“Holy shit,” said Chris, “It really is a zombie.”

“I told you,” said Gary, “I used my dad’s gun on one out at the farm, it didn’t even flinch when I put one in its heart.”

“I knew all those people the cops have been gunning down weren’t meth addicts,” said Brian, “those pigs can barely hit a moving target, much less a tweaked out crack head, plus all those headshots are totally not police procedure. They know what’s going on.”

The implication of their discovery hit all three of them at once. All of their movie, music and TV choices had lead to this. They knew how to deal how to identify zombies, they knew how to dispose of zombies, and now it seemed that fate, or chance, or God or Cthulu had put them in the right place at the right time to put down a zombie uprising while it was more uprising than apocalyptic event.

The three friends quickly gathered blunt instruments, and started planning their action.

“The facts are these”, said Chris, “we know that most of the reported ‘crack head’ killings have been near the new ethanol plant, we should start there. Who else would believe us?”

“What about Alan,” said Gary, “he’s always writing those weird ass stories, some of them have zombies in them, he might believe us.”

The three friends piled into Gary’s 1990 Toyota Corolla to go talk to Alan.

Alan wasn’t exactly friends with Chris, Gary and Brian, but there was a sort of mutual respect between them. While they didn’t really like the same movies and music, they at least liked the same general genres. While Chris, Gary and Brian were busy reading Stephen King, Alan was reading Vikram and the Vampire and other obscure, historical works of horror. He was also known for writing highly literary horror stories that were almost more symbolic than narrative. Chris Gary and Brian didn’t understand Alan, but they did respect him.

On their way to his house they spotted him walking in the dark.

“Hey,” said Chris, “you want to go kill some zombies?”

Without blinking, without asking so much as a single question Alan said yes, and got in the car.

As they began driving towards the ethanol plant they noticed that their high school’s parking lot was filled with cars.

“It’s the homecoming dance”, said Alan, “that’s probably where you’ll find the most zombies gathered.”

Chris, Gary and Brian assumed that Alan had put together the same pieces of the puzzle that they had.

“Makes sense”, said Gary, “they’ll be drawn there by lights and sound.”

“Nice,” said Alan, and though Gary glanced at him quizzically he didn’t say anything else.

Chris nosed Gary’s Corolla into a parking spot. The nearly 20 year old vehicle looked out of place next to most of the newer cars there. Brian handed Alan a spare baseball bat they had brought. Alan looked a little uneasy, but accepted the gift.

As the four would-be zombie slayers approached their high school they could hear screams coming from inside.

“What the hell is that?” asked Alan.

“We’re too late, it’s already begun,” Chris intoned.

Alan shot Chris a surprised look and raised his hands in a ‘what are you talking about’ motion. The other three all ignored him and continued to purposefully walk towards the high school. Alan trailed behind, looking perplexed.

Chris opened the door to the gym, instead of the usual dancing, punch drinking, feel copping that would go on at one of these events there was instead pandemonium. The dim lighting made everything feel much more chaotic but one thing was clear, students were being eaten by zombies, even if some of those zombies happened to have been students just minutes before. Dark shapes ran back and forth, other dark shapes shambled after them. Here and there three or four of the shambling shapes would catch a running and shape and the screaming would ratchet up even higher for a few seconds.

Chris hit the lights and he, Brian and Gary went to work. Where ever they saw a zombie they would put him, or her down with a home run shot across the temple. They worked methodically making sure no zombies ever got behind them or close enough to bite them.

Gary looked back and saw Alan just staring at the scene. He seemed to be in total shock, as if he wasn’t prepared for this at all. He held his bat in his right hand with the barrel resting on the ground behind him. It wasn’t clear if he even realized he held a bat at all. Gary took one last swing at a zombie that was chewing its way through a cheerleader’s neck, Gary thought her name was Mindy, or Cindy or… whatever. The zombie’s skull caved in spraying blood and brain over her white dress, although it was probably three minutes too late for Mindy, or Cindy or whatever.

Then he turned and walked back to Alan.

“What are you doing,” he screamed at Alan, “Aren’t you going to help? This is what we came here for.”

“I thought you were speaking metaphorically,” said Alan, “I thought we were going to be rude or something to the homecoming crowd”.

“Why would we call them zombies?”

“What do you think all my stories are about? These people are brain dead, they can’t see beyond this stupid tiny town, and this stupid tiny school, all they do is mindlessly wander around in packs consuming everything that isn’t like them. Why wouldn’t you call them zombies?”

Alan then dropped the bat he had been holding, turned around and walked out of the school, across the parking lot and started towards his home.

In 2304 first contact with an intelligent species is made. They were an insect like species that were eventually referred to as bugs. There were actually numerous sub-species of bugs, all of which were specialized for different roles. It eventually became known that the bugs functioned as a collective unit.

In 2306 ambassador-bugs made contact with the UN, seeking negotiations and intelligence information in consideration of war, trade, or maybe something else entirely. They abruptly cut off all contact without explanation.

In 2307 the bugs declared war by launching an all out assault on the Alpha Centauri system. The element of surprise and highly coordinated bug attack lead to a massive bug victory. Humanity soon learned how to counter attack and no other bug victory was as clear cut, though the war continued.

In 2309 the bugs successfully assassinated Benjamin Chikwata, Prime Minister of the UN and de facto leader of Earth. A few months later humanity won a small victory in Coletta Prime, a small settlement on the edges of settled space. Immediately after this minor defeat the bugs disappeared from all human inhabited systems without regard for strategic significance. Even systems that humanity hadn’t a prayer of contending for were completely vacated.

In the year following the Great Disappearance speculation was rampant. The conspiracy minded believed this was some sort of ruse as the bugs massed for a surprise attack. The more patriotic sorts claimed that the bugs had seen humanity’s resolve and strength and had given up. One professor of literature speculated that the bugs had been overwhelmed by disease carried by humans. The intelligence community was equally as baffled, and though their speculations never saw the light of publicity, they were as varied, and as unconvincing as the public’s reasoning. Ultimately, no explanation was generally accepted, when the history books were written the Great Disappearance was documented without commentary.

Three hundred years passed and as generations came and went, and as humanity continued its spread through the universe the Great Disappearance became nothing more than a curiosity. When the last human who had been told by an actual witness what the Bug War was like died, the irrelevancy of the Great Disappearance to humanity meant that it was consigned as trivia questions on game shows and board games, a curiosity as strange and uninteresting to most as was the lost Roanoke colony.

When the Bug War began humanity was just beginning to expand through the universe, human culture was largely monolithic, as it had been on earth due to the spread of communication technology, and the ability to travel quickly. Racism as an issue gradually had disappeared over the last hundred years before space bending due to the mixing of the races through intermarriage which gave everyone the same skin tone, and many of the cultural issues did the same as dress, food, and language slowly became as uniform as race.

However, after the Bug War, cultural divergence became a fact of life. Space bending wasn’t cheap and so it was used exclusively for colonizing distant solar systems. As a result each colony developed its own unique culture. One particular colony, 51 Pegasi, became obsessed with mysticism. They practiced speaking to the dead, prophecy, channeling, telepathy, dream interpretation and astral projection.

One man in particular Janus Arazo was obsessed with astral projection. He had been born on 51 Pegasi and though his family was incredibly wealthy no one was wealthy enough to employ space bending for tourism purposes. And so Janus used astral projection to travel and experience other parts of the universe. At first he explored centers of culture. Earth itself was fascinating with its settled culture, and old ways of doing things, then he slowly made the other rounds, Alpha Centauri with its somewhat paranoid culture which was a remnant of being destroyed by that first bug attack, and the frantic pace of life on the creatively named Big One located in Ursa Major due to the high gravity of the large planet which put a strain on the heart and other organs resulted in a life span of only 35 years for its inhabitants also fascinated Janus for a time. Eventually, however, he grew tired of sightseeing human cultures. Janus was a born explorer, and anthropology was only mildly interesting to him. So he began exploring outside of the settled universe, in solar systems and planets that had no names, most were so far beyond settled space that humanity wasn’t even aware of their existence.

It was on one of these planets that he first found a bug, in fact he had found many bugs, a whole planet full of them. It had been hundreds of years since a human had seen a bug, but he recognized them from pictures of old propaganda broadcasts he had uncovered in his studies. Though Janus was primarily interested in astral projection he also had some minor talents in the field of telepathy, and using those talents he recognized that most of the bugs had no intelligence of their own. They seemed to be almost machines, like they turned on and set to work at a particular task, and would do so until turned off or dead. So the question became who was setting them to work?

After several days of searching the planet of the bugs Janus found his answer. It or them, no word seemed quite right, was underground. And it was a telepath of extraordinary power. In his spirit form he could see the tendrils of thought reaching out to the non-sentient bugs, directing them where to go and what to do. After observing it for several hours he reached out his own mind and brushed against one of the tendrils of thought. The effect was instant. Immediately it knew he was there and directed its attention directly on him. To Janus it felt like being inside the mouth of a giant who was screaming as loudly as it could after smashing its giant thumb with a giant hammer. After a few seconds the screaming stopped, replaced by the combination of images, and ethereal concepts that was the universal language of telepathy.

“We know you,” it said, “You are one of the independent monkies.”

“Why do you call us that?” asked Janus.

Janus could feel it wanted information, so he let it into his personal memories. He could feel it rummaging around in his memories.

“You are a short lived species, you barely live longer than some of our workers. We badly underestimated your species”, it said, “during negotiations the slowness of your responses and decisions made us believe that you were a stupid race, our first victory which was overwhelming confirmed our initial assessment. The battles following should have indicated to us that something wasn’t right, but we had made our decision and our course of action was set. When we failed to overwhelm your species with force we decided to destroy your head. The operation went without a hitch, to us it was more proof that you were stupid. We expected to be able to sweep through your settlements easily winning victories over a brainless colony. When we suffered a defeat in our first battle we were forced to re-evaluate your species.”

This last sentence was thought with a wave of regret, and maybe a bit of bitterness.

“When you fought back after we destroyed your brain we realized our mistake. We studied you more closely and realized that each of you is a brain,” they continued, “and that you didn’t communicate directly, but through physical sounds.”

Janus was almost overwhelmed by the sense of revulsion that poured through the telepathic connection.

“You were so strange, foreign, alien, we couldn’t cope with the ramifications of what it meant to have every one of you a brain,” it continued, “we weren’t sure if it meant we couldn’t win, or couldn’t lose. So we retreated here to at the very least live on.”

They both may have been telepaths but Janus quickly realized their telepathy worked very differently. Throughout the conversation they had been withdrawing their telepathic tendrils from the workers and had been forming their power into one large mass to attempt the telepathic equivalent of a lightning strike, attempting to burn out Janus’ brain and turn him into a vegetable. Janus could see it plainly, clearly they had no idea their tactic was so transparent.

When Janus had judged he had as much information as he would get from them, he returned to his body before the bug brain could strike. He had solved one bit of historical trivia. For a moment he wondered why the bugs had tried to kill him after revealing so much information first. It made no sense. If they wanted him dead, why not just kill him? Why give him so much information first? Then taking a lesson from history and the bugs themselves he never considered the question again.

They usually met at Katie’s house. She was at least 400 lbs, maybe more, and couldn’t easily get out on her own. Luckily she had been able to make a really nice living doing voiceovers for commercials. She was able to record them in her studio in the basement and her agent took care of any on-site meetings that were required by clients. The other women hadn’t been so lucky in their careers. All three of them were still working in the same positions they had started in when they’d finished school, and so Katie’s house was the natural choice, because, in addition to having Katie in it, it also was the largest and nicest.

Francine was the least overweight of them all, weighing in at 280 lbs, and so she was still able to get out relatively easily. Most of her contribution to the conversation involved telling of various events that had happened to her while out in public, as well as showing off merchandise she had found a good deal on, and even the occasional modeling of new clothes she had bought. This last activity brought the most amount of excitement for Francine, since she was the only one who could occasionally find clothing in her size it meant she was the center of attention, at least for a few minutes.

On this particular evening Francine was in high spirits. She had been shopping earlier in the day and that meant all eyes, were on her, and every bit of the conversation was about her purchases, and were ultimately about her.

“I found this at the Salvation Army,” said Francine, pulling out a delicate blue lamp, “it was ½ off day so I got it for $5.”

The women commented on how cute it was, and how it would look fantastic in Francine’s house, and what a great deal it had been. The lamp made its way to Katie who noticed dirt on the bottom of it, so she wiped it clean with a napkin left over from the meal and almost dropped the delicate, cute lamp when a very loud and very male voice said, “I know its cliché, but your wish is my command.”

The four women stared in stunned silence at a large man dressed in an immaculate suit stood before him. His ebony skin was so deeply dark it almost seemed an impossible. He was dressed and groomed immaculately, and had an air of self-assurance that could never be mistaken for arrogance, but there was a sense of dignity about him that could only be described as gravitas. And he was staring at Katie expectantly.

Katie stared back with a stunned look.

After several minutes of staring the large man seemed to reach the end of his patience, and spoke again.

“You’re familiar with the story of Aladdin?” he said, “There is a bit of truth in those old stories, I live in a lamp, you released me, but you get only one wish, and so, as I said before, though it’s a cliché your wish is my command.”

Katie answered quickly, and unwaveringly, “I wish the four of us would for the rest of our lives maintain a normal body weight.”

“It’s my lamp,” screeched Francine, “It should be my wish!”

“She freed me,” said the man, “this is how it works. “

And then the man disappeared, as did exactly 589 pounds of body fat from the four women. There were no folds of skin that characterized extreme weight loss, nor any other mark on their skin that would indicate they had ever been anything other than normal sized women, except their clothes were suddenly far larger than any of them needed.

Katie quickly solved that problem by calling her agent and having him buy a variety of clothes sizes 8-10. He was used to acting as Katie’s errand boy, what he wasn’t used to was buying clothes, since all of Katie’s clothes normally had to be special ordered. Part of the reason why her agent was her agent is because he learned quickly to never ask questions, or make comments that referred to her weight at all, and as a result he didn’t ask a single question as to why she wanted clothes she hadn’t fit into since she was 9 years old. He simply knocked on the door, left the packages outside as requested, and left.

While all of the women had fantasized on a regular basis that losing weight would make them super model hot the reality was it only made them normal. But normal was enough to transform their lives. No longer were they invisible to their co-workers, or in the case of Katie she now actually could have co-workers, they could use stairs, fit into roller coasters, didn’t have to ask for chairs without arm rests, didn’t feel self-conscious when eating in public, and didn’t wonder if anytime anyone laughed, if they were making fat jokes.

Katie’s house no longer functioned as a fortress of solitude, instead it now functioned as a de-briefing center where the women came at the end of the night. Well, at least Susan, Barbara and Katie did. Francine had stopped going out with them after a week or so. In fact none of them had seen her in over a month. Katie proposed they call Francine and see what was going on. Susan and Barbara agreed and followed Katie into her office where they could use the speaker phone.

“Hello”, said Francine in a flat voice.

“Hi Franny,” said Katie, happily, “We were wondering if we’re ever going to see you again.”
Several seconds of uncomfortable silence followed.

“Hello?” asked Katie, “are you still there?”

“I’m still here,” said Francine, “but I can’t stand to be around you right now.”

The words hit Katie hard. Francine had been her friend for years, nothing had separated them before.
“What!?” asked Katie, “What’d I do?”

“It wasn’t fair,” said Francine, “That was my lamp. It should have been my wish.”

“You heard him,” said Katie, “that’s not how it works. Besides, what you have wished for besides weight loss?”

Several seconds of silence passed again. Susan, Barbara, and Katie knew Francine well enough that they knew she was weighing whether or not to say what she was thinking. Normally they would coax her out of her silence, this time, they let the silence hang in the air.

“It wasn’t fair,” said Francine, “we all got the same thing.”

More silence. More deciding by Francine.

She finally said, “you were the worst Katie. You gave up totally. You never tried to diet, you wouldn’t even go outside much less exercise. And you got the same thing I did. I may not have been successful, but at least I tried. Its NOT fair.”

“None of it is fair,” said Katie, her voice going flat and emotionless, “because you bought a stupid lamp at Goodwill, and because I was anal enough to clean the bottom of it, we all never have to worry about our weight again. We can eat whatever we want, we don’t have to exercise, and we didn’t have to struggle to lose weight in the first place. What happened to us was wonderful, and incredible. We got our lives back. And it was totally and utterly unfair for all of us.”

“But you were the worst,” said Fran, “I might have been fat, but I never gave up. I still dieted, I at least exercised, I could still find clothes to buy in the store, and actually leave my house. I didn’t have to use a stick with a sponge on it to wash myself. You just gave up and got fatter and fatter. It’s not fair that we got the same thing.”

“Frannie,” said Katie, her voice returning to its normal friendly demeanor, “it’s over. And it doesn’t matter if it wasn’t fair. Just come over and be our friend like before. There’s no reason to do this.”
Francine didn’t reply, instead she very calmly hung up the phone. The dial tone filled Katie’s office and seemed to dominate the space the few seconds it took for Katie to hang up the phone.

Whenever Jonah started writing his novels it was a brutal process that more closely resembled Sherman’s march to sea than was any artistic endeavor that Matt had ever seen or heard described. Jonah sat in front of his PC typing with a cadence more suitable to an early 20th century industrial machine of some sort than a person, and he did this for up to 20 hours a day. By the time he finished a novel he’d lose close to 20 lbs, because he’d forget to feed himself, and he smelled as bad as anyone who had a roof over his head could smell.

When Matt asked Jonah about the time spent creating the stories he wrote Jonah couldn’t provide much of an explanation. It always involved the phrase “the razor” but beyond that it was a mixed up jumble of crazy metaphors and seemingly made-up words. For example, one time Matt had asked Jonah why he stopped drinking while he was writing. It was a reasonable question. After all Jonah was a social drinker who always seemed to find himself in social situations night after night, and let’s face it, without substance abuse the world of art would be very empty indeed. All Jonah had said was, “it dulls the razor”. Matt could tell he wasn’t trying to be the mysterious artiste whose ways were ineffable to all those around him, he was actually at a loss for words, as if you were trying to describe colors to a man born blind.

For the first two novels Matt had written it off as artistic quirk, perhaps the 3% of Jonah that was madness that drove his talent. The third novel changed Matt’s judgment. The third novel was about a gay man who was killed by a couple of rednecks, and while the various culture warriors struggled over how to manipulate the story to sway public sentiment the family is trampled underfoot like the grass of a battlefield. Jonah completed the manuscript on October 1st, 1998, 11 days later on October 12th Matthew Shepherd was killed in Laramie Montana, on October 13th Jonah’s editor changed the name of the dead gay character, and changed his hometown. The editor had written it off as a huge cosmic coincidence, like the publishing of the novel “Futility” which told the story of a ship named the Titan which was similar in size to the Titanic, sank in the same general vicinity of the Titanic, and even sank from an iceberg piercing the starboard side, like the titanic. And it was published 14 years before the Titanic sailed.

The fourth novel should have tipped off even the least superstitious person in the history of universes. It was a story of political corruption, a story of a New York Attorney General named Eliot Spitzer who gained fame by prosecuting prostitution rings and eventually becomes governor, only to be discovered to be a huge fan of whores, and not in the “get them out of the business” sense of concern. Much like his fourth novel this novel dealt more with the individuals involved and how they were being used like pawns by newspapers, political players, other family members and generally anyone who could profit from the situation in any way. As a result his editor again changed the details, the name, the crimes, the city and ran with it. Jonah’s editor was either the least imaginative man in the history of the world or he all he could see was the dollar signs that an up and coming author meant for him, because he never said a word to Jonah about it, there weren’t even the usual whispers in the usual places, which in publishing circles was unprecedented because it meant no tongues were wagging at all.

Now, Jonah was sleeping for a few hours, as eventually his body forced him to do while he was writing and Matt decided to take a peek at the manuscript that Jonah had left up on the PC, after all, maybe Jonah had revealed the lotto numbers, or the winner of the Super Bowl, and Matt could make some money off of “the razor”, whatever it might be. Matt quickly hit the “home” key causing the curser to jump to the beginning of the story, and his name was drawn to the name of the protagonist: Matthew P. Mendenhall. It was his own name. And Matthew P. Mendenhall, the character as well as the person both went to and graduated from the same high school, both failed out of a state college, both were a little overweight, and both were provided for by their successful childhood friend who made it big as an author who was named Jonah.

Matt scanned the first few paged before hitting the “end” key and returning the curser to where it had been before. He dropped into the chair in front of the TV with a *whump* sound and his thoughts swirled around. This wasn’t good. This wasn’t good at all. Jonah didn’t write happy endings. If you were a major character in one of Jonah’s books you ended up dead, disgraced, living in quiet desperation, or just plain unhappy for a lifetime. This was not good.

After a few hours Jonah came in and sat back down and began his brutal creation process again. Matt sat there for a few minutes, contemplating his next move.

“I read the first few pages of your manuscript,” said Matt.

The typing stops. Jonah continues to stare straight ahead as if waking up and the words are taking a few minutes to penetrate.

“Please tell me I live happily ever after.”

Jonah turns slowly and says, “I don’t think that’s where this is headed.”

“What the hell,” said Matt, “I’ve been nothing but your friend since we were little, I stuck with you no matter what, I’d have given you anything you asked for, and this is how you repay me? You’re going to kill me, maim me, or psychologically damage me beyond repair with your voodoo novel writing skills?!?!? And for what? For the money? Is it the huge payday you’ve been guaranteed? Or is it the fame? Don’t tell me it’s something as douchey as for the sake of art. If you kill me for the sake of art I swear to Romero I will come back as a zombie and eat your fucking brains! ”

“It’s not like that,” said Jonah. “It’s the razor. I’m not doing this alone, and it is the art. Something wants people to know the things I write about. I’m not even sure I could stop if I wanted to.”

This just infuriated Matt even more, that Jonah would betray him like this and then deny any culpability. Instead of screaming Matt just said in a cold, hard voice, “I loved you I’d have done anything for you, and you stab me in the back, maybe literally, for a book contract. At least Lennon had Yoko Ono.”

And with that Matt was out the door. It was not a decision he thought through. He didn’t have any place to go, no car to head out anywhere, and just barely enough money to get a couple of meals at best. So Matt went to the bar they drank at almost every night. Jonah had an open tab here, and Matt was allowed to charge to it. So he started drinking, but instead of the beer he normally drank he started lining up shot after shot of whiskey, getting drunker and more desperate with each shot. Matt knew he was totally and inevitably screwed. Whatever Jonah wrote would come true, and Jonah wouldn’t stop writing no matter what. If Matt threw the PC out the window he’d go get another one and start over, hell, Jonah would write it on toilet paper with a pen stolen from a bank if he had to. As Matt’s mind plotted each new idea to save himself and stop the story and then discarded it the same thought kept coming to mind: “I would have done anything for him, and this is how he treats me”. Finally, Matt’s well lubricated brain came up with an idea that horrified him at first, but that phrase “I would have done anything for him, and this is how he treats me” had wormed its way into Matt’s brain and heart and made him bitter and hateful towards Jonah and eventually the idea wasn’t just no longer horrific, it seemed downright reasonable, maybe even noble.

So Matt got up from the bar, and started back towards their apartment. On the way there he used the keyless entry pad on Jonah’s car, opened the door and got out one of the aluminum softball bats and continued to their apartment. When he peeked around the corner he expected to see Jonah furiously typing away, but he wasn’t there, which was strange since it had only been four hours since Matt had left the apartment and usually Jonah would go for twelve hours at least. He started to go check Jonah’s bedroom, and on the way he smelled something vaguely peppermint as he passed the kitchen, but he was a man on a mission and didn’t bother checking it out. When he slowly opened the door to Jonah’s bedroom he could see Jonah sleeping, hear him snoring and see the slow rise and fall of his chest as he slept. Matt didn’t hesitate for a moment, anymore than a man who was defending himself from a deadly attacker would. He raised the bat and delivered a homerun swing to Jonah’s head. The bat shivered with the impact and Matt raised it again and again delivering shot after shot to Jonah’s head with major league power. By the time he was finished Jonah’s head was a pulpy, splintery mess of brain, blood and bone. The light from the streets illuminated the room just enough that Matt could see blood spatter on the wall behind the bed formed a crescent moon shape, which seemed strange to him. Shrugging it off he dropped the bat and said, “let’s see you finish that novel now you loyaless fuck.”

Matt then started towards Jonah’s PC to erase what he had already written but stopped at the kitchen as the peppermint smell hit him again. He turned into the kitchen and saw two empty bottles of peppermint Schnapps and a bottle of rum. They had all been partially consumed from their last party but Matt knew there had been enough there to get Jonah all sloppy.

“Good,” said Matt to no one in particular, “I hope his conscience did bother him.” The hard, bitter feeling he had cultivated towards Jonah felt good, almost holy to him right now.

Matt continued on to Jonah’s work room, sits down at the PC and begins to read to see if Jonah had already signed his death warrant by writing him out of the novel. He scrolled up several pages and began reading towards the end. What he read crushed his mind. The novel ends exactly as the nights events had unfolded. Matt the character had killed Jonah the character with a bat, it even included the crescent shaped blood stain on the wall.

Matt’s head spun, and it wasn’t just because of the whiskey shots from earlier in the night. This made no sense at all. Matt may not have been a literature professor but he knew enough to see the foreshadowing that Jonah had spun through the story, and he knew the Matt character was going to die, or at least end up a vegetable. This ending didn’t make any sense at all. It was like some shitty horror movie that tries to make up for its sheer awfulness by tacking on a contrived twist ending that just pisses the audience off because it makes no sense.

Then Matt remembered what Jonah had said about drinking while creating. “It dulls the razor”. And it all came together. The ending didn’t make sense because that wasn’t supposed to be the ending. Jonah had gotten bombed out of his skull on year old Peppermint Schnapps and rum that had been left over from their Halloween party last year to “dull the razor” and had written an ending the razor had never meant to be there. And it was the only ending that insured Matt’s survival, by ending Jonah’s life.

Matt put his head in his hands and began mentally kicking himself. How could he have been so stupid? Jonah had been nothing but the most loyal, best friend anyone could ask for. Jonah had carried him for years, long after everyone, even his family had given up on him. He had supported him financially, but also had never made him feel like a failure leeching off his successful friend. Everyone else but Jonah had gone out of their way to do exactly that. And now, even after Matt’s harsh, untrue words Jonah had demonstrated that he was the best friend possible by giving up his own life for his loser friend.

Three times Matt picked up the phone, once he even dialed 9-1 before slamming it back down. Turning himself in for murder wasn’t why Jonah had written that ending. He had written that ending to save Matt’s life, and if he was going to prison for murder 1 he might as well be dead. So Matt saved the manuscript, sent it off to Jonah’s editor with a typically Jonah-esque snarky comment, closed the laptop up and packed it up. He also grabbed Jonah’s cell phone and stuffed it in his pocket, grabbed the keys to the car and came up with a plan. If he could get rid of the body he could stall any investigation long enough the evidence might not be enough to convict him. The rough idea in Matt’s head was that if he got rid of the body and the evidence he could correspond with everyone who contacted Jonah regularly via email, because Jonah had worked hard to isolate himself from everyone who wanted a piece of him, and email was the least time consuming and most impersonal. His bills were all automatic withdrawals from the checking account, likewise payments from his publisher were handled the same way. That meant with no effort on his part no one would come poking around because everyone was getting paid.

Matt decided to take a chance and sneak the body out whole, he didn’t think he could take dismembering his friends’ body, so he wrapped the body in the bedsheets, shoved it into a couple of garbage bags and prayed that the halls of their apartment building would be empty between here and the service elevator. They were. Matt shoved his friend’s body into the car, drove off, stopping only to dump the body in one of the rivers that fed into the bay. And then he was gone, starting his new life given to him by Jonah.