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Speaker 1: Hi, Welcome to Fiction Revised, a short story podcast where

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each episode is a short story, rewritten, reimagined, and reshaped

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into a different genre, which is chosen at random. The

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story is blown out tires and the genre is contemporary.

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This is the first version of this story. The road

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opened up in a way that it does out here,

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flat enough to make you feel exposed, wide enough to

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make you feel small, and long enough to make you

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reconsider every life decision you'd ever made, including the questionable

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gas station coffee now tap dancing through your system. The

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sky was doing most of the work, pale, endless as

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the land stretched thin flat beneath it. Traffic had separated

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just enough for her to see the problem before she

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reached it. Dark strips of shredded rubber lay scattered across

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the lanes, jagged and uneven of a semi tire that

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had finally said you know what I'm done, and it

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exploded across the highway and one last dramatic attempt of

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being in the way. Some pieces hugged the shoulder, or

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others sat right in the middle of the road, bold

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as anything, waiting for the next unsuspecting vehicle to test

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its suspension. Most people held their breath and drove over

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these things like they were passing through a haunted house.

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She wasn't most people, but she still felt it immediately,

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that tight, uninviting surge in her chest, the body's little

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alarm system, overworked and underpaid, assuming at all times that

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things were about to get worse. Nothing had happened, yet

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nothing was happening. Still, her shoulders crept up like they

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were bracing for impact, like they'd been training for this

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moment their whole lives. She kept driving, doing what she

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always did, moving forward, even when her body thought some

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behind her was gaining on her. Moments like this had

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a way of pulling things loose. Not the big memories,

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not the dramatic ones that came with theme music and

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life lessons that were easy to retell at bars because

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they didn't cause others to flinch, Just the ones that

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arrived without context and refused to explain themselves. The muscle

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memory of staying agreeable, The reflex to make herself smaller

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so the situation wouldn't escalate, The years spent learning exactly

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how much space she was allowed to take up before

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someone noticed and got irritated. The smell of hot rubber

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tipped her into something older, like the brain had pulled

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a file. No one requested, and she was small again,

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standing on a chair and a quiet kitchen alone. Her

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parents were somewhere exactly doesn't matter. She didn't ask questions.

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Questions led to answers, and answers would lead to explanations,

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and explanations never came, So why ask She did what

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she always did. She figured it out. The pan on

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the stove was heavier than she expected, the handle hotter.

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When it burned, she hissed in air through her teeth

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and kept quiet. They would have been mad at the mistake,

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so she held it alone. Later she examined the mark

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on her hand in the bathroom, the skin angry and blistered.

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She ran it under cold water to soothe the pain

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and cried silently. She would wrap it herself and tend

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to it for weeks. No one noticed, no one asked.

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Healed without witness, the way most things did. Then, years later,

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the faint curve of a scar still lived there, pale, unremarkable,

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shaped vaguely like a parenthesis, as if her hand had

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been trying to whisper the rest of a story. No

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one bothered to read. Proof of a lesson learned early,

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and often rep pain was better left unmentioned. The memory passed,

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but the pattern stayed, Like a guest who refused to leave.

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The road head was still littered with debris. Cars reacted

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in their own ways. One swerved hard, overcorrected, and sped

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off like panic was something you could outrun if you

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just hit the gas at the right angle. Another slowed

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to a crawl. Hazard lights blinking apologetically, as though saying

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I'm sorry, I exist, Please don't honk at me. She

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watched them oddly detached, and realized how familiar this felt,

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how often she had navigated her life like this, adjusting, anticipating,

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preparing for damage that had already happened somewhere else. Being

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careful around people who were already mid explosion. Convinced she

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could foresee the danger if she watched closely enough. Her

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hands were tight on the steering wheel. She noticed it

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because she had learned to notice, not to fix them,

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just to clock them, prepare, expect. Knuckles, white, jaws clenched,

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breath aware, she took one deeper inhale. Not dramatic, just practical,

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the emotional equivalent of wiping crumbs off a counter. The

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debris wasn't coming for her. It wasn't alive, it wasn't personal.

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It had already done its damage somewhere behind her, and

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she had been living as if it might happen again

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at any moment, letting it set the pace, letting it

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decide how tightly she held on. Fear had been convincing,

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Fear always was, But fear, she realized, had never actually

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been in charge of getting her anywhere worth going. Fear

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had terrible taste in destinations. More memories lined up like

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they'd been waiting their turn, apologizing before being accused, mistaking

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acceptance of others with acceptance of self, confusing demand with love.

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She thought of her younger self, sitting on the edge

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of beds and couches that were never really hers, listening

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carefully while someone explained why they couldn't meet her where

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she was, why this wasn't going to work, why she

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was too much even when she asked for nothing. She

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nodded through those conversations like nodding was a skill she'd mastered,

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a talent she could put on a resume. Expert, instain agreeable,

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proficient in emotional acrobatics, knows how to smile and to

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shrink at the same time. She told herself closeness was

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something you earned by trying harder, by being easier, by

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not asking too much, that by being too much, you

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were a failure. Being not enough was also a failure.

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The rules were unclear, but the punishment was familiar. The

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faces changed, but the endings didn't. She kept choosing things

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that required fixing, things that stayed just out of reach.

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She mistook intensity for intimacy and called it growth. She

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stayed too long, even when it hurt, especially when it hurt,

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because pain has always been part of the fine print.

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When things fell apart, she took inventory of herself like

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a mechanic, convinced the problem had to be internal. Something

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must be wrong with me. Let me check the engine,

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the wiring, the whole damn frame. She never asked why

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she kept reaching for things that didn't reach back, why

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she poured herself into people who held her like a

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cup with a crack. The land stretched on, honest in

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its refusal to entertain her. No distractions, no scenery to

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hide behind, just long distances and the quiet insistence that

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you keep going. The kind of landscape that didn't try

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to impress you or seduce you. It just was unapologetically there, wide, flat, practical,

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and uninterested in your emotional monologue. She adjusted her course slightly,

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steady and de liberate, passing through the last of the

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ruined rubber tires without ceremony, no crash, no moment, just movement.

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The debris faded in the mirror, reduced to nothing more

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than dark flecks, swallowed by distance. It was strange how

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small they looked back there, how big they had felt

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up close. She wondered how many things in her life

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had followed that exact pattern, terrifying at first glance, forgettable

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once she stopped staring at them. The road didn't soften,

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the sky didn't change its mind, and her past didn't

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disappear just because she finally looked forward. Trauma wasn't a

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movie ending, not something solved with the monologue and a

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swelling soundtrack. It stuck around, It lingered, sometimes, it made

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popcorn and dragged a chair over. But something fundamental had shifted.

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She no longer confused vigilance with wisdom, or pain with proof,

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or love with possession. She no longer mistook someone staying

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for someone choosing her. She no longer worshiped the idea

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of being easy, like that was ever a goal. These

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moments burned hands, swallowed words, misdirected love. They were real,

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They carved paths, They lived within her etge into muscle

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and instinct, But they didn't get to decide where she

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was going. Her car hummed beneath her, steady and reliable,

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and she thought about how many years she had spent

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bracing for impact instead of appreciating the motion. How many

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times she had mistaken survival for living. She wasn't judging

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herself for it, not anymore. Surviving had been the right

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move back then. It had kept her alive, It had

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gotten her here. But she wasn't in that kitchen anymore.

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She wasn't a girl on a chair with a too

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heavy pan and no one to help. She wasn't sitting

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on beds that didn't feel like home, waiting for someone

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to pick her. She wasn't holding herself small to keep peace.

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The road stretched ahead, long and honest. She loosened her

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grip on the steering wheel, not completely. She wasn't reckless,

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but enough enough to feel the difference between holding on

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and hanging on. Maybe the stretch of road would have

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more debris, maybe not. Either way, she could handle it.

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She wasn't driving like the danger was already here. She

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wasn't flinching at every shadow. She wasn't living like life

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was just a series of explosions she had to predict.

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She drove because she wanted to get somewhere, not because

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she was running from what was behind her. The faint

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scar on her hand caught the light as she adjusted

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her grip. It was still there, it would always be there,

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but it was just part of her now, not the

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whole story. She breathed again, deeper, this time not out

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of fear or preparation, but because she could head. The

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sky remained huge and unimpressed, and for once she didn't

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take it personally. Hey, thank you so much for listening.

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Let's see what I'm writing next. Okay, according to the randomizer,

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it's going to be a news story, which makes sense

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considering there's only one story on the list right now,

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and the genre is going to be horror because it's

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a new story. Let's run it through the story shuffler,

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which is a macro honestly that I built in Excel

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that is going to give us the finer details of

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the story. Okay, So for this new story, the location

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will be a house that shouldn't still be standing, that

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should probably be perfect to horror. The character is someone

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everyone depends on, and the story is centered on coming

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back next week. The story changes, See You There Fiction

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Revised is written and read by Andy Kenyon