Month: July 2015

I awoke from an unusually vivid dream to find the apartment pitch black and my bedside clock showing 2:42 AM. My body was drenched in sweat. The sheets clung to me as I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the bed. Sitting hunched over in the darkness, I tried to recall the dream whose echoes still troubled my sleepy mind. I shivered in the night as the swirling images returned.

A prowler…across the hall. I had dreamt that someone had broken into Sarah Burgess’s apartment. The thought nagged at me: what if I’m right? I could picture the incident clearly — someone breaks in through the front door… awakens Sarah… jumps her… she hits her head on the table… dies….

I struggled into some pants and stepped out my apartment door.

At last, my efforts had paid off! For months, I had been trying to achieve extrasensory perception through focused meditation. Five nights a week were devoted to a deep searching of the mind in an effort to expand perception. Now it seemed that I had a vision of clairvoyance — the ability to know current events outside normal human perception. It must have taken a significant event such as this break-in to trigger it.

I tried her front door and, frowning, found it locked. Maybe my vision was more general than specific — maybe the intruder entered some other way. Fortunately, the locks in the apartment building were not constructed very well. With the proper lift and push, it was possible to open the doors without too much trouble.

I did so, but made more noise than I intended as the bolt suddenly sprung free. I had wanted to enter Sarah’s apartment silently to take the prowler by surprise, but now it seemed that I had to work fast. There! In the doorway! A dark figure moved slowly into the room. I sprang and collided with the figure bringing it down under me.

Thud. I heard a sickening crack as the figure fell and hoped that I hadn’t seriously hurt whomever it was. Rising to my feet, I felt along the wall for a switch and turned on the lights. I looked at the figure on the floor and groaned in despair as it all became clear.

Sarah!

She lay motionless on the carpet next to her coffee table in a puddle of blood, her eyes now staring and lifeless. There was no one else in the apartment.

“No!” I screamed, but it was true. I had not had a vision of clairvoyance but of precognition — seeing the future.

I was the prowler.

---

This is one of those ‘surprise ending’ stories that I warned you about a few days ago.

NOTE TO SELF: At some point in the past, I rewrote/expanded the first few paragraphs but, looking now, I decided to go with the original — which is better.

He stood in the rain staring bitterly down at the wedding invitation. He held it gingerly, a faint look of revulsion on his face as if it were a snake about to deliver the killing strike. He appeared suddenly old, years of future loneliness weighing down his features into a seemingly irreversible frown.

Diane!

His immobility belied the fervor with which he had torn open the envelope. He had thought irrationally that it might be a letter saying that she had forgiven him and that it could once again be alright between them. Hadn’t it only been three months since he had last seen her? The invitation was postmarked Boston.

Boston? Diane!

He and Diane had once been lovers a short eternity ago. Their’s had been the dream world of timelessness. Happiness abounded, and he knew nothing could destroy their perfect relationship — or so it seemed. A chain of events bordering on unreality that had begun with his laughing off her suggestion of marriage had led to her sudden departure on a cruel winter morning. After one week he was ambivalent; after two, he was deeply sorry but could find no trace of her to apologize. She had escaped to parts unknown.

Boston?

He had even bought a house for them to live in when she came back, as he had been always sure she would. The invitation said the wedding was the day after tomorrow. He watched the invitation become blurry and washed out by the rain, or was it his tears? It slipped from his hand as he turned and began the quarter-mile trek from his mailbox at the side of the road down the driveway to the house, now forever empty.

The rain stopped and the sun emerged to taunt him about his loss. Birds tittered his agony and the puddles through which he splashed were the tears of nature’s sympathy.

No! It didn’t have to be like this, did it? What if he wished — what if he truly believed that things were different? Could his belief change the past? What if he hadn’t laughed at marriage? What if Diane were his wife? Grief fed his purpose. I truly believe that this has happened.

Then. It. Is. True.

He broke through the trees into sight of the house. She stood on the porch of the house — their house — as she always had. His eyes misted over as he ran to her. His smile shown bright enough to dim the morning sunshine.

“Why are you so happy?” she asked.

He took her into his arms.

---

Wow. This, conceptually, is a great story. It actually brings tears to my eyes. It might need more fluff to be great, but I really, really like it. 

Hey! I found a box of old writings.

---

“What do you want?” the old woman demands of the darkness, “Who’s there?” She stands at the top of the stairs, one hand on the rail, the other clutching her robe to her breast to calm her pounding heart. There is no answer save the wind. Her stomach knots in fear.

---

“I’ll be alright,” she had told her son and his wife when they had offered to take her with them to the show this evening, “I’d just fall asleep anyway. You two go and have a good time.”

They were wonderful children. Mark, her youngest, had married Laura shortly before Mark’s father had died. “But you’ve got to come live with us, Mamma,” Laura always called her ‘Mamma’, “This house is too big for just the two of us anyway.” This was two weeks ago.

Much as she hated to be by herself, she couldn’t have those two staying home every night because of her. It had taken her two weeks to become used to the house, two weeks to build up enough courage to try to spend an evening alone. Finally, she had ignored her fears and insisted that they go to the show.

“Are you sure you’re going to be alright, Mamma?”

---

She stands frozen, not wanting to go forward and investigate the noise, but not wanting to retreat to her bedroom and hide under the sheets, waiting. She strains to hear another sound, her poor eyesight little help in searching the shadows of the living room below. Another noise. From where? Behind her? She looks around but sees nothing.

The throbbing in her ears once again grows louder.

---

“That’s just the house settling, Mamma.” They were downstairs in the dining room playing rummy when they had heard a noise. “Big houses do that a lot.” She had felt secure then. The house had seemed so safe with Mark and Laura around. But now…

---

Maybe I should call the police, she thinks, there’s a phone in Mark and Laura’s bedroom. But as she turns, a creak from down the hall stops her in her tracks. There’s also a phone at the foot of the stairs. She hesitates, then takes the first step down. Each step is a trial. She places her foot, then pauses to listen. Nothing.

After an eternity, she reaches the bottom and stops, robe held protectively about her, searching the room. The moonlight stabs through the window, revealing a face to her left. She screams and falls clutching her chest, her face unnaturally white.

Are you sure you’re going to be alright, Mamma?

---

“Is she going to be alright?”

The doctor smiled reassuringly. “She’ll be fine. People have mild heart attacks all the time. All she needs now is plenty of rest.”

Mark and Laura returned his smile, relieved.

---

“…so it was only the painting of grandfather that you saw, Mamma,” explained Mark.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Laura added, “Mamma, you nearly scared us to death!”