Kuunari

I’ll be publishing some short stories here on north of nowhere.  The first one is an older one called Run, about a young man, his roommate and her boyfriend, who get to deal with a stressful situation in a way that might not be the most productive.

Run (pdf)

Run on smashwords (buyer chooses price)

the start of the story after the break…

Run.

By Bill Stenross

I hadn’t spent the evening well, that much was certain. Wandering around the neighborhood aimlessly, from coffee shops to bookstores and back again. In the back pocket of my jeans was a cheap paperback edition of a classic novel popular before I was born. I had read for most of that that evening, gazing up often from my table, hoping to see someone I knew. This was how I ended up spending most nights I didn’t want to be at home, having quietly alienated my friends before my girlfriend left me to teach English abroad. Two years apart is a long time, and was too long for us.

I walked into the apartment slowly, carefully closing the door behind me, not wanting to let my roommate know I was home. I shrugged off my coat and scarf, throwing them in a pile on the living room couch. The streetlight outside my window kept the room illuminated and the remains of a rented movie covered the coffee table. I crept down the darkened hallway, knowing that I hoped to hear what was happening in her room.

It wasn’t that I loved her really. But in many respects she had replaced my ex, and had lent a sympathetic ear to my troubles and emotional flailing in late nights on the couch. I wanted them to fail. He was a successful student, with a promising career in buying estates and German cars ahead of him. He had spent his summers working in a building downtown, making connections that would serve him the rest of his life.

In the dark, I couldn’t hear much. Light flooded the floor before her door. I took a couple of steps back into the living room and called out, letting them know I was home. As I walked back down the hallway, I could hear movement in her bedroom. I paused outside my bedroom as I heard her door open.

“Hey, Run.” Her voice was muffled by silent tears. I turned around, she was leaning against the doorframe wearing soft flannel pants and a green tanktop. Her eyes were red.

I asked her how her night had been, to hear it from her. To hear how he had broken her heart, had crushed her spirit. We would be two kindred souls on the couch. My tales of desertion and heartbreak, finding their listener an empathic creature rather than sympathetic.

“I’m pregnant.” Silence. “he wants me to have an abortion.”

And that was it. She said other things in the hallway and so did I, but those words didn’t matter. For some people, love is a fuel. Without it, they are directionless, powerless against the crush of the world.

There came a knock on the door, and I walked past her to answer it…