Circumstancial (standard:science fiction, 1286 words)
Author: Vincent Collevera	Added: Mar 31 2010	Views/Reads: 2934/1890	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A man feels as though he is cursed. One missed phone call can sometimes make all the difference in the world.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

the room was registered in his fucking name, for Christ's sake! 

It seemed the same curse that doomed these girls to take their own lives
also somehow protected him from the law.  He knew he was personally 
responsible for at least a full percent of the annual suicide rate in 
this city, if not more than that.  A woman a month, sometimes more.  He 
tried not to do it; he tried not to pick them up.  At some point in 
time, he would find himself talking to a woman and something he would 
say, some hint of his pain, his guilt would reach them. 

The next thing he would be aware of was entering her.  Then she would
fall asleep.  They always fell asleep so quickly afterwards.  He would 
stay awake, staring at the ceiling since he'd learned not to watch them 
sleeping until near dawn when he'd slip out.  Sometimes he made it out 
of the parking lot and heard about it from a coworker, or on the news 
the next day.  Sometimes he didn't. 

At home, there was a message blinking on his answering machine and his
cat was as angry as usual at having been abandoned for the night.  He 
ignored what he knew would be the customary morning call from his 
mother telling him he should settle down and get married.  He avoided 
watching the news, knowing that it would reveal the mysterious suicide 
of a beautiful blond woman who jumped from her hotel window and that 
police did not suspect foul play. 

He showered, scrubbing until he bled in some places, and as ever unable
to completely remove the scent of the woman's skin.  He finished off a 
bottle of jack from his pantry to stem the impending flow of tears and 
dressed himself in his best suit.  Today was the last time, he had 
decided.  He wrote out a long confession letter, signed and dated it.  
He opened the back door to let the cat out, and grabbed a length of 
good stout rope from his garage. 

An hour later found his heels swinging in the air a few inches above an
overturned bar stool.  By the time the mailman found his body the next 
afternoon, his confession letter had been blown out into the lawn, 
where the night's sudden rain had soaked it to illegibility.  His name 
was added to a growing list of statistics, and a blond who had 
witnessed a suicide the night before he died gave a statement to the 
police.  Some woman had jumped to her death right next door to her 
room, and she'd only woken up when the sirens approached. 

When asked why she had been in the hotel in the first place, she
mentioned her new acquaintance.  When she learned of his suicide from 
the papers three days later, she scratched another tally on her kitchen 
chalkboard and began to search for another victim with whom to share 
her affliction, her curse. 


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