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....
The wind blew across the plains, picking up clods of dirt as it ran past, and I gripped my son's shoulder, as if by some instinct. Soon the dust would blow through the cracks in our log cabin, and the kitchen -- the tiny corner we called the kitchen -- would soon fill with what looked for all the world like soot. That we could take. The ground and the wind had been trying to kill us for years. We were used to it. But lately we'd had to contend with spiders. Tarantulas. Tough sons of bitches that put their...
that's my sister
o, she was a riot, she was
Always with the arms
HAhAhaha
it was natural, ya know
used them to talk-
but you gave her a sip of alcohol-
o girl
Wam Wam-
even my brothers would avoid standing too close
i've had many bruises over the years due to a night on the town with that girl
.. now, not that she'd fight-
just scream and laugh and ..Punch your shoulder instead of slapping it
"she's singing in this photo though, correct mrs. Neel"
o, well, yes of course she's singing, boy.
she had a beautiful...
Without a doubt, the hat makes the man.
Douglas VanHornersmeltser knew this. He also knew that without removing his hat, the bald spot atop his head would never receive the proper tan he needed for his date at precisely 7 p.m. on the night of Saturday the 11th of January.
A prudent New Englander, Douglas had rarely ventured to concern himself with tanning, his chaste, leathery skin almost always coated in the finest sheer of exfoliated heaven. Yet on this very occasion he sought the affections of the lady up 12th Avenue, Lydia Snout.
An elegant woman with slender legs...
.. 2080 ... 2090 ... 2100. 2100 NE Swenson Avenue, that was the address. Harold was certain of it. He could almost feel an unnatural attraction to the simple white door with blue finish that innocently faced the street, surrounded by colorful flower pots.
A hesitant step after another, his heart pounding, he approached it. His thoughts were hundreds of miles away, in his home country, where his family was held hostage. They were watching his every move, listening to his every breath. If he failed, his wife and children would die.
His hand rested on the doorknob. The windows...
Idyllic farmhouse? Well, appearances can be deceiving, I suppose. If the For Sale sign in front had said, "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here," we might have been more wary. As things stood,, when we signed on the dotted line we had no idea what we were really buying into... or signing away. The funny thing about souls, you don't really notice them until they're gone.
Eternal life.
That's what he'd promised, wasn't it?
Jane didn't know the tall, dark-haired man who had approached her late that night. He appeared as if an apparition as she exited the lonely subway terminal on the way home from an excruciating double shift.
He had spoken just two words. Eternal life. It was a dreamlike declaration - not quite a question, not a statement, just a whisper. But that was impossible.
She had looked at him with a mix of fear and curiosity before shaking her head and walking briskly up the dimly lit staircase. Just before walking into...
The bottom of the fountain was a shimmering mural of pennies, the dapper man reached in and picked up a penny, this particular one caught his eye, something gleamed differently about it, something that niggled in his memory. He had a vision of walking this route as a boy, knickers and plaid, a little beret on his dark head.
As the memory became clear he saw his mother, in her radiance that was lost as he got older. The years withered her frame emaciated her skin mere parchment covering frail bones. Cancer. She had died not long after his fifth...
They gathered in the woods, but that was not enough to save them, as they were mistaken for trees, cut down and shipped to a lumber mill.
One of them was fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to be made into thick planks; most of the rest were sadly torn apart into sawdust and mulch. But that one continued to live, in great pain, as he was violently sawed and assembled into a large, polished grandfather clock.
They attached to him some cold, foreign bits of metal that moved jarringly. The ticking of the gears against his aching frame was unceasing; day...
I love tests. I really do. Everyone just sits there staring at the paper - don't be in advanced calc if you can't handle it. The arcs, the plots, 3d graphs, cycloids, functions of the imaginary and trajectory's of murders - it's all beautiful. Each is a beautiful fractal within itself - a new function for a curve to follow.
Lets check out the next question.
"So what did Falkner mean by the word carrage?"
Crap - no more speed before English class.
Here it is - the teacher glaring at me. The sweat dripping off me as if I...