Solemnly, he prepared breakfast, though he understood by now, it was more for the ceremony of it than for necessary sustenance. Yvette joined him in silence, too sensitive to his feelings to want to appear joyful.
As they ate, they agreed to test their new found powers by focusing their minds upon some item they each desired. For him, he thought of fruit while Yvette considered a pair of earrings she'd always liked. Then they set out from the cottage once more in order to explore their strange new home.
This time, they walked along the track in the opposite direction, travelling again until the afternoon. The track ran on, twisting its way into a range of high mountains. They followed doggedly but the mountains seemed to draw back from them as they advanced. It was Tom who called a halt this time. " I swear they seemed nearer hours ago than they do now," he said.
"Perhaps they were."
"But we made this place," he said. "Surely, we can control it! We can make towns and cities filled with people and we can blast away that terrible silence with music if we want to."
"Perhaps the cottage is all we have," she said. "Perhaps our control ends at the gate." She looked around and shook her head. "But there is something, don't you feel it? A sort of expectation."
"All I feel is the silence," he replied. "It's unnatural, like the silence of a void, like a vacuum." Yet as he gazed around at the silent peaks, a part of him believed Yvette was right. The world seemed not quite dead, but more frozen,… suspended,… as if waiting for something.
Gently, Yvette took his hand. "Come," she said. "We'll go back."
And when they returned, it was to find a bowl of fruit upon the table and in a trinket box in the bedroom, to her delight, Yvette discovered her earrings.
She came to him later, in the garden. She had found a very fine dress, one whose design she had quietly been musing upon throughout their walk, and her new earrings sparkled in the softening light. He had made a salad of the fruit and they shared it, lounging on a rug spread upon the lawn.
He found it puzzling that here the silence seemed not so oppressive. He could hear the gentle movement of air, stirring the tall stems of the flowers and he was able to gaze out upon the land beyond without feeling afraid. Yvette was right, he thought. Their powers ended at the gate. But that made them little more than prisoners. What kind of higher existence was that?
"The grass has been cut," observed Yvette. "It smells lovely."
He nodded, ever more aware of her allure as she sat beside him. She lay back and sighed. "And the towels in the bathroom are fresh. Oh, Tom, it's like being on holiday,… staying in the very best hotel."
"But it gives us nothing to think about," he said.
She laughed. "You'd rather mow the lawn and wash towels?"
"It's what we do," he said. "It's how we live - details, we take care of details."
"But, Tom,… now surely everything is arranged so we can devote our time to thinking of one thing."
"And that is?"
"Each other, of course." She reached across and pressed his hand against the cool grass. "Already, I feel such a tenderness for you."
It was not possible to hide the effect of her touch and she smiled at his response. "There," she said. "I told you. You have been made like new."
And in that moment he hated his fine new flesh for its weakness.
"I belong with my wife," he said.
"But part of you is still with your wife. It would not be a betrayal of her, if you were to give this part to me."
He looked away, frightened even to think of it, in case it should come true.
"Tom," she went on, "what other reason is there for existing if it isn't to nurture what we can in each other. What else is there to think of now?"
"We must think of a way back," he said.
She looked away. "No, Tom. I was old and frail - I was sick,… Why should I want to go back?"
"Because none of this is real."
"Is imagination not real?" she said. "Is it not the most intimate form of reality any of us can achieve? It feels real to me - and it could be perfect,… if only you would think of me a little."
That night, she left her door ajar. He saw the soft slice of amber from her lamp when he retired and it seemed to call, stirring in him a deep carnal ache. It was a bitter twist, he thought, to have rediscovered such desire and yet be for ever separated from the woman he loved.
But he knew his wife would have been unable to cope with this renewed virility. Their amiable, but sexless marriage had been a thing they'd grown into, like their middle age. And he realised with shame the desire he felt now was not for his wife. The chemistry within him was unsophisticated. Not for it the dimpled buttocks of maturity. No, it sought only the unblemished perfection of youth, and who else could have embodied all of that more than the lithe and lovely Yvette?
How long would it be, he wondered? A month? Two months? A year? Inevitably it would happen. He would be won over by her love scented breezes, and everything he had ever known in his former life he would forget as surely as if he had been drugged.
He fought it. He had made his choice long ago and thoughts of anyone else, he told himself, were wrong. There had to be a way back! Then he began to wonder if pehaps like everything about this mysterious place, the answer could be found inside his own mind. Gradually then, throughout the long, slow hours he sank deep inside of himself, until at last, before the pale transparency of dawn,… it came to him.
In the morning, he turned to the bedside cabinet and slid open the drawer to find the revolver lying exactly as he had imagined it. Slowly, he drew it out. It was so simple. He would take himself off, somewhere far from the cottage where Yvette would never find what remained of him and there he would shut down this nightmare of semi-reality. Only then, he thought, would he become aware of his old self once more. Only then would he regain his freedom.
"But are you sure that's what you want?" came a voice.
It was Nancy. She was sitting in the rocker, watching him.
"How long have you been there?" he asked.
"I'm always here," she said. "I'm a manifestation of your unconscious mind, remember?"
"Are you?"
"You doubt it?"
"Would my unconscious lie to me?"
"I would never lie," she said.
"You told me there was no way back,… but there is. Am I right?"
Nancy looked away and Tom knew from the sudden sadness in her eyes that it was true. "Then you did lie. But why?"
"I am the marriage of your unconscious with Yvette's," she said. "You share me. So, I know only what is true for the both of you. Yvette has no desire to return, so there can be no way back for you either. I did not lie."
"But by that reasoning, if I want to go back, then Yvette has no choice but to return as well."
"No, Tom."
"Why?"
"Because you do not want to go back either."
"But,… . I want it with all my heart."
"Not with your heart, Tom,… with your conscience. There is a difference."
He felt himself filling then with an unexpected bitterness. "No," he said.
"Tom. This is right for you. It's what you have always dreamed of."
"I don't believe you."
"Sometimes we deceive ourselves."
"No. I know what I have to do." He held the revolver close and clicked the chambers round. To his surprise, it contained two bullets. "Two? Why two? Why not six? Why not just the one?"
"Did you think of leaving Yvette here, alone? It's not enough to take your own life. You must take hers as well. That's why you need two bullets in the gun."
He hesitated. "But I can't make her go back. She's nothing to return to. And she needn't be lonely here. She can spin lovers for herself."
"Lovers perhaps,… but not love. And without love, eternity would be an unimaginable torment. Surely you can see that."
"I see it. But what about me? How am I supposed to feel? My eternity will be
a torment of unfulfilled desire."
"It need not be unfulfilled."
"It can never happen."
Nancy shook her head in pity. "Tom," she said. "You know you do not love your wife."
At that he leaped up and screamed at her. "NO!"
But she'd already gone, melted into the deep shadow and at once he sank upon the bed and wept because he had known all along it was true.
He came upon Yvette in the garden. She turned at his footfall and he was at once aroused by the seductive fluidity of her movements. Suddenly, he felt a swelling in his chest, an unbearable pressure, squeezing his heart into stillness so that he thought he would die. Stricken, he fell to his knees.
She cried out and ran to him. "Tom!"
"It's all right," he said. "I'm all right."
She knelt beside him cradling him in her arms. "But Tom, what is it?"
He looked into her eyes. "Nancy was right. I've spent my whole life waiting, searching for everything that you are,… .
"I know."
"But we were a nation, a language,… a generation apart. What chance did we have?"
"Tom,… "
He bent his head into her hands and cried out. "I should have waited for you. Yvette."
"No,… you were right to settle for what you could have. We choose our mates at random,… and there doesn't have to be love for us to be happy. We would never have met, and even if we had, we would not have recognised our destiny in one another - only now,… only now as pure spirits given form. Do you understand?"
Suddenly they felt the air move. They felt the stillness throb with a new silence, a living silence made up of immeasurably tiny sounds,… the beating of wings and the stirring of grasses as the land breathed and the clean air stroked the mountains. Tom looked out at this new world beyond the gate. It seemed to beckon and he understood at last that in the simple realisation of their love, this truly had become,… .
… ..a perfect place.
Copyright©M Graeme1999
Thank you for downloading this short story. Other short works by Michael Graeme are available for free download from the Rivendale Review website at www.mgraeme.ic24.net. Longer works can be found at Lulu.com.
The cover image for the Feedbooks version of this short story is from a virtual photograph taken in the multiplayer online world known as Second Life. The characters depicted are the avatars representing the author, and an "associate".
From the same author on Feedbooks
* * *
The Enigma that was Carla Sinclair (2004) A short story by Michael Graeme (a 45 minute read):
I was not completely unhinged. She was just a computer program, a crude simulation - at best a never ending animated cartoon with only one character and no story line. But she was "something",... a hobby I suppose you might say. Other young men had hobbies, equally obscure, though perhaps more socially inclusive. They collected camera gear, they went fishing, raced cars or drank themselves stupid. Me? I coded in my bedroom. Same thing? Well, not quite. You see, while other people's hobbies took them out of themselves, mine enabled me to climb deeper inside.
* * *
Lively Custard (2004) Short Story - a 25 minute read: Rogue trees are popping up all over the little town of Frinton-cum-Hardy and the residents have begun speaking in metaphors so mixed and mangled, poor Armitage, connoisseur of all things bookish, finds he no longer understands his mother tongue. And if all that isn't enough his young protege, Jenny, from the Books Galore Emporeum is having "uncle trouble"!
* * *
A Moth on the Moon (2004) A twenty minute read, by Michael Graeme: Conspiracy theorists excepted, most people know the United States landed a man on the moon in 1969. What's less well known however, is that the British beat them to it, in 1947.
* * *
The Choices (2006) A fifteen minute read:
I am sitting here in the lounge-bar of the McKinley Arms Hotel, by the shores of Loch Lomond, and I am staring out into the twilight at my choices. I have been this way before many times and I always seem to go wrong at this point, so you must forgive what must seem like fastidious caution, but I simply have to get it right this time!
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Escape From Paradise Island (2007) A 25 minute read by Michael Graeme: Crime doesn't pay. That's what they try to teach you in prison, and fair enough, I might even have left there one day determined to go straight except, suddenly, I was on an island in the China Sea, gazing at a beautiful girl in a yellow Bikini. So maybe it had been worth it after all. But careful now! You had to avoid thinking things like that because they'd a nasty habit of dissolving back into reality and you'd wake up right back in that stinking grey cell: five years of your life already erased, with another two to go, and all because you'd never been able to resist the puzzle of a pretty motor car!
* * *
Push Hands (2008) Phil and Penny were made for each other - the only problem is they are married to other people. When they meet at a Tai Chi class they quickly realise the depth of one another's loneliness and need for a sympathetic ear. Fearful of the consequences, they go to elaborate lengths to avoid each other but their paths begin to cross with chance-defying regularity, pulling them ever more deeply into one another's confidence. Is this evidence of a mysterious power at work, or should they simply have an affair? Middle aged and married for a long time, their apparently unavoidable relationship causes them to ask serious questions of the meaning of their lives and their marriages, and finally to demand that their families respect them for who they really are. But will their families recognise them? Can they even recognise themselves?
Push Hands is a full length novel, complete and free to download.
* * *
The Man Who Could Not Forget (2008) A Short Story by Michael Graeme (a fifteen minute read):
...I have a problem with my memory. It isn't that it ever fails me - quite the opposite in fact. Indeed, my recall of events from all but the earliest years of my life is truly photographic, so there was little doubt in my mind the woman before me now was the one who had stolen the book....
* * *
The Magician of Monkton Pier (2009) Short Story - a twenty five minute read.
Joshua is navigating his eco-boat, The Mattie Rat along a dark and stinking stretch of the old canal through Monkton - a city overwhelmed by gangs and gun toting Militias. Joshua's seen it all before: urban decay, corruption and the death of hope. Living on the water, and with no need for money, he's usually able to slip unnoticed through these town stretches and into the green beyond. But when he's tricked into picking up a pair of enigmatic hitchers, Joshua knows there's going to be trouble in Monkton. In spite of his best efforts, the wily old Waterman is about to become an accomplice in the biggest magical stunt of all time. And if the world no longer believes in magic, well, it only has itself to blame.
* * *
Crystal Says (2009) A twenty minute read: So, I'm standing in this crop circle, down in Wiltshire, England, and there's a girl dangling a crystal from the end of a chain. She's very pretty, so I'm thinking I'll have to find a way of overlooking the fact she's probably also some kind of crank if I want to take advantage of the situation here,...
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Katie's Rescue (2009) A thirty minute read: It felt odd, driving into Raworth, because where I come from Raworth does not exist. I know that stretch of road, you see? It dips down to the river Warfe, crosses over by the old bridge, then rises up the dale on the other side. Ordinarily there's just a steep wooded ravine and a picturesque waterfall on the river but, like I said, on this occasion, there was also Raworth,...
* * *
The Summer of '83 (2009) Well, that's middle age for you: you either grow up, grow into it, accept its imperfections, its disappointments, and grow old grumbling at someone, or you ruin yourself on a mad fling with a girl half your age that you know won't last, and then you grow old alone and with only the walls to grumble at.
In the absence of any other alternati
ves, I know which of the two I prefer,... but what if there was a third alternative?
* * *
The Man Who Talked to Machines (2010) A short story from web-author Michael Graeme (a half hour read):
"You have to talk to them, counsel them, mesmerise them into stillness before you set foot anywhere near them. And, though I may not be considered wholly sane, at least I have a reputation for the way I talk to machines."
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Pandora and Melanie (2010) A thirty minute read:- My dear Richard, I apologise for the delay in writing to you but it's only now I am beginning to come to terms with the implications of your discovery, and also the news of your collaboration with the woman known to you as Pandora,...
The author joins in with the doom and gloom and predicts the end of the world, but as you might expect, there's an upside to every situation.
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Rosemary's Eyes (2010) A short story about life, and death: Rosemary was by the house, feeling her way among the delicate stems of a clematis, her light touch seeking the beauty of its tissue-thin blooms. She paused at our approach and looked towards me, her eyes passive, waiting. Then she reached out, inviting my embrace. And when she gathered me in her arms, she raised her lips to my ear and I felt her whispered words, hot and curling against my skin.
Love is a Perfect Place Page 2
