End of Story

by A.J. Finn

She slept deeply the night before—fairy tale–princess sleep, poisoned-apple sleep—and awoke to an attic whitewashed with sun;

“People your age—young people, I mean—you treat your lives like galleries, for public display, open to all. My life is no gallery. It’s a vault, a black box,

“It was your own doing! There’s no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.

“You’d make quite the psychoanalyst. Or at least a priest. There’s a whiff of the confessional about you.” Sebastian’s eyes are narrowed, as though he’s trying to locate the exact words. “A man finds himself saying what he hadn’t meant to say. That’s a gift. And a weapon.”

the past is a poison. Tolerable only in trace amounts.”

“The past isn’t gone. It’s just waiting.”

“This one shuts off automatically when I’m stopped. Just sudden quiet. Like sleep apnea. I always worry it won’t restart.”

She senses that a curtain is rising. Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats. Act 2 is about to begin.

All these years reading stories about death, yet she’s never seen—certainly never touched—a corpse. All those nights looming like a dark angel over the pages, spying on autopsies and checking pulses in blind alleys, drawing shut the painted eyelids of throttled dancers . . . Death was intrigue. Death was a challenge. Death seemed a thrill. But now she has seen death, held it, only to find it strange, and sad.

So Cole remained small, and strange, and too sensitive, like a person who’s lost his skin, all exposed nerves and visible heartbeat. “Someday,

you’re only as happy as your least happy child.

“Men.” He snorts. “Men are where evolution backed itself into a corner.”