Shorts - Thriller 2: Stories You Just Can't Put Down by _Collection Page A

napkins and tea towels, until that very morning. The morning. When something else took its place.
    She knew the wires, every one, because he’d told her about each as he placed them there, around the soft, fat wad of material they’d given him, the night before. There was, she wanted to tell the nurse, no other way to penetrate this old and well-protected inner sanctum of a world she had come to hate. No other means to escape the attention of the electric devices, the sniffers, the security people prying into everything that came and went in this great palace, a place that meant so much to so many.
    “I’m sorry,” she murmured, reaching for the band of yellow cable, taking the tail to the mouth, as she’d learned and practiced so many times in her small, fusty bedroom of the apartment she could barely afford.
    The foreign phrase he taught her wouldn’t come. They were, in any case, his words, not hers, codes from a set of beliefs she did not share.
    What she did know was the Circle. It seemed to have been with her forever, since the moment she first set foot in the dark world beneath the ground, hand in hand with her father, as he took the first step on the journey to his bleak, cruel end. By accident she had woken the slumbering beast one cold morning when she first met Ahmed on the stairs, a weak, impressionable creature, defined by nothing but his aimless anger. He was its slave, too, not that he ever knew.
    Her mind could not dismiss the image of Ouroboros at that moment, the picture of the serpent devouring itself. Or the words of the book that was now in the hands of Sergeant Kelly who was, perhaps, a little way away, outside even, eyeing the shattered body in the street.
    The living being had no need of eyes when there was nothing remaining outside him to be seen; nor of ears when there was nothing to be heard; and there was no surrounding atmosphere to be breathed. And all that he did or suffered took place in and by himself.
    From nothing to nothing, round and round.
    With unwavering hands Melanie Darma held the wires above her belly like a halo, bringing together the ends with a firm and deliberate motion, and as she did so she was filled with the deepest elation that this particular journey was at an end.

R. L. STINE
    R. L. Stine’s story “Roomful of Witnesses” clearly demonstrates that while truth isn’t always stranger than fiction, the strangest fiction always contains a kernel of truth. Based on a real place, this twisted tale could only have been written by R. L. Stine and reveals his wonderfully off-kilter look at the world. Best known for the nearly three hundred million children’s books sold, he has an uncanny ability to write pulse-pounding stories that keep you turning the pages without ever losing that childlike obsession with the gory details. Why do so many kids love everything this man writes? Turn the page and find out.

ROOMFUL OF WITNESSES
    W hat happened to Leon is a dirty shame.
    I never liked the guy. I’ll admit that. I thought he was lower than a squirrel beneath a truck tire.
    Bad blood between us? Maybe.
    But no one can pin this thing on me. No way. I didn’t do it—and I’ve got a roomful of witnesses.
    You heard me right. A roomful of witnesses.
    The day didn’t start too bad. Yeah, I woke up in the staff bungalow with the same joy, aches and pains in all the usual places, and a wet, hacking cough to remind me I was down to my last pack of smokes.
    What else is new?
    The sheets on my cot were damp from night sweat. I stood up and stretched. No bones cracking or creaking. Hell, I’m only thirty-eight.
    I know my hair is a little thin in front and my cheeks have crisscross lines in them. Charlene says I have old man’s eyes. Well,what do you expect? No one ever built a haven for Wayne Mullet.
    The top dresser drawer stuck again, and I tugged it so hard, I pulled something in my right shoulder. Groan. The Louisiana humidity doesn’t agree with furniture, at least not