Dilemma by D.A.Sanford - HTML preview

Dilemma

By D.A.Sanford

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Readers be advised

Warning: Contains adult content due to graphic descriptions of any or all of the following:

Battles, Language, Sexual

Both the cover and images in this book are not photographs or hand drawn art. They were created using AI text to graphics programs by the author.

Dilemma © 2025 D. A. Sanford

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the author or publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

for permission from the author contact danielsanford@sbcglobal.net I’m free, I think

A lot has happened in a short period of time. I had a bad reaction to prescribed drugs that put me in the hospital. Almost fatal, I came back but during that time, I had several hallucinations. The television had a show that repeated over and over again. I asked my youngest adult son, when he visited me, what he thought of the show. He told me that the television was not turned on. There were a few others but the one that I most remember was the thought that I was going to be the last of my four family members alive.

Two years after that, I lost my wife to factors related to three massive strokes. Two years after her, I lost my youngest son to cancer. Today, I am sitting at my computer, writing this having just paid for my last son’s funeral.

It has been two years since the youngest passed. My oldest, had had his left kidney removed before this. He was living well with the one but his digestive system started to fail. He was hospitalized but suddenly crashed.

Now I am alone. I slept well. My life was worry but now I am free.

Before you judge me, know these facts. My wife never worked outside the home. I put aside money in a retirement fund because, if I died, she would not have my social security. I had to make sure that she had funds beside life insurance. Worry. My youngest was independent but he never was interested in dating. I worried about him never knowing having a mate. He never did.

My oldest son was autistic. He never left home. We put aside money for his life after we passed.

After both my wife and my youngest passed, there was the worry about what was going to happen with him. Over and over, for 54 years worries about what would happen to my family after I passed. Now they are gone and all I have are my cats.

I am not regretting the worries but I got married at age twenty. A son at age twenty one and again at age twenty three. Work related worries, home worries and yes media related worries. None of that matters now. Even the family plot has the grave stone. My wife and youngest cremains are on the shelf. When the last son’s cremains are back, all three will be buried.

I record all this to explain why I feel free.

Human nature, my mind is trying hard to grasp onto something more to worry about but I am fighting it. I will win because I now need to think about me, finally.

“FOUND YOU!” echoes in my mind. So loud that I am looking out the window to see who has the bullhorn. I turned from my window and there was a female with her arms crossed and an angry look on her face.

She comes over to me and gets into my face. “Do you know how long that we have been searching for you. I worried about what happened to you after that incident. We tried to tell you that it was not your fault but no, you had to run and disappeared.”

I’m almost stuttering as I say to her, “Who the hell are you and what are you ranting about? I have just lost my last child and don’t have the stomach for jokes. Please leave me alone. I am going to look at one of those retired postal delivery vans and travel.”

She now softens her posture. She goes from a hostile attitude to something that looks very sad but understanding.

“You really don’t remember? We can work on that later. How old are you?”

I am puzzled at her question but I have had it with this farce. I answer her but in a hostile way.

“I am named Max Childers. I was born in Bolton to Harold and Martha Childers seventy four years ago. I had a free range childhood where I could wander around and have adventures. I married at twenty. Who the hell are you to say that I am someone else? Just leave me alone. I have quite a few more years until I can reunite with my lost ones.”

The hurt of relating that causes me to re-live all those good things but mostly remember all those hurtful things. “I need a drink!” With that I collapse, sliding down the wall to sit on the floor. Greef that has been suppressed for the sake of the family, due to the worries and losses, comes crashing down on me.

Covering the top of my head with my hands, “Just go. For god’s sake, leave me alone!” I hang my head and cry. I don’t care what it looks like. “JUST GO.”

She says that she will but not before she tells me. “Your name is not Max. It is Darrel. You are not allowed to stay like this. You have a job. You will find this hard to believe but you have been missing from our realm for a month. We will reclaim you in our way.”

As she leaves, she tells me that I am the most important person in her life. Then she is gone.

Most important person in her life? What the hell? What a ridiculous statement, ‘I’ve been gone only a month.’ I am now seething that a figment of my imagination tells me that. Looking up and seeing nothing but my ceiling, I yell, “Fuck you!”

I’m yelling at my brain. It is now reverting to that time of hallucinations. Don’t tell me. Could this horrible sequence of events be that I have taken a turn for the worse in the hospital.

Damn those doctor’s that prescribed those drugs but this means that my three are still alive.

“No they are not.” That females voice echoes in my mind.

My mind is broken. This is what it has grasped on to. A scene from those light novels I have read and wrote. It may be time to have my head checked.

I fall asleep while I sit on the floor leaning against the wall.

Dreams take me to the life that I had when all my family was still alive. My children were ten and twelve. My wife was full of life. It was one of the two family gatherings times. Summer was an outside picnic. All the children were running around. My father was showing them how to use a blade of grass as a whistle.

We adults were watching from the deck but mostly just talking.

My sister would always be the one with the movie camera and film everyone. She would narrate and usually talk over the person. I do have a compilation she made. My wife’s only voice response on the disc was “I’m going to live forever.”

That was the scene that was my dream but it was pleasant until I looked at my sister and saw that she was now that woman. All activity, every man, woman and child were looking at me, then she said to my wife,

“What a lie. You left him for a place he could never get to you. You died. Then you took his sons with you.”

I woke up to hear myself screaming.

This went on for quite a few nights. The same dream, the same screams. My neighbors were worried so they called my sister to tell her about the night terrors. She immediately came up and insisted to know what was going on.

At first, I tried to play it down as just bad dreams. She was not buying it so, I talked about the woman and what she had said. That she had invaded my dreams.

“You have to let go of the survivor’s guilt. It was not your fault.”

I noticed an inflection in her speech that was not hers. Getting very angry, I yell at her. “You’re that woman! Stop this at once! Go away!” My sister leaves in tears.

She did not deserve that. She only is concerned with my welfare.

Taking out most of my life’s savings, I bought that postal van and fixed it up with a recliner and a few amenities.

I was quite a few states away before anyone knew I left, or so I thought. As I looked in the rearview mirror, there in the recliner was that woman. With a smile from her, we were no longer in the van. We were in a white room.

“This farce has gone on too long. Everything you have experienced is all just a figment of your imagination. I now must take the kid gloves off. This is the place that you have sealed yourself off in. None of what you experience was real. We have found out that you grabbed one person’s memories from the destroyed world and twisted it to be your own.”

Listening to her and seeing this white room, a flicker of an old memory came forward.

“Let me just die. That was my life. Get someone else to do that job.” I curl up into a ball and try to will myself to die.

April squats down to my level. She rubs my back softly. It was a long time before she said anything but when she did, it hit home.

“You cannot will yourself to die, you are immortal Darrel. You have been in this room for a month. You have not eaten or drank anything. If you were mortal, you would be dead. I know that you just had a glance at your true life, didn’t you. What did you see?”

“I saw rocks just floating in space and me just hovering where a world should have been, What have you done to my mind? That cannot be real. If it is, then send me to oblivion.”

She comes and sits next to me. After silence, she, in a soft voice tells me the story of the rocks in space.

“You were sent to that planet to evaluate the population and its rulers. There was something off and it was disturbing. You lived amongst them, as is your method, for a year, their time. During that time you saw that there was some of the normal problems between the population and the rulers. What you reported was that the rulers were working to solve the problems of their countries. We are still trying to find out how those rulers found out about you.”

I look at her as she continues.

“What you did not pickup on was that their means of solving was to take over the other country and get rid of the other ruler. As one ruler set to war, he did not realize that the other ruler had finished his dig to almost the core of the world. When that ruler saw that he was going to lose, he launched a rocket powered mega bomb into the core. That blew up the world. You went for your follow up only to find the world as now an asteroid belt where once a thriving world was. That family that you lived with during your time, you became the father and suffered the loss.”

I’m realizing that she is correct but it hits me hard.

“Why couldn’t you just let me be delusional. You should have just pushed me over into the final life and let me meet them. Now that I am back, you now have condemned me to know that, because of me falling for those rulers’ lines, I now have the blood of millions on my hands. I now demand that you send me to oblivion. My three did not exist. My neighbors and my sister. I have none of them waiting for me. They were nothing so send me to nothing. Erase me altogether.”

April thinks about it, then comes up with a small consolation. It is something she or her predecessors never did. This will gain her notice and she most likely be called for review but she has to do something to get him back. Otherwise, he will need to be replaced and spend a lot of time letting Beez’s tree sing to him while he sleeps.

They both are on a burnt out world. There before them is a crazy man Darrel immediately recognizes. It is the ruler that blew up that world. April tells Darrel that this is his eternal world.

“He is here until time itself stops. Eternally remembering his deed. Talk to him and see if he is the same person that hid his true self from you. Punish him if you think it will do good for you.”

She steps back and I get a good look at him. He has totally lost grips on reality. His teeth are broken from chewing on rocks to solve his hunger and completely soiled from drinking the toxic fluids here. Even I can tell that no matter what I could do to him, it would not matter. Even I would not feel right.

April sees that I have not done anything but she is amazed when the ruler comes up to Darrel and begs him to kill him. He is on his knees and is crying. I look at April and know what my action will be.

“I now know that he is the one. I will stand beside you when you are called. I ask you to just send him to oblivion. This is no longer that man, it is just a miserable piece of living flesh.”

She smiles and that ruler is no longer here but we are joined by the gods of all.

“That is what your job is. Evaluate and pronounce what you see. We deliberately didn’t want you to see through to hidden intensions. That was our failure because it led to your breakdown. Know this, April asked for permission to bring you here knowing that if you proceeded to take revenge on him, we would have sent you to the final life. The god of mercy would have erased all memories of your position here.”

April is smiling as I am told that, in the final life, those that you lost in that family you had, that life you had in that delusion, will be there for me.

They touch me and I am now in my mid twenties rather than that mid seventies body.

The gods of all tells April. “You two are very close. Take him to a calm world to have him rehabilitate.

The male god of all looks at me and tells her to take me to one of the goblin refuge planets. She smiles because she is thinking of that world that was being consumed by ash.

“The world where that human met a wolf. (1) He was the last human on that world. The wolf was a female changeling. I heard he married the changeling and a goblin. That world is a very tranquil world but he will need to talk to Jerry. He is the last human from that world before it was destroyed. Jerry was in law enforcement. Homicide. He saw the worst. Let them go to an isolated area and just talk. Each have a burden that can be shared and eased.”

(1) Refer to my book “The Sage” It has a story “The last human” This is that world.