A drafty October morning met Gloria with a rustle of leaves and the subtle hint of rain coming in the air. Taking her newspaper from the front porch, she checked to make sure her mailbox still stood at the end of the driveway. The Elric brothers had been released from juvie only yesterday, so ever since then she’d been expecting to find her precious mailbox bashed to pieces by a Louisville. Mailbox still in one piece, Gloria opened the paper and walked back into the house to finish her cup of spiced cider and read the comics. She just couldn’t get enough of Classic Peanuts.

The morning passed relatively slowly with only the usual phone calls. First was her mother asking when she’d get out of the house and start making some grand kids. “I won’t be around forever you know!” Her mother just loved using that line; a lovely little guilt trip. The second call was her boss asking how everything was and if she’d be ready to come back to work next week. It had been almost a month since she had to leave for Richard’s funeral. Only a month and she still missed him so much. She missed the way he always woke her up on the morning of her birthday with a stream of slow kisses down the center of her face and over each eyelid whispering, “Time to wake Sleeping Beauty, the day’s begun and the night will be long.” She missed coming home to find him slumped over his typewriter working on the next chapter for his latest novel. Missed that "tap" "tap" "tap" as he typed out the paragraphs. She’d tried getting him a laptop so he could get them done faster but he simple refused, telling her, “Gotta stick to the old ways, Tennyson and Dickens didn’t have computers.” She missed curling up with him at night to watch Conan or Leno. She simply missed everything about him. The saying had become true. “You don’t know what you’ve got, till it’s gone.”

Without even thinking her hand came up and threw the coffee mug at the wall, shattering to a porcelain rainfall sprinkling across the linoleum floor of her kitchen. The crash and tinkling sound of the mug falling came with another storm of tears as Gloria fell to her knees sobbing. Arms wrapping about her own shoulders, to give comfort no one but Richard could ever have truly given, as she rocked back and forth trying to banish the memories. Memories that always played through her mind when she thought about him and their two years of happiness; constantly playing with the ring he’d given her. She refused to take it off.

“Why’d you have to die on me? Why’d you leave me here alone?” Gloria simpered as tears slid down her cheeks, a river of sorrow.

Hours passed before she was able to compose herself enough to get on with the day; her voice dry and sore from crying; eyes puffy and red. Letting her robes just fall to the ground, Gloria padded barefoot and naked through the house to the shower on the first floor. Turning the faucet, she stepped under the steady stream of liquid heat letting it almost wash away her sorrow, if only for the moment, knowing when she returned to the house, the memories would come back in a flood.

Stepping from the shower, Gloria flipped her hair forward, letting auburn curls lightly brush the floor as she dried them out before wrapping the tangled mess up in the towel. She was due for a trip to the salon; things were getting out of control. Maybe a day at a spa would help alleviate the emptiness she felt in her heart, if only temporarily. A deep breath taken, she wiped the fog from the mirror and stood there looking at herself for a handful of moments, analyzing her own image and what she saw in the reflection.

“Gloria Romanov, editor, daughter, cousin, sister, short in stature; barely five-five, in need of some exercise, but most would simply call her full figured. In that place between adorably chubby and pretty in pink. In mourning…”

Another deep breath taken, she wrapped herself up in a towel and began walking towards the guest bedroom. She and Richard had shared a bedroom on the second floor, but she couldn’t bring herself to sleep there with him gone. As she moved down the hall, her eyes went from picture to picture hanging on the walls. All the picture frames holding images of her and Richard, hiking, camping, hanging out at the beach with friends and colleagues, or just around the house living a happy life. A life most of their friends said would be seen into those Golden years.

“Guess they were wrong, huh Richard?” she whispered to the empty house.

Tap… Tap… Tap…

blinking in confusion, Gloria looked around for where the sound was coming from. At first it sounded like a tree branch hitting the window in the breeze outside, but as hazel hues fell on the window down the hall, there were indeed branches blowing in the wind, but nothing hit the window. A thought that perhaps her eyes were playing tricks, she moved closer, but no. A branch wasn’t hitting the window.

Tap…Tap…Tap…

There came that sound again this time from the stairs at the other end of the hall; almost like the taps were coming from Richard’s office on the second floor. But there weren’t any trees on that side of the house; at least not high enough to hit the window anyway. Bare feet padded hurriedly up carpeted steps to the office door, fingers sliding over the door handle feeling the layer of dust that had accumulated. She hadn’t been in this room since…that day. Not sure what to expect, Gloria braced herself and pushed open the door.

The room was exactly as Richard had left it. Books neatly lining the wall to wall bookshelves, his chair turned to gaze out the window offering a view of the Old Catholic church a few blocks over, unfinished story waiting to be typed in the typewriter. Exactly as it had been when Richard died.

“I must really need to get out of the house, starting to hear things.”

Tap…Tap…Tap…

Just as she’d started to leave the room the sound came back again. Gloria’s eyes immediately went to the typewriter. Now that there were not any obstructions to alter the sound, that tapping sounded like the typewriter working Richard’s magic. Walking towards it, her eyes fell over the paper and the unfinished story; reading the last few lines. Doing a double take she took the paper from its’ place holder and read it out loud.

“Just as she’d started to leave the room the sound came back again. Gloria’s eyes immediately went to the typewriter. Now that there were not any obstructions to alter the sound, that tapping sounded like the typewriter working Richard’s magic. Walking towards it, her eyes fell over the paper and the unfinished story; reading the last few lines. Doing a double take she took the paper from its’ place holder and read it out loud…-“

Breaths coming in sharp gasps, she looked around the room frantically, trying to put some sense to what she had just read. It wasn’t possible. Stories don’t write themselves!

Tap…Tap…Tap…

Going back to the typewriter, Gloria ripped the second sheet of paper from its’ place, Richard always typed with two sheets in the holder. Hazels looked with disbelief at the words on the paper, still not wanting to believe what they told her.

“Breaths coming in sharp gasps, she looked around the room frantically, trying to put some sense to what she had just read. It wasn’t possible. Stories don’t write themselves!”

Steps backing up too fast, her foot caught on the wheel of Richard’s chair making her lose balance. Arms pin-wheeling, she fell with the sound of shattering glass and wood as her body went through the second story window. Wind rushing to meet her as the towel about her body is blown off, the ground and repaired fence to the garden fast approached. The same place Richard had fallen.

The world slowly began to fade into darkness and the last images of the day being a white van pull up in front of her house and several men in suits coming out of the back.Then a strobe light of red and white, and finally just white as a sheet was placed over her naked body as it was loaded onto a stretcher. The last words she heard before darkness closed in were a soft whisper in her ear, “Time to wake Sleeping Beauty, the day has been long and the night has just begun.” and a ghostly kiss to her lips.

(work in progress)

Gloria awoke to the steady beep of a heart monitor and the slow drip of the IV at her bedside. Slumped in a chair slept her mother curled up with a Terry Pratchet novel lying half open, her thumb the bookmark. In the hallway outside she could see several nurses moving from room to room checking on different patients and marking down little things on the clipboards hanging outside each door. The soft call for this doctor or that to come to the ER or Maternity was the only overriding noise to the soft hum of her own medical apparatuses.

She fought to sit up and groaned as the movement had the world wavering on the edge of kaleidoscopic delirium. Her vision swam as blood started to flow from its resting position into the rest of her extremities. Gloria looked for a clock but found the quantum piece blocked by the partially open curtain to the other bed in the room. Legs slowly lower over the edge of the bed with the desire to move around. She needed to move as her last thoughts before the fall came back to her mind; thoughts about the typewriter.

“Musta been the grief, yeah, that’s it; the grief,” Her legs felt like gelatin as the cold linoleum touched the bottoms of her feet. Cold, a sensation, something to establish reality, the fall had been real. “I just had that window replaced too…”

“Oh thank the lord you’re awake…,” her mother’s sleep entrenched voice broke the contemplative quiet which had been ruling over the hospital room. Dogearing her current page Patty put the book on the seat and moved to envelope Gloria in a relieved embrace.

“Mama, I’m fine…really..,” despite the confident exterior she wanted to show, Gloria couldn’t have felt any safer in that hug, though her dry throat was starting to become an irritation.

“Le’s get you laid back down here, an’ I’ll fetch the doctor,” Before she could even move Patty had her daughter ushered back onto the bed and looking decent in her paper gown. “Maybe if we’re lucky he’ll be a handsome devil and single!” A wink and a laugh saw her mother out the door in hunt for a George C Looney or a McDreamy.

“Ladies and gentlemen, my mother,” Fighting off a brief moment of discomfort Gloria sat back in her bed and fished around for the remote to the television hanging in the corner of the room. She needed sound, sound to break the strange silence of the hospital outside her door.

“Glad my mother was never like that,” a softly muffled voice drifted over on the wings of shattered peace from behind the dividing curtain. There wasn’t any movement following it; just those seven words and a gentle laugh with a groan of pain.

“Ack!” Gloria jumped as a second voice that wasn’t her own. Craning her neck to the side to try and see around the curtain the sheets of her bed gave way; nearly dumping her to the floor. Good thing hospital beds come with railings. “Didn’t know anyone else was in here, you scared me.” The small groan registered almost last second in her mind.

“Are you okay?” she asked carefully, not sure what to make of her roommate.

“Just ignore the man behind the curtain,” another soft laugh and a groan of pain drifted from across the divide as the television clicked on. “So up for a comedy or should I search for WE and take a nap?”

She couldn’t help but laugh as he tied a Wizard of Oz referral into a testosterone joke. Shaking her head, Gloria sat up and fixed her hair in places where she felt Curls rebelling against the Split Enders for control of the current coif-dom.

“So what you in for?” It was pretty easy to make her voice sound downtrodden given the meds and how she felt, physically. Sliding her feet off the bed, Gloria got up again as the man slowly jumped from channel to channel unable to find something suitable.

“Was drag racing and a light pole decided it didn’t’ like me. It’ll be on ‘When Roadways go Bad’ next week,” the television finally came to rest on what looked like “On the Town” starring Gene Kelley and Frank Sinatra. “Good ol’ New York, New York, where the Bronx is up and the Battery’s down.”

His light hearted response was starting to chip at her mood. How could anyone be so upbeat after a car accident? She’d have been terrified to end up in a hospital after being in a wreck. Hell, it had her almost not want to see the other side of the veil that separated their two physical worlds.