Jerry’s Flat – Sunday Morning, March 12, 1989
Jerry awoke with a start and breathed heavily. He stared at the walls trying to make sense as to where he was. He patted his chest and looked down at the T-shirt he wore. A look of bewilderment crossed his face as he stared at the upside down image of beds in a field, a lone man sitting on a bed, a girl standing to the side looking at him. He stretched the shirt down to examine its top.
“Tye-die? Where did I get this? I don’t even like tye-die.”
He threw off the sheet. Fully dressed in blue jeans, his cowboy boots poked upwards.
“Ugh.”
A feeling of dread flushed through him as his foggy dream became a shadow. He searched his surroundings with anxious glances trying to make sense of what had happened. His eyes caught the black poster across the room—the prism refracted a single ray of light into its rainbow of colors. The clang of a bell alarm filled his head. Eardrums numbed, they sounded like the ocean with the woosh-woosh of a pump. Sitting upright made him dizzy, so he propped himself with his arms behind him. Music and lyrics traced through his mind.
One slip and down the hole we fall
It seems to take no time at all
Images appeared in his mind and he traced through them. The concert stage with the white orb of lights. Fog creeping across the stage floor. The smell of a doobie. Yannie flashing backstage passes. The huge security guard in neon-yellow. Her eye! His eyes darted to the poster on the wall. Triangle tattoo enclosed her eye, rainbow stripes bled into her blonde hair. He reflexly twitched his arm as the tactile memory surfaced on his skin. Supple skin against his. His mind paused as he stared at the image of her . . . topless . . . reaching . . . What is she reaching for? She grasped the red apple nestled among the fruit in the bowl.
Goosebumps rose on his arms, and he wiped them with hands as if to wash off the memory. He jolted as the image of the red apple magnified in his mind. Saliva pooled around his tongue. Perfectly white teeth pierced the red skin. He blinked as he recalled the spray of juice on his face. Her emotionless eye within the triangle peered deeply into his.
“Oh my God, what have I done?”
The doobies, the drinks, the girls.
“I must have passed out,” he said glumly as he closed his eyes and massaged his forehead.
Guilt crept . . . stalked . . . hid . . . in the recesses of his foggy mind.
The bowl of fruit . . . the lone red apple . . . it lay in the bowl all alone . . . the rest of the fruit . . . gone . . . the red apple . . .
Two bites out of it.
That binds a life to life
You won’t regret, you will never forget
There’ll be no sleep in here tonight
One slip . . .one slip
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“Since the first hour in which goodness came into conflict with evil, it has never ceased to be true in spiritual experience, that Satan hinders us.” ~ Charles Spurgeon
Lyrics © Pink Floyd, “One Slip”
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Copyright 2017 © Jeff Cambridge
Excerpt from PURSUIT, a novel by Jeff Cambridge, a writer of transformational fiction with characters that tell life-changing stories.
This is a pre-published scene.
To read the scenes sequentially, begin with
“PURSUIT: A Novel – Prologue”
You will find the previous episodes in the monthly archives. Click on them and enjoy.
Your comments are welcomed and appreciated. Simply check one of the reaction boxes below, write a comment, or email me at bycambridge@gmail.com.
This novel is a work of fiction. Any references to real events, businesses, organizations, and locales are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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