Edge of End Read Online Free PDF Page A

of the gas stove and dishwashing machine.
    My heart was still
hammering.
    I spotted an album lying
on the table, opened, a large black and white photo pinned to the
page. I saw a man of perhaps thirty, clearly of Spanish descent
with frizzy black hair, holding a girl in his arms,
“ his daughter ,” I
thought. They both smiled at me.
    Reluctantly I reached down for the
album. All the other pages were blank, so I flipped back to the one
with the man and his daughter and lowered it back onto the table.
Both their faces were unfamiliar to me. At least, I didn’t remember
either of them and my mind didn’t allow for any pictures of my past
to return. No sense of familiarity flirted inside me at the sight
of them. I didn’t feel the same as I had with the little blue-eyed
girl, who, by the way, had trapped me in this house with two savage
beasts on my tail.
    The people in the photograph still
stared at me. Where else could they look? I was about to turn away
when a red drop slid out from the girl’s left eye. I bent forward.
The drop balled up and rolled down the page and dripped onto the
table leaving a spindly stream on the paper. Then another one slid
from her other eye like the girl was crying red tears. They turned
into two shallow streams washing over her face.
    I shook my head in disbelief. I was
imagining this. Something was going on with my mind. I was in a
wrong place, in a surreal place. Nothing like this could really
happen.
    I thought about picking the album up
again and checking what was on its back, but I was jolted as a loud
squawk sounded from upstairs. I wheeled around, trembling with
adrenalin running through my veins. The squawking followed again,
sound of a woman, a crazed woman, yelling and screaming.
    You can lose your memories, but the
loss won’t make your identity change.
    I wasn’t a coward, though I had just
run away from the beasts. I had assessed the situation right.
That’s why, without thinking of my next move, I bolted up the
stairs. The staircase was much wider than the corridor. On the next
floor I found myself surrounded by four doors, the woman’s voice
coming from the one directly in front of me. My hands trembled as I
opened it.
    It was a study, not very large, and
the yelling woman was lying on her back on the desk with white and
ripped shirt, revealing her lacy bra. Her blue shoes were strewn on
the floor, and the papers off the desk were scattered all over the
place. With one hand she was trying to push back a man who had his
back to me and with the other she clasped onto her black skirt that
the man was about to rip off her body. I didn’t know what kind of
man I had been before, but I can assure you raping a woman wasn’t
in my character at all.
    “ Hey, you, fuckin’
asshole,” I yelled louder than the woman’s voice. “Let her go.” And
with those words I boldly stepped inside the room.
    The man let her out of his hold and
turned to face me–the fool who had dared to interrupt. I guess I
regretted that I had challenged him.
    Though I wasn’t sure that the person
standing before me was a he or an it. It looked like a man, as tall
as me with human hair on his head (it was black), bloodshot eyes,
the skin of his face dark-gray and scarred. I had a feeling that
its face had been burned, but the ashes still hung from the
remaining muscles of its chin.
    I thought it could be a human, but the
obvious tumors that jutted out from under its gray skin led me to
believe otherwise.
    Dressed in human clothes–blue jeans
and a green T-shirt–the creature scowled at me and took a step
towards me with open palms as if he was going to grab me and wring
my neck.
    “ What the hell?” I
spluttered. I stood appalled, out of the corner of my eye I seeing
his hands–as gray as his face.
    As it reached for me and stretched its
hands out, I jerked aside. The humanoid monster angrily kicked the
door closed, and as it shut, it cracked and shattered sending the
pieces fly up into the air