Trifecta ~ Craft

It's time for another Trifecta and I'm joining in again. Click here for participants.

Here's how it works: Submit a writing between 33 and 333 word using this week’s one-word prompt:

CRAFT (noun)skill in deceiving to gain an end <used craft and guile to close the deal>

I just happen to have such a use of the word in Dreamscape. Written in homage to Agatha Christie, Dreamscape is a haunting, a murder, a thriller, a mystery, and a love story that transcends time. Above all, this sensual tale is a reader's Easter egg hunt in the truest sense. Not everything is as it appears. Peppered throughout are little clues suggesting a story running behind the scenes. Finding them isn't necessary to the telling of the tale, just one of the fun twists I like to insert into my writing. Can you find them all before the story ends? But more importantly, can a ghost find love among the living?

Setting the stage:
In this scene, the ghost of Dr. Jason Bowen ponders how he came to be, and the gullibility that led him there.

Craft in 287 words:

When they met she’d been such a sweet and shy little beauty. That shyness, he’d come to learn, was part of their treachery – nothing but cunning craft. When she comforted him over the untimely death of his father, he’d been surprised by how quickly he fell head over heels. Seeking to win her timid heart and encourage the comfort that would eventually lead his wife into his bed, he gave into Cathy’s every whim. No more than two months had passed before he was compelled to offer her marriage. No more than four before he found himself dead with his spirit walking the halls.

He played the details of their courtship over and over in his mind, for what else was there to occupy his thoughts? Cathy Ames had accepted his proposal eagerly, despite her less-than-enthusiastic response to his advances. These always met with a cool reserve he erroneously mistook for maidenly shyness. But Cathy didn’t possess a shy bone in her body. No, far from it. He’d seen them together in bed, his wife and his murderer. Seen for himself the eager way she clutched Richard Mason’s body to hers and treated him to a carnal knowledge obviously developed from years of knowing. Not only did it shock his senses to see his shy wife play whore and play it well, it sickened him. What a fool he’d been. Unable to stomach the sight of them, he kept to the only room they never visited—the cupola at the top of the house—and decades passed there with little concern, because time ceased to have meaning for the dead. Yes, they continued on with their merry lives, raised their foul brood, and got away with murder.

~*~

"Humor and sensuality shine through in this story." "Lush and lyrical describe the prose -- hot and sumptuous the love scenes." "While you're reading Dreamscape, you'll come up with happily ever after theories. You'll desperately want to so these two people can triumph over death. My advice? Just read and enjoy the ride to the end. I had my thoughts, and they were wrong. The real ending is a wonderful surprise. Just let it be, and live in the Dreamscape."
~Author Jane Leopold Quinn

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~*~

Rose Anderson ~ You'll LOVE Reading Rose

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