This Book Does Not Exist by Mike Schneider Read Free Book Online

is crashing into Naomi’s parents’ house, obliterating the entire east side. The aircraft smokes and people scream from somewhere invisible to me and a Yellow Lab puppy like the one I had as a child runs out of the house. I watch the dog, wishing I were running with it somewhere far away, when a man wearing a pilot’s uniform emerges from the gaping hole in the house.
    From an eighth of a mile away he points at me .
    “Michael!”
    No one besides Naomi calls me that, except now this man, this pilot, who is closing the gap between us faster than should be possible on foot.
    He tosses something at me.
    The object skips on the porch and bumps against my foot.
    It is a knife. A commando-style knife designed to kill.
    The pilot stops ten feet away from me. He is tall and muscular, a man in uniform with flawless skin and a movie star face, younger than me. There is ferocity in his eyes but a mischievous slant in the way the edges of his mouth curl upwards, as if he’s competing in a game he loves only when he doesn’t lose.
    “You pickin ’ up the knife or what?”
    The pilot is clutching a smaller but still deadly knife of his own. I consider answering his question by attempting to escape, but the pilot has proven to be incredibly fast already. I start to debate other options, but I always think too much, so this time I act. I bend. My arm leans for the knife. My fingers curl around the handle.
    There is no turning back.
    I swipe at the pilot’s leg.
    The blade slices across the front of his shin and cuts through his pants. A channel of blood, blood that I released, leaks through the hole in the fabric. Becoming hyper-aware of my own vulnerability, I slip back, anticipating a counter-attack, and I’m right – the pilot plunges his knife at me – but he misses. His aim, pathetic.
    I have a moment where I think this is a fight I cannot lose.
    But that moment ends when the pilot punches me in the head.
    I crack back, down and off the porch. He cackles as the pain takes hold of my skull. He wipes the blood off of his shin before it runs down to his boot, which appears heavy enough to stomp a concrete block into gravel.
    He brings that boot down on top of me.
    I roll, arcing my knife at his chest. It doesn’t connect. He stabs at me in return. His first attempt hits air. His second comes as I’m clawing back to my feet, and it nicks my bicep. The puncture in my flesh burns. I stand up to him, angry.
    We square off.
    I read him. He reads me. We both search for an opening. He is almost giddy, and it lures me into a comfort zone, where I imagine us being able to carry on a conversation, with me lobbing questions like, “What is this place?” and “What is happening to me?” and “Why did you kill all those people?” and “Did Naomi tell you to call me Michael?” But I don’t say anything because at my core I’m still scared to death.
    Suddenly, the pilot flips his knife between hands and lunges. I dip away, thrusting my knife forward, aiming underneath his attacking arm to try to get to his stomach before he can get to me, but he pulls back – and I can’t extend myself all the way to his body – so I only clip his hand.
    The cut forces open his fingers. His weapon ricochets across the ground. He recoils to get it, and I go at him full on, striking his chest with the serrated edge of my blade and plunging it through his skin, bricking up against his sternum. The impact stings my hand the same way not holding my bat tightly enough when hitting a fastball out of a pitching machine would. Despite the shock, I hang on to the handle and rip the knife from his upper body, sending him spinning – and I cram the knife into his back.
    I lose my nerves along with my grip.
    The knife sticks in the pilot, who revolves as he plummets. The handle hits the ground first, and the collision drives the blade further into his back, all the way to the hilt.
    He curls into the fetal position. He twitches then spasms.
    I did not want