"Alice," she said. "Show Peter the way."
Alice led me through the forest, her willowy form making light work of the tangled branches. Meanwhile, I lumbered after her, dragging my tiresome baggage. We were heading east, in the direction of my car. It was ironic, I thought; the exit probably lay only a few paces to the south of where I'd crashed. We walked for longer than I expected, Alice always ahead, never turning, never speaking. Then the ground began to rise, the forest thinned and suddenly we were crossing a meadow, heading for a prominent hill.
When we reached the top, she sat down and waited for me to catch up. Breathless, I gazed around at an unbroken view of meadows, woods and lakes. "You can see the house from here," she said, pointing back across the valley.
There it was, its red brick glowing warmly. Of course we should have come upon the highway ages ago but there was nothing - only wide open spaces, and in the midst of it all stood the lone house. The highways simply were not there any more. She looked at me, as if to gauge my reaction, then rose quickly and began trotting back down the hill. Her eyes, like Rosemary's were now perfectly synchronised with my own. And in them I had read love and kindness,… and sympathy.
I remained there for a moment, rooted by a mixture of despair and grief, but then I called after her: "Where are we going?"
She turned then, and very gently she replied: "There are no more destinations, Peter. We have arrived, you and I."
She led me back through the forest, eventually bringing me to the pond by which I had first glimpsed her and Rosemary - except it was no longer a pond but the inlet of a much larger lake. There was no obscuring concrete embankment, no traffic roar, just sunlight on water and more forests and hills rising in the distance. This is what they had seen yesterday, I thought - even Rosemary,… or perhaps Rosemary most of all. They had been unmoved by the thunder of the traffic because for them it had not existed. I thought back to the accident - eighty miles an hour, plummeting twenty meters to the ground. Was it reasonable to go on believing I might have escaped unhurt? Had things been more serious,.. as serious as perhaps they had been for Alice?
"How long have you been here," I asked.
"I forget," she replied. "It's not important,… "
"And me?.." I said. "I'm,… "
"Yes," she said. "You're with us now."
"But you and Rosemary seem so happy. Am I not intruding."
She smiled. "Judge nothing here by what you know of life," she said. "Rosemary can be all things. Mother, lover, friend,… " She caught my eye once more. "It's really no different here to anywhere else," she said. "There is a reason for your coming - as there was in mine." She brushed my face with her fingers and smiled. "It really is lovely that you've come," she said.
We turned to leave but then she paused and gestured to my bag. "Leave it," she said.
I looked at it, crumpled and scuffed from a lifetime of travelling, a million miles of highway, an endless litany of destinations. I was tired of it, so I put it down by the water's edge and walked away.
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.
"Don't be afraid," she said. "Look into my eyes once more."
Steadying myself against the warm press of her, I looked and then I knew this was not the end of anything,… more the beginning of a greater understanding of what my life had been about. I breathed deeply of something sweet,…
… .and I was not afraid any more.
From the same author on Feedbooks
Love is a Perfect Place (1999) A short story by Michael Graeme - a twenty minute read: He scooped some water up and drank. It astonished him. It tasted like he imagined the most perfect water should taste, but it was a sensation spoiled by the queer fact that he wasn't thirsty even though he had walked for hours under a hot sun.
"Perhaps we don't need food,... or water," he said. "Only when it pleases us."
He looked around then at the land and he felt a chill. What manner of place was this? And what manner of being had he become?
* * *
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!
* * *
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 (20
09) 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,...
* * *
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 alternatives, 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."
* * *
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.
* * *
The Road From Langholm Avenue (2010) A story of unrequited love, of unexpected love, of love lost, and found again. With divorce and redundancy looming, our hero, Tom, is left facing middle age with the feeling that he made a wrong turn somewhere in his past. Then, as if things aren't bad enough he's inexplicably haunted by memories of Rachel, a girl he had a crush on at school. With emotions bubbling up to the surface he realises the old business with Rachel has never really been forgotten and that before he can find a way through his crisis, he's going to have to journey back in search of his deepest past. Tom sets out to find Rachel and, regardless of her circumstances, do the one thing he couldn't bring himself to do a quarter of a century ago: ask her on a date. But things don't quite go according to plan. Tom discovers a lot can change in twenty five years, but that some things remain exactly the same. And when it comes to the business of unrequited love, even those closest to him are not immune.
This is a full length novel - complete and free to read. It is not a teaser or a taster.
* * *
In Durleston Wood (2010) A middle aged romantic, Richard Hunter has hit the buffers. Divorced and estranged from his children, he trains as a teacher and takes up a post in his home village at his old Primary School. Never more than arm's length away from a nervous breakdown and hopelessly in love with his headmistress, Richard seeks solace in his boyhood haunt: Durleston Wood. But the wood now hides a secret, a mysterious woman kept hidden there as the apparent "property" of a villain - or so she tells him. As he learns more of her fate, and her plan to transfer her "ownership" to him, he tells himself this is the last thing he wants, while wondering if it isn't actually something he needs more than anything, that far from destroying him, rescuing her could be the one thing that stops him from going under.
This is a full length novel - not a taster or a teaser.
* * *
The Lavender and the Rose (2010) Matthew Rowan finds himself drawn to a secluded valley in the English Lake District where he meets Amanda, mistress of Cragside, a cottage nestled deep in a fold between high fells. On the surface it seems like the ideal refuge from a world gone mad, but what he doesn't know is that the house sits at the epicentre of a magnetic anomaly and has a reputation for playing strange tricks on the mind of anyone who sleeps there. There's also something peculiar about Amanda, who calls hersef Beatrice and leads a secretive life dressed entirely in Victorian costume. The Lavender and the Rose is an unusual love story, an erotic adventure, and a spiritual odyssey. It's also a psychological mystery whose resolution will require Matthew to question his understanding of the nature of human identity, and even reality itself.
* * *
The Singing Loch (2011) Scott Matthews, a disillusioned city worker, finds himself drawn into a bizarre corporate conspiracy. From the ruthless greed of '80's London, to the austere beauty of Western Scotland, Scott begins to unravel the threads of an enigma dating back centuries, while gradually falling under the spell of the mysterious and forbidden Singing Loch. Here he discovers love, enlightenment, and ultimately a truth more startling than legend.
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