Free and Horrible E-Book

Angel Rupert

• Herausgeber: Bentockiz
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Manipulation and scheming were not a natural part of her thinking. But then she realized, in a moment of maturity, that she’d unconsciously played him at least as much as he’d played her. In the end, she didn’t feel guilty. She didn’t feel heart-broken or used. She just felt relieved that that experiment in independence and self-fulfillment was over and he had never found out.

Leseprobe

Title Page

Free and Horrible

Unjustified Changes

Angel Rupert

Free and Horrible / 9th of series: Unjustified Changes / By Angel Rupert

Published 2023 by Bentockiz

e-book Imprint: Uniochlors

e-book Registration: Stockholm, Sweden

e-book ISBN: 9789198847086

e-book editing: Athens, Greece

Cover Images created via AI art generators

Table of Contents

Title Page

Introduction

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Introduction

Through books we come into contact with everything important that has happened in the past, analyzing also current events and putting our thoughts together to predict the future. The book is a window to the world, acquiring valuable knowledge and sparking our vivid imagination. It is a means of entertainment and is generally seen as a best friend, or as a slave that carries together all valuable information for us. The book is a friend who stays together without demands, a friend you call upon at every moment and abandon when you want.

It accompanies us in the hours of boredom and loneliness, while at the same time it entertains us. In general, a book does not ask anything from us, while it waits patiently on a dusty shelf to give us its information, to get us out of dead ends and to travel us to magical worlds.

This may be the travel mission of our books. Abstract narration, weird or unconscious thoughts difficult to be understood, but always genuine and full of life experiences, these are stories of life that can’t be overlooked easily.

This may be the start of something amazing.

Chapter One

He set the letter aside on his desk, amidst all the other clutter of special order requests, return lists, return confirmations, advance reviews, inventory counts, and the like. He’d hoped that putting it there might temporarily quiet the roar it was producing in his mind, free him to continue his work until his lunch hour came around—always at 2, after Deena (his other full-time employee, a young blonde newlywed who thought it good training to watch over and mother her faltering boss) who went from 12 to 1, and Emma from 1 till 2—and he could go off somewhere and unpack its contents in private. Despite his gesture, the sealed letter remained a palpable presence in the cubicle. It seemed to glow white hot out of the corner of his eye, and the roar that had begun when Allison handed it to him continued unabated. Though he hated to work at checkout, he was delighted this day when Valerie, their chief cashier, called him to the front and reminded him that he had agreed to run the register while she went to a doctor’s appointment (for “female trouble” she’d told him when making the request—he’d not pressed her for further details but since she was twenty-four and single and liked partying with boys of a faster sort than Zach, that trouble likely was related to an active sex life). From his seat behind the cash register, and distracted by a slow but steady stream of lunch-hour walk-ins, he was able to almost forget the potent missive waiting him in his cubicle.

When two o’clock rolled around (Valerie wasn’t back but Gail, their paperback manager and a thirty-something career retailer with her eye on a mall-store manager’s slot, came up from downstairs to tend the till), Zach threw on his tan corduroy sportcoat, stuffed the letter in its left-side inner breast pocket, and headed out the door with only a cursory nod to the curious glances of both Emma and Deena.

He headed up Franklin and Bromfield in the gray, cool day to his newest hidden-in-plain-sight hideaway—an iron bench in the far corner of the cemetery next to the old Park Street Church. It wasn’t really hidden in plain sight, since the bench was in full view of Tremont Street and all its passing cars and pedestrians. But what Zach had quickly discovered after his first couple brief stops on the bench (once to get out of the hot late-day sun, another time to escape a belligerent vagrant) was that if you were sitting alone and contemplative in a graveyard, people assumed you were in mourning and left you alone. Whether they did this out of respect or fear mattered little to Zach (and he was after all carrying a burden that felt like mortal loss). What mattered is that no one, not once, bothered him while he was sitting on that bench.

So naturally he headed for that spot with his new burden (or would it be freedom?) burning a metaphorical hole in his breast pocket. Under normal circumstances, today would’ve been too cold to sit in the shady and damp graveyard clothed in nothing more than his sportcoat over a button-down striped Oxford cloth shirt with a burgundy wool tie (Ed Denning demanded that all his male employees wear a shirt and tie) and khaki pants. But Zach didn’t feel the chill in the air or the cool slats of the bench that dampened his butt. All he felt was the letter—first in his pocket then in his fingers as he tore a ragged opening in the envelope’s top edge and removed the single sheet of linen stationery that had been folded in perfect thirds. He unfolded it to reveal a page of single-spaced typewritten text with only the salutation and the closing signature hand-written in a black-ink deliberate scrawl.

Dear Zachary Sandstrom—

Please pardon my tardiness. Your generous letter and manuscript arrived at a time when I was buried under a mountain of term papers and tests. They promptly became buried under their own mountain of ensuing correspondence only to be unearthed this morning by my faithful housekeeper, six months to the day since you sent them. Again, my apologies for the delay in responding; and my thanks for your letter and the stories and scenes.

I like your writing. Its intensity and gravitation toward what matters—toward the moments and words and actions that change lives—show great promise and natural skill, the sort of skill that can’t be taught. The intensity is so great in fact that it gives rise to my main reservation about the work I’ve seen—it’s too intense, tries to pack too much feeling and lesson in too small a frame. You may wish to consider dampening that blaze and letting that fire burn across a larger expanse of time and emotional terrain—a novel, perhaps; or a narrative poem (there is much about your prose that is but one step removed from verse). But there is vigorous life on all the pages I read; and I wish you much luck with your work.

As to your final question regarding studying with me at Avery, I must first grant that my tardy response may have resulted in its withdrawal. Your circumstances may have moved you beyond such a wish or possibility. However, if you are still interested, please note that I teach two courses one semester each year—one course in literature, one in writing. Currently, the writing course is in long prose fiction. Based on this sample of work, you would be a good candidate for that class.