Dan Hrbarr's blog: "My Novel"

                     It is what could be described as a dark faery-tale.            

     Epilogue: November, 2050

                                         All things must pass.

          I find myself standing, in dense woodland, I can’t remember how I got here at all, but feel like I have just woken up out of a dream. The air is chilly with a cutting edge of winter in it. I feel very strange, stronger than I have in ages. I run my hand across my face and try to shake the befuddlement from my brain, and stop.

          In the moonlight I can see my hands are young again, no withering from age no liver spots, the fingers are full and firm with muscle. I run my tongue along the inside of my mouth, teeth, all mine no dentures. I must be dreaming again neither thing can be true at my age.

          I walk through the woods and come to a small hut, with its door standing open onto the cold night and I enter it. Before me lays a hospital bed, where I am laying, wrinkled and withered, attached to machines that help keep me breathing, the heart monitor beeping out a rhythm , this is the reality I remember, old age, weakness.

 “Am I dreaming?” I ask, someone else is here with me perhaps they know the answer.

“No, Brendan, not this time.” The musical voice answers and I turn to find my companion looking the same as she did all those years ago, when we met in the woods. She is dressed in a white gown, with a long green mantel over it, she doesn’t even try to hide her smile or look the least bit sympathetic to my uncomfortable position. Looking at my aged body she laughs, “Are you worrying about that? You’re not dead either, love. But it is time to choose my dear.”

          We walk in silence out of the room and back into the woods. A white horse stands there waiting amid the trees grazing with disinterest on the grass. She mounts the horse and looks down on me with a smile, patiently waiting for my decision.

          I look back and can see the body in the bed through the open door, and hear the rhythmic sounds of the machines keeping it tied to the earth. I reach up and place my hand on the saddle, climbing up behind her. I put my arms around her waist, she still smells of woodlands and autumn leaves.

          “Did you come to say goodbye?”  I ask her

          “Silly boy, I came for you.” she laughs.

          I look back at the ancient me in the bed and with I sigh I make my choice. The heart monitor lets out a long high pitched beep replacing the rhythmic beats as my heart stops and the ventilators stop pumping air into ancient lungs in the room behind us. It doesn’t hurt at all. I feel relief.

“Ride on.” I whisper and as we ride away into the moon lit night, in the room behind us, I die. The moonlit woods become more vibrant and full of life, the air grows warm and sweetly perfumed with the scent of flowers on the night breeze and the music of the night woods fills the air. At last I am alive.