Friday Fiction - Upon the Pages

So, Friday Fiction is something I used to do on my blog (back when I ran a blog).  I tried to post a story or part of an ongoing serial every Friday.  Here's one that I wrote since then that was actually for an NPR short story contest.  Don't worry, NPR's exclusive rights to the story expired quite some time ago.  It had a prompt, which was that it had to start with the sentence you'll see that it starts with and be no longer than 300 words.  Feel free to leave any comments on it.

           She closed the book, placed it on the table, and finally, decided to walk through the door.  She still felt giddy sometimes about being famous.  She was used to it, but not over it.  The book was about her, of course.  A sort of living biography in hardback.  She loved reading it, and had to force herself to put it down.  She had almost heard her own scream of excitement at the flattering words.  She stepped out of her house and started up the steep slope leading away from it.  The house was just down a small cliff, and she had to climb almost vertically to leave.  It served to give her a good workout every day, as well as keep away unwanted visitors.  She crested the slope and began the much shallower descent down to her flat yard. 

            Would she go so far as to say she loved herself?  Yes, that sounded right.  She lived alone, keeping old tabloid clippings of paparazzi following her exploits.  And of course, her own biography.  She loved reading too.  With a deep inhalation, she imagined she could smell the crisp aroma of a new book. 

            Was she wrong to isolate herself so?  She turned back to the slope she had now descended and could not see her house over the hill.  She stood there a moment before turning back to walk further along.  If not wrong, then at least odd.  What a strange place to build a house.  She could not remember what her thought process had been when she bought it.  In fact, she could barely remember buying it at all.  Had it been that long?  Her old life as an ordinary person seemed unreal, almost another existence. 

            She looked around her and noticed something odd.  Her yard was covered in strange black lines and circles.  Was this some kind of exotic prank?  She was used to that sort of thing, but most pranks people attempted on her involved an effort to get her to say something stupid on camera.  This was, well, different.  Would she need to get police protection for her property?  Maybe she should just move even farther down the cliff, if people were going to do things like this.  It barely surprised her to see such stupidity from the unwashed masses.  She smiled, hoping that that thought didn’t represent how she really felt about her fellow humans. 

            She walked up to some of the black lines to get a closer look.  Here was a large circle, to its right another.  To the left: most of a circle with a vertical line extending from one end.  Farther right: a vertical line with two diagonal lines leaving it at 45 degrees from the same point.  On either side of all that: large empty space and more lines.  She blinked and straightened rapidly.  Realization dawned on her face as she recognized the lines for what they were. 

            Suddenly, the ground shook beneath her.  She fell into the middle of a black circle.  The letter “o”.  Turning upward, she saw a giant but familiar face.  Her own.  Another flat space, covered in words as well, came closing down.  As darkness descended on the pages, she loosed a scream of terror.  She fell silent as she remembered the sound she thought she had heard just moments before upon closing the book, but now knew that it had not been a scream of excitement.  She feared for herself, and for the fate of her larger self, as she closed the book, placed it on the table, and finally, decided to walk through the door.