“Holy Grounds” by Avra Elliott (fiction ’15)
An excerpt from “Holy Grounds ” by Avra Elliott (fiction ’15) published by Waxwing.
Holy Grounds
When Eddie’s sister Colleen first told him of Harold’s death, he’d pictured the old writer in a smoking jacket sitting in an overstuffed burgundy armchair, worn novel in his lap, a cigarette — or perhaps cigar — smoldering in a crystal ashtray beside him. As Harold drew his last breath, his soul, a grey version of his body if classic films were to be believed, would stand up and walk into the arms of one of Harold’s dark-haired damsels. That seemed the natural death of an aging, chain-smoking Western mystery writer. To hear a year after the fact that his friend had been killed by an insane man in a park, his face broken by a two-by-four, was to realize he’d been viewing life through a kaleidoscope. With the smallest shift what he knew to be a circle shrank into a dot and exploded into new patterns of nameless shapes and colors. Eddie began to suspect his favorite jacket had been stolen, not misplaced, and when Colleen said their father had sold the family home a few months before, she meant burned it to the ground.
