1984 Novel Pages Novels & Stories

I turn on the torch and flip the book to where I stop, which is page eighty-nine, and I continue from where I stop. Why do bad things happen to good people? I ask myself, as I flip open the next page, which is now page 124. The book gets dreadful and as much as I hate suspense; I have to read my way through and I am almost out of the woods with the suspense when I hear a knock on my door.

Under the orange peels. Page forty-one had been torn out at the spine. Clean. The way a man tears a page when he wants to keep it. The page was not in the trash. The page was somewhere else. I sat down on the kitchen floor with the book in my lap, my back against the cabinet, and my knees up. I cried for ninety seconds. For Daddy. For the girl at twelve. For the man down the hall who had figured out I had one sentence in this world worth holding, and reached in and took it.

I doubted that I could have done it. I lay in Sydney’s arms staring at that green glow on the ceiling until I began to wonder about the glow itself and realized it was coming from a tiny light on Martha’s laptop computer. I pressed the switch on the arm of her bed and raised the head high enough for me to read without awakening Sydney. Lifting the lid on the laptop, I found that it was on and that Martha had been working last on her novel. There were now one hundred seventy-three pages. I pulled the computer stand closer to me, shifted back to the beginning of the story, and began reading.

“What?” Lila asked. He held up the metal fastener running through the papers. “There are gaps.” Vanessa leaned closer. “What do you mean?” “See these marks?” He pointed to tiny tears near the punched holes. “Someone removed pages.” Silence. Vanessa immediately checked the file index. Her eyes widened. “He’s right.” “There should be forty-three pages.” She counted the papers. “Thirty-eight.” Five pages were missing. Lila’s pulse quickened. “What kind of pages?”

It all looked very interesting. I turned a few more pages. "How far are you with translating?" I asked him, while still running my fingers on the words that continued to give me a funny feeling. I turned to the next page and my breath hitched. "I'm on the 74th page." He answered and I looked down at the page number I was on. Page 501. He still had a long way to go. My face flushed and I couldn't get my eyes off the beast I was staring at. The book had no images with colour, but I could already imagine the creature with bright glowing green eyes. Oh no.

It's possible, right? So, the code has four numbers. 8,9,1, and 0. But...there is no 0 on the page numbers! I opened the book to page 8. I looked at that page and just like the other pages, there seemed to be nothing strange written there. I stared intently at the page and read some sentences on it.

I ask her. "Come look at my novel. You can read some chapters if you like," she said, giggling. I scanned her laptop and saw that she has almost 350 pages for her novel. That's a lot of words. "I would love to read some of it," I replied, feeling excited at the prospect of getting a glimpse into Max's creative mind. Max opened up her laptop and showed me the first few chapters of her novel. As I read through them, I was impressed by her writing style and the way she crafted her characters and their relationships.

I brеathеd, еyеs fluttеring shut. That did it. I thrеw thе blankеts off and rеachеd into thе drawеr undеr my bеd. My toy was thеrе, tuckеd bеtwееn a fеw old books I prеtеndеd to rеad. It was pink. I pullеd my pantiеs off and sat back, sprеading my lеgs slowly. “Just a quick onе,” I whispеrеd.

He says as he starts to check for a book "Well, I’m pretty sure that even if I find the so-called right book I won’t like it because I already hate reading." "Well I don’t know about that but I assure you if you read this book, you are gonna fall in love with novels." He hands me a book. "It’s one of my favorites." I collect the book from him and I flip to the last page. My eyes widen in shock to see it has 376 pages. "376 pages." I say questionably "I can’t read all that."

Watering my lips with my tongue, I began to recite every single word of it. "Chapter 8, page 71," she wasn't satisfied. And I did it again, pissing her off even more. "Chapter 85, page 700." Again. "Chapter 1, page 17." Again. "Chapter 55, page 593," again I recited word per word identical as in the book. "I'm sorry, Your Majesty, but did all of the girls have to recite five different pages of the book?" I asked, feigning confusion.