How to Read a Story

by Debbi Antebi

She could never bring herself to read the final chapter in a book of fiction. She hated closure; instead, she liked to imagine the characters continue their lives the way she saw fit. And not be tied down with the limits of plot. When one day she found out about her disease, she shut herself up in a house in the middle of nowhere, and all alone she watched her body swiftly melt away, taking away with it all her passions and goals, until she no longer was. Her last wish, written more as an explanation for her disappearance, was for her loved ones to think of her as she was before cancer. Far before her final chapter began.

6S

Debbi Antebi has work published or forthcoming in Six Sentences, Paragraph Planet, Flashshot and trapeze magazine. She lives in Istanbul, Turkey.