Averting Oblivion

By richard schneck

Five brand new stories, to stir your imagination.

Original stories written exclusively for this collection.

Spanning a range of genres, but each one taking weird turns.

A must read for fans of the unusual.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: richard schneck
• Release date: Mar 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215271643

Book preview

Introduction

Welcome kiddies!

It’s always an interesting task trying to write a snazzy introduction to my own stuff.

These stories are all original and written specifically to be in this collection.

They have, in my opinion, a similar feel to each other (Maybe just because I wrote all of them.) but they are all slightly different genres. That was my intention going in, to try and spread them out, to create a sampler, like a fictional box of candy. Or a box of fictional candy. Take your pick.

At some point in the future I’ll probably put out collections in which all the stories are the same genre. But this one is inspired more or less, by a Daphne du Maurier collection that I reread recently.

Make no mistake, I am not saying that my stories are anything like hers, just the idea that they vary in tone. (a bit)

In fairness, her stories were not written to be collected. But it resulted in a nice variety, and I liked it. If you’re curious it was a collection titled The Birds. A reprint of a book that was originally published under the name The Apple Tree.

But after Hitchcock made a movie out of the bird story, they changed the title. Same book, same stories. Just a different title.

But, getting back to this book . . .

I don’t want to tell you anything about the stories themselves, because that’s what they do.That is, the stories should stand on their own and make their meanings quite clear. If I rambled on about them, it would just mess with that. Might improve them, might wreck them. Better not to risk it.

Even rambling on like this might be a risk, but this one I will take, because the alternative is that you are all alone in a book that is completely indifferent to you.

That is not the case at all. I will be with you the whole time. Watching out for you. Holding your hand, if necessary. Brushing the gravel from the path. Clearing away the brush, and shooing small creatures out of your way. I’ll keep you from getting lost in the woods.

Or, more accurately, I have arranged the woods to keep you from being able to get lost in them.

So, I am mostly reassuring you that these stories did not just leap onto the page, of their own accord, and looking for trouble. I placed them all here, deliberately, in an attempt to make your reading experience as smooth and pleasant as possible. Like the way a DJ picks the order of songs.

Or, the way they used to. I have a pretty good idea that these days song lists are chosen by black-box algorithms, and incomprehensible artificial intelligence systems. Or it could be throwing darts at a song list. Doesn’t matter. The point is that I don’t know how much care is put into that activity. But I know how much was put into this . . .

Which was a lot.

Past Perfect

Alan Davis feels an undefined anxiety pushing it’s way around in him. Not manifesting in any pointedly physical way. He didn’t really feel anything in his body. Just a dread.

The dread of recognition. He sees a bank of roiling clouds, dark against a searing blue sky. The road stretching out to either side of him. Maybe into the distance, maybe it stops just out of view. It doesn’t matter.

The air is cool and thick. Median rails and light poles stabbing harsh dark shadows into the image like streaks of India ink. Dead black and, almost like holes cut through reality to reveal the nothing behind it.

It’s only moments till the car comes.

He had had this dream before. He recognizes it. It always produces this weird feeling of knowing it’s a dream while, at the same time, being fully immersed into it. So, knowing it is a dream doesn’t help him avoid the terror of it.

He hears the growl of a diesel engine, far off, sounding more like a wild beast, angry, and on the attack, than a simple mechanical device. Satan’s own motor roaring toward him.

And peripherally he catches site of motion on the strip of road. Grey concrete streaked with dried salt and oil stains. And a glint of pink beside a huge dark shape, both barreling toward him.

Emily is in the pink car. This is moments before she would die.

Again.

The dream always plays out the same way. He tries to scream and can’t. He cant hit the brake for her.

He is not in the car.

He can’t grab the wheel. He tries to scream harder. Tries to wake up. Wills himself to move, a foot an arm, a finger… anything to get awake. He tries to look away. But it’s a dream. Doesn’t matter where he looks, he sees it anyway.

He will dream it again.

Vivid detail. The truck jackknifes, the passing car becomes folded into the twisting wreck like a piece of tissue paper caught in a taffy puller.

And Emily in the midst of it.

Mercifully that particular detail doesn’t make it into the dream. No blood in the dream.

As he tries harder to scream, or move, or do anything to not see it, or to wake up, it just keeps playing out. Twisting, rolling, shredding. The screams of tearing metal, and some other sound, dark and dreadful.

Black.

Silence.

He feels sweat covering his body. The sound, gone. It’s dark. It’s over, this time.

He lets his thoughts gather. Still unnerved, he dreads opening his eyes. But forces himself to. The clock on the nightstand glows its time in soft reassuring blue digits.

He pulls the cover aside to get some cool air on his body. And twists himself up onto one arm to glance behind himself. The bedroom is lit by pre-dawn light diffusing through shear curtains. Giving everything a soft, cool ambiance. A stark contrast from the harsh dream-light he just left behind.

Emily lay peacefully sleeping. The most beautiful sight in the world. Twenty-seven years old. Her long dark hair splayed out on the bed with a little wisp falling across the bridge of her nose. He reaches out with a finger to gently peel it back. He takes in her slim, gentle face.

Many women don’t look as good without make up, or when they are asleep. She is not one of those. In fact he hates her wearing make up, she looks so much better without it. Lucky for everyone, she never really cared for it herself.

Just behind her perfect eyelids are the deepest blue eyes in the world. And he would wait patiently to see them.

He didn’t wake her. He watched her breathing for a little while. Pulling himself into the present moment. He wanted to fully appreciate exactly where he is, and when.

So many people live their entire lives thinking about the future, or the past, and completely miss the moments they have while they are actually in them. The Buddhists say people wish to relive the past because they neglected to live it fully the first time through.

Alan knows that better then almost anyone.

Alan wished he could have meditated more, or contemplated, or whatever it is that Zen-guys do to be fully in the moment. He did the best he could.

He lay back down to relax for a while. She would be awaken soon enough, and the dream will be almost forgotten as it always is.

The sun was fully up now. The light bounced around the kitchen leaving almost no dark areas. The small room was painted and draped in mostly pastel shades. Lot of green, but so delicate you could mistake it for white depending on the sun’s cast at different times of day.

The west-facing wall’s huge window threw a grid-work of square shadows across everything in the room at this time of the morning.

Although a tiny kitchen, this being their starter home, it had plenty of room for a small dining table. There was no dining room. Guess one could call this a breakfast nook. Although they ate all their meals here. If they were eating at home. Which was what they normally did during the week. Which this was, being Thursday.

Alan knew that much from having seen the tiny Th light on the alarm. But the calender on the kitchen wall above the waste-can gave no clue as to which Thursday it was. They had never been in the habit of marking them. It was October, that he could see. But no more than that.

He could hear Emily padding around upstairs. She was getting ready to go to her job. She taught 6 th grade at a small school less than three miles from the house. She had few reason to get on the kind of high-speed interstate as had been in the dream. Plus he knew, he always knew that the accident was on Saturday. Specifically Saturday, October 29, 1988.

This was 1988. So, the day would be anywhere from two days to three weeks. He jostled the frying pan on the stove to make sure the eggs slid freely before shoving a flipper under them and gently turning them over. He wanted these to be perfectly over-easy.

He wanted everything to be perfect, or as close as he could make it for her. And for as long as they had. He hoped it would be longer then a couple days, this time.

He was just buttering the toast when she came through the kitchen door. Her, now neatly combed, straight black hair pulled into a pony tail fell halfway down her back. Her blue eyes scintillating in the sun. His heart quivered.

As far as she knew they had only been married for eleven months. She had been twenty-six when they married. Twenty three when they met.

If it wasn’t love at first