“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” came the doleful, final testament from Reverend Stanley Howard in tribute to the life of Constance Linkler.
        Warren Linkler stood from the velvet-covered metal folding chair under the royal blue canopy and approached the bronze-colored casket one last time. The few in attendance gave their friend his moment of closure and farewell to the wife he had been so devoted to…so in love with.
        Placing his hand on her metal coffin, he whispered, “I never knew such a beautiful, kind, loving person as you existed in this universe.  I hope I showed you that in life.  I hope I gave you sufficient joy, because it will never equal the joy you brought me.”
        He turned away and slowly walked toward the Lincoln Town Car waiting to carry him back to his home; but before he reached the car, he was momentarily halted by George and Helen Schwartz.  “Warren, we would really like you to come over to the house today.  You shouldn’t be alone.  Not today.”
  
Helen had been Constance’s best girlfriend ever since grade school. The two women had shared everything together. There was no secret that hadn’t been disclosed between them, as it never went any further—every secret, save one.
        “No thank you, Helen,” Warren said gently, embracing them both.  They had been good friends and accepted him without question into their lives and small, but tight circle of friends, because Constance loved him.  “I promise I will come over tomorrow, though.”
        Helen looked into his green eyes.  “I will hold you to that promise.  Our door will always be open to you.”
        George and Helen made their way to their car, steadying each other’s gait over the uneven patches of the cemetery.  High school sweethearts, they were now in their mid-eighties.
  
Warren looked out the window of the limousine as it traveled through the little rural community. The streets would never have the same meaning for him as they did when he and Constance strolled in the summer sun along them.  He smiled, remembering the way her strawberry-colored hair would blow in the spring breeze and cover her face, only to be tenderly pulled away by Warren’s caressing hand.  He had known this day would come eventually and wanted nothing to interfere with his memory of her face and each day he had shared with her.
        Constance was the only one who had ever seen through his façade.  She had looked into his heart the first time they’d encountered each other at the service station she worked at—and from that very first, chance meeting, they knew they would be together until this day.
        Warren pondered that word, “chance.”  Constance believed that God had brought them together.  Warren had never happened upon God in his travels and, at first, did not believe such a thing possible.  But his vehicle had needed fuel and he had driven into this tiny community from the nearest exit ramp on the interstate in the hope of finding gasoline.  He found gasoline, and he found Constance.  They had never spent a day apart after that first meeting. Warren still didn’t believe in God, but he didn’t believe in coincidence either.
   
Warren was a scientist.  Together they traveled the world. Warren had wealth and wanted Constance to share in his exploration of mankind.  She even tolerated his study of military bases those first few years.  After his research was completed, they continued traveling to wherever Constance wanted to visit.  North, south, east and west, they bathed in each other’s love.  “Where” they loved wasn’t important.  It was the “loving” that mattered.
  
The limousine stopped in front of the small two-bedroom wood-framed house that Warren and Constance had shared for so many decades.  Instead of going inside, he walked around the home and into the backyard.  It was fall and the leaves had already gone through the miracle of changing hues, and most had found their way to the earth below.
        He looked at the afternoon sky and recalled the night he decided to tell Constance the truth.
  
Stars were blazing that night in the cloudless sky.  It was a beautiful summer’s eve that paled in comparison to Constance’s beauty in Warren’s eyes.  Constance was sixty-seven then.  They were sitting on the wooden lawn swing he and Constance had built and suspended from the oak tree’s longest limb.  When Warren began to speak, a gentle, tender finger pressed against his lips.
        “All I need to know is that I love you and that you love me.”  She moved in close to him and they spent the rest of the night wrapped in each other’s warmth, radiating in each other’s love, without saying a word.
  
He looked at the old swing, now decayed, but still silently moving in the breeze.  It was time.
        Warren went into the house through the back door.  In the spare bedroom, he opened the closet and pulled the pine board from atop the inner doorjamb, then plucked the tiny object out of its carved resting place.  He also removed the hollow 
    
   

Copyright ©2010 Calliope, All rights reserved.

Calliope
5975 W. Western Way
PMB 116Y
Tucson, AZ  85713

 cylinder, no bigger than a drinking straw, next to it and left the room.  He entered the bedroom that he and Constance had shared for so many years and looked at his reflection in her full-length mirror.  He had given it to her on their first wedding anni-versary.  It was an antique beveled-glass dressing mirror in a walnut frame on cast-iron feet.  Warren looked at the empty bed and thought of how he used to lie there, watching her as she stood naked in front of the mirror, combing her strawberry tresses, and, years later, her thinning gray hair.  In his eyes, her beauty never faded.
        He looked again at his reflection.  “You will not pollute the sanctity of this place. This is a shelter of beauty and peace.  It is an abode of love.  You owe her more than this,” he said to the image.
       
Warren went out to the backyard again.  He unwrapped the tiny object from its cloak of silver cloth and held it in his hand.  It was no larger than the acorns the squirrels gathered from the oak tree that supported the swing that he and Constance used to sit in together. The little fragment of crystal sparkled in the sunlight, as Warren’s fingers enveloped it and his eyes closed.  He envisioned a motel room he had once stayed in before he had found Constance…before he had found love.  He didn’t know if the motel still existed.
  
It didn’t.  When he opened his eyes, he found he was standing inside a shopping mall.  It would do.
        Across from him there was a men’s clothing store.  He entered and selected a suit from the rack then eased his way into a dressing room.  Placing the suit’s hanger on a hook, he held out his hand and focused on the tiny crystal.  Prismatic colors of the fragment surrendered to a brilliant pink chromaticity as it transmitted his signal.  The color property faded only to reappear as an iridescent blue, acknowledgment that his signal had been received.
        Warren walked around the mall for several hours studying the people—the lovers—as they shopped.  Finally, an announcement came over the speaker system that it was 9:00 p.m., and the mall was closing.  He quickly returned to the clothing store and its dressing room.
        Removing his clothing, he stared at the skin he had so patiently crafted, manicured, and textured each and every day, so that Constance would never feel she was growing old alone.  They had shared age together.  Warren studied his body for the last time.  It was his final connection to love…to Constance.
  
He closed his eyes and allowed the process to begin. Slowly the shell lost its elasticity and liquefied, dripping from his natural form into a silicone puddle on the floor.  He chose not to open what had been his eyes before turning away from the mirror when the process was completed.  He didn’t want to be reminded yet.  He wanted to hold her memory as long as he could.
        Clutching the crystal shard and clear tube in his two tendrils, he envisioned a room in a house he knew well.
  
Opening the single slit that covered the membrane that accepted and processed viewing, he examined the sleeping forms.  He slid the crystal into the tube, which expanded to accept the shard.  He stroked the tube and the crystal glowed pink again, while he envisioned the deaths of the two bodies. A rose-colored shaft of light exploded around the couple, sucking away the oxygen so necessary for life. They died instantly, painlessly, never knowing that death had come to them.
  
Za’Ron remained there a moment longer than necessary, analyzing the remains of George and Helen Schwartz.  He knew he would be chastised for disobeying orders, for killing before the military installations had been neutralized, but that wasn’t important anymore.  He had chosen to save George and Helen from the devastation, carnage, and terror of the Crescendium invasion he had signaled to commence upon this planet called Earth.
        They were Constance’s friends.  He killed them out of gratitude for their friendship.  Constance would have wanted it that way.  It was his final gift to her.
    
    
                       About the Author
     
        D. A. Kentner, now retired, was Chief of Police of Freeport, Illinois, an auctioneer, antiques dealer, and still performs Estate Assessments occasionally for specific clients.  He has a degree in Law Enforcement and is a Federally-certified instructor in “Communication for Community Policing.  He returned to writing after a thirty-eight year hiatus.
        His short stories have been accepted for publication in Faraway Journal, Jukebox Journal, Static Movement, and Clockwise Cat.  His short story, “Search for Publication,” appeared in the Spring 2009 issue of Calliope.  He has completed two novels and is close to finishing a third.  He submitted one of the novels, Death—1, Pretzels—0, a murder mystery, to the 2010 St. Martin’s Minotaur/ Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Competition, and is awaiting the results.