New and Unfiltered fiction. Short stories by William Stager. Street date: September 2006

The Adolescent-Adult Bedtime Reader: A Collection of Stories. In this innovative, cutting edge collection of shorts, William Stager tells stories about everyday people living on the edge of the American dream. His characters encounter strange and surreal circumstances as they struggle to survive and to find meaning in their lives. Their other-worldly experiences take place just off of Main Street, Everywhere, U.S.A.

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Copyrighted Material, 2006 William Stager. All rights reserved.

short story EXCERPT

The Adolescent-Adult Bedime Reader: Anthony Baniker's Journey to the Far Side of Infinity

In order to reach the next life, one has to travel to the far side; the far side of infinity, or so I was told by a wise old woman on the hill, in the back country of West Virginia. It was on a foggy and rainy fall afternoon, as I packed up to leave on an expedition that I had spent my whole life planning for, that I realized that I did not have to go anywhere in order to reach the end of the universe, and that travel through space and time was achievable through the mind. This was when I decided to fake my own death, so that I could drop out of society and begin my journey. I decided that I would fake my own death through an ultra light aircraft crash. All that I needed to do would be to load the homebuilt aircraft with fuel and one of the cadavers from the old depository, then fly up to 6,000 feet at night and parachute out. I would put my old military dog tags in the aircraft, along with other identifying items that would not be totally incinerated by the crash and the ensuing fire. The cadaver that would burn to a crisp would be identified as me. Before the crash, I planned to put my energy into a disinformation campaign. After my sister mentioned that I should do something about my depression, I saw a doctor and talked about my prescriptions about town. People knew about me at the supermarket, the post office and at the local bar. Soon, I was satisfied that the campaign was successful, and that I would be able to embark on the first leg of my journey...

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