EXCERPT FROM FATEFUL DAYS



Excerpt 1



"I'm worried about Dan," Joy Elton said.

Mike Boyle glanced up from one of Joy's resource books, Deadly Doses, a Writer's Guide to Poisons, by Serita Deborah Stevens and Anne Klarner. "Why?" His finger marked the H section where he had stopped reading. "You took him to the clinic yesterday."

"I know but they didn't do any tests or anything and," Joy got up from her rocking chair, "I have a bad feeling."

"So," Mike said, his eyes returning to the page, "go check on him."

"I'm going to do just that," Joy said, grabbing her jacket from the peg inside the kitchen door.

She ran up the two flights of inside stairs leading to what she and Mike called the 'tree-house loft,' the one- bedroom dwelling over the shop. Belatedly, she remembered that she had not brought the key with her. Maybe Dan had left the door unlocked, she thought as she reached the top step. Tentatively she called to him, "Dan?" Silence. She tried the door and found it locked. "Dan," she called, a bit louder this time. Silence. Joy looked at her watch. Eleven o'clock, he should have been up by now if all was well. Joy ran back down the stairs to get the key. It was flu season, maybe that's what was wrong.

Retrieving the key from the hook inside the utility room door, she ran back up the stairs and listened. Silence. She unlocked the door and stepped inside, almost gagging at the sour smell pervading the small apartment. The door from the kitchen to the bedroom was closed. "Dan, are you awake?" Silence.

Joy turned the knob and cautiously opened the door. She didn't want to wake him if he was sleeping.

The stale, sickroom-smell was more powerful in the over-heated bedroom. Dan Samson was invisible in the tangled roll of bedclothes. "Dan, you okay?" When she received no answer, she gently touched his shoulder.

Dan jerked up, flinging off the covers from his arms and upper body. His sweat-beaded face was flushed, his eyes bloodshot when he finally got his encrusted eyelids open. "Wha-oh-hurts." He fell back onto the bed, groaning.

"Dan, what's the matter?"

"I'm freezing, head's splitting, eyes ache." He rubbed his eyes with his fists. "I see psychedelic visions, swirling, swirling, swirling-"



Excerpt 2



That night, while Dan slept, shadowy figures-two men

--whispered, pointing at him. They were not in his bedroom, but in the bathroom between the bedroom and living room. One man wore nebulous white. The other one blended with the shadows. Dan strained to hear.

"Let's take him now," said the shadow.

"NO."

"But why not?"

"Too easy," the one in white said. "He must chose life or-"

"Good plan," said the dark one. "Let him struggle."

Dan sensed that it was still night when he awoke, panting and sweating. He rolled over-onto something hard-cold.

"What the hell-" He reached under his right shoulder for the object. He withdrew it. "How did this get here?"

Now fully awake, Dan sat up holding his father's Colt .45. While instinctively checking to see if it was loaded, he thought back to when his father had presented it to him many years earlier, not long before he died of stomach cancer. His father had carried it while in the Marines at Guadalcanal.

When his father had gifted it to him, it had not been loaded. It was now.

Dan sat on the edge of the rumpled bed shifting the pistol from one hand to the other. His eyes throbbed, his head pounded and he still could see nothing. He pointed the pistol at his right temple.




Excerpt 3



Andi and Peg spent most of the day lounging by the hotel pool, taking a quick dip now and then to cool off before returning to sunbathing and reading. Andi was reading one of several Reader's Digests she had brought along to catch up on. A short article on fate piqued her interest. In the article, Andi was reminded that the word came from Greek and Roman classical mythology as in the Fates, three goddesses of destiny. The article posed two questions. Were events results of Fate? Or did events occur and then the results become attributed to Fate? Andi leaned toward answering 'yes' to the second question.

But she would not think about her fate right now. She lay back in the chair and closed her eyes. Not now in the warmth and peacefulness of Hawaii.