Reddit Collection (Fresh-Short #9), DeYtH Banger [best novels to read for beginners TXT] 📗

scalp and forced her head beneath the sweet-smelling water.

In that moment, the world glittered. The wine glass flew from her hand, shattering into a glorious bloom of crystal shards against the floor. The wine coursed through the gaps between the tiles in webbed rivulets of thinning red. Beneath the pressure of my hands, I felt her begin to thrash wildly. Drops of water arced through the air, trailing warm kisses over the bare skin of my arms. Never before had the universe created such a frame of perfection.

 

However, the sublimity of it all began to fade with each passing second. You see, I had done a lot of reading on death by drowning. Experts say that it takes about two or three minutes for a drowning victim to lose consciousness, and about five for them to actually die. But five minutes in, she was still struggling just as avidly as she had when I had first pushed her under.

 

The next five minutes were absolutely agonizing. As the high continued to diminish, she never stopped heaving against my weight. The glass had settled on the floor and the wine had fanned out as far as it could go, but the water kept flying as my hands struggled to wrestle her down.

 

And then finally, I gave up.

For a second after she sat up, we simply stared at each other. The glimmer in her eyes was unfathomable, while the fear in my own was probably overflowing.

Then I ran. I’m at my best friend’s house right now. He doesn’t know that I tried to murder my girlfriend. He doesn’t know that she wouldn’t die. And he doesn’t know that I’m a dead man when she comes for me.

After all, how can I hope to fight off somebody who can’t be killed?

 

They say it's my memory

 by Zchxz

 

 

I remember my grandchildren. I do. Little Timmy came first and just started kindergarten this year. He had a large gap in his front teeth and loved stripes so much - his favorite animals were zebras and tigers.

 

 

Emma, my daughter's daughter, preferred rolling around but had learned to walk. She still had a ton of her baby fat and her laugh, oh... Such a bundle of joy.

 

 

But they're missing, and my children tell me they never existed. I've stopped yelling at them and the doctors since they're too strong for me and give me something that leaves me blacking out for at least a few hours. I refuse to quietly accept what's going on, and while they all keep trying to get me to understand my dementia I swear something else is going on.

 

Last month I got a new doctor, who told me he's always been my doctor. He's young, well-trimmed and a little too perky for my liking. No one's ever really that happy, not all the time. He gave me square blue pills insisting I've been on them for years, but I know my pills are white and oblong. There's not a lot I can do about it in my condition, and all the other patients I've spoken to actually do have Alzheimer's or something worse.

 

A week ago my son stopped visiting. My daughter told me she's an only child, that she's always been an only child. I asked her for photo albums to remember, using that generic boring old-person voice I can't stand. And every photo I've looked at, even the ones that used to be of only my son's family, are missing all the people I still remember.

 

I've asked why our family photo albums has pictures of landscapes, beaches, and houses with no people in it. But it's like talking to a wall spray painted with ignorance in the shape of a smile. No definitive answers, no explanations, and no matter the questions or evidence they keep telling me I'm the one with memory issues.

 

Yesterday the doctor told me I never even had children at all. Utter bullshit, because my daughter left her purse in the room and I still have the albums. He says a nurse probably left her things here, and that a local volunteer brought the photos from my home. If he's covering something up I can't tell, and at this point there's no one left to help me investigate.

 

 

They keep telling me to try and understand. To accept that my mind is failing. But it's not, because I remember everything clear as day. My round white pills. Little Tommy's smile. My daughters.

And yet, even my reflection is missing today.

A Note Written on the Back of a Grocery Store Receipt

 by  whoeverfightsmonster

 

 

23 dead.
And that's only in the parking lot.
This storm came out of nowhere,
with lightning like nothing I've ever seen.
It keeps striking, again and again.
People are burning, convulsing,
their shoes blown off. Things I never
thought were flammable are on fire.
The lightning isn't stopping.

A woman ran out of the store just now.
I drove toward her, thinking I could help.
Stupid of me. If I'd opened the door, we'd
both be dead. But, oh God, I never imagined
the horrible things a human body does
when it's fighting to survive.
24 dead now.

I don't know what's happening.
I went out for milk, came back
to the car, and the radio was making
loud screeching sounds.
Then the lightning started.
My phone's dead. The radio's just
pops and crackles. I'm safe in my car, I think.
I need to go home to check on my family.

If I don't make it, please,
whoever finds this note—
My name is Mike Edwards. Tell my family
I love them, and that I died trying
to get back to them.

 

I made it. I'm parked in my driveway.
I can see my kids in the front window
of our house. They're only 20 feet away,
but I can't help them.

Going outside is impossible. Opening
a window is suicide. The garage door
doesn't work because there's no electricity.
All we can do is wait.
Storms don't last forever.

 

It's not stopping. Everything's burning.
There's smoke at the back of our house.
The milk is warm.

Not much room left to write (sorry about
the receipt—it was all I could find).
I'll make it short.

I have a plan. I'll drive straight through
the front window, get far enough inside
so the lightning can't reach.
I'll load my family into the car, and we'll drive.
Somewhere without lightning.

We'll live through this. I feel it more strongly
than I've ever felt anything in my life.
And when we're all together again,
and my wife and children are safe,
I'll write their names at the bottom of this note,
as proof that we survived.

9,342 Dolls

 by NeonTempo

 

 

Detective Hawson, veteran officer of the esteemed Metropolitan Police force, smiled at the small plastic baby on his desk.

His working day was long done, his bag packed. Yet, as those around him left the poorly heated office for their marginally better heated homes, Hawson stayed behind, examining the unassuming plastic doll. The thing was in poor condition; worn by time with dark smudges across its face. Nothing anyone would consider special. However to Detective Hawson, incomparable sentimentalist that he was, the grubby doll shone with novel significance.

 

You are not supposed to keep mementos from cases, regardless of how bizarre and interesting they were, but this was the one impropriety that Hawson allowed himself. Meredith in Evidence, who liked Hawson enough to indulge his vices, had picked the doll at random from some boxes holding almost ten thousand. Boxes labeled with the name "Lindsay Roscoe".

Lindsay was a salon assistant, committed to a mental institution after biting off a strangers fingers. She'd fled the scene and a young Detective Hawson had been dispatched to the girl's registered address.

 

That was where he found them. 9,324 plastic dolls spanning every crevice of a filthy bed-sit. Not long after they were collected, it became clear that each doll contained human hair. The girl swept up in the salon, and apparently used the cuttings to fashion makeshift voodoo dolls.

 

 

Hawson smiled to himself, remembering how disturbed it had made him. Then a playful, sideways thought entered his mind.

There was a simple way to test whether they worked.

Slowly, with the dumbest of grins upon his face, Hawson walked the doll over to his mobile, and mock dialed his office phone.

He stopped smiling when his desk phone rang.

 

Hawson stared at the receiver for what seemed like an age. It was a coincidence, he knew that, but there was something chilling about the timing, and how the phone wouldn't stop ringing.

Hawson's hand shot out and snatched the receiver to his ear.

"Hello?"

 

"... ... Please..." A woman's crying voice answered. "H... How are you doing this?"

 

Hawson threw the phone onto the desk and stood up. After a breathless, still moment, he burst from his office and ran down the corridor.

 

Scarcely a minute later he erupted, panting into the small dark room at the back of Evidence. Pleading with Meredith to let him see the rest of the dolls.

 

You see Detective Hawson was a sensible collector. He'd never take something unless the case was closed, and Meredith would never pass him a memento unless the evidence was no longer needed.

"I'm sorry. You're too late." Said Meredith as she stood aside and walked back into Evidence.

Hawson stood immobile. His eyes wide. His pupils pinlike in the light of the incinerator.

Disrepair