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Chapter 25
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The Descending Winding of Adam Keir Chapter 26
How did I get here? This question plagued Adam’s mind, running through it over and over again. Try as he may, he could find no clear answer. A month ago, he’d been living life the same way he’d been living it for the past 23 years. Everything had been perfect. Mundane, but perfect. He had Larisa, he had Jesse . . . Two of his best friends. He hadn’t needed a psychologist. He’d been content with the routine of his life, even if Larisa was cheating on him. Now he had no one. He’d pushed everyone away, because the only person he wanted was Evangeline. But she didn’t want him, did she? No, she didn’t. He couldn’t blame her, though, because the first person he pushed away was her. How did I get here? It was around 9:30 PM, or maybe later. Adam didn’t know for certain; he’d thrown his cellphone out of the car’s window while driving and didn’t have a watch. Regardless, everything seemed to have worked out in his favor. He reclined in the chair
The Descending Winding of Adam Keir Chapter 1
There once was a man. He led a good life, and had a wife. He was happy. But then, during a moment of solitude, in washed the darkness. A girl stepped out of it and beckoned to him. By the time he started to struggle, he realized that she’d already wound around him a web of flesh. He was tangled in it, and though he fought to reach back to the doorway he’d entered from, with every second he was dragged further away from it—further into the abyss. There was no escaping from the girl who wanted him for her own. When he turned and looked at her, he saw that she now had the face of a spider. Piece by piece, she began to eat him up, but he felt no pain. He felt nothing anymore . . . No, too edgy. Without hesitance, Adam Keir deleted everything from his video. He had spent all day throwing together the visuals, but had only just sat down to think about the concept. It wasn’t surreal enough, it was just dark for the sake of being dark. Defeated, he laid his head down on the desk,
The Descending Winding of Adam Keir Chapter 2
The customer arrived forty-five minutes later: a middle-aged man who looked older than Adam and Jesse but was probably younger, who was wearing a green polo shirt and khaki shorts. If Adam had to guess, he was probably a father looking to impress his teenaged son, though he had no way of knowing for sure. What he paid attention to on the customer the most was how lightly he was dressed. “A little summery for October, isn’t it?” he wanted to say to the man, but didn’t. Jesse did his best to sell the guitar to the man, but regardless of his childlike enthusiasm and eager recommendations, he still seemed unimpressed. “It’s no Fireglo,” he said, commenting disappointedly on it being a Mapleglo. That silenced Jesse for a moment. Noticing that his friend and co-worker (boss? One of the two, anyway) seemed offended by the complaint, Adam did his best to take over. “It’s not, but this guitar is the next best thing,” he explained, eve
The Descending Winding of Adam Keir Chapter 3
He saw the subway train again. Still the woman was there, and so was the man who had taken it upon himself to sit beside her. There was a long beat of stillness, during which neither of them spoke. The only sound came from the rumbling of the train, and the only light came in abrupt flashes through the windows. When she could bear the silence no longer, she asked, “Do you know where we’re headed?” Without looking at her, the man answered, “Yes. But it’s no concern of yours.” She tried to stay calm, but her hands were trembling against her will. The man did nothing but sit beside her, but somehow that was enough to give her a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach. She felt unsafe, but also like he would attack her if she tried to move away from him. She looked back down into her purse and stared at the tiny pistol at the bottom. Would she be able to shoot him before he did something to her? Should she? Was she being paranoid? As she thoug
The Descending Winding of Adam Keir Chapter 4
By the time Adam heard the front door open downstairs—probably Larisa, meaning it had to be around 10:00 PM—he was a quarter of the way through storyboarding a new video. The premise he’d gone with in interpreting his dream was that the woman was the representation of sanity. The man with the axe was a traumatic event, and the man sitting beside her was the representation of madness—so close, sitting beside her, but so far, knowing the answers to her questions but being unable to give them. The gun was her only source of hope, the only string holding her to her sanity. With it and its one bullet, she could choose only one option: either embrace the trauma, or embrace insanity. Though he was almost half done with the storyboarding, he still didn’t know what she was going to choose. He felt that if she chose insanity, it would be insulting somehow. But if she chose to embrace the trauma, that was too boring. Whatever the outcome he chose, he had the concept, and it was one t
The Descending Winding of Adam Keir Chapter 5
Adam’s commute to Waller’s Pawn Shop wasn’t very far, but somehow it still managed to take him past four and a half churches. The first was the Trinity United Church of Christ, a huge brown building. However, this wasn’t the actual Trinity United Church of Christ; from what he had heard, this seemed to be some sort of day-care variant. On the next street over was the Bibleway Church of Chicago, a tiny apartment-sized building and part of an otherwise vacant one-storey “duplex” setup. Then again, he wasn’t sure if it was actually a church, though. It seemed more like a book club for people who liked to read and discuss the Bible. So, he didn’t count it, but because it had “Church” in its name, he considered it as a half. Right behind the Bibleway was the second actual church he passed: West 95 Oakdale Missionary. This one was a red brick building, about the size of a house. The one time he’d decided to go out of his way to look at it, he’d seen a sign on it with the words,
The Descending Winding of Adam Keir Chapter 6
There was a squirrel sitting on a tree that Adam could see from a window in his office. The way it sat perplexed him and filled him with an undefined tension: it remained completely still. Not even its tail twitched. It sat at an awkward angle, one that should’ve caused it to tip backward and fall out of the tree. Yet, somehow, there it remained, sitting at a 60 degree angle, not moving so much as an inch. He’d never seen a squirrel so still. They usually scurried quickly out of sight. But this one just kept sitting there. He must have been standing in front of the window watching it for an hour, because he’d caught sight of it at around 7:30 that morning, and now Larisa was knocking on his office’s door to check in on him. It was Wednesday, her day off. On Wednesdays, she always woke up at 8:00 and checked on him at 8:30, after showering. Thus, he felt safe in assuming that he’d been staring out of the window for at least an hour. When Larisa got no answer, sh
The Descending Winding of Adam Keir Chapter 7
For lunch, Larisa made omelets. As she cooked, Adam sat at the dining table. His phone sat on the table in front of him, and while he kept reaching for it, he kept stopping himself from picking it up. Evangeline had been texting him non-stop for the past hour, but hadn’t mentioned following him home. Part of Adam began to doubt that it actually was her, but another part argued, who else could it have been? He had read all of her messages thus far. Most were unremarkable; her clamoring, excited for his video and wanting to know more about it. But he hadn’t responded, not once. His phone vibrated on the table—he’d set it to vibrate to not attract Larisa’s attention. Him getting so many notifications at once would surely confuse her. Again, his hand reached for the phone, and the moment he realized that it did, he locked his arm in place. He had to force his hand back onto the mug of coffee that currently sat where his plate would be in a moment. Adam felt off. Th
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