The moment Drayton was no longer an animal. But something else.
This.
Perhaps he’s been tracking us O’Gallchoirs because he likes the taste. Maybe he’s repaying a debt. Or giving us a gift. Did I want to know I was going to die? Has the last week been a wreck?
Yes. Yes.
Has it been a gift?
That night, when dinner is done and I make the kids put away their phones and play a stupid boardgame and, despite their best efforts to sabotage the night, they laugh. We laugh. When it’s dark and quiet, I retire to the balcony, again. No tea, this time. Just sitting back, listening to the ships. The scent of pluff mud is thick.
My wife comes through the bedroom. “There you are? You all right?”
She stands next to me, hands on hips, firing the psychologist laser beam into my brain to suck out my thoughts. She remains solid, unmoving. Demanding an explanation for my peculiar behavior.
I push the chair back, take her hand and draw her close. We dance like we did on our wedding night, swaying back and forth. This time to the sounds of the treefrogs. She relaxes into my embrace, lays her head on my shoulder. The psychologist retires and it’s just her. Just me.
We dance.
LAST DAY
Wet and numb.
I started the morning with a headache and came down to the pier. It all seems like a dream now. Everything.
I sense strangers trying to help me while my eyelids get heavy and the day gets brighter. Blood floods my brain. I don’t really care.
Drayton stands over me like a shadow.
Sounds mesh, become garbled nonsense. The world continues to get brighter, like an overexposed photo. I close my eyes for a long beat. Drayton is still there, his dark form contrasting in the wash of daylight.
Every galaxy has a black hole.
He kneels next to me. He doesn’t reach out, he just waits.
He doesn’t know when he was born. Or when he will die. And then I realize he has no beginning, no end. The answer to a koan is manifest, kneeling in the grass. Perhaps I am dreaming. Does it matter?
The world is now light. Only light.
My eyelids are the only things that move, and even that is involuntary. I can’t say the words, but he feels them, sees them form as thoughts.
He puts his hand on my chest.
He doesn’t drain me. Rather, he fills me.
And then he dissolves into the light until there’s nothing. And I don’t know where I am. Or why.
I become nothing.
I become everything.
I am this.
And the sun will rise without me.
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Novels by Tony Bertauski
CLAUS
Claus: Legend of the Fat Man
Jack: The Tale of Frost
Frosty: Journey of a Snowman (Coming!)
FOREVERLAND
The Annihilation of Foreverland
Foreverland is Dead
Beyond Foreverland (Coming!)
HALFSKIN
Halfskin
Clay (Coming!)
M0therland (Coming!)
SOCKET GREENY
The Discovery of Socket Greeny (#1) FREE!
The Training of Socket Greeny (#2)
The Legend of Socket Greeny (#3)
The Socket Greeny Saga (#1, #2, #3)
DRAYTON (Novellas)
Drayton (The Taker) (#1) FREE
Bearing the Cross (Drayton #2)
Swift is the Current (Drayton #3)
Yellow (Drayton #4)
Numbers (Drayton #5)
The Drayton Chronicles (#1 through #5)
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The Annihilation of Foreverland
Foreverland is Dead
Halfskin
The Discovery of Socket Greeny
The Training of Socket Greeny
The Legend of Socket Greeny (In Progress)
The Drayton Chronicles
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