Prompt #104
Epilogue
Hello, everybody!
I’m posting a prompt today, even though I know it’s probably a busy week for many of you, and you won’t have the time or headspace to read or respond. But here I am anyway, through thick and thin, just like the good old postal service!
I hope your holidays are wonderful, no matter what you celebrate (or don’t celebrate).
Meanwhile, here’s the penultimate prompt of 2025! Phew! Incredible!
Confession:
I stole this prompt from somewhere.
But I don’t know remember where… If you’ve seen it, please let us all know so I can give proper credit to the person who made it up. Apologies in advance to that certain someone. And also: thank you!
Here it is:
Today’s Prompt:
Write an epilogue (or, alternatively, a final paragraph) to a book that doesn’t exist.
That’s the whole prompt. You all know what an epilogue is, right? Here’s a definition in case you need it:
From Wikipedia:
a piece of writing at the end of a work of literature, usually used to bring closure to the work. [1] It is presented from the perspective of within the story.
From the Cambridge Dictionary:
A speech or piece of text that is added to the end of a play or book, often giving a short statement about what happens to the characters after the play or book finishes.
From Merriam-Webster:
a concluding section that rounds out the design of a literary work.
Okay, you get the point, and you probably didn’t need those definitions in the first place. I tried this prompt already, and although I don’t think what I wrote will win any awards, I have to say—this was really a fun exercise. Here’s what I came up:
Epilogue
After that, I didn’t hear from Graham for many years. I suppose I could have been the one to pick up the phone, dial his number, say hey, can we start over and this time leave out all the bad parts? But of course, that was a ridiculous notion, a childish one, the thoughts of an earlier me—the me who believed that change was still possible. And so I did my best to live my life without thinking about him. From time to time across the years, he’d pop up in the papers, or someone would mention his name, ask if I’d heard anything. Once, a postcard arrived from Peru, his unintelligible scrawl leaving a message I could not decipher, and I remember tossing the postcard into the woodstove and then regretting it. I think of that day at the cabin as little as possible, but there are times when the mind plays tricks, and the memory resurfaces unbidden when I’m not paying attention. In those moments, I wonder what would have happened had there been no gun in the den, no ghosts in the closet. But what good is it to wonder? We can’t change the past, much as we may want to. Last week, I placed a bouquet of roses on Linda’s grave and asked her to forgive me. As always, there was no message in return besides the silence. Maybe that is the message. Graham, wherever he may be, is lost to me now as well, but I’ve grown older, and visions of him no longer haunt the things I do. Still, I must admit that he appears unbidden from time to time, and I see him once again in all his youthful glory, still losing the fight with his demons. Still sure that the world is his for the taking. Still able to ruin me, over and over again.
Hopefully, by reading this paragraph, you get a drift of what that non-existent and never-written book was all about. Maybe I should write it!
Okay, it’s your turn. Have at it! Four hundred words max if you want me to read what you post. Go over the limit and my eyes may glaze over…
See you next week!
[photo credit: Valeria Reverdo on Unsplash.com]
And so here we are, closing things down like an all night bar. Everyone’s gone home, have they, or somewhere, because they’re not here. No one’s been by since the accident twenty five years ago. That’s a long time to be brain dead. Most don’t last that long. Even Evangeline the sentinel caregiver doesn’t think they’ll ever wake up at this point. Still, she smiles at the vivacious Vivien, the striking beauty, summa cum laude at Vassar, silver medalist in Olympic sailing, whispering she was going to meet Dash the estate’s gardener from Australia.
He does know roses, I see that, but I understand his lineage traces to the penal colonies, sniffed Mama.
In the prison hulks they chained the felons below decks in their vomit and filth, said the Count.
Cover for me, won’t you dear Eva, they mustn't know, mustn’t. They’ll disown me, or kill him.
If their attention had spread beyond the tendrils of their own lust they’d have known, there’s the rub. That the Bugatti’s axel, well, you can guess the rest. Really, it was the children made it such a tragedy. At least they died, shared not the bedrot fate of these two, who after all, curiously, shared a future. Mama and the Count are long gone. Why they provided for Dash at the end is the family secret, lodged in the subterranean safes of Barclays Bank.
It’s dawn now. Evangeline enters the room and spreads the curtains so the sunlight floods over the couple sleeping forever.
Epilogue.
Gregory didn’t get far. Crashed into a gurney in the hallway and limped to the elevator. The elevator! Managed to exit the front door of the hospital and attempt an escape on a lime scooter. Ran a red light and collided with a police cruiser. The officer couldn’t stop laughing when he came by the bookstore to take my statement.
Gregory was unhurt, but his trial for attempted manslaughter is next month. Meanwhile, he has called my mother to complain about jail food.
My mother? Has a new beau. The coroner, who was “such a great comfort to her” when everyone thought I was dead, has begun spending several nights at a time at her house. He seems nice. And he seems to have taken her mind off match-making for me.
Which is good.
All right, it may have been foolhardy. Did I say “may have?” It was foolhardy.
I found that key, and I knew who was behind it all. Charon is a daemon. Immortal and reckless overall. I’ve read enough mythology to realize just how jealous, petty, vengeful, dramatic…and lustful immortals are.
Oh, but that last characteristic.
So, yes, I went through that door. A woman’s entitled to some fun after that ordeal.
Beyond that night? Or was it three days? In his world, who knows?
But Elias and I are back in the bookshop.
And that very good looking cop who took my statement has a kayak. And a newfound interest in literature.