Framescape ~1~

Photo compliments of Willow
For Magpie Tales
FrameScape Part One

I wasn’t sure what happened to me. The last thing I remember, I was driving home from Branson. The grey dusk turned a threatening thick charcoal right before my eyes. In the distance there were wisps of smoke surrounded by endless miles of Shagbark Hickory, Black Walnut, Sugar Maple and just about a half dozen or more varieties of cedar. My steep mountain view was shrouded in dense moist air, the pressure dropped and my ears popped.

The sky can change in thirty seconds flat in Missouri. Sheets of rain blanketed the area north of me. A clap and flash jolted me, forcing me to grip even tighter at ten and two. My eyes opened wide, my book played on without my attention. I was three chapters in on the latest Nevada Barr when I last attended. I push the player off needing full concentration, when the white streak hit the pavement right in front of me.

I swerved and that was the last thing I remember driving that mountain pass.

My grip was not tight. I looked down at my fingers, my car was gone and the sky opened up right in front of me. My skin became smooth and creamy. I looked at my reflection in a crystal clear pond. My figure was upright and slender, as it had once been. My hair flowed down my back and my eyes were bright and clear. I turned away from the pond and found myself looking at a large wooden frame. It called to me as any inviting opening would.

I stepped through it. On the other side I was in a torch lite hallway of stone walls, moist, rough and cold. A dank smell enveloped me and I could hear voices, laughter, music and revelry in the near vicinity. Slowly, I drifted toward the noise, it seemed to be coming from behind a large wooden door with heavy hinges and knobs. My hand reached to a large bronze door knob, I twisted the knob, my efforts in vane the door was stuck. I could hear the party on the other side. I was anxious to join the revelers.

I pushed my whole weight against the door and still nothing happened. My shoulder edged its way through the wooden door leaving the rest of me suspended between the two rooms.  A man dressed in a tuxedo reached through me, grabbing the knob twisting it and suddenly his spirit was mirroring mine.

His spirit was vicious and nervous. He seemed to momentarily sense my presence. His facial muscles ticked as if trying to brush me away with his mind. It occurred to me that in that moment he could feel me but he couldn’t see me or know what I was seeing in him. His demeanor was cold and calculating his plan lay out in front of me. Sketched was a visual of his itinerary, his intentions an aerial view, sinister and dark. All of this I felt, as sure as I had ever felt, the sun on my face.

I felt a flash of pain, my mangled car, lights, people and sirens enter my consciousness but urgently and without consideration, I pushed it away. I needed to hinder this man’s plan and I needed to do it at the expense of my own resuscitation.

To be continued....