Consumed – John Ward And Kacey Flynn

Jack sipped his coffee, noting its intense bitterness. He took a slice of toast and dunked it into the cup, causing his reflection to ripple in the coffee’s brown. The bread didn’t taste any better. He tossed it back onto the plate, but missed ever-so-slightly, sending it, instead, sliding across the plastic tabletop.

Crumbs scattered. Jack licked his thumb and pressed it onto a small gathering of them. He could barely even stomach those. Maybe Jack had gotten sick. His mom used to say that his tastebuds would go with the sun, and even though cold season hadn’t yet embraced the town, he supposed he could’ve been its first victim. Jack sagged into the booth. A horsefly landed on the rim of the coffee mug, perhaps smelling the same bitterness. As it circled and jumped from edge to edge, Jack wondered if his new pet ate insects.

No, he thought, it probably ate dirt. Surely, the diner could spare some of these leftover coffee grounds. “Well, that’s mighty unlike you.” Jack looked up to see Amy standing over him with a fresh pot, ready to pour—her face a bit of a puzzle.

“Think the flu’s got me.” Jack scratched the unkempt brown beard that dove past his chin before sprawling thinly onto his neck. “I don’t know, Jackie. Those baby blues of yours are fairly red today. You sleeping all right?” Jack smiled even though his eyes were green. “You got any good coffee in this place?” Truth was, he’d been up the better part of the night trying to fix a loose post on his staircase; a shoddy mending of duct tape and dripping gorilla glue barely held the wood together.

Amy put a hand on her chest, feigning offense. “And here I thought you loved our exotic brew. I guess you just keep coming back for me.” These flirtations weren’t new. In their high school years, one of Amy’s friends suggested he play a game of truth or dare with them. In his naivety, Jack found himself trapped in a game of dare, specifically—for an odd reason, he remembered thinking as a teenager—only with Amy. She’d crushed on him for a while, but Jack had never reciprocated.

They remained close over the years, nonetheless. Now, Jack felt an odd sense of longing for her. This was new. He smothered the feeling immediately. A bead of sweat formed on his brow. Jack couldn’t tell if the humidity had worsened since he got to the diner or if his sickness had developed that quickly. He didn’t dare think it was her. He reached for another soggy bite of toast. Nothing doing. So, Jack got up from his full cup and uneaten bread and left a ten-dollar bill on the counter.

At home, Jack leaned over his bathroom sink.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, events, and incidents are the product of the authors’ twisted imaginations, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real institutions, incidents, and/or persons, living, dead, or undead, is purely coincidental. No part of this publication may be scanned, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including storage and retrieval systems, without the express permission of the individual authors or the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in their review.

No AI training: without in any way limiting the authors’ and publishers’ exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The authors and publisher reserve all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models. Edited by Kacey Flynn and John Ward. Published by Arbutus Studios (www.arbutusfilms.com). Main cover image by Get Covers; alternate cover image from Shutterstock.

Book design and layout by Vestan Pance. ISBN: 978-1-7383580-6-9 eISBN: 978-1-7383580-7-6 For Rose, you helped me bloom. I’m so excited for the garden we will cultivate together. KACEY FLYNN For Maggie and Oskar, my lights in the darkness. JOHN WARD 1kitap1.com/en FIRST DATE E. Florian Gludovacz Charlene and I had met the old-fashioned way, through mutual friends rather than online, which apparently is pretty rare these days.

I don’t really have an opinion on this, because I’m not very experienced in the dating scene in general. It’s not because of a lack of interest in meeting women, but I’m usually either travelling or too busy with work to socialise much, so it was a welcome surprise when my colleague Bob and his wife Linda introduced us at their dinner party. Charlene was stunningly beautiful with curly blonde hair and a dazzling smile, and best of all, she really seemed to like me.

We made light, bantering conversation and soon discovered that we both shared a keen interest in food. She was a self-admitted foodie who enjoyed cooking elaborate meals and exploring the city’s restaurant scene in search of new and unusual dishes. I confided that I, too, was partial to culinary adventures. One perk of my frequent business trips—I mentioned casually—was the opportunity to sample exotic local cuisines.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 296a89ff5e8e9d80
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 1,275,499 bytes (1.216 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• ISBN: 9781738358069, 9781738358076
• Pages: 388
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 478.85 minutes
• Total Words: 95,770
• Total Characters: 536,790
• Average Words per Page: 246.83
• Average Characters per Page: 1383.48

Most Frequent Words

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