69 INCHES AND RISING by Rebecca Steinbeck Read Free Book Online

damage the man in black hoped it would, and it made him happy to see that.
    Her body was close to giving up now and the tears flowed hard and fast. She looked around, not for help anymore but for comfort, because she had accepted in her heart that by then it was too late. She looked around because she wanted the last thing she saw before she died to be the thing that had given her the most happiness - her home town that kept chugg-chugg-chugging along during the day, and its sordid little secrets to itself at night. But night had not yet come and one member of the population of a small town blowing the hell out of another could not be kept a secret for very long.
    Jonathon closed his eyes and he saw his mother’s blood flowing freely from the hole in her chest. He looked closer at her and saw her tears too. They fell from her eyes and they landed on the scorched earth. The fire would not go out even with the tears falling on it. It burned her skin because the fire was hot and she was cooking like a Thanksgiving turkey. She looked up at him. The pain in her eyes cut him deep and hard like a rusty razor. It tormented his soul, playing with it like a child would play with his dog, but this dog was dead. Jonathon reached out to touch her but he didn’t touch her because he couldn’t. He could only hope and pray that he would reach her before the Devil swallowed her whole. “I’m coming, Mom,” he said, and he set off in the hope he could bring her back from the depths of Hell, and he was armed with a sword, a shield, and the love of a God that for so long he didn’t believe in. Little did he know that his time on Earth, during which he had suffered time and again and about which he had written any number of horror stories for which he had become rich and famous, had been practice for the real thing, the ultimate test of his strength and depth as a man who, according to God’s wishes, would one day be king.
     
     
    CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
     
    J onathon walked along a dirt road that wound its way around hills and trees. Plumes of smoke rose into the darkness and they watched over him like a hawk watches over its prey. Black bats flew overhead. They screeched as they searched for food and they found it in the form of a slab of roasted meat that looked like a horse but Jonathon couldn’t tell for sure. All he knew was that the animal was now dead. The bats tore at the roasted meat, pulling it away from the bones and Jonathon watched them closely as he walked by. One of the bats looked back at him. They were kindred spirits, Jonathon and the bat, both surviving at night on whatever they could get their hands on. For the bat, it was food for its body. And for Jonathon, it was food for thought for his novels. But now the novels didn’t matter, and the food for thought that once fuelled them was fuelling something else - the survival of the woman who gave him life.
    Soon Jonathon was tired and he stopped by the side of the road to rest. He saw a skull on the other side of the road and he wondered whose it might be. Were they young or old? Were they in love with another, or were they a single soul in a single body? He stopped his train of thought because he knew it had but one destination, Novel Central, and he knew the computer he wrote his words on no longer existed, and Novel Central was a destination that could no longer be reached. Instead of thinking about what the skull might represent, and writing a story about it, he accepted its true meaning, which was death, and death stood still for no one. He climbed to his feet and carried on down the road in search of his mother. The road was hard and hot, and it was hurting his feet, but still he carried on. And while the road hurt his feet, the darkness around him burned his heart because within it was a fire breathed by the Devil and fanned by his demons. But still he carried on, and he carried on because of the love he had for his mother. He wanted to reach her and save her. He