Notes from the Edge 05-08-24

 Notes from the Edge 05-08-24

Humor helps your soul endure…

Yes, I am warped.

Today is Wednesday and I thought to give you a peek at a new short story collection, Mister Johnson now available only on Amazon #FREE with #KindleUnlimited 

MISTER
JOHNSON: Short Stories

Copyright 2024 W. G.
SWEET, all rights reserved, domestic and foreign

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold
or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with
another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank
you for respecting the hard work of this author.

From the short story: ONLY IN DREAMS

The dream came nearly instantly. But it was so un-dreamlike that I didn’t realize it was occurring as it began to unfold.

I was in a small clearing in a forest late at night. A low fire burned before me, not much more than embers. I drowsed, my head nodding, snapping up at the sounds that came from the forest and then succumbing once more to its great weight. I drowsed again and my head snapped up again at some sound closer to me and I found her before the fire: Sitting across from me.  She spoke…

“You can change it all, you know.” Her eyes. Her hair, nothing had changed, and my heart cried out to the feelings she provoked inside of me. Conflicted with what I knew I was beginning to feel for Elisa. No, felt. Not beginning to feel, I corrected myself. But that only made the guilt set in deeper. 

She waited, but I could not find my voice.

“I know, she is here and I am not.” She leaned close to me and I could smell her clean scent. “I don’t blame you for being confused, but baby it’s only the confusion.  I’m the one you love… You know that.” She leaned back. The fire turning to orange-red chips in her black eyes.

Tears rolled freely down her cheeks and my own began to spill too.

“You’re dead,” I managed.

“I don’t have to be,” she said softly, reasonably.

My mouth opened at that, but I had no words.

“Look… I know you slept with her… You were lonely… You didn’t realize you could fix this… You had no reason to know, but now you do know. I came to you so you would know… I wanted you to know. You have no idea how lonely death is… How… Alone you are in death.” 

She swiped at her eyes… “Maybe it’s different if you were supposed to go. Maybe… But when you weren’t. When you had everything to live for… A man you loved… We were going to have a baby… It wasn’t fair… And it wasn’t my time.”

She swiped at her eyes once more. I took a few deep breaths and tried to suppress a sob…

“I told myself I wouldn’t cry… Wouldn’t beg you… I told myself,” she said.

My own chest heaved. I caught my breath. “You… You’re not real… What… What is this…” And that is when I began to realize that I was in a dream. It had that dreamlike quality to it, but it had such a real quality to it at the same time.

“I’m as real as she is,” she whispered. “No, I don’t have a body… True… But you can fix that… You could undo what she did… You could.” She looked at me. Held my eyes.

“Tell me… Just tell me you don’t love me… Tell me… Make me believe it, because, believe me, I don’t… I see someone who filled a space.” She swiped at the tears that rolled down her cheeks once more, licked her lips and then continued. “Come on, think about it…” She lifted strands of her hair in one hand. “The same hair. We’re built the same… You can’t see it? Baby, she’s a substitute… A substitute… She’s there because you want me, because you still love me… It’s true, you know it’s true.” She leaned forward once more. Her hands came up, settled on either side of my face. The fire between us for a while. She let me go, leaned back and held my eyes across the fire as I tried to wake myself up.

The dream, if it was a dream was too real. Too painful. I could not wake myself from it. I could not and really didn’t want to. I wanted answers to the questions she had helped to voice within me.

“What do you mean I can change it,” I asked her at last, once I was sure I had my voice and most of the emotion in me under control.

“You’re alive. You can dream. You can go back and change it,” she said.

And I had thought that. Wished that, hoped for it in the days following the accident, but dreams could change nothing, they wern’t real, I knew that. Even as my mind turned away from me I knew that, and then suddenly I didn’t. With what seemed to be Ann before me, I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t see the reason, I no longer believed in that rationality. My logic seemed faulty. Anything but truthful. Anything but the way it should be.

I shook my head. “I dream. I know.”

“I was your wife. I would have had our children. I was purposed to live that life. I know I was purposed for it… I wasn’t supposed to die…”

Her eyes held mine. “Would you let me show you? Would you? If I don’t show you, you will never believe me. I can take you there so you can see how it happened.” Her voice was not much more than a whisper.

I shook my head. My own tears flowing… “This can not be real… This can not be real…”

“But it is… Let me show you… In a few moments all of this can be gone… You wake up in bed with me… Five years ago… It really can be that way. That easy. You can fix it, and… You can fix it… Please, please let me show you!” She leaned forward once more, her arms outstretched, hands cupping the sides of my face. I closed my eyes to the touch, it was all wrong as much as it felt so right.

I blinked, opened my eyes and she was gone. My breath caught in my throat. I could feel the tears drying on my cheeks, leaving me cold despite the fire in front of me. I blinked, but she was still gone. The other side of the fire empty and shadowed. My mind insisted that the fact she was not there had to be the unreality. That unreality was thinking it had been a dream. It had been no dream, it had been real…

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