Excerpt from my novel FATE.

 

                             The Promise of Eternal Bliss Beyond                                                              

       It became a daily habit for Emmet to go to the waterfront and sit not too far from where his mother was blown off. He knew why, but his gut‑feeling told him to say nothing, because it would only give reason for others to gossip … as if there was not enough of that being done already.
       It happened one afternoon when a sea fog was coming in to settle over the village for the night. After lighting his pipe and drawing on that sweet, rough plug he favored, he found himself looking toward the place where his mother fell, the last thought that might have passed through her mind drifting back to her early youth in Revanna, Italy ... the strong smell of cows coming down from the hillside, grazing on precious young grass that gave good milk.
       He was jolted from his daydream, sitting upright as a sudden rush of adrenaline coursed through him. Before him stood a greyhound ... sleek, grey, and still ... its piercing gaze fixed on him. It was not a threatening stare, but a stare nonetheless. Emmet knew at once this was no ordinary sighting. It was the same ghostly greyhound that had lived in his youth through his father’s stories. The greyhound that appeared when his father lay near death on the windswept beach at Blackman’s Bay in Van Diemen’s Land.
       He slumped back down, feeling his advancing age catch up with him, his confidence draining just as quickly. There were days when his mind felt as capable as it had when he was young, Irish and Italian blood running strong through him ... but this was not one of those days. Each morning, he woke physically tired, the fatigue settling into his bones, lodging in his lower back, travelling down into his phantom leg only to jab and mock him.
      Each day also brought a deeper contemplation of Death’s inevitable arrival ... the promise of release, of final peace in some eternal bliss beyond this world ... and a greyhound drawn from his father’s stories did nothing to ease that pull. He could sense the ticking clock of time counting down to his final breath of sea air. He found himself thinking of death far more often than of God Himself, turning inward during his darker moods to consider what kind of afterlife might be waiting for him.
       He was not afraid of dying … he feared how he would die.
       He imagined a peace that might exist beyond the confines of this life, a place unburdened by struggle and loss. In that vision, the chaos and heartache that had overtaken him began to recede, replaced by a calm that felt almost real. He saw his family whole again. The pull of that imagined stillness was irresistible, offering him a glimpse of what might lie beyond the weight he carried.
       Each thought of that promised eternal bliss ... where liberation might finally come ... felt only a few steps away, perhaps no farther than the place where his mother was blown off … or, just as likely, damnation to the fires of Hell, life and death being nothing more than two sides of the same coin.
       He wrestled with the idea that the narratives written by mere mortals ... called 'Holy Books' ... were fashioned to instill fear of a wrathful God, a Heaven of promised bliss, and a Hell of burning despair to chastise His own creation. Perhaps, he thought, there was some truth in it for a man like himself. Tales of sinners and saints, redemption and damnation ... he could not help wondering where he belonged within that grand scale of threat and promise.
       As these thoughts turned over, the greyhound moved closer.
       It came to him then that the line between sinner and saint was as blurred as the line between sanity and madness, and that any distant creator of mankind’s suffering was likely indifferent to the cries and prayers of His creations. He could almost smell the greyhound now ... it stood so near. Grace and mercy felt as unreachable as that imagined eternal bliss ... and yet the greyhound remained.
       Was he a sinner exposed, a fallen soul seeking forgiveness and left to wander the darker passages of his own mind? Or a saint in disguise, enduring hardship, striving for grace amid a life so saturated with death? The question echoed the unrest in his heart. Emmet Meagher knew he was wrestling with God Himself ... not with prayer or a double-edged sword, but with questions that demanded answers.
       Each question became a plea, a tug‑of‑war between hope and hopelessness, faith and doubt, all ending in silence. He reached out toward the greyhound. His hand passed through nothing but air.
       That afternoon on the waterfront, his life splintered across his mind, sowing fear and uncertainty, driving him into a cul‑de‑sac between conscious thought and darker instinct. Clarity came and went. Confusion followed close behind, carrying him toward thoughts he scarcely dared to name ... but what's the point.
       His unconscious mind had become a battleground of repressed emotion and unresolved grief, stirred fully awake by the death of his son, Marcus. The same questions returned, day after day, trapped in a snare. What was the purpose of his existence? Why could he not reach Fiadh? Why did Death feel closer to him than the living?
       The greyhound stood in his way ... not as an obstruction, but as a presence that refused to move aside.
       Though still married and under the same roof, Emmet was forced each day to confront Fiadh’s grief alongside his own. They were bound by fate and loss, yet divided by the same bond. Memories of Marcus’s death returned relentlessly, forcing him to acknowledge her suffering as well as his own, the shared grief neither dared to speak aloud.
       The greyhound locked its gaze on Emmet, deep and unwavering, as if drawing him into stillness. Its eyes held a quiet authority, a knowing calm ... something his father, Rebel, would have recognized. Emmet felt an unspoken understanding pass between them, something beyond animal instinct or mortal reason.
       He heard then the laughter of his two sons, the smell of fried fish from the kitchen that fatal morning ... ordinary memories now sharpened by loss. His heart ached with the imbalance between his pain and Fiadh’s unspoken burden, a weight that had begun to drive others away. Friends hesitated, not from malice, but from discomfort and fear of reopening wounds they did not know how to handle.
       He saw what grief had done to her ... the shell left behind where a vibrant woman once stood. He wanted to tell her she was not alone, but the words failed him, and it felt wrong to intrude upon her grief ... her personal suffering.
       The greyhound began to back away, slowly.
       Words, he knew, were blunt instruments. They reopened wounds barely scabbed, fell hollow against suffering no language could truly contain. There were no words between Emmet and the greyhound ... only understanding.
       Death was not an abstraction. It arrived for every human being from the moment of birth, dictated by fate. Natural death, violent death, accident, war, even suicide ... all were paths written long before a man understood he was walking them.
       And then the greyhound was gone.