"Dancing Away": There's true love and then there's pure love

Occasionally, I pull out stories I've written and relive them. The purpose is to track style and determine if the long term metamorphosis of my story-telling is good or, maybe, return to a few of those style points  abandoned or set aside inadvertently. Sure, I have learned many things from other novelists, critics and reviewers but, sometimes, a simple look back at our own journey can be an educational reminder.

This morning, I opened a short story titled "Dancing Away" and read it for the first time in several years. I learned I have a style that needs to be revisited and incorporated into the romance novel I'm currently drafting.

Here is the first couple of pages of the short story, "Dancing Away":

I can’t breathe!

Why can’t I inhale?

My face, I can’t feel my face!

I know my hands are there, just as they have been for seventy-six years. My senses tell me so. But where are they?

What’s happening?

I see light—abundant light, yet I turn my hands this way and that and see nothing. The light flows over me liked warmed satin. Neither shadows nor objects are visible as far as the light shines.

This… Light… striates and flexes; there is comfort in it. I’m becoming aware that I stand witness to the length and breadth of infinity and know, I just somehow know, when the light fades, I’ll see universal truths reserved until this moment. I’m entwined in the past yet long to embrace the future. This awareness is simply instilled.

The draw is powerful. But another force of equal power tugs.

Again, it occurs to me that no breath enters my lungs.

Now I remember. It was a tumor, I think.

Knowing this answers nothing, just a reason for more questions. How is it I can contemplate these things, if in such pain?

Where is the pain?

Could it be powerful drugs?

I feel no discomforts, nothing but—but a tingling joy.

Josephine!

Bolting upright—at least it feels I have done so; it occurs to me that joy and Josephine are synonymous, inseparable; one cannot exist without the other.

My Jojo—memories flood in and burn white-hot. Desire fuels a fire as an accelerant tossed upon a flame.

We’ve become separated. I cannot see or call to her.

I want to shout her name but I have no voice.

My soundless distress has been heard. The Light wrinkles and I look down upon the saddened face of my Jojo, framed in lustrous silver hair holding the hand of a pathetically drawn man with tubes and wires splaying from his upper torso to points surrounding a hospital bed.

Suddenly, I feel warmth sliding across my palm—the palm of a hand I still cannot see. It’s Jojo.

I watch. She closes her eyes, saying something I cannot hear then sways to and fro. It’s rhythmic, like a dance.

Fearful this connection will be broken if I move, even twitch; I’ll be jettisoned from this place to… Heaven only knows where.

I long to hear the music and for that I cry tears I cannot see or feel.

My intention hardens.

I’ll not move, not even blink, for eternity if necessary. I refuse to sever this thread that keeps me bound.

I’ll be patient and wait for the day I can again hear the music.

"Dancing Away" is available for download at Amazon.com. 

http://www.amazon.com/Dancing-Away-Daniel-Lance-Wright-ebook/dp/B0056IAKWO/ref=sr_1_13?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1406887432&sr=1-13&keywords=daniel+lance+wright

If you decide to spend the $.99 for the download, I promise you will not be disappointed.