Narrative Passage Thursday

Okay, dear readers, here it is: Narrative Passage Thursday.

As stated before there are really no rules. My personal preference, no dialogue. That's just me.

Now, I read and read and read and read and read some more last night looking for just the right passage to post here. I couldn't make a decision. Go figure. So (note to self - stop using the word 'so' so (dang) often), I decided to post various small narrative passages.


Jake was beyond furious. If rage had a color, his would be the most vibrant red tinged with just a hint of yellow for drama queen effect.

Rage, unfortunately, did not have a color. Rage – silent for so long, if he didn’t speak the words, they wouldn’t come true – only had an outlet now: his mother. She stood across from him in her newly updated – granite counters, stainless appliances, hardwood floors – kitchen. She had wiped away the kitchen of his childhood, just as she had wiped away the truth regarding his private adoption 32 years ago.


Jake turned around, away from the pain in Ophelia’s eyes, and out the window. Night had fallen over Nashville. The majority of the downtown buildings were brightly lit. Traffic moved at a hurried pace on the streets below. Time seemed to slow in the condo. Ophelia’s life – her carefully constructed lie and the truth she and Cordelia kept hidden from Ophelia’s family for thirty-two years – was about to implode around her, and in a very unpleasant way. Tomorrow – Friday the 13th to be exact, a most fitting day for bad news – would see the truth about Esmeralda DeMarrco’s unnamed beneficiary released to her family. The DeMarrco family – particularly Esmeralda’s son Antonio – would have a name to direct their hate towards, an actual living, breathing person who allegedly tricked his mother into leaving all her wealth to them, instead of to her family. Little did Antonio – or Ophelia, or their children, or anyone know – that everything Esmeralda did was to right a wrong done so long ago, and to unite a family that should never have been divided. I will grant you anonymity until the day the courts – trust me, they will – declare me competent. Only then, shall your name be released to my family. Only then, shall the wicked game I have in store for you, for my family, begin. I don’t do this out of spite, or even revenge at Ophelia, though she deserves more than I could ever plan for her, but to bring you home to us, where you belong. So spoke Esmeralda in a DVD. He took her at her word – now, even though he doubted her for a number of years. She had been right about the competency hearings. She had been more than prepared for the inevitable fight over her will, and the lengths her son would go to in order to claim her wealth. He trusted she would be right on every other tidbit of information she provided in the DVDs.



Friday the 13th dawned bright, clear, and bitterly cold. Jake found it extremely fitting for the day life, as he currently knew it, to end. He stood at the windows of his condo, coffee cup in hand, and looked out at the city. In a few hours, the DeMarrco family would learn his name. He sighed. Life was about choices, forks in the proverbial road, left, right, or gaily forward. Each choice is a different path, a different possibility, and every choice not made, every path not taken, is a different possibility. For the most part, Jake never thought back about the choices he made in life. He did not dwell on the what ifs of life, but rather the this is the choice I made and I must live with the consequences of that choice. He had made some bad choices in his life. He moved past those moments, on to the next, and did not bother to dwell on what might have happened had he taken the path to the left rather than the path to the right, or just went gaily forward. Life was life, perhaps not totally predestined, but still life.


Now, a different place and time, so many bad choices behind him, he faced the ultimate question: what if? There were so many of those questions in his mind now. What if his mother and aunt had told him the truth from the beginning? What if his aunt had not made that fateful choice that changed so many lives, hers – possibly his as well – most of all? What if he had never befriended the old woman in Borders? What if he never learned the truth? What if the ultimate lie never happened and he had lived a totally different life? Would the abuse he endured never have happened if that ‘what if’ occurred? Would he not be scarred – emotionally/physically – if his aunt had chosen a different path? Would he be a fundamentally different person? Would he not be afraid to open himself up to another man?


Jake sat at the piano in his condo, his fingers poised over the keyboard, his right foot hovering just above the pedal. He closed his eyes, inhaled slightly, saw the notes form in his mind, lowered his fingers to the keyboard, and began to play Girls of the Night from Jekyll and Hyde. He let the notes rise into the room, the music surround him, and his mind focused solely on the music. There was nothing else. Nighttime is where we live, night is where we give everything we have to give. The words to the song seemed to float in his mind. Somewhere I know there’s a someday, just for me, everybody has that someday, so why not me? Effortless, no thought, just him and the music. Most lovers can rejoice, we don’t have a choice, we just know we have to give. There was only this, here, now, and nothing else existed – not his mother, not the lies of Ophelia, not the wicked game he found himself playing against his will. Ask me to share your fantasies . . .



Okay, that's it. Just a few tidbits of narration. Nothing major. Have a great day.

S