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    Anything But Lonely: stories about the end of the world
    Anything But Lonely: stories about the end of the world
    Anything But Lonely: stories about the end of the world
    Ebook39 pages35 minutes

    Anything But Lonely: stories about the end of the world

    By Ryan Sheffield

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    About this ebook

    From charitable vandals to lovelorn superheroes to mad bombers, the disconsolate characters of the six stories in Anything But Lonely each face their own figurative- and sometimes literal -end of the world.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRyan Sheffield
    Release dateOct 6, 2011
    ISBN9781465755728
    Anything But Lonely: stories about the end of the world
    Author

    Ryan Sheffield

    Ryan Sheffield is a writer and artist from North Texas.

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      Book preview

      Anything But Lonely - Ryan Sheffield

      Anything But Lonely

      stories about the end of the world

      Ryan Sheffield

      Copyright 2011 Ryan Sheffield

      Smashwords Edition

      Thank you for downloading this free e-book. You’re more than welcome to share it with your friends, print it off, leave it in strange places or read it aloud to friends at Christmas parties. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book, title, author name and this copyright statement remain in their complete original form. Please don’t pretend you wrote it or sell it for money. Thanks!

      Contents

      Scrawler’s Last Five Miles to Fate

      The Last Goddamn Place on Earth

      Manifesto

      Drinks With a Friend

      Clark

      The Tasked

      Scrawler’s Last Five Miles to Fate

      Scrawler slammed his fist against the radio button because the story was bullshit and he didn’t want to hear it anymore.

      He wiped a tear and punched the steering wheel. He thought about the air bag and punched the wheel again, softer this time. He had to take a leak. Thank God for small favors. He was drowning.

      He caught sight of an exit sign and flipped on the blinker. Interstate 30, Dallas to Texarkana was a long, painful stretch of nothing, empty, flatness, and a gas station. You’re lucky to find a crummy Mexican joint and once every three nothings and a flatness, there’s a truck stop. Scrawler didn’t believe in luck. He might have, if luck did anything for him.

      He punched the radio back on as he pulled into the truck stop parking lot. A commercial for wholesale gold. Punch off. He threw the parking brake and sat there watching an obese woman hobble past his car. She looked like a giant sack full of water stuffed into Capri pants and reeking of the human condition. He checked himself in the rearview. His eyes were red and puffy around the edges, but the tears had dried. He thought about buying a sandwich. He thought about low-fat mayonnaise seeping out the bottom of Capri pants. He punched the steering wheel.

      Texas truck stops are lit like Purgatory would be if God owned a K-Mart. Aisle after aisle of fried pork skins and Indian trinkets, colorful toys made of Chinese lead and resin busts of crying eagles. Scrawler loved knick-knacks because Shelly loved knick-knacks. He had never taken her to a truck stop, but she would have loved them. Probably.

      Texas truck stop bathrooms are lit like Hell would be if the Devil liked trinkets and mayonnaise. Beefy truckers pissed, coughed and didn’t wash their hands. Their musk was that of the unwashed, ignorant, helpless masses. Lost and wandering and smelling so thickly of cigarette smoke that you could taste the color yellow in the back of your teeth when they walked by.

      Scrawler picked a stall and shut the door. He used his boot to kick the

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