Done And Dusted Audiobook Free Novels & Stories

The card scraped across my cheek before falling onto the floor with a sharp clatter. At that exact moment, my phone rang again. The ringtone sounded unbearably harsh in the dead silent lobby. It was the hospital. My hands trembled as I answered and turned on speakerphone. The doctor's exhausted, grief-stricken voice echoed clearly throughout the hall. "Ms. Nolan, we regret to inform you..." "The patient, Helen Walter, suffered severe intracranial bleeding. Resuscitation efforts were unsuccessful. "She was pronounced dead one minute ago. "Please come to the hospital as soon as possible to process the death certificate."

Thousands of abandoned books rested upon the silent sand. Some were half-buried. Others lay open, their pages completely blank. The woman whispered, "These are all unfinished stories..." The First Reader nodded. "Every story abandoned by its Author eventually arrives here." Adrian stepped onto the cold sand. The moment his foot touched the shore... every abandoned book trembled. One by one... their pages began turning. Not by wind. By recognition. A faint whisper rose from every direction. "Author..." "Please..." "Finish us..." Thousands of voices.

Perfect. Finally. **THE END**

And I drive the shard home. The shard punches deep—blood fountains. The Heart convulses—a wet, shuddering gasp. And finally— It dies. The air shudders, the stones shake, and the pit wails—not with anger, but with grief. Something ancient and rotted and wrong weeps into the dark, and I know—we killed something it loved. Good. Let it mourn. Let it drown in it. I collapse to my knees beside the ruined corpse, blood pouring from a hundred torn seams in my body, the shard clutched tight against my chest.

Who built the machine that destroyed my family. Dead. Not in prison. Not facing trial. Just gone. Quietly. In a cold room full of disappearing data. Was that justice? I didn't know. Couldn't decide. "Deletion complete," the automated voice announced. "All files destroyed. Deadman's switch permanently deactivated. System shutting down." Then silence. Complete. Final. Absolute. Rodriguez's voice. "It's done. Everything's gone. Four thousand files. All backups. All redundancies. Completely destroyed."

I'll be me. Free. Radiant. Alive. Lara Leone.

I smiled bitterly. "Mom, if you'd just looked for three more seconds or zoomed in a little more, you would've noticed that my chest wasn't moving at all. You were so close to realizing that I was dead." When the final exam ended, Danielle was the first candidate to sprint out of the exam hall. "Mom, Dad, I did really well! I'm going to be okay. Let's go home and share the good news with Sophie right now!" Dad nodded. As he started his car, his eyes turned red-rimmed.

“Finalize the paperwork and wrap up the entire contract.” “Right away, ma'am.” Chloe paused, the line quiet for a beat before she spoke up again, her tone shifting from professional to deeply concerned. “Are you alright? You… you don’t sound like yourself.” I closed my eyes, leaning my head back against the drywall, feeling the faint, throbbing ache where Arden’s fingers had dug into my jaw. “I am fine, Chloe. Thank you,” I said quietly, before hanging up the phone. I looked up at the ceiling. The tears had dried on my face, replaced by a cold, numbing clarity.

The cellar was silent, but it was a silence thick with the smell of ozone and ancient dust. The Auditor had not just vanished; it had been De-rezzed, its geometric plates dissolving into a fine, black silt that covered the floor like funeral ash. In its place, hovering inches above the copper grounding rod, was the Golden Record.

“Yes, Ms. Mancini. Evelyn and everything tied to the name have ended, once and for all.” Outside, the snow-covered mountains stood lofty, and the sky was a deep blue. All the love, hate, crimes, and judgments of the past had faded like smoke, stirring nothing within me. All that had gone rested in the deep sea and on the execution ground. The journey ahead was long, and I walked with only the stars.