First Short Story

REMEMBER ME

The first time he watched her die she’d been little more than an animal. Cro-Magnon, maybe. Homo sapien, barely. He had held her and watched the spark fade from her eyes, howling as his soul plunged back into the abyss. Not like this time. This time they’d had seventy years together. This time he was prepared to lose her…again.

“Tell me,” she wheezed, placing her wrinkled hand, trembling, over his rough, strong one. “Tell me the Secret.”

Sitting in their bed, he hugged her against his chest holding her up to ease her struggle to breathe. Still she gasped for air.

It was time.

He whispered to her then of the Beginning, of eons past when they were all One, the Dark and the Light, before the Separation; how they entered matter and forgot what they were; how one Dark soul refused to forget, refused to play the game of Life; how he waited for his Light, life after life, to remember him.

She never did.

“Remember me,” he begged, yearning for a flicker of recognition as her Light separated, but it was too late. She had slipped away.

He cradled her body and wept…again.