Read Online The Everborn by Nicholas Grabowsky - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Nicholas Grabowsky
Ads: Link
not my wife...but in fact something else.
My eyes fixed upon her ghostly figure in the glass, my body hunched awkwardly over forgotten research relics. My hearing was by now acutely attuned to the sounds of clanking dishes and the sizzling of grills, sounds fading against the mounting threat of Melony’s voice speaking to me. I was aware of only silence until then, as though someone impulsively popped a quarter into a jukebox selection of kitchen clatter chorus to revive me from my stunned state. Just as instantly, I could smell the aroma of broiled and boiled banquet, as though it had not existed a moment before. All this would have surely antagonized my empty belly into record depths of growling rage if my hunger had not been snuffed beneath the numbing blanket of my wife’s semblance.
As my senses livened to the environment around me, I found myself able to think, able to move. I felt myself capable of spinning to face my wife, to leap upon my feet and embrace her as I should have within the very instant I saw her, to cry out with every emotion suppressed until then by the confusion I had awakened to, to exclaim to the world and to the forces which separated us that I missed her, missed her deeply. I wanted to proclaim that regardless of unknown destiny, I could not face such an appalling isolation from my most precious beloved again and to do so would be an act of unmistakable evil I would fight against to the death.
This resurgence of will was more than enough to encourage any conscious ability to move, if not to face my fears nor to embrace Melony, then to simply get out of the goddamn doorway. And I moved, turning in dilatory incline, my vision panned like a surveillance camera reviving from a power loss.
I continued to turn, even as I sensed the touch of her hand. I felt it upon my shoulder, resting suddenly and comfortably and I had no recollection of it having actually been placed there. It was as though it had been there all along, even before the spectacle of my arrival, fingers molded gently against the arch of my collarbone, subtle palm cupped shallow into the knit sweater-cloaked soft flesh above my shoulder blade. It could be true that this touch alone initiated my ability to move and it had not resulted from my own strength after all.
If this touch called me into motion just steps ahead of my own awareness, this would account for the strange, detached sensation which swept over me, a sensation cruelly overridden in the incessant parallel drawn for me since this whole mess began. It was at this particular moment, however, when time as I knew it broke free from its linear shell and emerged scrambled before me in mismatched fragments.
To perfect a description of what came next, I would have to be dyslexic. Even still, only I could truly read and understand.
But there came a voice: she was speaking to me, and as my eyes drew further into my wife’s direction I knew instantly that the voice I heard did not belong to the woman I knew.
It was the voice of another woman entirely. What she said did not seem directed at me. It was more of a general announcement.
“ We’ve got tonight’s special!”
And as I looked, I saw that what spoke was not human. Whatever it was, it was clearly female and quite curvaceous, but legless and floating upon a bed of invisible currents of warmth, unclothed, its skin gleaming with the luster of polished bronze. It raised its arms to me.
As I dropped further to the floor in a trance of crippling weakness, my vision fell upon the typewritten letter that brought me there.
I lost all consciousness then, but in my last remaining thoughts I realized what the voice had meant.
And I thought of midnight meal specials.
4.
Time Retold At the Motel Untold
My second episode of lost consciousness.
So far to memory.
And no matter the amount of days or hours or chunks of moments then passing beneath linear time’s eternal scrutiny, the
My eyes fixed upon her ghostly figure in the glass, my body hunched awkwardly over forgotten research relics. My hearing was by now acutely attuned to the sounds of clanking dishes and the sizzling of grills, sounds fading against the mounting threat of Melony’s voice speaking to me. I was aware of only silence until then, as though someone impulsively popped a quarter into a jukebox selection of kitchen clatter chorus to revive me from my stunned state. Just as instantly, I could smell the aroma of broiled and boiled banquet, as though it had not existed a moment before. All this would have surely antagonized my empty belly into record depths of growling rage if my hunger had not been snuffed beneath the numbing blanket of my wife’s semblance.
As my senses livened to the environment around me, I found myself able to think, able to move. I felt myself capable of spinning to face my wife, to leap upon my feet and embrace her as I should have within the very instant I saw her, to cry out with every emotion suppressed until then by the confusion I had awakened to, to exclaim to the world and to the forces which separated us that I missed her, missed her deeply. I wanted to proclaim that regardless of unknown destiny, I could not face such an appalling isolation from my most precious beloved again and to do so would be an act of unmistakable evil I would fight against to the death.
This resurgence of will was more than enough to encourage any conscious ability to move, if not to face my fears nor to embrace Melony, then to simply get out of the goddamn doorway. And I moved, turning in dilatory incline, my vision panned like a surveillance camera reviving from a power loss.
I continued to turn, even as I sensed the touch of her hand. I felt it upon my shoulder, resting suddenly and comfortably and I had no recollection of it having actually been placed there. It was as though it had been there all along, even before the spectacle of my arrival, fingers molded gently against the arch of my collarbone, subtle palm cupped shallow into the knit sweater-cloaked soft flesh above my shoulder blade. It could be true that this touch alone initiated my ability to move and it had not resulted from my own strength after all.
If this touch called me into motion just steps ahead of my own awareness, this would account for the strange, detached sensation which swept over me, a sensation cruelly overridden in the incessant parallel drawn for me since this whole mess began. It was at this particular moment, however, when time as I knew it broke free from its linear shell and emerged scrambled before me in mismatched fragments.
To perfect a description of what came next, I would have to be dyslexic. Even still, only I could truly read and understand.
But there came a voice: she was speaking to me, and as my eyes drew further into my wife’s direction I knew instantly that the voice I heard did not belong to the woman I knew.
It was the voice of another woman entirely. What she said did not seem directed at me. It was more of a general announcement.
“ We’ve got tonight’s special!”
And as I looked, I saw that what spoke was not human. Whatever it was, it was clearly female and quite curvaceous, but legless and floating upon a bed of invisible currents of warmth, unclothed, its skin gleaming with the luster of polished bronze. It raised its arms to me.
As I dropped further to the floor in a trance of crippling weakness, my vision fell upon the typewritten letter that brought me there.
I lost all consciousness then, but in my last remaining thoughts I realized what the voice had meant.
And I thought of midnight meal specials.
4.
Time Retold At the Motel Untold
My second episode of lost consciousness.
So far to memory.
And no matter the amount of days or hours or chunks of moments then passing beneath linear time’s eternal scrutiny, the
Similar Books
