Eclipse

Claudius wanted to be the first man to reach the stars. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't... but one thing is certain: It was murder getting there.

The story opens with Claudius drifting alone in space, awaiting rescue and pondering the speck of light he can see in the distance. As events unfold, Claudius continues to drift and get more and more anxious while he thinks back along the paths that led him here, from his possibly-abusive childhood to the mutiny that caused the wreck of his mission.

In alternating chapters, Claudius' chilling story unfolds as the reader delves more deeply into his troubled mind, taking side trips to his high school, and to a mental hospital or institution where Claudius is everyone and everything. In the end, the reader is left to piece together, with Claudius, what world he actually knew.

Eclipse is a mind-bending Mobius strip of a science fiction story in the classic Ray Bradbury style, a book that will haunt you after you put it down.

©2009 Briane F. Pagel, Jr. (P)2015 Briane F. Pagel, Jr.