute then you can have it back, I just want to tell my girl I love her before they ship me out.”

“Where are you going?” Archie asked before he could stop himself. He had never been as open with strangers as Pat.

“Somewhere in the Pacific, won’t know for sure till we’re on the ship, just hope I get to kill some Japs for what they did in Hawaii,” the young man, no more than nineteen said as he tipped his head and slipped into the phone booth, closing the door behind him.

Everything around him was dark, dreary, not black and white, not quite, it was like a photo that time had taken the color from. Even the neon sign over the bar glowed with a dingy light that had been sapped of any brilliance. 

Then he saw her, at the end of the bar, her blue summer dress the only spot of color in an otherwise drab world, her eyes sparkling with a playful light, her red hair set off by the color of the simple dress she wore.

She got up from the bar, and was walking towards him, when from the baby monitor on his belt she cried out his name.

“Archie.”

He looked up from where he was sitting to find himself  back in his man cave. Sitting in the phone booth, his shoulder resting against the glass side.

“Archie.” Her voice crackled from the monitor again, a forlorn cry from the wilderness of her disease.

His back was stiff, his buttocks numb from having sat so long, and he struggled to pull himself to his feet.

How long had he been out? He glanced at his watch as a sinking despair overwhelmed him. She had been alone for four hours. How long had she been calling for him before he realized it?

Pushing open the door of the phone booth he rushed upstairs to find she had messed herself. He had no idea how long she had been calling for him, but the look in her eyes, that humiliation of having lain in her own waste, burned with a brilliant intensity. 

“I’m, sorry,” he repeated as he worked to clean her, swearing to himself that he would never forget her again. As he worked he realized that while he was standing in that smoky bar, watching the red head walk towards him, he had completely forgotten, for the briefest of moments, about his ailing wife. He was surprised when he realized just how liberating forgetting her could be. His childish side sought to counter his guilt by reminding him that she had already forgotten him.

To be continued
 

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Free Read Friday: Covenant Part I

Covenant

Some promises are kept for a lifetime

“Archie,” Patricia’s voice shrieked through the plastic mesh of the baby monitor on the counter top. He had installed them to keep tabs on his wife when he wasn’t in her room, and she needed him. All she said anymore was his name and even that was becoming an increasingly rare occurrence. It was if the disease had not only robbed her of her mind, and her memories, but was taking her voice as well.

Doctor Patterson had said it would eventually come to that as the disease progressed through its varied stages.

With her sandwich and a pile of potato chips on the Styrofoam plate he placed them on the plastic tray he used for her meals. There was already a Styrofoam cup full of lemon water, and a Styrofoam bowl of butterscotch pudding. Next to the plate were two napkins, and the only utensil, a plastic spoon for the pudding. Anything with sharp edges had to be avoided. She was past the physically violent stage, almost completely bedridden, with the exception of her bathroom visits that she insisted on continuing, even though a bed pan was available.  

Yet it was always wise to be careful.

With the monitor clipped to his belt he carried her tray down the hall towards her bedroom, and with every step the sadness settled deeper into his heart. She had once been a vibrant, loving, woman. A fiery redhead whose personality matched the color of her hair. To this day he was still in awe of the fact that she had chosen him over the array of suitors who were constantly at her beck and call.

At her door he paused, mentally preparing himself for what waited beyond the closed door. Once he was ready he stepped into the brightly lit room. The windows were open and a gentle breeze stirred the curtains as the steady sound of the oceans waves came crashing through. Birds twittered in the trees beyond the window as life contiued beyond the walls that surrounded them.

She had always loved the sound of the ocean

“Good morning Patricia,” Archie said as he placed her tray on the table next to her bed. The table was the kind found in every hospital, it looked like an angular letter C, mounted on four wheels that were capable of slipping under the hospital bed, so the surface could be brought close to the patient.

She watched him from the pillows under her head, her once vibrant red hair now the color of the sheets she lay on, her faced lined with age, eyes that once sparkled with a mischievous light now watched him with guarded mistrust as he moved around the foot of her bed, and crossed to the window.

“Is this too cold for you?”

She watched him silently as he pushed the window down, cutting off the sound of the ocean’s waves, and he turned to face her, the smile he’d plastered on his face faltering under her relentless gaze. She was in there somewhere, he knew it, it was just a matter of time before she managed to find her way back to him.

“I’ve brought you your favorite,” he said as he returned to the other side of the table, and settled into his seat as he slid the hospital table across in front of her. She looked from Archie to the sandwich, then back again.

He nodded at the sandwich and she cautiously picked it up from the plate, several pieces of chicken falling onto her chest as she brought it to her mouth.

After she had fallen asleep, he sought out the sanctuary of what she once called his man cave. Half the basement had been converted into a den of sorts for the assorted objects that Archie had come across in his travels.  The upper half of the walls were covered with signs from the past, advertising everything from Standard Oil to Wonder Bread, builds strong bodies eight ways. Beneath the signs, shelves overflowed with assorted small toys from the past, from cast iron to wind up tin toys all gaily painted in a variety of colors, many of which were also marked with the rust of neglect.

This was his sanctuary from the trials and tribulations of life and many a time he would just come down her and sit as he admired his collection, and listened to the music of the past, trying to recapture the innocence of the time period much of these items had come from.

His pride and joy was the nineteen forties telephone booth that occupied one corner of the room. It had been painstakingly restored to its former glory, its wood frame glistening in the light from a number of old style neon signs that were situated here and there among the other signs of the period. Every time he looked at the phone booth he imagined a line of GI’s waiting to use the phone for one last conversation with their sweethearts before they were shipped off the war.

An easy chair sat in one corner of the room, next to a bookcase filled with old volumes, and an old style table lamp whose surface reflected the light from above. Tonight he ignored the easy chair and turned towards the phone booth whose bench seat offered very little comfort.  The interior still smelled of old smoke, sweat, and the spilled tears of many a brave boy marching off to war. The phone mounted in the corner was black, its box like body designed with an eyes towards function over fashion. 

To be continued
 

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Free Read Friday: Billy, The End

Read the entire story from the start:  BILLY

Billy

Instantly they were transported to the black depths of that gloomy forest, Sarah was clinging to his hand as he ran through twisted branches that reached out to snatch at his clothing. Ahead of them, in the distance,  he saw a square of soft yellow light that offered safety from the creatures of the night that crashed through the forest all around them.

His path was lit by a soft glow that seemed to be coming from him and he held up his free hand to look at the splayed fingers, each glowing with a soft luminescence that emanated from his flesh.

“Keep going,” she said from behind him as his feet faltered and he slowed in awe at the light that was coming from his own body.

The sounds of trees being torn asunder came from the forest around them, the frustrated thrashing of those shadowy beasts that could do nothing more than keep time with his flight.

“Hurry,” she said and he looked back to see she had nearly vanished into the shadows. Fear blossomed in his heart and the effervescent glow of his body flickered. As it did the night intruded upon the small circle that around them, ebony claws piercing the illumination, adding to the terror thundering through him.

His steps faltered as the glow diminished and the night, filled to overflowing with those ancient things, pressed in close around them. So close they brushed against the bare skin of his arm and he was overwhelmed by a calming sensation that sought to lull him into a more relaxed frame of mind.

That was how they go into you. Not through terror, or fear, or even the promise of respite from all the bad that was going on in your life. No, they slipped in when you least expected them to, when you were drifting in the featureless void between the light of vigilance and the shadowy realm of your dreams. When you were off guard was the most dangerous time of any night.

But once they got their hooks into you it was all over, unless.

As the night pressed in all around them he looked into his sister’s fading eyes, fear battling the sorrow that was once more welling up from that bottomless void. He felt their touch on that deep primitive level.  They were coming for them and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it. More claws cleaved the fading light as his terror swelled to overwhelm him.

“I’m sorry,” he said, reaching out for her with one hand. A shadowy appendage caressed his fingers, leaving a chill in it’s wake as she slowly faded into the shadows that now surrounded them. The light of safety was too far away, on the other side of a vast gulf of nothingness that seethed with the creatures of the night.

“It’s okay,” she whispered in his mind, “I will always love you,” the words were so alien coming from her. Words she had never once in his memory spoken, and the realization struck him with the force of a physical blow. He loved her too, as only a younger brother could love an older sister.

The light that had been waning suddenly flared as his love for her infused him with renewed strength and a desire to save her. Those shadowy things were overwhelmed by the pulse of light, several becoming trapped in its glow, their misshapen figures devoured by the light that turned them to ash upon its touch.

She came back to him, gaining more substance, fed by his love for her. Her grip tightened on his hand as he turned and ran through the shadowy depths with her in tow, straight for the small opening that offered them an escape from this place of shadows. Around them the forest crackled as those shadowy things fled in the wake of the light that burned from him.

Reaching the opening he dove through, into he light and the safety if offered. At the last moment her hand slipped from his. He bounced onto her bed once before rolling off the side onto the floor.

“Sara?” he called out as he scrambled to his feet and looked around her empty room, his gaze coming to rest on that poster.

“No,” he screamed as he attacked the poster on the wall. Jamming his hand into the shadows, coming up hard against the unyielding surface of the wall behind it. He had failed and the shadows had gotten what they wanted. Sara was still trapped on the other side, and he couldn’t get to her.

“Sara,” he screamed as his rage was deflated by the helplessness of a six year old. He had been crazy to think he could do anything to change what had happened. Sorrow overwhelmed him as he dropped to her bed and cried into her pillows that still carried her scent.

From outside came the sound of a car door closing and he pushed himself up from the bed, climbing down he crossed to the window and saw his father walking up the short walk to the front door. Turning from the window he crossed her room to the hallway, and took the stairs down to the first floor. His footsteps heavy with sorrow and bitter disappointment.

“Hey sport, let’s go, Sara’s awake, she wants to see you,” his father said and he stopped to state as him, his mouth hanging open.

“Don’t just stand there catching flies with your mouth hanging open, let’s go, Sara’s waiting. I wanted to call but she insisted I bring you to the hospital.”

“Sara’s okay?” Billy said as he slowly approached his father who stood by the front door. From outside came the sound of Mr. Winslow cutting his grass, and the Baker kids still playing.

She was okay? They had made it? But what happened at the end, when he lost her hand?

“She’s not one hundred percent yet, and she’ll have to stay in the hospital, but she woke up this morning.”

Then he remembered the poster still hanging over her bed.

“Hang on a second,” he said before he turned and raced back up the steps. In Sara’s room he crossed to the poster and pulled it from the wall, rolling it up as the sound of thrashing came from the shadows around the base of the tree. Once he was done he raced down the hallway to the attic doorway. In the attic he searched through the old Christmas stuff piled in the corner until he found what he was looking for. A cardboard tube from a roll of wrapping paper. Sliding the poster into the tube he crossed to the darkest part of the attic and hid the tube behind a pile of old boxes.

As he walked down the steps from the attic he heard a faint clicking coming from where he’d hidden the cardboard tube. It would be safe for her to come home now, and he promised himself that once he got home he would sneak that tube out of the house and bury it somewhere deep in the forest behind their house.

THE END

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