Keith R. Long

Mansfield: Part Four: Old Age, Decline, and Death Keith R. Long

As the snow falls outside his ambulance window, Steve Dobbs drives to check on his ninety-year-old grandmother, who lives in a mansion haunted by ghosts from her past. After Marsha Winthrop is found dead, Steve is bequeathed the mansion where he eventually starts a new life. But one night after his ambulance crashes in the mansion's courtyard, Dobbs is found more dead than alive - and dies shortly thereafter. Ted Mansfield, who was Marsha's second husband, has hallucinated an entire fictitious lifetime for Steve and from his point of view that indirectly reveals everything Ted knows of the Winthrop family and Marsha's life after their divorce. Ted has fallen into a twisted, upside-down world driven by his bizarre dreams. As he moves from one dream to the next, ninety years of events are twisted and replayed in disguise as his subconscious mind reviews his perceptions of reality. As his nights of fitful dreams continue, Ted embarks on more intoxicating adventures as Red, a time traveler hoping for success in a strange, dystopian future. Mansfield continues the tale of one man's journey through life as he fitfully dreams about his experiences through alternate realities in one last attempt to make sense of his life and the confusing social, political, and economic events that occurred around the world during the opening years of the twenty-first century.