Immortal!

She sat there, by the window,at her desk, watching the snow fall. Her head was full of thoughts. She was confused. She did not know what to write next. Every sunday, she would read the chapter of her story published that day in the paper.Then, she would know what would come next. She would know what had to happen next, to her characters, and that's how she wrote it, every week, making sure she had her story ready for the press when they wanted.

Things had changed this time. She had just written the penultimate chapter of her story. It had been published that Sunday. And according to her usual routine, she read her story, reading it the way it appeared in the paper. And then, she waited for thoughts to flow. This would be her last chapter, the climax to her story. The ending had to be good. She knew. A good story, with a bad ending or an unsatisfactory ending could never be a good story in the first place.

She felt pressured. As the thoughts came to her mind, she dismissed every one of them. The climax had to please all her readers, or at least most of them. People would remember her story and people would remember her for her story. Tuesday came and went, and she still had no story ready. The press was in no hurry. The paper would come out on Sunday anyway. She had time till Saturday. Day by day, the pressure mounted. She could come up with no proper ending chapter to her story and it took away her sleep. When she went grocery shopping, people would pester her about it, asking her how the story would end. She locked herself in, not able to handle it all. Days went by just like that, and it was Saturday, and then, Sunday came.

All over the country, people opened their Sunday morning papers, looking to read the conclusion to that thrilling story. But there was no story there, where it should have been. Her readers frantically rushed through the paper, searching for the story, but it was nowhere to be seen. But tucked away at the corner of the second page was an obituary. They would never read the ending to that story.

She had died while writing that last chapter of her story, the story that would immortalize her. A heart attack had instantly killed her. People were sad. And also disappointed that they wouldn't get to read the final chapter. That great story would go unfinished, after all. But it was not over yet. The newspaper, sometime during midweek, asked for an opinion poll of it's readers. They informed the general public that, she had died while writing the story, she hadn't completed her last chapter. Would the people want that semi-finished chapter published anyway? Most of the people voted yes. And the story would thus appear in the Sunday paper. The last chapter, the incomplete one.

Sunday paper arrived but the excitement was low. As they flicked through the pages, they saw her story, that last chapter. And they read it. And read it again. It was indeed incomplete. There were unanswered questions. But the incomplete story, had, in a weird way, given the perfect ending to her story. It had pleased all her readers, leaving them pondering over it, thoughtful. By being incomplete, her story had indeed reached the level of expectations she'd had from it. It had become immortal, a story that would be remembered. In death, she had achieved, what she couldn't have done in life. In death, she had immortalized herself.