Come Into My Dark
an excerpt

The letter waited patiently on Arthur's bedside table, where he'd placed it during the night. He'd had more than one bad dream, the details of which he could not recall, but he knew that the letter was partly to blame. He knew this, and he had not even opened it yet. And now he could barely get himself to try. After breakfast, he told himself as he pulled on his day clothes, painstakingly buttoning up the flannel shirt with his arthritic hands, after breakfast I'll read this damned thing.

At breakfast however, old Jimmy Shriner passed out face first into his eggs and toast, and was rushed away by ambulance to Hilltower General. This got everybody talking, especially Ginny Tibbs who always said that Jimmy Shriner had a big ol' crush on her. The whole strange scene gave Arthur no reason to go back to his room and back to his letter. Before he knew it lunch had arrived, and then he and a few other residents filed into the tv room to watch the Weekly News. Long ago it had been the Weekly Political Roundup, but in these parts there were no elected officials anymore; people in positions of serving the town kept then until they died, at which time, the jobs were filled by applying and interviewing, just like any other job, like stocking shelves at the supermarket. They'd grown weary of elections being rigged and decided no one cared anymore, so why keep up the old pattern of things? The Weekly News this days didn't cover much more than how the weather was affecting change across the United States: parts of California had drifted off into the ocean and were now a floating island resort; Mississippi had been all but obliterated in several years' worth of tropical storms and now it wasn't even on maps or recognized as a State. More states were expected to have the same eventual status. The United States of America were shrinking instead of growing.

Through all the events and distractions of the day, Arthur never once forgot about the letter, which, for someone prone to forgetting just about everything, that was saying something. It had him by the throat and would not let him go, and he didn't have the first clue as to why.