Vanquished.
I was confused. This isn't how I expected the novel to end. Who committed the crime? Where was the last chapter with the explanation, the satisfying ending the reader could ponder on when the final lines had been read?
This book looked identical to the others in the bookshop the next day but twenty pages were missing at the back. I was waiting in line to exchange the book when I had a strong mysterious feeling not to.
Returning home I sat on the battered red leather sofa and opened the last page again.
More words than I expected....
"I couldn't sleep with her next to me. Each night, I'd have a hard time trying to sleep. She was everything I could hope for and I stressed each night, as I'd try to drift off, that she'd realize one day I wasn't good enough for her. Thank god each morning she was there for me."
A married man, Tom, who lived outside of New York, was taking the train, as usual into town. Tom was married to Rosie. Margie, a friend of Rosie’s, who was also taking the train, saw him talking to a woman.
Tom appeared to be...
Penelope loved the fountain, loved the way the water sprayed, cooling her in the hot sun, making her clothes cling as she called her joy to the heavens.
"What are you doing?" asked the man in the blue uniform.
Some sort of park official, thought the girl. "Nothing. Just enjoying the water."
"This isn't a waterpark, you know," said the man, a note of disapproval hanging from his lips like a dangling cigar, ready to drop and burn.
"So?" she asked. She kicked up a fine spray as her feet pattered against the thin layer that had built up over...
It was hard to send a message in a bottle when you didn't even have the bottle.
Harry sighed as he put the folded bit of paper into the stream, hoping it would be carried to someone who would find him. Someone with better navigational skills than he had anyway. He couldn't even write his location, because he hadn't the slightest Goddamn idea where he was. GPS didn't do a hell of a lot of good with a dead phone, and if he hadn't slipped down that muddy slope...
Nevermind.
He rested along the stream's edge and looked up at...
In hindsight, the solution was obvious.
It was staring me right in the face the entire time but for some reason I had a hard time coming to terms with it.
It wasn't really his fault, in a way I guess you could say it was my fault. I was the one who always wanted to try new things and that night, he had been nowhere to be found. I jumped in with both feet, never once thinking about the consequences.
It was easy for me, I had no ties to anyone or anything. Well except for him.
He, on...
"I'm with stupid," she said.
I looked away. It wasn't the first time she'd said something like that about me. I knew that because it wans't the first time she'd said it right in front of me.
So I just looked away. I had a Pepsi can that I jiggled, and sometimes raised to my mouth.
We walked around the arcade, with her twitching her behind, trying to look like she was hot shit.
Why she needed me along to do that, I don't know.
Unless it just made her feel better to have someone to feel better than.
I...
I couldn't sleep with her next to me. Her gentle snoring, calming to almost anyone else, was absolutely maddening to me. It was nails being dragged down a chalkboard, squealing and begging for everyone for miles to be quiet long enough for the mouse dragging its nails to be heard.
I wasn't in love with her. I didn't even love her, not for even the briefest of moments. A marriage of convenience? Who was this marriage convenient for? I knew that she slept with other men behind my back and, conversely, I knew that I slept with other men behind...
Jane was a beautiful young woman. Her blonde hair was the envy of everyone in the land. No one else had hair like that. Many said it was the color of straw. Now her father, he was also a nice man. Very beloved by everyone and the leader of this village. He, however was dying. Jane was his only child and not ready to take on the duties that would be given to her if he died. She had been walking through the meadow one day when it struck her. She could get the elixer of Eternal Life and give...
the city was empty
winter empty, not
summer empty
snowstorm home-bound, not
bound for Myrtle Beach, or
flown to Florida or
wherever the hell
the neighbors went.
Christ, doesn't anyone stay
home anymore?
Sit on the deck in frayed nylon
beach chairs?
I can't even find them in
the stores anymore.
what happened?
where did everyone go?
it's the city...
it should
never
be
empty.
It had been three weeks now, to the day, that Mira James had been absent from class. Mrs. Pendleton sighed with regret as she rubbed Mira's name off of her desk. Truancy was a sad reality that she was powerless to stop, and the school always needed to make room for new students.
She rummaged gingerly through the shelf, searching for the pile of junk that seemed to accumulate in every seventh-grader's desk. It would all be in the trash soon, leaving room for the next student's pencils, stickers, and other belongings.
It was empty. Clean, even. With a frown,...