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Come on darlin', take me home and put me to bed, a short story by jeffmearns. Date added: 2009-04-22. Times viewed: 8685.

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Intro: Introduction to a novel in progress

Ok, let's get something straight from the start. I am not the hero of this story, or any other story. I am a selfish bastard. This is the story of a heroine, Kim. This is a story of alcoholism, drug abuse, violence, attempted rape, incest, fraud and corruption, threats and intimidation, abandonment, horrific accidents and loss of faith. But, above all, it is a love story; a true love story. And it begins, near the end, on the day of my fiftieth birthday. Or does it?

I've always been envious of people with bad memories. Not those people who have a history swamped in sorrow but those who can't remember much. They can watch a movie over and over again and the ending is always fresh, always an outcome of surprise. And so, although I love reading novels, even if I haven't picked up a certain book for years, a couple of pages in and the characters, the plot, come flooding back. When I first got back from Greece, almost five months ago, I started re-reading a novel by Steven Saylor and was really confused because, even after a few chapters, I couldn't remember the ending. I'd read every other book in my parent's house in the first week back in a blitz of escapism, anything to blank out the world, the recent events but, more precisely, to blank out me. I didn't try to blank out Kim; even I know that some things are simply impossible. I was going through 2 or 3 novels a day, hiding in my old bedroom. Anyway, the more I read of Saylor's book the more uncomfortable I became. ‘Why can't I remember the end?' I was so tempted to skip to the last page but couldn't. I didn't want the book to end, I didn't want anything to end, I didn't want my life to end, but it had... the existence was still happening but life, in other words, my life with Kim was over. And then something amazing happened, I turned a page and there it was... the book has no end. Was this a sign, or just some cruel God joke, some metaphor for our relationship? The book, like my life, is a misprint. The last thirty pages of the book are the first thirty pages of the book. There is no ending, no conclusion. There is no resolution, no understanding. Or, as Kim would have put it, this is a story, an episode, a relationship that will never be ‘grounded'

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