When You Die in Your Dreams

This is the first in a series of daily excerpts from my novella,
"When You Die in Your Dreams" available on Kindle for 99 cents
Check back daily for the next installment.

Part One

As the fog began to dissipate I found myself wandering through the largest bookstore I'd ever seen. Three stories high and floors that seemed to stretch out to infinity. In the center was a beautifully landscaped atrium with soaring stone walls and exotic plants from all over the globe. A waterfall cascaded thirty feet from a rock ledge near the ceiling into a pool on the first floor. A glass-walled elevator ascended and descended behind the aqueous curtain.

As I stood awestruck in the middle of the store admiring the grandeur a clerk approached me.

“Parker? Parker Edwards?” He fidgeted anxiously.

“Yes. That's me,” I replied.

“You're late! Come with me,” he said as he grabbed my arm and frantically ushered me to the book signing chamber on the third floor.

A podium was set up at the front of the room. Next to it was a table filled with stacks and stacks of my latest novel. I was to give a short talk about my book and then sit at the table where I would meet fans and sign their copies.

I positioned myself at the lectern and glanced over at the books: 300 empty pages and a blank cover. My mouth dried out and sweat beaded up on my forehead. How could this have happened? I looked down at myself only to discover to my horror that I was naked from head to toe. I sheepishly looked up at the sea of chairs before me. Fortunately no one had shown up to hear me speak or buy my book. I shriveled behind the rostrum.

Dead leaves swirled in the breeze and crunched under my feet as I walked up the path to our front porch.

“That's odd,” I thought to myself, noticing that my wife's car was not in the driveway. “Janelle didn't say anything about going out.”

I pulled the piece of paper -- an eviction notice from the Sheriff's department -- from the jamb before opening the door and walking inside. As I laid the note on the table in the foyer I heard my wife rustling about upstairs.

“Janelle, where's the car?” I called up to her.

She did not respond but a moment later came stumbling down the steps with a large suitcase in each hand, the portmanteaus thudding heavily off each tread.

“Janelle?” I said as she trudged past me and out the front door, never making eye contact.

“Janelle!” I called out as she got into a cab that was waiting outside. After the driver loaded her bags into the trunk the yellow taxi pulled out of the driveway, taking the love of my life out of my life for good.

I walked back inside and made my way into the kitchen where I found the note, which she intended for me to find after she was gone, lying on the counter next to the sink with her wedding ring on top.

Parker,
I'm sorry, but I didn't sign on for this.

The car was repossessed this morning.

Don't bother trying to call. Have a nice life.

Janelle

I sat down on the floor and buried my head in my hands. Tears seeped through the fissures between my fingers. What am I going to do? Where am I going to go? As I contemplated my future -- whether or not I even wanted to go on -- I heard a knock at the front door. I got up and went to the dining room window and pulled back the curtain. It was the sheriff, there to evict me.

How did all of this happen? Things had been so good. Janelle and I were newly-married, had just built our dream home, my books were selling well - and then I hit the dreaded writer's block. I couldn't produce another novel and sales of my previous volumes dried up. It all seemed to fall apart in the blink of an eye; like a bad dream. I just wanted to get away.