Trifecta ~ Phantom

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:

Phantom: a representation of something abstract, ideal, or incorporeal

I just happen to have phantom in a snippet from book 2 in my award-winning love story ~
Loving Leonardo - The Quest

Setting the stage:
In this scene, my trio face the typical autumn season’s strong ocean current through the Strait of Gibraltar but head into the arms of a substantial North Atlantic storm. Ellie and Luca are overjoyed at the power of it. Nicolas is seasick.

Phantom:
Clutching an empty flower urn should I have need to fill it, I took to the settee and watched my overjoyed companions through the open door of our starboard balcony. In my opinion, Prospero himself would have found this passing too much, but they stood at the rail outlined by the pending wrath of Neptune and thoroughly enjoyed the wild wind and roiling waves. Conversely, I clung to my cushion and damp washcloth. 

Although the balcony possessed a high lattice to keep guests from tumbling into the drink, I felt an honest fear that had nothing whatsoever to do with the storm. I hadn’t voiced it to either of them, but I felt an increasing sense of unease, an unaccountable prickling at the nape of my neck as if something terrible was about to happen. I’d had several nightmares since Ellie’s abduction and Luca’s encounter with the fanatical Bruno, disturbing phantoms that jarred me awake and left me unsettled. 

I thought about that. Recurring nightmares plagued my youth but tapered off as I matured. Through these bad dreams, I had relived the accident that made me an orphan. I was just a boy when my parents and nanny died during our holiday in Brighton. I don’t know what spooked the horses that day, but they ran wildly and my mother screamed as I fell through the tumbling coach door. I also remembered the incredible pain as my small body landed and my arm and leg bones snapped. 

That childhood trauma had revisited my dreams over the past several nights, and my adult mind lent an additionally horrific reality each time. In one, I came home to find all I knew and loved gone.  Waking in a sweat, I found myself wondering if Bruno had died in the fall as we supposed. We hadn’t checked for a pulse, we'd simply assumed. It was getting so I dreaded closing my eyes. 

Loving Leonardo books 1 & 2 ~
A Victorian polyamorous love story with a touch of reader-interactive art history.

"This is a most delicious read, and I certainly hope we see more of these three lovers in the near future."

~Coffee Time Romance & More 

<>o<><>o<><>o<>

Rose Anderson ~ You'll LOVE Reading Rose

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