Posts Tagged ‘Fiction’
Returning CHAPTER 24: TRANSCENDING
By PATRICK CABELLO HANSEL Where is the best place to jump between centuries? Or perhaps, the better question is: when is the best place to jump between centuries? For while travelling through space seems pretty straightforward, it often isn’t. Roadblocks and detours abound. Travelling through time, with the idea that you can bend time to your advantage, is both impossible and widely practiced, sometimes successfully. Thank you to Dave and Mary Ellen for their suggestions of the liminal spaces where time travel of the unusual sort can occur! For those of you who doubt its existence, hang in there. You’ve followed the previous 23 and ½ chapters, which are in the past. You’ve wondered where our blessed family is going, which is in the future. So right now, in the present, suspend disbelief and follow along with me. I may not know where I am going, but I trust the trip will be fine. This is a ghost story, after all. In the first novella “Searching,” Matthew Kelly [...]
CHAPTER 23: AGNES MAKES A FAITHFUL DECISION
By PATRICK CABELLO HANSEL The name Agnes means “pure, holy,” from the Greek hagne. Going further back, the Indo-European root may be hyag, meaning “to sacrifice.” Those two meanings are about to collide in our elder Agnes, as she makes a fateful, nay, a faithful, decision to defy Brian Fleming and his ilk. Of course, no human is perfectly pure or holy, at least not in terms of the perfection we set as a standard. But here’s another linguistic lesson, sports fans, “to perfect” doesn’t just mean to do a job perfectly. It also means to complete a task or calling in the way it was meant to be. Agnes loved her granddaughter Amethyst, the only family member she had left. She had stood by her when she fell into addiction and sex trafficking. She had practiced tough love with her, grandmother love, mother love. Ingrid, Agnes’ only daughter had been killed in a police shooting when Amethyst was 12, and Agnes took the sad and angry girl in. Ingrid had been a single [...]
RETURNING CHAPTER 22: WHERE IS SHE?
by Patrick Cabello Hansel As Angel and Luz and their son travel through space and time, we need to look in on the object of their search. That is, little Lupe, who has been missing. Remember her?! Although, I shudder to think of her as the object of her search, but more as the subject. The Brian Flemings of this world, and the forces they represent, deal with people as objects. Those who are striving to be fully human do not. What do we know? We know that Luz and Angel arrived at Lupe’s daycare late. Angel had fallen into a deep sleep with his son, still tired from working a double shift at the hospital. Luz had been sidetracked by an unexpected trip with an unexpected man down a secret chamber at the bookstore. Neither one of them could remember who was supposed to pick up Lupita from daycare. They rushed there through the slush and wind to find the center closed and part of a strange note that read: We have your light blessing. You will know where she is. They [...]
