Blackbirds by Chuck Wendig Page B

get one book, and when that book is over, so are we. Worse, some of us get shorter books than others. Austin's book was a pamphlet. Once it's over, it's over. Throw it away. Say goodbye, Gracie."
      "That's morbid."
      Miriam stands, kicks over her chair, then picks it up and wings it hard – it clatters against the warehouse floor, spinning away.
      "Paul, don't you get it? I tried to save this stupid little kid's life, and in trying to save it, I'm the one who doomed it. I killed him . If I didn't have that vision, if I didn't act on that vision, his dog-fucker of a mother would've probably dragged him into a shoe store or back home and she'd never have been distracted by the crazy girl, and her kid would never have made it to the highway. It's like some sick snake-biting-its-own-tail bullshit. Fate had a plan, and I was part of that plan all along even though I thought I was being slick and wriggling free from destiny's grip. By trying to stop it, I made it happen."
      The chair is far away now, so Miriam sits down on the floor. She smokes quietly, huddled over, breathing heavy and deep.
      "That's why I don't try to save people," Miriam finally says.
      "Oh."
      Miriam stubs her cigarette out on the hard concrete floor.
      "Now," she says. "What you really want to know is, how did I get this way?"

 
 
FIFTEEN
    Ouroboros
     
    Waffle House, a staple of the American South, is essentially a greasy yellow coffin. It's small. It's boxy. Half the people inside are little more than animated corpses, stuffing their mouths full of hash browns and sausages and the requisite waffles, their bodies bloating and swelling, their hearts dying. Miriam thinks it's awesome. She eats here because it's just one more nail in the ol' pine box; she can hear her arteries clogging, crunchy and crispy like the skin on fried chicken.
      The irony, she thinks, is that you can't smoke in here anymore. Now only the Waffle House waitress is the approved death merchant.
      Miriam stands outside now. It's spitting rain. Cars drive past. She sees a defunct Circuit City through a haze of smoke, and a little Korean place across the highway sitting next to a Jo Ann Fabrics. In the distance are the yellow lights and dark silhouette of the Charlotte skyline, a neatly arranged picket fence of skyscrapers, hardly the tumbling monstrosity that is New York or Philly.
      She feels perched on an edge. Precariously balanced. She doesn't want to think about the future – she so rarely does anymore, usually just letting life carry her along like she's a discarded Styrofoam cup floating on a lazy, crazy river. But it keeps nagging at her. Worrying with little teeth.
      She's heard that, in lab studies, rats and monkeys who are given the illusion of choice end up relatively healthy. Even if they only have two choices, a lever that doles out an electric shock and a lever that doles out a different electric shock, they at least feel like they have some say in their outcome, and end up being much happier and more productive. Rats and monkeys who just get the shock arbitrarily, no choice at all, end up anxious, agitated, chewing out fur and biting holes in their little hands and little feet before dying of cancer or heart death.
      Miriam feels like she has no control. She wonders how long it will be before she's chewing her own fingers down to the bone.
      Of course, it might also be Louis.
      He haunts her. He's not even dead, and she sees his ghost. A chance meeting once, and now she sees glimpses of him in places: standing in a crowd, driving a nearby minivan, in the reflection of the smeary Waffle House window –
      "Miriam?"
      She wheels.
      The ghost is talking to her.
      "Hey," the ghost of Louis says. Except – normally, the ghost has those Xs of electrical tape over bloody eye sockets. This one, not so much. Real eyes. Warm eyes. Watching.
      "You're not a ghost," she says aloud.
      He pauses. Pats himself down as if