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Nathan drove the coast road, windows down, the air pleasurable to breathe as anything his joyfully expanding lungs ever inhaled. He drove by where his business should be, and saw his name remained on the large lighted sign above the gracefully lit showroom. Bentleys and the rest rested inside serine in their confidence.
Going home, he heard a voice whisper. Going home, he had never thought of it. Home, in that town he had finally found, home with the wife who loved him and rejoiced at his presence, home, such a simple thing, such a simple idea. Going home, it felt finally natural to him, going home and not running away.
Night still, the car pulled up to the closed double C gates and he smiled again when he saw them. He pressed the buzzer and announced himself. Antoine’s assistant remotely opened the entrance. In the morning his man would scrub the car interior of evidence, then take the vehicle to a scrap yard that in minutes would convert it into a three by three two-ton box.
Leaving the car on the driveway by the shed, he saw his dogs running toward him from the far field. Constance, in one of her funny, bright print flowing nightgowns, rushed down the mansion’s front steps. She waved and giggled pushing her big but lovingly fleshy body his way.
The thrilled dogs, wet tongues shaking, tiny tails wagging, stood on their hind legs before him, and he brushed and patted them.
“Nathan! Nathan!” Constance called, beaming. “Oh Nathan,” she said, stumbling into his arms. “Nathan, at last,” she cried, tears shedding over her plump cheeks. “Missed you so much. So much.” She kissed him, covered his face with kisses. “My Nathan. Nathan. I missed you so much.”
“I missed you too, Constance.”
“Did you? Did you really?”
“Yes.”
“Oh you look so good. A little worn or tired but good.”
“You’ll fix me back.”
“I will,” she said, the two walking to the house, the dogs jumping around them, Antoine’s assistant waiting at the foot of the steps.
“Did you have fun?”
His face gnarled; memories of friends raw. “Yes . . .”
“Oh honey, something happened.”
“No-no. We had . . . fun. Great fun, great trip, for the books.”
“Then come on. Now you’re home, and I’ll take care of you. You’ll rest, and everything will be back exactly as it was.”
“Thank you, Constance. Thank you.”
They continued strolling side by side to the house, leaning on one another. Lifting his eyes, Nathan saw a risen Moon, big, glowing, reflecting the Sun still to rise and chariot it away. He thought, should a cosmic machete slice that orb of light, light to the eye, like a tart apple, it would reveal only dirt inside like his atrophied heart. Cold the Moon, hot the Sun, warm the Earth fusing all nature. That he walked as he did then could only mean that She accepted him as he had become. She had not killed him. She had allowed him to survive to be whatever it was he’d become. He had been man, grown from man, and had only returned.
Man or almost man he had always been. Like the stars and everything existent, he was part of them, and they all part of one another. Whatever change occurred in him was insignificant to time and Earth. Nature would take care of it untroubled, unconcerned. How long its captive who had broken his chains would be allowed to go on, he did not care. He had freed himself from the shackles that bound him to torment and disgrace. Now it would be his time to live at least equally and perhaps above his long-oppressor. He was in late season but he felt urgings and power as after a taking and entry into a new cycle: resplendent, life brimming, but this time with his blessed yulenhood endowed to triumph.
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End Book II
Yulen: Return of the Beast – Mystery Suspense Thriller (Yulen - Book 2) Page 28