Habits.

Interconnecting stories about the habits people pick up over the years.

I. Obituaries

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Over the years, Courtney had picked up a gruesome habit. But, perhaps, it was a bit beneficial. Her habit had involved a slight stalker fixation on her former camp mates-- finding out which province they lived in and then finding out what town they lived in and ordering their newspaper.

So, every day, she found eighteen seperate newspapers on her doorsteps. (Sadie and Katie were still one person as far as she was concerned, Bridgette and Geoff had long since married, Noah and Heather lived in the same town and she had long since stopped caring about her own newspaper-- it was a dull piece of trash that mostly depended on gossip about the locals. She lived in a backwater town, Gore Bay, Ontario, population less than one thousand, so it wasn't really a big deal.)

Picking up all the newspapers, she realized her neighbors were out, at their windows, to watch her collect her many papers again. She was a frequent name in her town's gossip rag, but it wasn't as if she knew this. Rumors floated around the twenty seven year old high school professor like flies around a horse. They were as far fetched to her being a spy to the simple thing; 'she gets them for her classes.'

She really just liked the idea of knowing what happened to everyone before everyone else. It wasn't that she was morbid, it was just that she liked knowing how the other's were, even if it wasn't in person.

Carrying the large pile of newsprint inside, she set them on the barewood kitchen table her older brother had made for her-- he had become quite the craftsman. She had needed a table since her doberman, Ava, bought mostly for protection, had jumped on her old flimsy one and snapped it in two.

That lead to the new table. That, and Ava not being allowed near the new one.

Opening newspaper number one; it was for Camrose, Alberta. Home to 'The Camrose Canadian' newspaper and Harold Whitaker-- the reason she didn't win 100,000. Flipping through the weather and the daily happenings, skipping over the sports and arts, she landed on the page she was looking for.

Obituaries.

Scanning through, she was relieved to find out, well, her old teammate wasn't dead. But, it seemed that his mother was.

Fifty-eight year old Alice Whitaker died this past Thursday of a heart attack. Alice was the mother of two, Harold and Taylor Whitaker and husband of George Whitaker. Funeral services will...

Such a shame, she was young for a heart attack.

Folding up the paper, she set it to the side. She would have to send flowers.

The next newspaper in her stack was 'The Victoria Times-Colonist,' hailing from nearby Victoria, British Columbia. Bridgette Woods-Harrison and Geoff Harrison lived there.

She scanned the obituaries.

Nothing. Not a single familiar name or anything. Her chest stopped constricting-- it always did when she checked on them. She set the paper to the side, in a different stack from Harold's.

One for the living, one for the dead. It was a philosophy-- you couldn't get your hits and misses all jumbled up.

She grabbed the next paper in the stack, arguably the thickest. 'The Toronto Star', not surprisingly from Toronto, Ontario. Here, in it's pages, may house the obituaries of Heather Dane or Noah Wallace.

She flipped through. Past the D's, through the W's. There was a 'Z' name she nearly recognized, but she realized it was just a friend of her dad's. She didn't care much, but she put it in the 'death' pile.

She checked another Ontario newspaper; the 'Ottawa Sun.' She was pleased to find that DJ hadn't bit the dust in the last week.

One more, she told herself. Her ex-boyfriend's town, a small dinky town much like her own, Leader, Saskatchewan. It's newpaper was much like her own, a town gossip magazine. It's obituary section was lacking, only one death in the past week, belonging to an elderly woman named Rose Meyer.

Checking the large clock above her stove, she was dismayed to see that she should have left ten minutes ago. She hated being late, but it seemed as if it had been happening with increasing frequency as of late.

Standing, she hurridly shuffles over the cold floor to slip her shoes and coat on, grabbing her mobile off the table by the door. Stepping out, she turns and slips her key into the lock and locks her door.

She treads quickly, but somewhat carefully, over the patches of ice on her steps. Increasing her speed down the sidewalk to her driveway she slips a few times but manages to keep herself upright, speeding up once more to remove herself from the cold, she swears in her head as soon as she completely slips on a patch of ice, giving herself a black eye as she smacks her head into her car on the way down.

She swears out loud this time. "Fuck!" She holds her eye as she sits on the frozen ground for a few minutes before wobbily getting up and getting in her car to drive to work.

School was eventful that day, if only for the fact that two of her students asked if she had been mugged and one fellow teacher asked if she was the victim of an abusive boyfriend.

Psh, as if. She hadn't had one of those since she was twenty five and stupid and hadn't gotten over her thing for the bad boy. Boy, had she since then.

Returning home, she eyed the papers on the table while she filled her dog's feed bowl.

She went through them, per usual.

"Maybe this isn't a healthy habit, Courtney." She said to herself after finding out that no one, in fact, had died. "Maybe it would be plausible to get these in 30 years, but not now."

So Courtney went online and canceled all of her subscriptions.

She then went to another site and bought a wreath of flowers to be sent to Harold's family.

The doberman cocked her head to the side as she watched.

--

I dunno. It seemed less creepy/crappy in my head.