Doorway

Les Zigomanis

Description

Amy has never really known family. Not like her husband, Brad, with his tribe of brothers, sisters, and cousins. Amy's only ever had her Aunt Zara - ever since Amy was twelve and her parents died. It was Aunt Zara who took her in, raised her, and provided for all her needs and desires. Aunt Zara has been her world.When Aunt Zara passes unexpectedly during Amy and Brad's fifth wedding anniversary, Amy is at a loss. How will she be able to go on? Will she be able to go on without Aunt Zara's nurturing and guidance, even if Aunt Zara has provided for them with an inheritance?That night, Amy awakes to find a doorway glowing with a faint nimbus standing at the foot of her bed and the possibility that perhaps Aunt Zara hasn't left her after all.

Sujets

• Fantasy (canción de Mariah Carey)
• Short story
• Fantasy

Informations

• Publié par: Untreed Reads
• Date de parution: 06 février 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781611872613
• Langue: English

Extrait

Table of Contents
Copyright
Doorway by Les Zigomanis
i.
ii.
iii.
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xii.
Doorway
By Les Zigomanis

Copyright 2012 by Les Zigomanis
Cover Copyright 2012 by Ginny Glass Untreed Reads Publishing
The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.


This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold, reproduced or transmitted by any means in any form or given away to other people without specific permission from the author and/or publisher. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.


This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to the living or dead is entirely coincidental.


http://www.untreedreads.com
Doorway
By Les Zigomanis
i.
Opening the pink cake box, Amy stared at her anniversary cake. It was heart-shaped, vanilla, with strawberry filling. Elegantly iced across the top was:
Happy 5th Anniversary
Amy & Brad
To 45 more!
Amy smiled at her Aunt Zara’s whimsy. To 45 more. Aunt Zara, a spinster! And who’d initially disapproved of Brad also! But, of course, that was Zara—never one to hold a grudge and single-mindedly interested (and invested) in Amy’s happiness.
Arms circled her, and Brad pressed his grizzled face to her cheek. Amy wished he’d shaved, although there were times (and places) she liked the scratching. But she couldn’t think about that right now. Later. Maybe. Definitely . Right now, the cake and guests awaited.
“We gonna cut it?” Brad asked.
Amy looked out through the kitchen window at the eyesore which dominated her backyard. A yellow tarpaulin, like the big top of a circus tent, had been set up as cover. Not that they needed it. They couldn’t have gotten a better night—clear skies, warm without being unpleasant, an occasional but refreshing (in the very literal sense of the word) breeze.
Gathered—chatting, dancing, eating, drinking, and in some cases making out—were at least a hundred guests. Amy couldn’t believe the trouble they’d gone to for a fifth wedding anniversary. But that was the way Brad—and his family—did things: exaggeratedly. Brad had brothers, sisters, in-laws, aunts, uncles, and cousins—you needed a database to keep track of all of them. And they shared everything, celebrated every event, no matter how small.
Sometimes, Amy envied that about Brad, that familial community, whilst she had only Zara. Other times, she thought it must’ve been like belonging to a tribe in which nobody had any privacy, and rebuked the notion.
Then there were Brad’s plethora of friends, some close, but most just acquaintances from work whom orbited his star. Amy was sure she couldn’t put names to half of them. It was funny how parties worked. They were meant to celebrate you, but all you did all night was waitress for the enjoyment and indulgence of others, and then clean up afterward.
Maybe it was right that the tarpaulin covering the backyard was like the tent of a big top—the party, like most parties, was enough of a circus to justify it. Amy couldn’t wait until it was done, until she and Brad could sit down and have a private moment to themselves to enjoy their anniversary.
Brad probed with one forefinger to excavate some cream icing from the cake. Amy slapped his hand away playfully.
“Where’s Aunt Zara?” she asked.
“Don’t know.”
Amy continued looking through the kitchen window, hoping to spot Zara. Of course, Zara wouldn’t be out mingling. The whole evening, she’d been in and out of the kitchen, working just as tirelessly—but uncomplainingly—as Amy. Amy envied the uncomplaining bit, but it was beyond her. Anyway, as Zara always told her, It’s a wife’s right to complain! So why give up a God-given right?
“Take the cake outside,” Amy said. “I’m going to have a quick look.”
“Okay.” Brad kissed her on the cheek. “Love you.”
“Love you, too.” Amy kissed him on the lips.
It wasn’t unusual for Zara to go missing. She was seventy, tired easily and—against Amy’s many protests—pushed herself exhaustively. Often, she would retreat to the spare room they kept for her and have a power-nap, but now the spare room was empty. She checked Brad’s den, which had a leather couch that Zara favoured, but nothing. Next were the two bathrooms, which had queues streaming from the doors, with the first person in each certain Zara wasn’t in the bathroom ahead of them. Then hers and Brad’s bedroom, as that had its own bathroom.
And Amy stopped.
Peeking out from behind the bed, aimed at the ceiling, were a pair of feet in pointed red heels.
ii.
Time was meant to move arduously through grief.
Amy knew that was supposed to be a universal truth, like when she was twelve and her parents had been killed in a car accident. She’d cried endlessly, wanting the pain and disbelief and loss to be over. But it never had. Every day had been like the last. Every tomorrow offered only the same hopelessness. It wasn’t until she’d blown out the candles of her fourteenth birthday cake that she’d realised that her parents were two years gone and she needed to accept that she had to move forward.
Now, however, time sheared disjointedly. The grief and disbelief stilled her mind, lobotomised her cognizance, until her exclusive and inescapable reality was that Zara was dead. But around her, everything appeared in random, rapid flashes, like her mind couldn’t put together the jigsaw of events which followed and could only assimilate instances.
She was aware of sinking mutely onto the corner of the bed, of Brad finding her later, that he covered Zara with a blanket and tried to coax Amy out of the bedroom, but she was immovable. Members of his family approached her intermittently, but she was unresponsive. Then there was Dr. Bruner, the family GP and, later, the paramedics whom pronounced Zara dead even as Dr. Bruner administered Amy a sedative, and then spoke quietly to Brad before handing him a script for Xanax.