Tag: death

Fiction: Final Encounter

Posted on by bryon

Private William E. Morency was always easy for Quân to find. Skill and training were key the first time; modern technology and the openness of a big city now came to his aid.

Quân had been in the city for three days, adjusting to a time zone halfway around the world and — following years of habit —ensuring he wasn’t being followed.

The cemetery was on the tour bus route; a number of persons prominent in regional and national history were buried there. Quân paid polite attention during the early part of the tour, waiting patiently for the garish bus to arrive at the cemetery.

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Fiction: Blades Sharpened Wile You Wate

Posted on by bryon

LaVon limped and trudged from his little house to his workshop after lunch. He hadn’t eaten much; it was too hot to care about food. He had made himself drink one glass of water, but even that had been an effort.

“Don’t rightly know why I’m botherin’,” he told himself as he wiped his brow. “Ain’t no one ’round here been needin’ any blades sharpened in a month of Sundays.” He grunted softly. “Folks ’cross the tracks have their own sharpenin’ man.”

But a man went to work; LaVon had been going to one kind of work or another since he was eight years old, and that had been more than six decades ago. Now his work, when he got any, was running a foot-powered grindstone to sharpen dull blades. He couldn’t lift and tote and bend like he had done in his younger days, and this was what was left to him to keep body and soul together.

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Fiction: Unraveled

Posted on by bryon

Margaret busied herself with her knitting. When the dark green sweater was finished, she would send it, along with some other homemade treats, to Paul Jr. He could wear the sweater under his army uniform and be just a little warmer while he strove to make everyone safer.

At the rap of the door knocker, Coral, the family’s cat, leaped off the couch and trotted into another room. Margaret set her knitting aside.

She picked it up again hours later, long after the army men and then the Rev. Hauser had gone. She had done her work so well, but it had been fated to be wasted.

She took up her scissors and snipped the yarn close to the sweater. The ball dropped to the floor, and as she went toward her bedroom she kicked the yarn out of her way. She folded tissue paper around the unfinished sweater and packed it away in a shirt box.

The young man had been gone for months; he was out of Coral’s thoughts unless she walked past his bedroom and caught his scent. All she knew was that she had a new toy, and she played with it all night.

Fiction: Rearview Mirror

Posted on by bryon

Lewis had worked out a simple plan: Load the old propane tank on the ton truck. Back over the gas pump by the old barn. The truck’s hot tailpipe and some fortunate sparks ignite both the gasoline storage tank and the fume-filled propane tank. Half the farm goes up in a massive explosion.

It should be a quick death, he figured, and best of all it would look like an accident; the insurance company would pay off.

Lorna would be at work at the diner, and Sarah would be in school. They wouldn’t get hurt, and they wouldn’t be around to see it happen. He’d sent them both off that morning with smiles and hugs and kisses, so there would be no reason to suspect he’d taken his own life. And they’d have a last happy memory of him.

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Fiction: Newton’s Laws of Motion, Briefly

Posted on by bryon

1) A body at rest tends to remain at rest and a body in motion tends to remain in motion until acted on by some outside force.

We walked toward each other. At the corner, our eyes met, and we each knew the other as the soulmate we had been awaiting. We kept moving, past each other, but we turned in perfect synchronicity and walked backward so as not to lose sight. We smiled, knowing that pure love was finally ours.

2) A body will accelerate proportionally to a force acting on it and inversely proportional to the mass.

She was in the crosswalk where an SUV hit her. Her trim, light body spilled onto the pavement, rolling, rolling…

3) For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

I relive those few perfect seconds before her death, and I bathe again in the warmth of her love, by engaging in life in every positive way I can. That includes volunteer work as an elementary school crossing guard where, perhaps, our children might have gone.

Fiction: Final Shuffle

Posted on by bryon

Millicent’s coffin sat at the top of the stairs inside the Broadmanor family mausoleum.

Jeremy Broadmanor, Millicent’s nephew, sighed. He had been expecting this. “Gentlemen, your assistance, please.”

The pallbearers carrying the coffin of Jeremy’s father, Frederick, set their burden down and took up the handles of Millicent’s coffin. Jeremy led the way into the crypt.

“Aunt Millicent,” he said, “this is the third time in the past year you have done this. First when we brought cousin Arnold here. Then, eight months later when poor little Theodore died of the measles. And now again as we bring your dear brother to his final rest. It’s just too bad of you, Aunt Millicent, to play this game at such times.”

He shook his head as he looked at the empty space next to the coffin of his other late aunt, Marvela, Millicent and Frederick’s elder sister. He silently directed the pallbearers to place Millicent’s coffin against a wall on the far side of the crypt, then nodded that they should bring his father down.

“I am very sorry, Aunt Millicent,” Jeremy said to the coffin, “but this is as good as it gets. You are as far from Aunt Marvela as it is possible to be in here. You are part of the family and here you will remain. Surely a lifelong feud was enough; you don’t have to carry it on after your deaths, as well.”

The pallbearers returned and placed Frederick next to Millicent, blocking her in her new resting place. Frederick had always tried to make peace between the sisters.

“Thank you, Father, and good luck,” he said.

As Jeremy trod the steps upward, he heard a small noise. He pondered for years afterward whether it was a final huff from his Aunt Millicent or a sigh of relief from someone else entombed there.

Fiction: Dice

Posted on by bryon

Kris’s big green fuzzy dice hung motionless in place.

“They don’t look half bad there,” said Kris’s father.

“No, they don’t,” Kris’s friend Darren agreed.

“I was skeptical, but they work,” Kris’s grandfather said.

“I still don’t think they’re appropriate,” Kris’s mother said. “But I’m not going to argue the point. I suppose they’re not hurting anything, either.”

“I think they’re appropriate,” Kris’s little sister said quietly.

They finally turned away and walked down the little aisle. A man in a dark suit smiled gravely at them and nodded a good night; they would all be back in the morning.

The big green fuzzy dice — which alone had survived the wreck — swung a little as the man closed the casket, and they came to rest on Kris’s chest.

Fiction: Last Call

Posted on by bryon

Arnold put a bullet in each of the six chambers.

“Talk about overkill,” he muttered, and made himself chuckle.

He took a last look around his apartment, at the peeling wallpaper in the living room, the leaking faucet dripping on a stack of dishes in the kitchen, the worn carpeting, the old furniture that wouldn’t last long enough to become antique – and it wasn’t his to sell if it did make it that far.

He looked at the stack of bills he had permitted to accumulate on the corner table. They weren’t even all his bills; the previous tenant’s overdue notices were still arriving even after four years.

Arnold looked at the phone. The service had been cut off, but he remembered the last time he had used it. That memory brought him right back to the gun in his hand and the main reason for its being there.

Last words, he thought. I should say something, even though no one is here to listen.

He thought for a couple of moments but nothing interesting came to mind. He finally settled on, “The hell with it,” and raised the gun to his mouth.

The telephone rang.

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Remembering Archie

Posted on by bryon

We are storytelling creatures, we humans. Our sentience notices our mortality and mixes with our fear and so we tell ourselves lots of stories about death.

We tell ourselves that the unjust are eternally punished in either darkness or flame. This is especially popular if the unjust are beyond our reach in this life.

Even more important: to stave off our personal dread of the trip each of us must take alone to Hamlet’s undiscovered country, or to console ourselves that the parting we now make with a loved one is not final, we tell stories about a Valhalla or a Heaven, where we and those we love will yet live and enjoy peace and plenty.

When a beloved pet dies, we may tell ourselves a story about how our furry family member has crossed Rainbow Bridge.

As a storyteller, I could probably come up with something good along these lines. But my stories would be no less wish fulfillment than these others. I am increasingly convinced that the only stories to be told at such a time, the only true stories, are those the mourners hold in still-living memory.

Today, I mourn, and I think this is no time for other stories or for the flights of fancy I create.

The more-than-year-long run of one new piece of fiction a week ends here. Grim, tearful reality now rules as we grieve for a wonderful little dog we knew for almost two years. Perhaps there will be more to say about this later; perhaps the stories I hold of him will work their way into other stories that will then be more true because of the sharing. And perhaps we’ll get back on track next week. For now…

how empty the yard
without him –
our well-loved Archie

Fiction: Accept Our Condolences

Posted on by bryon

Marla started working her way through the pile of mail that the girls had been stacking up on the end table. It was mostly sympathy cards, of course. The electric bill, punctual as always. A reminder from her dentist that it was time for her checkup – as if she cared about her teeth after losing the man she’d loved. And an envelope bearing the name of a local law firm. She opened it.

“Dear Mrs. Furst:

“Please accept our condolences on the sudden death of your husband, Jacob. He was quite pleasant to know and we were pleased to have done some work for him shortly before his death.

“Enclosed is a bill for services we rendered before his untimely demise, in the matter of the divorce proceedings he was about to initiate. Needless to say, these arrangements had not been completed, nor had he finalized his new will to include his son, Samuel, by Ms. Torie Champel, whom he was planning to marry at a later date. She has retained our services and you may expect to hear from us again regarding that matter and Samuel’s share in the estate.

“All payments are due 30 days after the date on the invoice.

“Again, we are sorry for your loss.

“Sincerely…”