Fiction

Pieces
by Trent Hudley

The only light in the room was from the television, a pale, blue-white haze suspended in the surrounding darkness like a patch of metallic mist. Elder DeVille, wrapped in the mist, sat naked, except for his plaid boxer shorts and a can of Pabst beer. Stiff and motionless in his recliner, he stared, unblinking, forward. The television cast gray, flickering shadows across his body, and the sound, turned down low, suffused in his head with the voices from the other room. The images from the television paraded in front of his vision in disconnected flashes of color. A collage of sight and sound swirled around his head, like a thin cloud of smoke.
     He could hear his sister Mary's voice, thin, soft and airy as if it were carried on a breeze from some great distance away. He knew the voice was his sister's, and somewhere in his consciousness he knew...