The Truth of Fiction Now available in audio. Narrated by the marvelous Miranda Reading-Spring
Do us all a favor and get a copy!
This is Heckel, not Miranda Reading-Spring, She has a MUCH BETTER voice.
This Miranda.
This is Dexter, too tired to keep editing.
From The Truth of Fiction:
The Road Less Traveled
I didn’t mean to kill her – not really – not at the moment of impact. But it’s hardly an excuse, especially because I’d been hired to do exactly that.
I can still see the moment of death. I probably always will. It was less gruesome and more final than I’d expected… if I had expected anything.
Truth be told, the only death I had anticipated was mine – mine and my three companions. We had been sent to kill her, although a less likely gang of assassins you’d have been hard put to find. Not that that is an excuse.
It might well have ended differently, all of us dismembered, burnt and hacked to bits. It certainly seemed the most likely conclusion, if only she hadn’t gone after my dog.
I’ve had him ever since I was a girl, the only spot of color in my grey world. When she’d threatened him I reacted with the closest element at hand, never pausing to consider that it might be deadly. That is how passion is – action without thought – and there you are, locked up and awaiting a trial that can have no good ending.
At least my dog is safe, for the moment, locked in beside me, small furry heart a drum beat next to mine. I hope it’s not a death knell. He licks my face, his saliva mixing comfort with my tears.
I am less afraid of death than partings — endings.
What will happen to my three companions? Will they be dismembered, burnt and beheaded? Were their ends predestined? Is mine? Was hers?
I can still hear her shrieks and see her body writhing, smoking in pain – then nothingness, the flame of an extinguished candle. I will have to live with that, if live I do. I will awake to the smell of her passing, like burnt hair, and fall asleep, when I can, to the fact that I am an annihilator, a destroyer of worlds. For isn’t each person a world unto themselves? True, she wasn’t a nice person, but even the saintliest among us have done evil. It’s only in fairy tales that princesses are solidly good and witches completely bad, as if they had been carved from a single element – soap or chocolate, diamonds or coal.
I may be dead soon, thrown from the parapets or torn limb from limb, but for now, here in this cell, all I have is time: time to consider the universe, time to reflect on my actions, time to wonder if it was my fate to be a murderer, time to ponder if it would have been better to be the one who died. In an instant, the world can slip through your hands and shatter, impossible to retrieve as an egg. Earthquakes open chasms while you’re wishing on a falling star. How odd this world is. You wake up as a sweet young girl and by dinner you’re a murderer. Who would have thought that water could be more deadly than hate? If only she hadn’t gone after Toto.
OOPS! Wrong Toto
Now we’re talking!
Publisher’s Summary
The Lake of Contemplation, which lies in the Forest of Ideas, is where artists go for inspiration, writers look for ideas, and philosophers seek the truth. They never find it, but there’s no harm in looking. The weather’s fine and there are few sweeter ways to spend a Sunday than searching for meaning and wild blueberries.
Sometimes a dreamer, for what are philosophers and artists if not dreamers, almost conceived of a better reality. Artists saw colors invisible to the eye, but not the heart. Composers heard music harmonizing above and below the confinement of scales. Writers envisioned new realities and scientists felt the soft edges of the universe.
But truth is slippery, often it slid through their fingers, sinking heavier than a pound of lead feathers, down, down, down to the murky bottom of the Lake of Contemplation.
Often a writer in search of a new story might lose an old one. Familiar tales, falling into deep water, take on a new existence. Love stories reveal hidden horrors. Childhood classics, distorted by wavering reflections, morph into tales so dark you could see them even through closed lids.
Thus begins The Truth of Fiction
Meryl, Josh, and Jessie go for a picnic in the Forest of Ideas. They had come to the woods to capture The White Hind. Hinds are usually red, but this deer was white, lacking the pigment of lies and it was rumored to contain the truth in its antlers and hooves. As they search for the truth, they discover old stories made new, truths about themselves, and the meaning of friendship.
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Really, you’ll love it!