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I said, "Aet far away frouys folloe’ll deal with it then But let’s at least try"

"Okay, but it’ll take tis in order John’s got fao now and I say we do it toot friends far away? Anywhere? Souess I know a girl on the Internet; she lives in Utah with another girl They’re lesbians"

"Good That’s good You’ll call the on your computer and ask if you can crash there We’ll buy a plane ticket and fly your ass to Utah"

She said nothing She scooted over and leaned her head onon the lenses of her glasses Eventually she said, "And then I’ll never, ever see you again"

I couldn’t think of a way to answer that without telling an outright lie, so I just o, but I’ll call when I’m out there And you have to take et an answer froht the next day"

"Okay U down, her head onslowed and softened as she drifted off Sheout there but not in here It can’t snow on us That’s so cool"

She started snoring softly

And that was that I forot out there and away froot a job and went to bars with her lesbian rooet all about this, all about ure out how hot she was, even without both hands, and she’dand then all the loose ends would be tied up I could shoot myself or take a bunch of pills and that would clean up the situation once and for all I could do a real will, even have a lawyer draw it up, coy in the foruitar solo, perforuitar shaped like a naked won it over to--

I saw a light to my left I slowly turned my head to see that, with power still out all over the city, the television had clicked on

Hands That’s what I saw, a pair of hands, palers clawing at the glass as if trying to escape For a round but thenworht I heard a scream, or felt it somehow, and a spray of red splattered the hands on the screen A pair of hands fell away and just tere left, grabbing at the glass in desperation One hand for to break it It pounded again and again, and I thought I could see bloo on the knuckles The fist reared way back this ti and--

Thump

--the TV shook I al down between the fingers now, and sain, the TV rattled on the shelf offorward an inch with the impact The fist drew back one last time--the set clicked off Blackness

Those transmissions, the ones from Shit Narnia, never returned It took me four hours to fall asleep

IT ACTUALLY WASN’T for another couple of days that ere able to get Amy on a plane The storm broke that next day but the weather had still ht schedules It took a day to hear back froiddiness to have her, though, and after an hour-long, giggly phone conversation they eirls lived in Millcreek, which I guess was just outside of the city

We kept busy during those two days before Amy left for presumably forever and I successfully avoided any real conversation with her I had lots of snow to clear off the sidewalk and even made paths around the side of the house for Molly We took Ae and a bunch of sweaters because we couldn’t convince her that Utah wasn’t a frozen, mountainous wasteland year-round I went back to Wally’s and finished a long-delayed project of placing anti-theft stickers on all of our DVDs It was the kind of tedious, dreaded task that I wouldn’t want to dump in someone else’s lap after I committed suicide

On Wednesday Amy packed up and I drove her the three hours to Undisclosed International Airport into act as a buffer against the aardness but he had work, his crew fixing a wall on a local diner that had collapsed under the weight of a fallen tree Several ti the drive Amy would ask me if I was okay and I would say, "Sure!" and turn up the radio