{"id":1654,"date":"2017-02-28T15:14:41","date_gmt":"2017-02-28T20:14:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stephaniesilberwordsworks.com\/?p=1654"},"modified":"2017-04-22T13:30:14","modified_gmt":"2017-04-22T17:30:14","slug":"honor-oscar-excerpt-dark-side-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hometeamproductions.tv\/wordsworks\/honor-oscar-excerpt-dark-side-time\/","title":{"rendered":"IN HONOR OF OSCAR: Excerpt from THE DARK SIDE OF TIME"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this tale of horror and suspense, protagonists Sunny, a struggling actor, and husband\u00a0 Andrew, who has had to compromise his own ambitions, have recently moved into a 19th<\/sup> century cottage with their toddler daughter.\u00a0 It was to be the home of their dreams, but it is turning out to be the miasmic stuff of nightmares. \u00a0In this scene, Sunny, in NYC to meet her agent, has caught her husband in a lie \u2013 he\u2019s not working overtime, as he’d told her, he\u2019s sitting in a bar, which has been occurring all too frequently of late. She hails a cab only to find the driver is one of three mysterious neighbors living in the vacated convent on the church grounds abutting the cottage.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Outside, full dark, and the neon contrails of the rush hour vehicles streaked through the gridded canyons of the city.\u00a0 Sunny headed back east toward Grand Central.\u00a0 But first, another stop at Andrew\u2019s building, and her timing was as perfect as her hunch; her husband was coming through the revolving doors, alone, and he too turned east.\u00a0 For a shining moment Sunny\u2019s heart lifted.\u00a0 He\u2019d gotten off early for once.\u00a0 He was hurrying home to join her and the baby for dinner.\u00a0 Everything that had happened could be explained.\u00a0 Misunderstandings.\u00a0 Overheated imaginations.\u00a0 The strain of their unwanted houseguest.<\/p>\n

Andrew strode down Park Avenue toward the terminal, but unexpectedly veered into the Waldorf.\u00a0 Sunny followed, head down, watching as her husband entered Sir Harry\u2019s Bar, right off the lobby, and by then she\u2019d seen enough.\u00a0 The piano in the lobby tinkled out a little Gershwin riff over the hum of talk and laughter.\u00a0 Sunny\u2019s shoulders slumped.\u00a0 Her feet throbbed, and a certain moisture about her right heel indicated the genesis of a bloodying blister on the rise.\u00a0 She turned, half expecting to see Mrs. Smith stride in, soign\u00e9e and elegant, tossing her long hair back with a slender hand, garbed in chic head to toe black.\u00a0 But there were only strangers.\u00a0 Why, in a neighborhood crawling with happy hour haunts, would he choose a hotel <\/em>bar?\u00a0 And why alone, and not with colleagues?\u00a0 Sunny guessed she knew.\u00a0 She would not follow him in; but if she had, and if she\u2019d been a fly on the wall, or otherwise rendered invisible, she would have seen him sitting alone, drinking martinis one after the other, downcast, looking at no one save the bartender when necessary, responding to nothing.\u00a0 One hand cupping his chin, fingers splayed across his mouth, forefinger tapping incessantly at the side of his nose.<\/p>\n

Back on the street, she stood at the curb to flag a cab, and was numbly surprised to see one glide over immediately.\u00a0 Sunny took a tired breath and clambered in, glancing back once at the hotel.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m just going a few blocks,\u201d she told the driver.\u00a0 He turned then, grinning broadly, and it was Shepherd at the wheel.\u00a0 He even had a hack license displayed on the dash, with his picture and his name, reading simply, \u2018Shepherd.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cHey, Chiquita,\u201d he said.\u00a0 \u201cWhere can I take you?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShepherd.\u00a0 You sure hold a lot of jobs.\u201d\u00a0 She stared with little interest out the window at the slur of traffic.\u00a0 The radio faintly audible, Madonna\u2019s \u2018Justify My Love.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI multi-task like nobody\u2019s business,\u201d he told her.\u00a0 \u201cThat\u2019s my MOS. Military Occupational Specialty, to the untutored.\u00a0 I\u2019m a busy, busy man.\u00a0 Industrious, so to speak.\u201d\u00a0 He turned up the radio.\u00a0 Madonna moaned and whispered, cajoling.\u00a0 \u201cToo bad I wasn\u2019t around for your little visit there yesterday.\u00a0 Lucky thing ol\u2019 Bachelor wasn\u2019t in residence \u2013 he might could\u2019ve torn your fucking throat out, me not there.\u00a0 Find out what was puzzling you?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow did you know I was there?\u201d Sunny asked.\u00a0 (Tell me your stories I\u2019m not afraid of who you are we can fly!)\u00a0 <\/em>In the rear view mirror Shepherd\u2019s eyes burned into hers.\u00a0 A faraway reluctant stirring in her blood.\u00a0 (I\u2019m open\u2026and ready\u2026for you\u2026to justify my love\u2026)<\/em><\/p>\n

He tossed the flashlight lightly into the backseat.\u00a0 \u201cYour property.\u00a0 You forget, Chica.\u00a0 This is YOURS.\u00a0 I worked down your basement.\u00a0 I\u2019ve USED this.\u00a0 You left it in the bushes, but I don\u2019t miss much.\u00a0 Missed you <\/em>though.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWere the Smiths home?\u00a0 Somebody was.\u00a0 There was someone standing on the stairs as I left.\u201d\u00a0 As I fucking ran away.\u00a0 Wetting my panties, and not in a good way.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cNegative,\u201d Shepherd said shortly.\u00a0 \u201cHe works nights.\u00a0 She wouldn\u2019t have been home yet \u2013 she works late.\u00a0 Like somebody else we know.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to hear it,\u201d Sunny said, but without irritation.\u00a0 \u201cWas it you then?\u201d\u00a0 She lowered her head.\u00a0 In the traffic\u2019s play of light and shadow, her clasped hands moved almost independently of herself, knuckles cracking.\u00a0 Like the bones of small animals.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cHELLS, no, Chica.\u00a0 I always love a visit with you.\u00a0 Wouldn\u2019t pass it up, not for love or money.\u201d\u00a0 The cab sped onto the ramp to the FDR north.\u00a0 The air in the taxi suddenly static, buzzing.\u00a0 Tiny bits of glittering confetti swirled in Sunny\u2019s field of vision, snowing inside and out.\u00a0 The sound of warp and tectonic fracturing, her mind pitching and yawing.\u00a0 (Hoping\u2026praying\u2026for you\u2026to justify my love\u2026)<\/em><\/p>\n

The taxi stretched and morphed and was then a taxi no more, but a limo, redolent with the fragrance of fine leather.\u00a0 Shepherd was sitting beside her.\u00a0 He slipped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close.<\/p>\n

\u201cCome for a ride with me, little girl?\u201d\u00a0 He dropped his face into the scented essence of her hair.\u00a0 Whispered, \u201cYou don\u2019t know what we might find.\u00a0 I want you.\u00a0 To know.\u201d\u00a0 Reached for the bottle of wine set open and ready on the walnut minibar.\u00a0 The wine from the Smiths, with its strange, hypnotic label, the tossing, luminous red sea and the scarred white face of the moon holding the secrets of eternity to itself.\u00a0 He poured out formally, for both, handing Sunny hers with care that not a drop would spill.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2019This is thy hour, Oh Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,\u2019\u201d he said.\u00a0 \u201cHere\u2019s to Mr. Walt Whitman.\u00a0 And to you, darlin\u2019.\u201d\u00a0 Clicked his glass against hers, never shifting his yellow gaze away from her.\u00a0 Sipping.\u00a0 Sighing with pleasure.\u00a0 Finally leaning his great head back against the seat, his craggy profile in sharp relief against the moving lights of passing vehicles.<\/p>\n

\u201cMi querida.\u00a0 Do you want it?\u201d\u00a0 A susurration, an incantation.<\/p>\n

Sunny drank.\u00a0 The wine a tantalizing puzzle, nectarous, dizzying.\u00a0 Shepherd kissed her then, fully, and she could taste the wine in his kiss, and it was good.<\/p>\n

Sunny woke to full daylight in a strange bed, though she was not aware that it was strange; she had no memories of any past, of any existence beyond the present.\u00a0 (O Reader, have you guessed perhaps that such a life, with its humble trappings and its failures and sorrows and imperfect loves, may never have existed at all?)\u00a0 Only morningtime, naked in a sumptuous bed.\u00a0 Three walls of windows revealed an expanse of steep hillside, with a shining city far below shooting spires of glass and steel into the pale blue haze of the sky.\u00a0 She could smell eucalyptus and a good roast coffee; the latter was laid on a tray upon the nighttable, steaming gently, already poured.<\/p>\n

When Shepherd entered she could not have known he was altered \u2013 gone his rough edges, his beard stubble, his coarse manner; intact his subtle suggestion of the anomalous, the \u2018other.\u2019\u00a0 His tan hair brushed back smoothly from his forehead, and could his eyebrows have been waxed?\u00a0 (They were; but here in the glass house in the hills, his eyebrows have always been groomed, and so were unremarkable.)<\/p>\n

He bent to kiss her, and she knew from his kiss that he was her lover as well as her bodyguard.\u00a0 \u201cReady for the big day?\u201d\u00a0 She smiled at him.\u00a0 \u201cYou\u2019ve worked hard for this,\u201d he said.\u00a0 It\u2019s about time.\u201d\u00a0 He pulled back the duvet, slapped her lightly on the ass.\u00a0 \u201cYou better kick it up,\u201d he said.\u00a0 \u201cYou\u2019ve got about a thousand stylists running around clucking like a bunch of hens.\u00a0 Also flowers are arriving.\u201d<\/p>\n

A light knock at the door, and a pretty young woman popped her head in.\u00a0 Her name, Sunny knew, was Peg.\u00a0 \u201cMorning!\u00a0 Phone calls coming in by the dozens already, and not even ten AM.\u00a0 You talking, or not?\u201d<\/p>\n

Sunny fell back onto the pillows.\u00a0 \u201cNot.\u00a0 Not until after, when I have something to say one way or the other.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shepherd laughed.\u00a0 \u201cYou have your notes ready for that?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMore or less, I suppose,\u201d Sunny told him.\u00a0 \u201cBut please let\u2019s not get ahead of ourselves here.\u00a0 I\u2019d feel too bad if I walk out of there empty handed after running my mouth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou won\u2019t, Chica,\u201d Shepherd said confidently.\u00a0 \u201cTrust me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Feeling him watching her, she stood and walked naked into the bath, turned the faucets on full.\u00a0 The platform bathtub was as large as a plunge pool, and the wall of windows in this room overlooked the gardens and infinity pool shimmering precariously over the city in the lemony light.\u00a0 Black marble, sleek built-in fireplace with a flatscreen mounted above it.\u00a0 Sunny lit the scented white candles surrounding the tub, and settled floating into the warm fizzing waters with a soft exhalation.<\/p>\n

In the mellow afternoon, Shepherd, urbane in evening clothes, pressed a broad hand into the small of her back.\u00a0 Crowds beyond barricades were beginning to scream her name as they caught sight of her.\u00a0 She was wrapped like a present in sheer layers the color of sunshine and as weightless, pale as her hair, which lifted in the mild breeze.\u00a0 That eucalyptus scent wafting.\u00a0 She was calm and happy.\u00a0 Flashbulbs popped.\u00a0 They were on the red carpet then, and she smiled easily, first this way, and then that, mics thrust in her face no bother at all, minions milling, stylists fussing, handlers allowing only some to speak to her and the afternoon dissolved into the sweeping space of the theater, and there was her very face on screen as the clip began, large as a building and as beautiful as the sun, and later the golden idol was offered to her and she took it and it was solid and heavy and real and the roaring hurricane of applause remained in her very ears as she opened her eyes on the commuter railroad, still a peak hour train, heading north toward home.\u00a0 She could feel the blisters on her oozing feet.\u00a0 The tailcap lanyard of the Dorcy LED flashlight protruded snakelike from her purse.\u00a0 Sunny reached past it for her cellphone, dialed Stuart.<\/p>\n

\u201cHey, favorite client!\u201d \u00a0Her agent all cordiality and self-assurance.\u00a0 \u201cYou in?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSorry, Stuart,\u201d she told him.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m out.\u201d\u00a0 She had never felt more certain about anything in her life.\u00a0 Except perhaps for when she decided the cottage on Church Lane should be hers.\u00a0 But that was another story.<\/p>\n

DISCLAIMER:\u00a0 Stephanie Silber owns the copyright to the foregoing and gives permission only for the sample herein to be distributed free of charge, and without alteration.<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this tale of horror and suspense, protagonists Sunny, a struggling actor, and husband\u00a0 Andrew, who has had to compromise his own ambitions, have recently moved into a 19th century cottage with their toddler daughter.\u00a0 It was to be the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n