Never Apart

         I met Fionnuala on a Friday the thirteenth in the township of Perth. She was beautiful but it was her smile which reached out to my soul. Then I discovered her last name she was a Shea. The Shea's it said had airs and hated the common folk like farmers and  favoured trade. Her family hated me not only because they thought that I had no future but because her brothers had tangled with mine and mine had bested them. 

        Despite all that we met in secret and fell in love. We spent every moment we could together. Our passion was carried away and we slept together in the barn two weeks ago resulting in the news that 
 Fionnuala told me two days ago.

 “I need you to take a deep breath.” she’d said and then she told me the good news she carried my babe. 
Fionnuala and I had decided,we would run away to Toronto, away from Patrick Thoron, the rich brute, her father bade her marry; away from my family who also disapproved . My distant cousin who worked in a factory had offered me a job and a place for us in Toronto where they couldn’t reach us. We were to meet at Grand Bend cliff to run away tonight.

     Night fell and still Fionnuala didn’t appear. I searched for her entering her father’s house. I felt a pain in the back of my head and  when I awoke I found the house empty devoid of furniture as if she’d never existed at all. Finally I went back to the cliff hoping against hope that somehow she reappear. Night fell and as I took one step towards the edge of the cliff, I heard, “Frederick, my love you’ve finally come.”

She looked so different. Her hair had turned white overnight and her face was lined with wrinkles. What had they done to her?

“Where have you been?” I asked.

“Waiting for you,” she said.

Fionnuala smiled, and the air around me swirled with pinpoints of light until it became all encompassing. Time had no meaning. I looked at her seeing once again the woman I’d first fallen in love with and I realized that this was what I had been waiting for all this time; for we were now together for eternity at last, no one could ever keep us part.

©Sheilagh Lee July 23, 2018

Back to the Future

Back to the Future

     The bar was dark, dank and dusty and emptied; exactly what I wanted to continue my drinking to oblivion. A fortune telling machine stood in the corner. On an impulse I went to put in the required quarter and realized it took dollar coins. I only had two Susan B. Anthony dollars that my girlfriend, Amy had given me before she died in the bus accident ten years ago on three days before we gradated high school . 

A card popped out of the fortune telling machine interrupting my sad thoughts of Amy and how I'd never love anyone as much as her. I peered at the card dumbfounded for I recognized my own hand writing and it read, ‘True love that you seek is available if you turn back time, put in another coin for details.’

     How could it be my handwriting? The message was ridiculous. Turning back time indeed if only I could. instead I sought oblivion in the bottom of my glass. I sat down and had another drink, but the machine beckoned to me still. I found myself propelled to it and put in the other dollar Amy had given me. A card came out and I read, ‘What you seek is close at hand.’

     I threw down the card in disgust; but when I looked down my body was seventeen years old again. I ran out the bar door and found myself back at my high school. The school the bus was there waiting for the music department's year end trip. (The trip I had missed because of appendicitis.)

     I entered it and hoped to stop the bus before it left, but the second I entered the bus lurched and started driving. I tried to get the bus to stop l but several teachers corralled me, tied me down and placed me with a duct taped mouth beside Amy. The accident happened just as it had before, only this time as the bus rolled over and over I felt pain and then felt the life drain from me. 

I woke drooling in a beer,in that dingy bar; I looked for the fortune telling machine but it had disappeared. I concluded that it must have all been a dream. One good  thing came from all of this finally I could move on from my guilt nothing I could have done could have saved my friends or my girlfriend, Amy. Life was for the living they said and I'd been dead for ten years it was time to start living.

©Sheilagh Lee July 18, 2018

I Should Have Listened to Nanny

      Accepting a job with mystery writer, Bradley Guest; I scolded myself for shivering when I saw his home Castle Cronin. It was positively gothic with turrets, and gargoyles overlooking the front door. The door opened and Bradley ushered me in and talking about my duties as secretary. A phone call made him leave the room.

“You should get out while you can. He’s a very bad man,” the housekeeper said.

“I need the job if I find I don’t like this job I’ll leave tonight.”

“Oh, you’ll leave tonight. Listen I am an old woman and he’s rather fond of me, so I’m safe; but a young woman like you is not.”

“Why are you trying to scare me away?”

“It’s for your own good. It’s too late he’s coming back. Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” the housekeeper said leaving as quickly as she came.

“Was that my housekeeper?”

“Yes.” I answered.

“Did she tell you to leave?”

I nodded.

“I’m sorry. She’s actually my possessive old nanny. You don’t want to leave now, do you?”

“No, I said and followed him to his study.

“Sometimes I act out the plots in my books. I hope that isn’t a problem.”

“No, of course not.”

That’s how I found myself pretending to be the murder victim. Unfortunately for me it was only pretense on my part. Nanny asked where they’d hide this body. As I lay there dying from a knife wound, I wondered why didn’t I listen to nanny?

©Sheilagh Lee July 11, 2018

Happy Independence Day

To my American followers on July 4th, 2018 on the occasion of America's Birthday of  Independence Day


Have a great holiday and enjoy the fireworks 

Happy Canada Day