Ghost Lover (standard:romance, 779 words)
Author: Siobhan McHenry	Added: Oct 14 2003	Views/Reads: 3283/1	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
a romantic story of the search for love, UNFINISHED!!!

Nighttime Musings. 

During the night, there would be enough silence in the air for atoms of
inspiration to come together, flooding into the stillness of his mind 
and body. At that moment -- would suddenly jump out of bed to 
frantically write down his ideas before they became lost in dreams or 
would fade out like time. 

To him, it did not matter what he wrote as long as a steady stream of
thought kept flowing. Sometimes,as soon as the light was switched on, 
like the flick of a match, the flame of ideas would disappear as 
quickly as they had appeared. Nostalgic memories would intersperse with 
the events of the day. New ideas would break forth, although often they 
were merely remainders of his hidden subconcious thoughts. His 
loneliness was an extreme emptiness. 

A new light would shine on new meanings in the quiet of night; the only
noise, his ink pen scuttling across the page. Poetry and fresh 
imagination would hurry to rise before the sun. Every idea that could 
be written competed and won against the speed at which he could set 
them down, often leaving a confused mess of scribblings, on scraps of 
paper and the backs of cigarette packets. 

To be a writer, to him, meant to be always alert and most often alone, a
solitary life was required, making him an open vessel into which could 
be poured all kinds of godly inspiration. 

The things he had dreamt of lately, with eyes wide awake, had mostly
apertained to the question of Love, a deep lonely longing which left 
him wondering whether there was also anyone seeking him. He often lay 
on his side, his arm outstretched, lightly clutching the ghostly hand 
of his imagined lover. As the touch seemed so real to him, he could 
calmly await the assurance that she too was holding his hand in her own 
loneliness. 

This keen yearning and alertness at night, more often led him outside,
to smoke a cigarette and wait for the dawn, when the frost on the trees 
slowly melted to a silky dew, and colours rarely seen during the day 
would emerge with the first light of the sun... 

She appeared to him in a wakeful dream...standing in the doorway of his
front room where he lay sprawled out on the floor, after a drunken 
evening. 

A blue light filtered into the room, a presence moved close to him, he
smelt the faint musky smell of a delicate perfume... in the shadows of 
the dark room, the slender, beautiful silohuette of a woman was cast on 
the wall, he could not make out a face. He saw the whiteness of her 
teeth as she smiled, reflecting the moonlight that shone in like a pale 
searchlight. She moved across the room and picked out a book from the 
shelf, opened it at a random page,and  put it down on a chair. The moon 
disappeared behind the clouds bringing the black of night back into the 
room. With it she was gone. 

He ran into the hall, bumping into the door, grasping the walls for the
lightswitch. The sharpness of the electric light blinded him for a 
moment. After a few seconds, when he had adjusted to the light, he 
crept out through the front door to catch  sight of the stranger in the 
street. There was no sign of her anywhere. 

He went back into the front room, the book was still there on the
chair!! It was no dream then it seemed. He picked up the book and read 
the first few paragraphs on the left-hand page. It was a collection of 
Love poetry. He read of Erminia,  a princess from Antioch, who fears 
for  her love, Tancred, a crusader prince, with whom she had fallen in 
love with whilst being held captive as his prisoner, it read; 

"Her grief was such, she lived not half the year; Yet banishment, nor
loss of friends constrained, The hapless maid, her passion to forebear; 
For though exceeding were her woe and grief, Of all her sorrows yet her 
love was chief." 

Who was this mysterious lover, had it been a dream? A drunken
hallucination? Was she indeed the ghostly lover who had been holding 
his hand all those nights he had prayed for her. 

Was she real or had he merely gone mad from such deep yearnings? Was his
Love truely a ghost, already gone from this world and never would he 
meet her face to face in the light of day? 

He slept little the next night, conscious of a strangely spiritual air
to the crisp, frosty night, but this time no one came. 


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