James D. Chrisman is a young man living in Central Indiana, with the quiet solace of his books and a giant stereo system that his neighbors hate.

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When Jimmy is forced to move into his Grandmother’s house he has a lot of choices. Does he want to move into the first floor, or the basement? Would he like cable, or satellite television? Should he kill his Grandmother, or let her live?    

                                                                    Excerpt
Word Count: 3000
Pages to Print: 13
File Format: PDF                  Price: $2.99

EXCERPTS

 I Could Do It

    I could do it. Johnny glared at the withered old woman before him. Her shambling steps down the stairs were painfully slow to watch, although far worse to follow. Maybe that’s the wrong thing to think . . . ‘How could I not?’ Yeah, I like ‘how could I not’ much more. All it takes is one push, and then it’s over. He glanced down at the full laundry basket in his arms. The load was all his own clothing, although he hadn’t washed any of them. The old woman had washed them and folded them into this basket.
    He no longer even thought of her as his grandmother. She was the old woman, the annoying woman. On occasion she was even the old annoying woman. How could she be anything else when she took an eternity to go up or down a flight of stairs?
    “Are you coming, Johnny?” The old woman asked, beginning the act of turning to look at him while on the stairs. It was aggravating for Johnny to watch her slow spin, instead he let his eyes fall to her hands on the railings. They clung the banisters as if they were the very thread of life itself. I wonder if Grandpa had tried to hold on−no. He had been carrying that damn box of books! Johnny internally snarled. His Grandpa had fallen down this very set of stairs while bringing a large box of books down to the basement. And while he had mourned his Grandfather, he now felt the older man’s death had really been the death of two lives. His grandfather’s and his own.
That fateful day his parents had called him, insisting he move in with the old woman to care for her. ‘Because she’s too old to be alone, and we don’t want to put her in a nursing home.’ His mother had whined. ‘So? Why doesn’t she move in with you and Dad?’ ‘John, just do as you’re told’. The command had irritated him, but he did do as he was told. At the time he had vaguely pondered, How bad could it be?
    He wasn’t even completely sure the frail old biddy he had moved in with was the Grandmother of his childhood. The grandmother he remembered had been the very stereotype of grandmotheriness. Every time he had visited her there had been cookies and milk, and every Christmas there had been hand knitted sweaters and homemade dressing.
    The elderly relative he had loved, even if he hadn’t ever been precisely fond, had vanished the day he moved into her home. Now he often caught her peering at him from the corner of her eyes, as if she were measuring him. It often gave Johnny the creeps, as if he was being examined by a mortician. What was his height? His weight? Oak, mahogany, or would simple pine do?

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