Empty Rooms and Hallways Read online

  He laughed a little but said nothing.

  I stared out at the fields passing, the woods in the distance, and I listened to the rattles and clunks of the car as it straddled the ribbed asphalt, thudding over potholes and bouncing around corners.

  “I need to go to Idaho,” I told the driver. “I should have mentioned that before I got in.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. We said nothing for a while, and then he said, “We all go the same place in the end.”

  “What?” I asked.

  He shrugged again, looking over at me. His eyes were the bluest I’d ever seen, as though they were illuminated by some ethereal light.

  “Or just the next town, I guess,” I said quickly.

  He turned again to watch the road. “No more towns,” he said quietly.

  “Sure, just around this curve,” I told him.

  “Nope,” he said, so I dropped it. I was starting to get nervous now, because it felt like the car was going to fall apart. I swear the wheels were getting further apart. The door panels and dashboard seemed further away.

  “Is something wrong with this car?” I asked him, because it was really happening. It was definitely pulling apart. My door was three feet away, separated from the dashboard, and in between was blackness. The scenery still passed outside the window.

  “Nothing wrong with this car,” he said.

  Then the car was so far away that all the parts were separate points of light on the horizon, zooming away, vanishing like the world it took with it. Suddenly, there was just a steering wheel and two seats, and he and I.

  “I’ve been watching you,” he said quietly, not looking at me. “And now I’ve got you.”

  “I think I want to get out of the car,” I said, but he laughed because there was no car anymore. The only thing left was my heart pounding, the sounds of the road somewhere below us in the dark, the distant squeaks of some phantom suspension. “Who are you?” I whispered, and he looked at me again with his blue eyes, more ghostly than before.

  “You know who I am,” he said, and then he was gone, but I still heard his voice, laughing. I sat in an invisible car seat, hard and uncomfortable, rattling over imaginary potholes. “You know who I am,” he said again, his voice echoing into the void.

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  About the Author

  I was born in the wastelands of the American Midwest, and I still live there, much to everyone's regret. I started writing as a teenager as a side effect of what psychologists refer to as the "personal fable." I believed that I was unique, that my personal life story impacted the world, and that the world revolves around me. In my mid-twenties, I picked up writing again because I was sick of reading slosh and tired of having to go back fifty years to find books I actually want to read. I was especially over the only gay literature available in 2008 being soft core porn romance bullshit with jacked, oiled-up porn stars on the covers. I decided that if I wanted to read something that wasn't 500 pages of comma abuse and boners, I'd have to write it myself.

  And so I did. It may not be the best, but it's what I want to read. Thank you for the support, and I hope my writing means something to you as well.

  Visit my Goodreads page, where you can further abuse me by leaving me comments and questions and rating my worth as an author by a vague five-star scale! Click click! Do it!

  You might even go to my author page on Facebook and give it a like. That would be awesome!

  Thanks for the continued support and thanks for reading.

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  Dedication

  This story collection is dedicated to my partners in writing, a very select group of people who are also writers. They are all extremely talented and they write things that I look forward to reading (a rare thing these days because, in my opinion, there's a lot of literary slosh in the world right now) and they have all at one point or another helped me shape one of my typo-riddled landmines into a finished book. Without the guidance of these awesome folks, I wouldn't have the courage to publish anything I've written. I'd like to say that I do everything myself, but without the help of these people and being constantly inspired by their ability to keep writing and creating new works, I'd have given up long ago. I am inspired almost every day by you guys, even by things so mundane and inconsequential as status updates on social media, so thank you.

  Gypsy Snow

  Chelsey Barker

  Brianne Chason

  Joe Egly-Shaneyfelt

  Elizabeth Verger

  Carla Kleeberg

  If I forgot anyone, I'm sorry. I blame my advanced age.

  I want to extend a very special thank you to all of my readers for your support and encouragement during the 2015 season. I'd like to extend it like the neck of a giraffe, but alas. I have no god-like abilities. You'll have to accept some kind of mechanized extension.

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