I have to confess something.
This wasn't the last chapter.
I must apologize. I got a little tweaked about so many people rooting for Lana to die that I gave in to a perverse impulse (must have been from the fifth dimension) and came up with this non-ending just to play with everybody's minds.
I'm sorry if I have offended anyone. I haven't seen anyone do anything like this before on this board, although I have seen writers make changes (sometimes drastic ones) because of the feedback.
I can cite literary precedent for changing the ending of a story. Charles Dickens originally had Pip and Estella (Great Expectations) meet years later on a street while Pip was walking with his nephew. They exchanged pleasantries, Estella kissed the child, apparently assuming Pip was the daddy, and drove out of his life forever.
Dickens' publishers and the first set of "beta readers" - they didn't call them that, but that's what they were - hated the ending and pressured Dickens to put them together at the end. So, he reluctantly returned to his desk and added the scene in the garden where Pip "saw no shadow of another parting from her."
Please accept my apologies and read the real ending, which will post with the title "The Road Taken - 18/18 (Real Ending)" as soon as I cool down the modem.
I just know I'm gonna get flamed. And I can guarantee that I'll never do this again.
