Crossed Out Words Novels & Stories

​ A blocked number flashed acro‌ss th‍e s​creen​ with a si‌ngle l‌i⁠ne: Wa‌lk a‌way from Cr​oss. Last wa‌r​n‍in⁠g,They wont protect you twice, Alvarez.⁠

But as I looked attentively at the ink, I realized everything was wrong about it. The page was violently scratched, not just with ink, but it seemed to be gouged with something sharp. No matter how hard I tried to make sense of even a single word, I couldn't. It seemed to have been intentionally wiped out in such a way that nothing could be readable from it.

Sienna turned the photograph over with hands that had gone unsteady, and read the single word written there in careful, old-fashioned script. Not a full name. Just one word, underlined twice, like whoever wrote it had wanted to make absolutely certain it would never, under any circumstances, be forgotten. First,

After her outburst earlier, I discovered that she had every reason to be angry at me. Everyone involved in this had every reason to be pissed at my being. But it only took an outburst for me to realize. Lol… I really do deserve an award for the way I effortlessly mess up people’s lives. Or make some lose theirs. Mrs. Phoebe really didn’t deserve this for any reason, her only crime was knowing me. I really need to disappear from everyone, they’d definitely be happier. They usually are till I come along with my bullshit. I was a little too lost in my thoughts that I hadn’t noticed a woman trying to cross the road with her son and I had to bring the car to a screeching halt.

Elliott It's the night before the wedding. Jessie and the girls are with her sister and parents while mine were here with me and Sarah. I picked at my dinner, unable to eat without the kids and Jessie. I leave the table without a word, able to walk away without the need of crutches.

Selene set the mug carefully on the shelf in our bedroom before we went down to the study, a small stubborn insistence that whatever waited in Marcus’s email, the coast was still coming home with us in some form. The email, when I opened it, was shorter than I expected. A single attachment, a scanned document, old enough that the paper had yellowed at the corners in the photograph. A ledger page, handwritten, three columns of figures and a header that made my stomach tighten before I’d even read the numbers themselves. Cross Whitmore Hart. All three names, together, on a single page, dated twenty-two years ago. “That’s not possible,” Selene said quietly, reading over my shoulder. “My father

Picked it up and typed two words and stared at them and deleted them and typed them again and this time before I could think about it any further I hit send and set the phone on the table and walked to the window and did not look at it again. Two words.

He looked at me for one more long moment. Then he nodded. Once. Small. And looked back at his papers. I walked to my room. Closed the door. Sat at my desk. My one crossed-out sentence was still at the top of the page. I looked at it. Then I turned to a fresh page. And this time when I put the pen to paper, The words came.

I look back at my case study options and I add a fourth one and then immediately cross it out before I can finish writing it. But the two words are still visible under the single line. False testimony.

The smile was brief but real enough to matter. The desk before him had become a war again. St. Agnes files lay beside the current extraction order, donor lines, and a printed grid containing the remaining active cases. Yet among them sat something different: a yellow notepad divided into three columns in Rosa’s handwriting. Words used. Words removed. Words to try. Louelita moved closer. Under Words removed were the obvious ones: wait, it’s all right, be good, calm down, hush. The other column contained phrases that sounded less like therapy than weather reports.