The Brody Girl - How It Begins...
Prologue
1
It rained earlier in the evening, but the thunder clouds finished emptying themselves on the old house in Indiana. A light breeze whisked the remnants of the storm away, and as it did, the moon emerged. In its full light, someone might have seen the silhouette of a person crawling out of the house through an upstairs window. No one did.
Nor did anyone hear their footsteps. There were the songs of crickets, frogs, and the last drops of rain that fell from the trees, but not a single sound from the dark specter on that roof.
The shadowy figure was small, but nimble while it crept along the roofline of the Victorian country home. It moved in silent determination down and across the gable outside the window and then over to the southern corner of the roof. There it disappeared down the side of the building and was not seen again until it appeared in the large yard between the house and the dense forest behind it.
Without cover of shadow, and bathed by the light of the full summer moon the figure was visible. Other than the maroon-colored pack upon her back, the girl carried nothing. Her dark clothes were all but indistinguishable. All, except for her bright white shoes. They glistened like wet pearls in the moonlight.
A Small Taste Of What Awaits You At - The End Of The Line...
An Interview with Death
1 – Near Death
The first time I witnessed Death in person, I’d just awoken in the hospital. The anesthesia was just wearing off, and when I came out of my stupor, I looked beside me and was taken aback. A frail man was lying on the bed next to mine, his pallid skin clinging tightly to his skull. My neighbor didn’t have much for hair, and festering sores covered his face.
Usually, the only things you smell in a hospital are cleaning products and rubbing alcohol; however, all I could smell was the stench coming from the man lying next to me. I thought I recognized the bitter odor wafting from him, but for the life of me, the pungent vapors escaped me. Please, don’t get the wrong idea. It wasn’t the smell of the man that woke me up, even though it was acrid enough to do so.
What woke me after my surgery was the sound of his voice, though it wasn’t loud. In fact, the man whispered so very faintly that you would never hear him over the sound of the air conditioning blowing out from the ceiling vent above us. Even so, despite the most imperceptible level at which he spoke, I heard my neighbor as clearly as if he’d whispered right in my ear.
“I’m ready.”