The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button Novels & Stories

"Is everything alright, sir?" "Yes, Luke," Benjamin lied, arranging his expression into something that approximated normal. "Everything is fine." They walked out to the car in silence. Luke opened the back door and Benjamin slid in, closing his eyes as the car started moving. "Where to next, sir?" Luke asked after several minutes. Benjamin opened his eyes and looked at the city passing by outside the window. He had built his business here. He had raised one family and destroyed another in this city. Had made his fortune and lost his soul within these streets.

I indicated the chair, and Benjamin folded himself into it, awkwardly, his knees angled toward the door as though he might bolt at any second. There wasn’t much in his file. A referral, some neurological scans, a letter from a GP in north London mentioning disturbing nightmares and a sense of being out of control. He was twenty-two, with no history of mental illness or drug abuse. Intelligent. Physically healthy. Living with his fiancée, Arky.

“She’s the reason I agreed to come at all. She saw the exhibition poster and informed me that if I didn’t at least look at the blue ones, I was failing as a parent.” Cathrene felt the unexpected pull of genuine conversation — not networking, not polite survival, but something simpler. “And what’s the verdict? Are the blue ones worth it?” “This one is,” he said. “I’m Benjamin. Benjamin Ward.” “Cathrene Ashford.” If he recognized the name from business pages or society mentions, he did not show it. He only nodded once, as if accepting a plain fact, and returned his attention to the painting for another moment before speaking again.

A year. Three hundred and sixty-five days of watching the world from behind a stranger's face. Adrian stared out his penthouse window at the sprawling grid of New York City, a metropolis of light and life that felt as gray and desolate as a graveyard. This face, this body, was a choice—a desperate, last-ditch effort to claw his way back from the abyss.

TESSA I could see Benjamin—Ben, as he had introduced himself and insisted we call him. He did look like Ben. His face was too open and eager, as though he wanted to be trusted without earning it. And yet, every time his eyes slid toward me or, worse, toward Calla, I felt my chest constrict. There was something strange about the way he looked at us. It wasn’t hostile, but it wasn’t simple curiosity either. It was like he carried a memory in his stare, one that refused to stay buried.

A grand staircase spirals upward like a ribcage. The Air smells like cigars, blood and expensive cologne. Footstep echoes from the upper floor. ——— There he is.Victor Rensik. Dressed in a sharp suit tailored over a frame too muscled for a man his age. Mid 50’s. Silver streaks in his dark hair, and his eyes are the pale blue of something that shouldn’t walk in daylight. He walks down the steps, glass of liquor in hand,not smiling but appraising. Both him and “Bella” sizing up themselves.