Such a Sunday as this

Not the most eventful Sunday, but a pleasant one nevertheless.

I finished the Sunday crossword. I watched an episode of Fringe and of Doctor Who. I liked them both, but the former may be laying on the “faith is better than science” a little too thick, and the latter may be doing the same with the “this is all deeply portentous and convoluted foreshadowing for what’s to come.” But still, quite enjoyable. I finally finished writing this, my thoughts on Lev Grossman’s novel The Magicians, and I wrote something else, sillier but more fun, with my weekly writing group:

It wasn’t love that sent Joyce to the island. When she looked back on it, it wasn’t even lust. Pierce had been attractive enough, in a vague, if-you-liked-that-sort-of-thing kind of way, but Joyce hadn’t been marooned on the island for ten years, cut off from all society and — if she was being really honest with herself — going slowly crazy, because of some schoolgirl crush. She had come here, and been stuck here, because of that damn stolen weapon, the Jeweled Blade of Semerkhet, which Pierce had somehow convinced her he had tracked to the island, following a direct trail from pharaoh’ s tomb to grave robber to pirate lair. When Joyce looked back on it, a schoolgirl crush would have been less embarrassing.

Now that he was dead, finally dead, and she had access to his journals, the writings that for those first eight months on the island he had kept hidden from her, Joyce knew the simple truth, that Pierce had of course been lying. There was no Blade of Semerkhet. Pierce wasn’t even an Egyptologist, unless you counted a failed half-semester in some unnamed state school’s history department, where he’d been kicked out for…well, something. Pierce’s scribbled notes, especially near the end, had never been exactly clear. He had been transcribing scraps of his life story for posterity — certainly not for her benefit — but even his more lucid moments, the few the venom in his bloodstream allowed him, were filled with half-truths, misdirections, and bold-faced lies.

That, as Joyce had learned the night their ship crashed onto the island, was just who Pierce was. He was a man with only a casual acquaintance with the truth, who would spin any tale — however elaborate, however ridiculous — just to get what he wanted. Unfortunately, that made her the dumb girl who had believed all the lies.

Knowing the truth hadn’t exactly found her a way home.

But at least she could find some satisfaction in knowing that she was the one who had finally ended Pierce’s life.

And that was my Sunday.