Moonlight Murder

*Announced by neither lightning nor thunder, a sudden hard rain roared down the night and drummed the roof.

*The inky trees silvered with moonlight were like a forest dreamed into existence by an artist with etching-needles, a black wax ground board and an eye for the eerie.

*There could be no menace in the moon yet it hung (~~over the night~~) as if it were a dragon’s egg from which some world-ending beast would hatch.

* The rain withered to an end as she finished the task, and the waning day came to an early twilight under the wrung-out cloud.

*His corpse toppled backward into the life that had splashed out on the floor behind him.

*Somehow a smile seemed more dangerous just now, a challenge to Fate that Fate would not ignore.

*Almost 40 years of grief and settled sorrow had worked upon the flesh, and even a single smile – perhaps even 10,000 of them – could not erase the engraved melancholy.

*His face had been so gently folded by time and so respectfully drawn by gravity that advanced age was, in his case, a grace.

◊ To be separated from him was a deep-heart sorrow.

>He had no idea what had possessed his daughter to do such a thing, but whatever the reason, it had brought back the past.

< They sat together side by side, the three of them, and watched in silence as the fire devoured the past.

∞ And now, let’s open a magnificent red wine.

◊ In the crystal cups , the smooth and steady (~~candle~~) flames elongated and fluttered like serpent tongues.

Raili Tanska

Steps for Peace

Day by day, what you do is what you become.

Heraclitus

How this story was created:

I don’t know quite what to call this, it’s just something that emerged from somewhere within my Muse. I have created this short murder mystery from books written by two authors – Dean Koontz and Judy Nunn.

I have used the last lines from three of Judy Nunn’s books – > Maralinga, <Elianne and ∞Spirit of the Ghan

The rest are drawn from two books written by Dean Koontz: the Jane Hawk series – *The Silent Corner and ◊The Crooked Staircase. His descriptive languaging is just superb.