An Excerpt

Oh, hello again. Being planted in the midst of my busiest semester ever, I've been prevented from making blogging contributions over the past few months. In the meantime, I've become engaged to the beautiful Ashley Marie (more on that to come)! To the half a person that actually reads my blog on a regular basis, I thought that I would tide you over with an excerpt from a short story that I've been working on for a couple of years currently called "The Results of an Aging Mind":

"Lucy stroked the smooth glass plating that guarded the photograph, which hung in the family room. The photograph was amidst many other beautifully framed pictures hanging neatly and balanced forming, what Lucy thought to be, the most perfect photogenic community. The pictures were so peopled and composed of bright eyes and long smiles that it gave off a vibrant energy and the feeling that they would all start conversing with one another at any moment. The truth was that Lucy could spend an afternoon with each and every one of these photographs, but there was something special about the one she caressed compared to the others. It meant more to her than any of them, and she didn’t know quite why.

It was a simple image, a color photograph of her family dressed in their fine church clothes taken over a decade ago. Her family had the picture done as a gift for her and William. The people on this large print, the tiny but intricate eyes were all too much at times. It all seemed so surreal and so wonderful. Memories suddenly appeared in Lucy’s mind like bubbles on the top of boiling water. They became faster, warmer, some larger than others spilling over into buckets filled with thousands of stories. Each story seemed to lead to another one, another beautiful moment. They weave together like a mysterious maze with doorways in every pocket. Those bubbles were popping now, however. They were going away in tiny explosions, and it was harder to get them back. They were gone in a million tiny fragments of water. Lucy had read that it was the result of an aging mind. She did not like to think that way. And none of that really mattered for today was an extraordinary day. They were all making their way over.

She mounted the delicately framed photograph back in its place on the wall. Lucy suddenly thought that there was something she had to do before they arrived, but this had presently escaped her. She would have gone into the kitchen to check her notes that she often made these days, but the window to the backyard was on the way. She stopped, overcome by images of serene Friday afternoons finger painting out on the patio. She touched their tiny, brightly colored fingers with her own as she scooped paint for her own paper. She remembered the paint being so smoothed, thick, and pleasant. If it wasn’t for that strange yet wonderful smell, it might taste like chocolate or something delicious.

Suddenly, some hideous, irritating object plopped itself down in front of that window like a rhinoceros in the middle of Africa. That wonderful afternoon scene was immediately obstructed as if a giant finger had applied its own thick streak of dark paint across Lucy’s eyes. Another bubble had popped, and the life that was out there was now shattered in a million different irretrievable pieces."