Short Story
movingfinger
Posts: 117
A Place of Veils and Roses
A young man, in his prime, runs through a field of tall grass. Sunbeams cascade over his body; there is not a cloud in the sky. Songbirds flutter through the air and sing a song for anyone to hear. Picturesque grass runs rampant in all directions. The green pasture is textured by patches of violet, pink and white lupins, bordered by day lilies and untold other varieties of flowers. He does not know how he got to this place but for some reason he doesn’t mind. He picks a flower from a natural arrangement and smells it. It is a sweet fragrance, one that he cannot remember ever smelling, but knows that he has. It has been so long since he has smelled a fresh picked flower, longer than he can remember.
Dropping the flower into the blanket of grass he spots a calm river in the distance. Feeling urges that until now lay dormant he runs to the banking and plunges into the tranquil river’s refreshing depths. He lies at the bottom and looks up at the distant sun. It creates a halo of light around him illuminating his presence in the darkness of the water. The bed of the river sparkles like the stars of a brisk winter sky as the sun bounces off of mica covered pebbles. He floats up to the surface and swims to the shore. When he emerges he finds himself dry and surrounded by distant friends.
“Sam you old devil, where have you been?” he asks to an old acquaintance
“Here and there, I have been keeping tabs on you, though, ever since the war”
“The war? Yes, I had completely forgotten.” His face loses its jovial expression, “You went to Normandy…you never came back.”
“Don’t worry about such things now, it is a glorious day and there is no reason not to be happy.”
He hadn’t felt the tingle of happiness for many years now. The newfound emotion creeps over his body, a wave of jubilation comes soon after. He has many similar conversations with many old friends, each lost to him at some point. A striking young woman now catches his eye. She seems familiar but he can’t recall why. All that he knows is that he must find out who she is, and from where he knows her. He is entrapped in her gaze.
He begins to stroll briskly over to her, but his walk begins to become slower and more strained. She dissipates into a forming fog. His joints begin to creak and ache with each step. His once thick blonde hair is now slowly becoming a decreasing mass of gray. He looks at his hands. To his amazement they appear old and wrinkled, the veins draped loosely from his skin. He tries to call for help but his voice is old and raspy; it gets lost in the wind.
The old man struggles to keep his footing but finds himself falling. The once sunlit sky is now covered in dark clouds. Lighting bolts crash around him and he can smell the once beautiful field burning. He feels a searing jolt of electricity enter his chest. As it hits him, an image splits his consciousness. It is of a cold gray room with men in white coats; they are all staring at him. His mind springs to the scene of a car wreck; moments later he feels another shock to his chest. He is back in the cold gray room. He sees a woman in a white coat standing over him; she holds two paddles in her hands. He doesn’t know her, but for some reason he associates her with a deep-rooted loathing. He feels the same towards all the people in the room, which he now realizes, are doctors.
His memory slowly comes back to him as the images from the sunlit field begin to fade away. He now knows that he is not a young man. He knows that he is 86 years old and he is disgusted with the prison his body has become. The room he is in mocks him, when compared to grassy field. The lupins and song birds have been replaced by plastic flowers and the whir of machines. Doctors flit in and out of the room; they talk about him like he isn’t there. He wishes that he wasn’t.
He tries to reason with the doctors. He pleads for his death; he yearns for his friends. Only gargles come from his mouth and he begins to choke on the various tubes intruding into his throat. They think his decrepit attempts at speech are a form of shock. One of them takes out a needle and slowly inserts it into one of his collapsed veins. As the sedative enters his bloodstream he becomes groggy and his senses deadened. His eyes close and he slowly drifts into unconsciousness.
The subconscious haunts his beleaguered mind. He sees flashes of old memories: a car, anachronistic to this day’s streamlined models, on fire, its front crumpled against a tree. He has seen this before. The door swings open and a body slithers out and coils into a heap onto the ground. Blood dances on his hands as he bends over to check the body. It is a woman, in her thirties; her face, crumpled like the front of the car, hugs the ground. He recognizes all this but he can’t remember from where. Even in his dreams his memory is faded. A flash; Black suits and tears; white flowers and a handful of dirt. Her face, the dream always ends before he sees her face.
He awakens from the nightmare in a dark and unfamiliar room. He feels a warm sensation under his sheets. He realizes what it is and curses his weak bladder. This loss of control joins a list of many in his addled body. Old age is the only disease from which one does not seek a cure. He remembers now where he is; it doesn’t comfort him though. He is alone. He has been alone for more years than he cares to count, living a desolate life in a one room boarding home. The only thing he had to look forward to was the infrequent visits from his son.
His befuddled mind only remembers passing photographs of raising his son. He was a single father, working two jobs. Everything he did though, he did it for him. Images emerge: birthday cakes and baseball gloves, graduations and good byes. His son lit up his life for such a long time, the shadows created when he left were only that much more obvious. Loneliness invaded his life since then, the shadows taking over so much, that he himself became one. Over time he lost most of his memories, became senile. He was forced to live in the present, searching aimlessly for links to the past. His time in the sunlit field only teased him of what he had lost, what he yearned to recapture.
The whirring of the machines brings him back to his present surroundings. The only things that he can see are the lights flickering on the machines that are keeping him alive. The lights make him think of little devils dancing in irreverence. Yes, the machines keep him going, he is not alive though; vivacity left him long ago. His body is the only thing anchoring him to this terrestrial life. His body is not of muscle and flesh anymore. It is now only a vessel of mechanical devices that keep his blood flowing and his eyes blinking. It serves no other purpose.
He hears the door open but is not strong enough to turn his head. A man and women, both in their early fifties, walk cautiously up to his bed.
He recognizes them as his son and his daughter-in-law. He sees the love in their eyes but cannot help but pity them for their selfishness. They know that he has no reason to live. They know that he is only here because they would not sign his D.N.R. request. There is no cure for old age but still they tell the doctors to revive him, to keep him on life support. They cannot deal with his death; they cannot just say good-bye. His son tries to talk to him, but the old man has nothing to say. Using all of his energy he angles his body to the side, facing himself away towards the wall.
Time slips bye slowly, every second seems like an eternity. All of his soul is yearning to return to his youth, his friends. He thinks of the vicissitudes of his recent life. It outrages him. He feels robbed of his death. Instead of relishing in his paradiso, he is rotting in the purgatory. The longer he dwells on it the more enraged he becomes. It feels as if his blood is going to boil. He feels a tightening in his chest; he can almost hear his veins popping and crackling under the pressure. His fingertips tingle with a pain that slowly runs up his arm and connects to his already failing heart. The pain, though, is welcomed. He knows that it means that his life will soon be over; he feels death grow inside him like an event horizon in a dying sun. They’ll have him back, though, more of a vegetable than before.
His son sees his father’s pain and begins to go get a doctor; he is caught though by his father’s piercing gaze. His mouth is clenched by the throes of the heart attack, but his eyes can still speak. They plead death, scream for it. The son’s hand leaves the door and falls to his side. The eyes pull him towards his father’s bed. Tears begin to streak down his face; he knows that his father’s time has come. He only hopes that he is ready to say good-bye. The son pulls the I.V. from his father’s arm and gently slides the tubes from his mouth. He leans down and kisses his father’s cheek. The old man whispers into his son’s ear with his last breath, “Thank you.”
With these words the old man feels his body lifting from the table. He looks down and sees his son hugging his lifeless corpse. He whispers good-bye and is swept to the scene of the car crash. She died that night, his wife. He never told his son how she had died, he himself had forgotten. Now he knows, though; he had pushed the memory aside, buried it under years of guilt. He should have been the one driving that night in ‘45; he shouldn’t let her go to the store. This time, though, as she falls out of the car, he is there to catch her, to share her last breath. He clasps her hand, closes his eyes and as they descend to the sunlit plains he recites their poem:
Do I not deal with angels
When her lips I touch
So gentle, so warm and sweet—Falsity
Has no sight of her
O the world is a place of veils and roses
When she is there
I am come to her wonder
Like a boy finding a star in a haymow
And there is nothing cruel or mad or evil
Anywhere.
With this he opens his eyes and he is with her, hand in hand, standing amongst the lupins. Lupins were always her favorite flower; he remembered picking them with her during their courtship. Just like he did back in the summer of ‘39, he lays her upon the bed of flowers.
“Where have you been all these years?”
“Here, putting off eternity until I could share it with you.”
At this he presses his lips against hers and begins their new existence together. This…this was heaven.
A young man, in his prime, runs through a field of tall grass. Sunbeams cascade over his body; there is not a cloud in the sky. Songbirds flutter through the air and sing a song for anyone to hear. Picturesque grass runs rampant in all directions. The green pasture is textured by patches of violet, pink and white lupins, bordered by day lilies and untold other varieties of flowers. He does not know how he got to this place but for some reason he doesn’t mind. He picks a flower from a natural arrangement and smells it. It is a sweet fragrance, one that he cannot remember ever smelling, but knows that he has. It has been so long since he has smelled a fresh picked flower, longer than he can remember.
Dropping the flower into the blanket of grass he spots a calm river in the distance. Feeling urges that until now lay dormant he runs to the banking and plunges into the tranquil river’s refreshing depths. He lies at the bottom and looks up at the distant sun. It creates a halo of light around him illuminating his presence in the darkness of the water. The bed of the river sparkles like the stars of a brisk winter sky as the sun bounces off of mica covered pebbles. He floats up to the surface and swims to the shore. When he emerges he finds himself dry and surrounded by distant friends.
“Sam you old devil, where have you been?” he asks to an old acquaintance
“Here and there, I have been keeping tabs on you, though, ever since the war”
“The war? Yes, I had completely forgotten.” His face loses its jovial expression, “You went to Normandy…you never came back.”
“Don’t worry about such things now, it is a glorious day and there is no reason not to be happy.”
He hadn’t felt the tingle of happiness for many years now. The newfound emotion creeps over his body, a wave of jubilation comes soon after. He has many similar conversations with many old friends, each lost to him at some point. A striking young woman now catches his eye. She seems familiar but he can’t recall why. All that he knows is that he must find out who she is, and from where he knows her. He is entrapped in her gaze.
He begins to stroll briskly over to her, but his walk begins to become slower and more strained. She dissipates into a forming fog. His joints begin to creak and ache with each step. His once thick blonde hair is now slowly becoming a decreasing mass of gray. He looks at his hands. To his amazement they appear old and wrinkled, the veins draped loosely from his skin. He tries to call for help but his voice is old and raspy; it gets lost in the wind.
The old man struggles to keep his footing but finds himself falling. The once sunlit sky is now covered in dark clouds. Lighting bolts crash around him and he can smell the once beautiful field burning. He feels a searing jolt of electricity enter his chest. As it hits him, an image splits his consciousness. It is of a cold gray room with men in white coats; they are all staring at him. His mind springs to the scene of a car wreck; moments later he feels another shock to his chest. He is back in the cold gray room. He sees a woman in a white coat standing over him; she holds two paddles in her hands. He doesn’t know her, but for some reason he associates her with a deep-rooted loathing. He feels the same towards all the people in the room, which he now realizes, are doctors.
His memory slowly comes back to him as the images from the sunlit field begin to fade away. He now knows that he is not a young man. He knows that he is 86 years old and he is disgusted with the prison his body has become. The room he is in mocks him, when compared to grassy field. The lupins and song birds have been replaced by plastic flowers and the whir of machines. Doctors flit in and out of the room; they talk about him like he isn’t there. He wishes that he wasn’t.
He tries to reason with the doctors. He pleads for his death; he yearns for his friends. Only gargles come from his mouth and he begins to choke on the various tubes intruding into his throat. They think his decrepit attempts at speech are a form of shock. One of them takes out a needle and slowly inserts it into one of his collapsed veins. As the sedative enters his bloodstream he becomes groggy and his senses deadened. His eyes close and he slowly drifts into unconsciousness.
The subconscious haunts his beleaguered mind. He sees flashes of old memories: a car, anachronistic to this day’s streamlined models, on fire, its front crumpled against a tree. He has seen this before. The door swings open and a body slithers out and coils into a heap onto the ground. Blood dances on his hands as he bends over to check the body. It is a woman, in her thirties; her face, crumpled like the front of the car, hugs the ground. He recognizes all this but he can’t remember from where. Even in his dreams his memory is faded. A flash; Black suits and tears; white flowers and a handful of dirt. Her face, the dream always ends before he sees her face.
He awakens from the nightmare in a dark and unfamiliar room. He feels a warm sensation under his sheets. He realizes what it is and curses his weak bladder. This loss of control joins a list of many in his addled body. Old age is the only disease from which one does not seek a cure. He remembers now where he is; it doesn’t comfort him though. He is alone. He has been alone for more years than he cares to count, living a desolate life in a one room boarding home. The only thing he had to look forward to was the infrequent visits from his son.
His befuddled mind only remembers passing photographs of raising his son. He was a single father, working two jobs. Everything he did though, he did it for him. Images emerge: birthday cakes and baseball gloves, graduations and good byes. His son lit up his life for such a long time, the shadows created when he left were only that much more obvious. Loneliness invaded his life since then, the shadows taking over so much, that he himself became one. Over time he lost most of his memories, became senile. He was forced to live in the present, searching aimlessly for links to the past. His time in the sunlit field only teased him of what he had lost, what he yearned to recapture.
The whirring of the machines brings him back to his present surroundings. The only things that he can see are the lights flickering on the machines that are keeping him alive. The lights make him think of little devils dancing in irreverence. Yes, the machines keep him going, he is not alive though; vivacity left him long ago. His body is the only thing anchoring him to this terrestrial life. His body is not of muscle and flesh anymore. It is now only a vessel of mechanical devices that keep his blood flowing and his eyes blinking. It serves no other purpose.
He hears the door open but is not strong enough to turn his head. A man and women, both in their early fifties, walk cautiously up to his bed.
He recognizes them as his son and his daughter-in-law. He sees the love in their eyes but cannot help but pity them for their selfishness. They know that he has no reason to live. They know that he is only here because they would not sign his D.N.R. request. There is no cure for old age but still they tell the doctors to revive him, to keep him on life support. They cannot deal with his death; they cannot just say good-bye. His son tries to talk to him, but the old man has nothing to say. Using all of his energy he angles his body to the side, facing himself away towards the wall.
Time slips bye slowly, every second seems like an eternity. All of his soul is yearning to return to his youth, his friends. He thinks of the vicissitudes of his recent life. It outrages him. He feels robbed of his death. Instead of relishing in his paradiso, he is rotting in the purgatory. The longer he dwells on it the more enraged he becomes. It feels as if his blood is going to boil. He feels a tightening in his chest; he can almost hear his veins popping and crackling under the pressure. His fingertips tingle with a pain that slowly runs up his arm and connects to his already failing heart. The pain, though, is welcomed. He knows that it means that his life will soon be over; he feels death grow inside him like an event horizon in a dying sun. They’ll have him back, though, more of a vegetable than before.
His son sees his father’s pain and begins to go get a doctor; he is caught though by his father’s piercing gaze. His mouth is clenched by the throes of the heart attack, but his eyes can still speak. They plead death, scream for it. The son’s hand leaves the door and falls to his side. The eyes pull him towards his father’s bed. Tears begin to streak down his face; he knows that his father’s time has come. He only hopes that he is ready to say good-bye. The son pulls the I.V. from his father’s arm and gently slides the tubes from his mouth. He leans down and kisses his father’s cheek. The old man whispers into his son’s ear with his last breath, “Thank you.”
With these words the old man feels his body lifting from the table. He looks down and sees his son hugging his lifeless corpse. He whispers good-bye and is swept to the scene of the car crash. She died that night, his wife. He never told his son how she had died, he himself had forgotten. Now he knows, though; he had pushed the memory aside, buried it under years of guilt. He should have been the one driving that night in ‘45; he shouldn’t let her go to the store. This time, though, as she falls out of the car, he is there to catch her, to share her last breath. He clasps her hand, closes his eyes and as they descend to the sunlit plains he recites their poem:
Do I not deal with angels
When her lips I touch
So gentle, so warm and sweet—Falsity
Has no sight of her
O the world is a place of veils and roses
When she is there
I am come to her wonder
Like a boy finding a star in a haymow
And there is nothing cruel or mad or evil
Anywhere.
With this he opens his eyes and he is with her, hand in hand, standing amongst the lupins. Lupins were always her favorite flower; he remembered picking them with her during their courtship. Just like he did back in the summer of ‘39, he lays her upon the bed of flowers.
“Where have you been all these years?”
“Here, putting off eternity until I could share it with you.”
At this he presses his lips against hers and begins their new existence together. This…this was heaven.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it
-- Omar Khayyam
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it
-- Omar Khayyam
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Comments
Also, could there be a stronger ending? We've guessed early on that this is heaven, or some afterworld. Could the lovers' reunion be more bittersweet? Could we have some psychological insight into any negotiation of distance between the lovers separated by death, or is everything all just heavenly? My instinct would be to steer from overt sentimentality.
I enjoyed reading this. Thanks. Hope my suggestions are okay.