May’s Guest Storyteller, Douglas MacIlroy

Douglas MacMillan MacIlroy is a former submarine pilot turned observatory night attendant who writes novels, screenplays, flash fiction and poetry, all for the joy of putting pen to paper. He lives on the Big Island of Hawaii and is a professional disc golfer.

This is what he has to say about his two thought-provoking 100 word stories below:

“The revelation that reincarnation is real hits hard, both to the outside observer and to those experiencing it for the first time.  Like it or not, a door in the mind is opened and the view through it is stunning”.

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 “….’Twas all Astonishment”

 “I’m afraid,” cried Samahe as saffron and rose limned the eastern sky.

“Not even time itself will stand in the way of my return,” I whispered into my wife’s thick raven hair.

How the gods must have laughed.

At daybreak I left on the Silk Road, safeguarding a caravan of Lapis-Lazuli bound for distant Seres, far beyond the Taklamakan Desert.

A month out of Samarkand, bandits fell upon us. Carrion crows stripped my bones.

I will keep my promise.

For eight-hundred years and many lifetimes I have searched for my love.

When I find her, I will never leave.

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 Unhinged

Water fills my mouth with the taste of loam. Sunbeams illuminate my slowly billowing dress as I tumble along the muddy bottom into unbearable brightness and a letting go.

It was just a recurring dream until I saw the picture of the river in a travel magazine. I knew the spot even though I’d never been there before today.

County records note the drowning of a four-year-old girl in the War Eagle River on Maundy Thursday, April 1969. Three states distant and one day later, on Good Friday, I came wailing into this world.

I stand on the river bank, unhinged in time.