One Last Night Together - Part Three

One Last Night Together – Part Three

By Brandon Palzkill

            Duncan had always considered himself to be a strong, steady-minded individual. Anyone from work would have readily offered that he had a very level head on his shoulders, and was never prone to hallucinations. Yet, he must have been hallucinating. He must have been going mad. He must have taken a sharp blow to the head or suffered some other serious trauma. In his mind, that was the only reasonable explanation as to why Angela was standing, before him. What other possibility could there be? She had died; she is dead. 

            “Are you… you?” Duncan stammered, unable to piece together a coherent question. 

            “Yes…” she answered, softly, “…and, no.”

When she spoke, it was as though she was standing at the other end of a gymnasium. Her voice was unnaturally distant, and carried a slow, ringing echo, as haunting as the answer, she gave.

“But, you’re…” Duncan began, woefully.

“Yes… I am,” Angela cut across, sparing him from having to finish his painful sentence. 

Angela’s affirmation made the reality of this conversation all the more surreal to Duncan, who peered more intently at his lost love, than he could ever remember doing, while she lived. She looked exactly as she had, on her very last day, and yet she seemed different; otherworldly. Her brown hair was streaked with white, while her normally soft blue eyes looked gray and colder. Her once pink flesh had paled to a milky white, and radiated with a strange, ethereal glow, which enhanced her beauty, much more than it detracted from it. 

“Is this real?” He asked, unconcealed longing in his voice.

Angela nodded, but said nothing, and an icy chill flickered through Duncan’s body.

“What are you?”

Terrified excitement, which coursed through him, made the question come out far more aggressively than he had intended, and she looked mildly affronted by his tone. For a long while, she said nothing, and Duncan was worried that he might have insulted her.  In fact, Angela was formulating an answer to his harshly posed inquiry, and took great care in selecting her words, so that he might better understand her.

“I am something of a facsimile; an entity that exists, somewhere between life and death. I am a physical reincarnation of my former self, something more substantial than any mere ghost or phantasm, yet no heart beats within my chest, nor does blood flow within my veins. I exist on an entirely different plane than you do.”

Duncan found himself hardly able to understand her, at all, but specific words, she had used, had him thinking about vampires and zombies; scary movie monsters on Saturday afternoons. They had terrorized his childhood in ways that he had long forgotten, but were now at the forefront of his memories. He became suddenly concerned that she might attack him and took a step back. 

“Why have you come back to me?” he asked, cautiously.

“I have come to be your guide,” she answered, her hollow voice ringing with something resembling pity. 

“What do you mean, “guide?’” Duncan pressed on. “Where will you be taking me?”

“That all depends on you...” Angela said, gravely.

One Last Night Together - Part Two

One Last Night Together – Part Two

By Brandon Palzkill

            Duncan was unable to fathom the idea that someone might want to break into his house. There had only been two attempted break-ins, during the more than thirty years of him residing in the neighborhood, and both of them had transpired to be odd misunderstandings, resulting in no charges, filed. More to the point, he had very little in the way of valuables that someone might find to be worth stealing, unless they wanted his LP collection, or a small television that was almost twenty years old.

            Absently, he fell into his armchair and struggled to make some sort of sense of the situation, while he poured a scotch; maybe it would help him think. The seriousness of the circumstances became increasingly clearer, so he assessed any protective measures that might be available to him. His bedroom was without a phone; there was no calling the police. On top of that, the lock on his door suddenly seemed laughably feeble, as though it might be defeated by a stronger than average wind. What’s more, he had no gun, nor anything else that might serve him in warding off would-be intruders. All in all, he had serious misgivings about his chances.

Fear crept up Duncan’s spine, while he listened intently to the activity downstairs. The barely audible footsteps walked purposefully through the study and into the adjoining living room. Were they really there to rob him? If so, why had they walked through two rooms, seemingly uninterested in the contents? To him, it seemed improbable that the intruder could have spotted anything of worth, without stopping to look. Clearly, they had not come to his home to steal, but then what other possibilities were there? The answer to that question made Duncan’s heart sink clear to the basement. 

The footsteps resolutely approached the bottom of the stairs, and Duncan understood; whoever was downstairs had came there for him. He had no idea why, but he was certain that something bad would happen, once they found him. With no other options available, he was going to have to try and fight for it. He made on last, desperate attempt to scour the room, looking for something to use as a weapon, but all he could manage was his bottle of scotch, and that would only allow for one shot at his potential assailant; he would need to make that shot count.

He hid out of view, on the left side of the doorway, while he waited and listened. The footsteps ascended the stairs, softly, yet confidently, conveying a notion that the intruder had an intimate knowledge of the house’s layout. When the intruder reached the top of the stairs, they made no hesitation, walking straight toward his bedroom. Duncan heart raced, as the stranger stopped, inches from the door. After a moment’s pause, a sudden click indicated the unlocking of the door. As the door swung open, Duncan lunged, but immediately froze, heart-stopping terror erupting inside of him. 

“It can’t be” he whispered, in stunned disbelief.

One Last Night Together - Part One

One Last Night Together – Part One

By Brandon Palzkill

            Duncan spent many of his nights sitting alone in his bedroom, ever since he lost his wife, Angela, in a tragic accident, fifteen years ago. After so long, he might have found someone new; over the years, many people suggested that he let his deceased love rest in peace and move on, however, there was no possibility of ever finding someone like Angela. To him, anyone else could only ever be a pale imitation, and he’d much rather be left alone with his fondest memories, than to try and begin a new life with some cheap knock off.

            For Duncan, living each day became about perpetuating a routine. He would come home from work, cook a simple, single-serve dinner, watch the early broadcast of the news, and then he would lock himself in his bedroom. From there, he would sit in his armchair, and sip on a glass of scotch, while listening to a record on an old, beaten turntable. The record, “When a Man Loves a Woman,” was playing on the jukebox on their first date, and became the first song that they would dance to at their wedding, and the very first note of the organ would instantly transport him back to those happy times, where he could be with her. 

The evening had come, and Duncan had come home to the thunderous silence of his empty home, as usual. He spent twenty minutes preparing his quick and dirty dinner, which he would have eaten in about six minutes. After dinner, he lingered over the kitchen sink, while he washed those few dishes that he had dirtied in the making and eating of his dinner. He looked down at the pattern on his dinner plate and saw that it had nearly faded completely away; it was the only plate that he had ever really used, and when he was done, he would wash it up and put it back on the top of the pile. 

Finishing the dishes, Duncan retreated to his bedroom, an empty whisky glass in one hand, and a bottle of fifteen year old Glenfiddich in the other. He closed and locked his bedroom door, as usual, and set the scotch on a small table next to his armchair, while he fussed with the turntable. Unfortunately, the turntable was old, at least forty years, and it took a little jiggering to get it going. He would never replace it, though; it was the first thing that they had bought for their very first apartment.

While he fidgeted with his temperamental record player, a sudden realization had come to him. He had barely registered the soft, steady thumping, coming from the downstairs study. It took him a few moments before the significance really sunk in, and he became immediately startled by realization; the man who’d spent most of his past fifteen years, alone, had a guest in his home… an uninvited guest, at that.  

There Is A Try!

There Is A Try!

By Brandon Palzkill

I fearfully made my descent,

through pearlescent skies,

my flailing body, painfully rent,

from winds as they whipped  by.

It’s my mistake, I tried to soar,

though mine were hands, not wings,

and falling further than before,

has left it’s piercing sting.

Yet, even though I’ve tried and failed,

and failed and tried, some more,

I steel my nerves, again, and bail,

leaping out that door.

And as I drop, a leaded weight,

again, to fall and die,

I’ll finally defeat my fate…

I’ll spread my wings and fly.

Welcome To My World... Again!

Due to forces entirely beyond my control, I was made to redo my spiffy new page, so what say we try this again:

Welcome to Brandon's Writing Desk, a webpage set up, that I might get some of my written work out there, for anyone wishing to read it. I'm presently in the process of writing a novel, but I also enjoy writing poetry and short stories, some of which will grace this web page. I hope that I might be able to post my work on a regular basis, at least once a week, and I also hope that you, the reader, will find my work to be interesting and enjoyable. If you do not, I invite you to leave a comment and tell me why. Thank you, one and all, for stopping by my page! I truly hope you come back!