Month: March 2018

I Saw Her Again

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The line we draw between reality and fantasy is a fragile thing, a brittle house of glass that requires only one small pebble, one hairline crack, to fall shattering to the ground.

I saw her again.

I saw her again, and my psyche, like our metaphorical house of glass, burst into a million sparkling pieces.

I was seven when I watched her die, and I was thirty when I spied her outside in the pouring rain, holding an umbrella in her right hand, along with a smoldering cigarette in her left.

I can already hear what you’re going to say next. How do I know she was the same person? People look like other people all the time. And if not for what happened next, I’d say you were right.

The world, dreary and gray, took on a hollow, distant cast. I thought, surely, I must be dreaming. I wanted to move on, wanted to shy away from the uncanny encounter before I could be undone. But in such mad and dreamlike moments, we do odd things—dangerous things we wouldn’t dare attempt by the ordinary light of day.

I pulled up beside her, not minding the cold and the damp and the pelting rain, and I said, “Excuse me, don’t I know you from someplace?”

In the instant before she turned, I thought, This is all a misunderstanding. The crawling goosebumps will pass, and when I see for myself that she isn’t the same person, that it was only a bit of déjà vu, I’ll wander on, shaking my head and wondering how I could have been such a fool.

But then she looked at me, and she was the same person, and I stood there in a hapless stupor as her lips curled into a malicious sneer.

“Hello, Joseph. How good to see you again.”

That from the woman I watched die.

That from the woman I helped my father kill.

“Say hello to your father for me.”

Then she turned away, just another stranger in the pouring rain. First I was walking. Then jogging. Then running. I careened down the puddle-laden street, convinced she was right behind me, ready to mete out cold, hard justice at last.

Murderer, whispered a part of myself I’d locked away for twenty-three years.

Impossible, shrieked another.

And inside, in the manic chambers of a shattered mind, a million shards of my broken soul clambered and shouted at once.

Now I am broken, and like Humpty Dumpty, all the King’s horses and all the King’s men couldn’t put me together again.

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“Dying Breath” is released!

A place of waiting.

The thought echoes over and over again through Jerome’s mind. Waking in a barn with no memory of where he’s come from, it is his only clue. But before he even has time to think, sleep bears down on him, and when he opens his eyes again, he’s someone else.

A soldier one moment, a financial analyst the next. A little girl. An old man. With each life Jerome experiences, he remembers something else of his own. Flashes of a bright light. A hospital bed. A mysterious woman named Darlene.

But what does it mean? What does each life have in common? Most importantly, what can it tell Jerome about himself?

My latest short story, Dying Breath, is released today!

About a year ago, I posted the first rough draft on Patreon. Now, finally, after having been through three editors, it’s released 🙂 I had a great time writing it, and I’m excited to share it with all of you.

You can buy the e-book for your Amazon Kindle, Kobo, Nook or Google device for just $1.99.

Find it for the Amazon Kindle by clicking here.
Find it for your Kobo device by clicking here.
Find it for the Barnes & Noble Nook by clicking here.
Find it on Google Play by clicking here.

I hope you enjoy the story, and if you feel so inclined, I hope you’ll write to me at jeff at jeffcolemanwrites dot com to let me know what you thought of the story 🙂

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