Thomas World

Thomas World Read Online Free PDF Page A

Book: Thomas World Read Online Free PDF
Author: Richard Cox
Tags: Fiction, Science-Fiction, adventure, Horror
turn off the ignition.
    â€œIt’s God’s business,” Gloria says, looking away from me, out the window. “Everything is.”
    â€œBut why create gay people and then condemn them to Hell?”
    â€œIt’s a—”
    I wait for her to continue, but she doesn’t.
    â€œIt’s not fair,” I say.
    â€œGod has a plan for all of us, but sometimes it’s difficult to see what that plan is.”
    â€œOkay, but if your brother doesn’t stop being gay, is he going to Hell?”
    For a long moment Gloria doesn’t say anything. But her eyes turn glassy, and her bottom lip quivers, and I hate myself for it. I wish I knew where we went wrong. Have I changed? Has she? Have we both?
    â€œYou’re horrible,” she finally says, and gets out of the car.
    I watch her walk past the car and into the house. I want to follow her inside, apologize, but I don’t.
    My mind isn’t right. I need to compose myself before I talk to her again.
    I close my eyes and picture the bathroom. I watch the old man striding across the floor, headed directly for me. I think about his black and white beard and the spidery capillaries in his nose. I’ve never seen that man in my entire life.
    So why on earth is his face so familiar?

THREE
    O ne of the reasons Gloria and I have been struggling is because we don’t see each other that much anymore. She’s been spending a lot more time at church, helping run this council and volunteering for all sorts of fundraisers and charity events, and I’ve been working on my new screenplay. I don’t think I mentioned it yet but that’s what I want to do with my life. Write films. I’ve made some money at it but not enough to quit my job. I’ll tell you more about that later.
    Right now I want to talk about Jack. This is the Jack I mentioned before, the one who dated Gloria before I did. She left him to be with me. I guess you could say I stole her from him, if you want to be negative about it, but I didn’t do it on purpose. I mean I didn’t set out to do it so much as it just happened. You can’t help who you love in this world.
    Not surprisingly, Jack was unimpressed with what I considered fate. He didn’t give up on Gloria easily, and even after I proposed he swore he would win her back eventually. For a long time I worried about him, about his resentment, but after we were married he faded from our lives. In time I forgot about him.
    Then, three years ago, Gloria took a job at the same company as Jack. She didn’t bother telling me he worked there until deep in the interview process, long after I could mount an opposition campaign. She claims she didn’t know about it herself. To make matters worse, three months ago she accepted a promotion that means she now works for him directly. Can you believe that? I mean, honestly. Has Jack really been plotting his revenge for thirteen years? Or is this another one of life’s infamous coincidences?
    Either way, every time seven o’clock arrives and Gloria’s still not home from work, I grow a little angrier. Wouldn’t you? She sees him every day. She sees him more than she sees me. And then when I ask about her day, how things are at work, Gloria tells me I’m being obsessive. But all I’m doing is asking about her job. We end up talking about Jack by association. He’s her boss, for heaven’s sake.
    Isn’t he?
    Or am I hallucinating that, too?
    I keep hearing the old man’s voice, the guy in the bathroom. I keep seeing his ruddy face and hearing his ominous words, but we all know I can’t say for sure if it really happened. Just like no one else saw the blue orb. I clearly hallucinated that. And once you accept you are hallucinating, how can you say, really, when it stops? When you have a bad dream at night, it ends when you wake up. But when you’re talking about a real-life, daytime hallucination, how can you
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