The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

 

Cover art photo for the novel, ACT OF CONTRITION. Photo (c) 2017, Richard C. Trice, all rights reserved. 

            Brokenness, it is said, is the first step to healing. 

            Right. 

         But Trent had discovered, after all this time, that there exists a level of "broken" that refuses to be repaired, that remains untouchable, untreatable . . . unhealable. A brokenness which eludes every skill of the physician's hand. A brokenness born of having once had such a perfect sweetness wrap itself around the heart that waves of wholeness had begun to radiate outward, flooding the entire being, manifesting itself in positive energies, from the mundane to the majestic, in everything you did in every single day. But then only to awaken one of the those days to find that this radiance, this completeness, had been brutally ripped right out of your soul. Such violence leaves only a devastated landscape in its wake, at all levels physically, psychologically, even spiritually. There would never be a complete healing--scar tissue, perhaps, on the surface--but an open, bleeding wound deep down, never to hold a suture in place; a constant reminder of something so very precious now forever lost. 

            In Trent's case, on one particular day of this enlightened clarity, there had also been birthed a certain form of madness, not pervasive--yet--but tickling around the perimeters of his mind.  Since then, he had learned that this madness would continue to evade all attempts of healing. No amount of distractions, whether through music, a good dinner, or drinking, or the touch of a real woman, proved anything more than a passing titillation. For it was this madness that would now and forever become his closest and dearest companion--his only real mistress--from now until the end of his days. 

            And he would come to learn to cherish and embrace her like the lover she was, because she was now all he was capable of feeling. 

Excerpt from the novel ACT OF CONTRITION, (c) 2017 by Richard C. Trice and TriceTunes, all rights reserved.