Presto - Prologue
#1 of Presto
Sometimes the quiet of the night raises specters of the past, and sometimes they insist that we entertain them. Arden sits alone with his memories, his guilt, and his responsibility. It is a dark night of the soul, but who knows what the dawn will bring?
Thanks to Tank Jaeger for his friendship, continued support, and proofing.
This is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Story and all characters ©2022 The Golden Unicorn.
Arden leaned back in the uncomfortable wooden desk chair, and pinched the bridge of his muzzle, rubbing the corners of his tired, bloodshot eyes. The fur around them was slightly matted, as it always was when he had been crying - something he seemed to be doing with much more frequency lately. Tonight had been three months to the day. Strangely, time didn't heal all wounds.
He glanced at the glowing, muted television on the counter to his right, and then squinted back at the blazing spotlight cast by the lone desk lamp onto the narrow, cluttered, built-in, desktop-dining table - the main feature of the laughably small "efficiency" apartment that he shared with his depression. For the past couple of hours, he had forced himself to face the emotional roller-coaster that he'd ridden for the past two years - well, half his life actually, if he was fully honest - and to commit that confrontation to paper; a travelogue of sorts of the high and low points of his existence. There the beginnings of the testament sat, in the unforgiving glare of the bare bulb.
He'd hoped for clarity, for peace - for absolution. But instead, what he had was an elegy, for a life truly gone too soon. He closed his eyes as tears began to well up again, his ears flattening in despair. How did this help? What was it all for? And what the hell do I do now?