Writing Her End

Flash Fiction 


When she wrote the end of her novel, she didn’t realize that she’d also written the end of her life. It was intended to be fiction. The girl in her novel was just a character. She was middle aged. Her life story had been much different from her character’s life story. But their ends were much the same. All the while she had been working on her novel, she didn’t know she was writing her end. 

Of course, the end of her novel had nothing to do with her death, which officially never happened, except as a mystery. It was just the real truth of her presumed death mirrored her character’s end. Mari was an author who wrote mystery fiction stories, and had then became a mystery herself when she vanished at the age of 43, leaving behind a yet unpublished book, where the character, a young teenage girl, vanishes and is officially never found, though presumed abducted. People wondered if the end of Mari’s book(which wasn’t published, given the circumstances, but was still talked about, and known about) had been a clue to her fate.

Was she writing her end, when she finished the novel with the girl vanishing and never being found? Did she have some premonition? Did someone she know have knowledge of the end of her book, and perhaps thought it would make a good, though tragic, real life ending? Was someone who wasn’t what they seemed in her life? Her boyfriend was suspected and interviewed, but he denied he’d done anything to her though they had been having problems, in fact, he was not aware of the end of her book. Her family, friends, and acquaintances were interviewed. There didn’t seem to be any answers. It seemed she’d gone for a walk one spring day and never returned. 

Of course, ”mystery writer becomes a mystery” makes good headlines, and there were those who thought she may have vanished into some new life, or perhaps taken her life, even- the ending of her unpublished final book served as fodder for many theories. Nobody’s ever found out, so far, what became of her. Like her character, Mari’s story ends in a mystery. But hopefully she didn’t write her own end, while she was writing the end of her novel. Her story could yet have another ending, one that isn’t a mystery.