The condemned man stands on a bridge, his hands bound behind his back. A noose is tied around his neck. In a moment he will meet his fate: DEATH BY HANGING. There is no escape. Or is there? Find out in . . . An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Jack Harter

Horror I want to read

book

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

”Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him. In the code of military etiquette silence and fixity are forms of deference.”   Due to unspecified reasons, Peyton Fahrquhar has never joined the glorious fight for the Confederacy, but he is a firm secessionist and is ardently devoted to the cause. He is a wealthy Alabama planter with a pretty wife and a passel load of children. When he discovers that the bridge at Owl Creek has been rebuilt by the invading army of the Union, he decides this is his chance to do something for the Southern cause.   His eyes are bespeckled by the splendorous beacon of glory.   In other words, he is blinded by his vision of his own future achievement.   Many times there is a razor thin line between success and failure. We are not privy to how close to being successful our gentleman of mayhem was to destroying the bridge, but we do know that his illusion of glory has ended in an inglorious, frankly embarrassing, reality.    He is about to be hung.    At moments like this something happens to our senses. I remember when I had my Jeep accident. I was flipping over and over. Sounds were amplified. The crunch of steel was like a Wagner crescendo. The sound of breaking glass was like shrieking sirens. Everything slowed down to where I could watch individual pieces of glass moving so slowly that I could have caught them with a pair of chopsticks.    I was NEO.   For Fahrquhar, it is his watch, ticking so loud that to his ears it sounds like iron being molded by a hammer on an anvil. Everything seems brighter and more significant. He is standing on the bridge he had meant to destroy. His life is literally hanging in the balance, about to be dispatched by this inanimate object’s ability to suspend his weight long enough for his life to be taken from him.    ”As to his head, he was conscious of nothing but a feeling of fullness -- of congestion. These sensations were unaccompanied by thought. The intellectual part of his nature was already effaced; he had power only to feel, and feeling was torment. He was conscious of motion. Encompassed in a luminous cloud, of which he was now merely the fiery heart, without material substance, he swung through unthinkable arcs of oscillation, like a vast pendulum.”   Any time the word pendulum is used in a story I can’t help but think of Poe.    ”I now observed, with what horror it is needless to say, that its nether extremity was formed of a crescent of glittering steel, about a foot in length from horn to horn; the horns upward, and the under edge evidently as keen as that of a razor. Like a razor also it seemed massy and heavy, tapering from the edge into a solid and broad structure above. It was appended to a weighty rod of brass, and the whole  hissed  as it swung through the air.” Edgar Allan Poe The Pit and the Pendulum   There are some very clever twists, and the author, Ambrose “Bitter” Bierce, leaves you a few breadcrumbs along the way. He was known for his sardonic view of human nature. Whenever I read a Bierce story, which it has been way too long since I’ve read the last one, I come away feeling that he is speaking from personal experience. The hanging scene in this story, you would swear the man has been dangling from a rope at some point in time in his history. His stories are dark and feel so real that I have to slap myself across the face periodically to make sure I don’t find myself trapped in a world of Bierce’s making.   Bierce, in typical Bierce fashion, heads down to Mexico and is never heard of again. He is gone like smoke caught in a Western wind.   I would recommend reading this story without commentary and then reading it a second time with analysis because Bierce has layered in some symbolism into the story. He then camouflaged these metaphors with leaves and broken branches. If you move your head too fast your eyes will just skim right over the top of them. You can see ‘em, but you have to be looking right at ‘em. Highly Recommended!   If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit  http://www.jeffreykeeten.com  I also have a Facebook blogger page at: https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten

Books like An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

Cross-category suggestions

Lists with An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

Horror I want to read

Liked by