PIECES OF GLASS – A Short Story in Seven Parts

by Phillip Large

Part 1 – Nothing

The wave hit the shore like a jealous lover’s slap in the face, startling Richard, leaving him dazed and confused.  Opening his tear-clenched eyes, the stars dazzled so brightly that their oh-so-near Hollywood counterparts paled in comparison. Richard squinted to get his bearings. 

For one short moment the celestial blanket above allowed Richard Elliott Jr. to see the curvature of the Earth, just as he had as a kid, as he had as a teen, as he had as a married man and just as suddenly all its weight came tumbling down upon him, buckling him to his knees.

How long had he been standing there, bare feet in the sand?  The tide inched closer touching too close to his crotch, sending a cold shiver up his spine.  Midnight walks on the Cambria shore used to be such a magical escape, the path lit only by the moonstones stealing light from the gentle orb above.  Where did time go? He stood, soaked from the knees down.

Richard rolled his jeans up to a slightly embarrassing level to strain the seawater out. Looking down he stared at the foaming ocean swell as it inhaled again back to the sea leaving bits and pieces of shells, discarded and crushed.

Suddenly, an old Peter Bradley Adams song, something about ‘moonlight’ filled Richard’s head.

There’s a moon shining bright upon my feet

And tonight the dogs are coming to capture me

It was September 2011 and the Acoustic Musical Festival in Norfolk, Virginia.  They sang along, lighters held high and then… crack, flash forward to 2014, the ocean exhaled and another wave tumbled down.

Seaweed entrapped his feet and the Queen of the Sea, Amphitrite, lust for him to join her for eternity, but Richard freed himself from her grip and continued walking.

This sleepy beach town halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco was as good a place as any to clear his head.  Cambria used to be their vacation from the world.  Now, six weeks after his divorce, it left a hole in his heart deeper than the ink black ocean. 

That’s why Richard was here in the first place, to start healing… to move on.  Boxed up, zip code changed and new cell phone number still on his “to-do” list, he walked and walked until the distant lights of his oceanfront rental faded in the mist. 

Richard’s life choices came late in the arch of God’s master plan.  Why did he suppress his feelings for so long? Questions he asked himself aloud, left alone in the dark and the fog. 

He tried again to focus, noticing his own now moonless reflection, the thirsty darkness drinking in even his shadow, until there was nothing.

PIECES OF GLASS – A Short Story in Seven Parts

by Phillip Large

Part 2 – Blood and Lust

Walking through the fog-drenched beach of Cambria, Richard began to feel his own body separating into bits of sea spray, drops of blood and lust.  

“So, I’m gay,” he heard himself whisper over the mist as if to another person, though no one applauded his coming out but a distant group of mockingbirds.  How fitting. 

He wondered aloud if his indiscretions were the separating point with his wife or had he fallen out and then in love with another.  Unfortunately the reality was a one-night-stand that lasted four weeks and proved the final nail in his troubled marriage. 

It wasn’t the sex. Richard had enjoyed making love to Barbara, “Barbie,” but sex with Jason, “Jase” was, well… out-of-body experiential. Richard had wondered what greener pasture lay beyond his failing marriage for some time.  In the last three years Barbie lost all interest as well and their bed felt more like a coffin than a California King. 

The thundering crash of a giant wave swept away Richard’s reminiscing leaving him only with a bruised reality. The sky parted and the iridescent full moon burned through the fog in his head and on the beach.

And there, just four feet in front of him lying on the shore was a woman with skin as white as the reflecting moonstones that surrounded her.  Richard let out a high-pitched gasp that even the sea faring animals this time left unanswered.  He froze in his tracks leaving size 12 footprints as far back as the tide would allow.

She moved… one slender finger reaching up and out of the seaweed bed that would have entombed her if Richard had not crossed her path.  Jungle Red nail polish caught the full moon’s glow glistening and unscratched from the pummeling waves. In fact, everything about the lady of the mist looked untouched and styled as if she were posing for a magazine ad.

Dropping to his knees Richard began to dig, the ocean clearly demonstrating it had another plan for her when suddenly a five-foot wave took them both under and slightly down the tide embankment. Crawling through kelp and driftwood, together they found a semi-dry spot and immediately gagged and choked on the salt, sand, and lack of air.

Now laying beside her, heads parallel, the woman looked directly into Richard’s eyes and for a moment, they joined for a breath or two, and then another crash this time dragging them both up and closer to the high tide mark.  

Richard found ground where they could find clean air and gripped it for both their lives. 

A hermit crab raised his home and crossed Richard’s extended hand like a bridge to the mysterious female lying on her chest.  She took three very deep breaths of clean air, raising her whole body from the beach. 

She turned directly into Richard’s gaze and gagged up what seemed like an ocean of water, warm and salty. Her eyes again caught Richard’s gaze as her tongue licked a grain of sand from her crimson full lips.

In the frigid cold Richard felt something stir in his soaking wet jeans.

PIECES OF GLASS – A Short Story in Seven Parts

by Phillip Large

Part 3 – Old Moonstone Cottage

Finally reaching his vacation rental, Richard pulled back the unlocked sliding glass door releasing the scent of jasmine candles burning brightly. Some obscure acoustic version of a Top 40 pop song, perhaps Coldplay, played in the background entertaining two sleepy Labrador retrievers.  

He inhaled a deep and much needed welcome home with a touch of guilt. How careless to exit a house with such dangerous abandon; burning candles, CD choices left to his pets, but considering the night’s realities Richard chose to leave judgment to someone else.  

His long-sleeved jean shirt kept ‘her’ semi-clothed as he shut the slider and the ocean that had tried to claim his now house guest. Richard’s female dogs Sade and Bella circled around their new visitor inquisitive as to her origin. Both found their noses planted firmly in her fertile region only women and bitches know well.

“Stop that, get outside,” shouted Richard, grabbing both their collars and escorting his girls to the dog run alongside the rental. 

It’s only then that he noticed the estranged woman had not muttered a single word. Had she washed ashore from a boat wreck at sea?   Was she assaulted and left for dead by someone still dangerously trolling the shore?  Was she in shock from the extremely cold water and on the verge of hypothermia?  The last question awoke his sense of duty.

“Would you like a hot shower?”  Just saying it out loud sounded deviant but his intentions were pure.  Richard was truly concerned for the beautiful copper-haired woman with skin so alabaster it looked almost translucent with heat radiating from within. Wasn’t she freezing as he was?

He pulled back the shower door to his master shower and cranked the hot water all the way to the right.  Richard shook nervously on the tile floor the seawater puddled under him and ran over to the stranger.

The posh sized rental home came highly recommended from his now ex-wife’s attorney. The bathroom as big as most people’s living rooms, with a changing area and duel vanities on parallel sides of the room. An antique claw-foot tub sat opposite the 4-head steam shower.  

Sitting on a small table was a journal Richard had been reading earlier with testimonials from past guests. Glancing over his shoulder he thought it odd to be left open to a family’s final words on their stay at Old Moonstone Cottage.

“We have enjoyed our stay here in lovely Cambria and especially the quaint cottage. Our last night was a bit chilling, but I’m giving too much away.  May you both find peace here.” – the Reynolds, Bob, Maryanne, Benjamin and Kelsey.

Both?

The shower finally reached its full potential and there lying on the floor next to his feet was his own jean shirt.  It’s not like Richard to toss his clothes like a careless bachelor. He returned the journal to the small table.

And then her hand grabbed Richard’s jeans by the belt, abruptly pulling him off his feet and yanking him into the steam-filled shower.

PIECES OF GLASS – A Short Story in Seven Parts

by Phillip Large

Part 4 – Morning

Richard stretched out in the canopied bed letting his toes touch the far edge, just off the end of his king-sized mattress.  He flipped over anticipating the mysterious woman that he had rescued from the shore the night before, the same woman he had made passionate love to until the morning sun started to illuminate the tops of the pines on the Cambria hillside. So many questions raced through his head.

Instead Richard woke to an empty bed.  Resting on the pillow where the copper-haired woman’s head should be was a moonstone set in a simple chained amulet.

The Romans thought moonstone to be formed out of moonlight and to be the stone of sensitivity and love. Richard thought how insensitive to leave him with not so much as a thank you for saving her life. In India today, moonstone is considered to be a “Dream Stone”, bringing about sweet and beautiful dreams.  Richard’s dreams were indeed sweet, but his waking reality was starting to look a bit unnerving. 

He lifted the sheets as if perhaps she was hiding to find only fine beach sand outlining where she should have been.

Just then the iPhone resting on his side of the bed’s nightstand rang so unexpectedly that Richard didn’t recognize his own ringtone, Maroon V’s “I’ve Got the Moves Like Jagger.”  Stumbling to take the call he thought finally some answers.  Looking at the caller I.D. left him with even more questions. 

Jason Crawford.  “Jase.”

Richard read the caller I.D. again and again, then grabbed the cell phone and hit ‘slide to unlock’ taking Jason’s call.

“Jason?”

“Hi Richard.”

“Why are you calling me?  Is everything OK?”   Richard couldn’t help his caring self even though Jason had taken him from CLOSETED to OUT and then dumped him.

“Maybe?.”  Jason wasn’t much of a conversationalist.

“Then what’s up? Why the fuck are you calling me?” Richard finally got in some of the hate he felt for Jason ditching him.  The trash talking sounded a little sophomoric and ridiculous coming from Richard’s mouth and he inhaled through his clenched teeth trying desperately to take it back.

Jason continued, “Like I was saying, last night I got a phone call from a woman. She didn’t give me her name, but she has a message for you. She asked for you by name. Sounded like she was about your age.”

Richard would have hung up already if Jase wasn’t one to give such innocent jabbing without understanding the hurt.

“Jase, what time last night was this?” Richard’s heart beat so hard and fast that he thought for a moment he could see it pulsating through his chest.

“Around 3:30 a.m., I was just getting home from the club.”  Jase worked at a local gay hangout in West Hollywood called “The Abbey.”  That’s where he and Richard had first hooked up.  Ranked as MTV’s “Best Gay Bar in the World” two years in a row, Richard thought how could he lose if he’s going to throw caution and his sexual orientation to the wind.

“What did she say?” Richard demanded.

“Do you know this woman? Why is she calling my phone looking for you?” Jason asked in return.

“It doesn’t matter,” Richard was too quick to respond.  “What did she say for Christ sake?”

Jason read from the cocktail napkin he scribbled the night before, “The sky is red and lowering and only those who are found to be righteous can escape the destruction that will come.  Three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”

Richard felt his hand go numb and the phone fell to the floor.

He gained a small bit of composure and grabbed his cell phone off the carpeted runner praying that Jason hadn’t hung up on him. “Hello, sorry, Jase are you still there?”

“Yes. Are you OK?  Where are you?” Jason replied.

“In Cambria.”

“Is sheeee with you?” Jason asked with an obvious hint of distaste.

“She? No.” Richard’s wife (ex-wife) was 341 miles out of the picture but the stranger was still fogging his immediate memory.

“I’m coming up there. What’s that two, three hours from West Hollywood?” Jason quizzed.

“Four with no traffic. Why are you coming here? What?  Hold on a minute. This has nothing to do with you.”

“Nothing to do with me!  Tell that to the psycho calling me with stupid biblical prophecies. WTF Richard!  What the hell is going on?”  Jason finally cracked.

Richard paused before answering Jase trying to collect his thoughts.  Every bone in his body ached for Jason to come back to him.  Or did it?  What was last night about?  Did last night even happen?

“Richard, are you there? Talk to me.” Jason wanted answers.

“It’s nothing Jase.  Probably a prank call.”  Richard didn’t believe his own lies.

“A prank caller dialing your gay ex-lover asking for you by name?”

“Perhaps Barbie is up to this.  I’ll call her as soon as we hang up.”  Richard had no intention of ringing his ex-wife.  Barbie could be a real bitch, but a prank prophetic phone call at 3:30am wasn’t her style.

“Let me dial you back.  I need to sort this out.”  Richard clicked the red ‘end call’ button.

Jason started to tell Richard to please be careful but found himself talking to a dead cell.  He paused, then touched the Maps app on his phone and typed in Cambria, California.

Richard stood in an empty house frightened out of his skin for what was happening.  He went into the master bath and dowsed his face in cold water.  Looking up into the mirror he half expected the strange moonstone woman to be staring back at him.  Instead he found a scared man in his late 30’s dripping with fear.

On the small table to his right sat the house journal still turned to Bob Reynolds’s last entry. Richard read it back again to himself.  “May you both find peace.”

He suddenly had a plan. A long shot, but a plan nonetheless.

Richard went into his bedroom and found his briefcase and dug through paperwork looking for his house rental contract until he located the folder titled Cambria Vacation Homes.  He picked up the house phone and dialed the number.

“Cambria Vacation Homes,” a woman politely answered.

“Um, this is Bob, Bob Reynolds.  My family stayed in Old Moonstone Cottage not long ago.”

“Yes, Bob I remember you. How can I help?”

“My wife seems to have lost a necklace and we think it might have been in the cottage.”  Richard gained a little more confidence with each lie. “Would you be willing to look through the rental and see if anything turns up?”

“Sure, nothing was reported by the cleaning crew but we’re more than happy to walk through the house again.  What does it look like?”

“It’s a moonstone amulet at the end of a silver chain.  You have my cell phone number correct?  Can you repeat it back?”

“310-487-0957.  Is that the best place to find you?”

“Yes, thank you very much.”  Richard hung up the house phone and immediately dialed the number on his own cell phone.

PIECES OF GLASS – A Short Story in Seven Parts

by Phillip Large

Part 5 – Mira

Shaking uncontrollably, Richard misdialed the number three times and hung up his cell phone.  He took a deep breath, and then read through Bob Reynolds’s journal once again.  Below Bob’s entry, clearly in another person’s handwriting was scribbled the following statement – “It’s always wise to obey the One who loves you most.”  Was that there before?

Who comments on another guest’s personal journal entries? “Obey?” That’s a word he hadn’t heard since his marriage to Barbie 13 years back.  “Do you promise to love, honor and obey?”  Richard thought one out of two, OK, well maybe, more like zero out of three, but for every promise there is a price to pay.

Slowly he attempted to type in the phone number that the rental house woman had so easily slipped to him. The cell rang three times and a young woman answered.

“Dr. Reynolds’s office, do you mind holding?”

“Um, …” she put Richard on hold before he could answer.  Doctor Reynolds?

About two minutes expired while Richard hung in limbo listening to on-hold music.  “Wrecking Ball” was the next song when finally the receptionist returned.  Thank God.

“Thanks for holding, do you want to make an appointment?” the Nurse curtly answered, obviously busy and juggling many duties.

“I need to speak to Bob, um, Dr. Reynolds.”

“And whom may I say is calling?”

“This is Cambria Vacation Homes, “ Richard’s lies and deceit were getting better by the minute.  “The Doctor lost a personal item and I am calling to tell him that we have found it.  Bob left a note stating that if anyone came across the piece he lost, to check with him.”

“Just a minute.”  The receptionist put Richard on hold and buzzed Dr. Reynolds in his office to see if he wanted to take the call.

Immediately a male voice took over the conversation.  “Who is this?”

Richard threw aside the charade and got straight to the point.  He didn’t know how long the Doctor would stay with him.   “This is Richard Elliot. I am staying in Old Moonstone Cottage in Cambria.  I was reading your journal post from your recent stay.”

“I thought you said this was the rental company?”

“I’m very sorry, please don’t hang up.  This is very important.  It involves a copper-haired woman here on the beach.”

The phone fell silent for a moment or two.

“Her name is Mira,” the Doctor replied.

“What? Mirror?”

“No, Mira.” Bob spelled it back, “M.I.R.A.”

“How do you know this?”

“She told me.”

Richard was stunned.  She told him her name?  She doesn’t exist. What do you mean, she told him?!  “You met her?” 

“Yes.  I take it you did as well.”  The Doc sounded a bit arrogant and almost boastful. “I’ll assume you’re married… or were.”

Richard didn’t answer.

“I was as well, married that is.”  Bob told his story like a new entry in the Cottage journal. 

‘Was?” Richard responded.

“I was married at the time that Mira paid me a visit in Cambria.”

“Paid a visit?”  The words rolled so easily out of the Doctor’s mouth.  “It was not the most ideal marriage by far, my wife and I were on the edge of a divorce, then the beach, the moonstones, the full moon…”

Richard cut the Doctor’s romantic therapy session off mid-sentence.  “Are you telling me you had sex with a woman named Mira, in Cambria…  a woman that you met on the beach… a woman that you took back to Old Moonstone Cottage???”

“Yes. Maybe. I’m not sure.”  The good Doctor sounded more fucked up than Richard. “Either way, it was the end of my marriage for sure…”

The Doc trailed off, Richard had stopped listening several minutes before. He was still trying desperately to pull together the loose ends. Then, the Doctor tied that knot for him.

“How many days have you been in the beach house?”

It took Richard a minute to calculate even though it was less than 48 hours.  “Two,” he replied.

“Three days and three nights in the heart of the earth,” the Doctor responded.

Richard fell backwards, his head hitting the dresser and knocking the mirror that rest on it.  He lay unconscious bleeding on the hardwood floor.  A pool of blood snaked from his cut forehead to the cell phone that lay just out of reach.

“Richard, it’s day two, you won’t live to see a third day.  Get out!”  

Dr. Bob Reynolds’s warning went unanswered.

PIECES OF GLASS – A Short Story in Seven Parts

by Phillip Large

Part 6 – Holy Breath

A pair of velvet lips kissed Richards face, first his forehead, then his own lips.  He slowly opened one eye, then the next and found himself horizontal with the floor. Balls of dog hair circled under the dresser like tumbleweeds. A lost squeaky ball rested against the antique dresser’s rear foot.  “Bella will be happy,” escaped his mouth with much effort.  Richard tried to right himself, only to fall back down under the room’s heavy gravity.

“Take your time,” a woman’s voice spoke in his ear as if from inside his head.

Richard spun to the left and then the right to see a pair of women’s feet, manicured and soft. 

She leaned down to his POV revealing the copper-haired stranger. “There’s no rush.”  She spoke.  “Mira” spoke.  Her red hair moved in a slow motion breeze that Richard didn’t feel.  He raised his right hand to her face to make sure he wasn’t dreaming again.

“Let me help you.”  Mira reached under Richard’s chest and with very little effort raised him to a full upright position, leaning back slightly on the top of the dresser.

Richard turned around and checked his forehead in the dresser mirror. “The dresser mirror?”  Last Richard remembered the mirror lay on the floor shattered just like his forehead.  He rubbed where the gash should be moving in closer to his own head only to see himself, unscarred, the mirror now solid with his terrified reflection.

Mira stood just behind him. She wore a long white cotton dress, her amble breasts stood firm through the gauzed fabric signaling the room was a bit chilly. This did nothing for Richard other than confuse him even further.

“You’re the woman from the beach.” She heard Richard’s statement but didn’t respond.

“Where did you go the other night?  You were laying in the ocean spray for dead, then we, well…” Richard wasn’t comfortable with any of his questions.  Leaping forward in time he tried to put a period on his question. “Then, then you were gone.”

“I’m always here.  I am the one that loves you most Richard,” Mira whispered.  Everything she said came out in a whisper as if spoken on an unfeeling breeze, as if carried on an impossible mist.

Then she kissed him again, full and wet on the lips, tasting like the ocean itself mixed with salt and kelp, sucking the oxygen from his lungs.

Richard felt his senses leaving him in her sweet communion kiss. A Matt Alber song fell in and out of his immediate consciousness.

Love rising from the mist

Promise me this and only this

Holy breathe touching me

Like a wind song

The last words Richard understood were from Mira, “Say goodbye.”

Outside the tide rose to it’s highest mark with a thunderous wave that broke the shoreline and everything in its path.

The wind howled through open doors and windows like a widow mourning her lover.

The sky turned red as the sun lowered too quickly to its inevitable escape.

And the clock ticked 5:30pm, forty-nine hours since Richard checked into Old Moonstone Cottage.

Day 3.

PIECES OF GLASS – A Short Story in Seven Parts

by Phillip Large

Part 7 – “Day 3 The Reckoning”

Richard fell backwards, above him the waves crashed, foaming white like a rabid dog’s snarl. The light of day penetrated the ocean in streaming rays extinguished one by one. He frantically grasped at anything and everything to get a grip on this damnation. The ocean faded from bright blue, to azure and then midnight as he tumbled farther into her depths. Then all went black.

The roar of the world above fell silent for what seemed like eternity and Richard felt an eerie peace like never before. His drop continued without the need of oxygen, sand, waves or sunsets. The deeper he fell material desires were drowned out, their voices choked in his interminable descent, and then once again, nothing.

Jason arrived at Cambria Vacation Homes rentals in just under 4 hours. The traffic was considerably light for LA.  He really didn’t have a plan he just knew that something was dreadfully wrong with Richard and somehow he was involved.  The woman’s cryptic call late the night before sounded threatening.  Even though Jason was 17 years younger than Richard, he thought himself to be wise for his age. It was hard to pull something over on him, and that’s just what this felt like.

The plump woman at the rental desk proved most helpful and within minutes Jason was given the address to Richard’s Old Moonstone Cottage.  He had played Richard’s ‘son’ before when the circumstances required and was well versed in the estranged offspring of Richard and Barbie Elliot. 

“Where’s your Mother this trip?” the lady behind the desk pried.

“She’s having her stomach stapled. Gross, I know but she’s pushing 280.  It’s the best thing.”

The receptionist let out an “Oh dear” but Jason was already out the door.

Driving the road North called appropriately Moonstone Beach Road, Jason could see why Richard loved Cambria and came back year after year.  He exited the car and walked across Highway 1 to take in the scenic rocky coast and gather his thoughts before confronting Richard.

Quaint B&B’s dotted the shoreline with larger homes climbing the hillside, each demanding an even greater view than the one below. A pine wood path meandered on and on until it wrapped out of sight and over a lookout point.  Couples walked hand in hand with kids running ahead and dogs pulling leashes.

On the shore, a woman screamed out to the bus tour operator “I found one!  A moonstone!!” sending fellow tourists into a frenzy hunting for jeweled rocks.

The tour guide turned to Jason and confessed, “There are no moonstones on Moonstone Beach, only pieces of glass.  I let them have their fun pocketing shattered river polished coke and beer bottles back to their hometowns with stories of finding treasures here in Cambria.  A bit deceptive, but that’s my job, to make things appear what they are not.” Words that Jason took to heart considering Richard’s circumstances.    

He got back in his Toyota Prius and within two minutes found the gated dirt drive of the Old Moonstone Cottage. Jase shut off the engine and exited the car. A breeze picked up blowing pine needles in mini-twisters biting at his ankles until he reached the front door.  He knocked hard to let any and everyone know there’s someone here. The door swung open and flew back leaving a dent in the wall, knocking over a half glass of wine on the floor leaving a blood red stain. Why was the front door unlocked?  Richard must be home.

“Richard?” Jason shouted into an empty home, the lights were on and the dogs outside in the run, but no Richard.

In the master bedroom sitting on an antique dresser he found the journal Richard had referred to in their phone call earlier, the pages left open. On the left was scribbled the message, “It’s always wise to obey the One who loves you most.” 

On the right was handwriting that Jason recognized immediately, Richard’s.  “The sea once it’s cast her spell, it holds me in her net forever,” signed Richard Elliot Jr.  That was definitely Richard’s penmanship, but not something Jason ever heard him mutter.  It sounded more like a ceremonial burying than “I’m having the time of my life, wish you were here in Cambria.”

Jason stared at the signature for the longest time and then began to slowly weep; pulling deep heaving breathes his tears stung and fell down upon the page.  Picking up the pen that lay beside the journal he began to write a farewell letter to his ex-lover.

“Dearest Richard, I’m sorry that I left you without even a goodbye. I just didn’t know if now was the best time for me to commit to anyone.”

From the darkest depths of the ocean, three rays of light reached out to Richard and slowed his fall. The first hit his face and the sensation of warmth filled his entire body. The second ray hit his heart and it began to beat so loud that it hurt his ears.  And the third hit his left hand giving Richard the strength to reach up.

Jason continued writing, “You might think I’m a bad person for saying this, but meeting someone in a bar isn’t perhaps the best place to start a long-term relationship.  If we had met somewhere like this, here in Cambria we might have had a better chance.  Honestly I’ve never got this close to anyone before and it was a little scary.”

Five rays of light shot through Richard’s murky hell entrapping his entire body and pulling him upward.  In the far distance he could begin to hear waves breaking on a sandy shore.

“I catch myself thinking about you every day. I thank you for the love and joy we had together, no matter how short.”

Richard soared from the ocean’s depth carried up and up.

Jason came to the end of the page and signed it  “In my heart and dreams forever, Jason.” Tears filled his eyes and streamed down and off his cheek hitting the page and blurring Richard’s name.

Just then Old Moonstone’s Journal began to swell with water. Jason stepped back brushing the tears from his eyes trying to focus.  The pages dissolved and water began pouring into the room. Salt water.

Jason ran for the master bedroom door.  A cold wind slammed it shut and it locked from the outside. The water now reached his knees making it harder to walk. Waves crashed against furniture throwing lamps, chairs, plants and clothes everywhere. Jason pulled against the current and tried to reach the distant window.  Suddenly storm shutters from the outside closed and a wood beam locked him in from the outside.

Jason started treading, choking on the salt water and frantically searching for an escape.  The ceiling came down to hit his head, light bulbs exploding as oceans of water sealed his fate. Taking one last breath Jason fell silent and floated in the current that turned him around and around the room.  He wondered what kind of demon possessed this house that she would steal the soul of Richard and now himself?

From across the room a figure came closer through a deep blue sea.  Rays of light illuminated the dark water, light that came from the shape, the silhouette of a man. The light filled Jason’s eyes and his heart with hope. In the cold salt water Richard reached out his hand and pulled Jason closer, holding him to his chest, the rays of light now pulsing through both their bodies, floating in space and time.

And then the crack of a wave shattered everything and the seawater disappeared, leaving Richard and Jason clinging to each other in the ram-shackled master bedroom of Old Moonstone Cottage. Moonstones filled the hardwood floors with glowing beams of light.

Richard held Jase tight and waited for him to open his clenched eyes. He blinked then shook off the water on his face opening his sea blue eyes and smiled directly back at Richard.

Jason found the energy to speak, “Now I am one the that loves you most.”

Outside the sky turned red, the sun lowered on the horizon burning the ocean foaming with jealous rage.

— the end —