Current mood:	nerdy
Entry tags:	beauty, death, horror, life, romance, sex, stephen king, truth, writing

Write. (Fiction)
"Write." she said.

"Write?" he asked.

"Right."

And write he did. The words couldn't have held more meaning if they had appeared on a stone tablet presented by a wizened old man who said "Yes, I'm fucking Moses. Write, goddamn it!"

If he could (reach? affect? please?) her by writing, then he would do just that. He was very apprehensive about the whole thing. He knew he wielded a pen like a switchblade, and switchblades rarely pleased anyone but the person who held it. Still, he had little to lose. If she didn't care, then nothing could hurt her. If she did care, then she would understand that he didn't harbor any malice towards her, and would never hurt her intentionally. She kept her real thoughts and feelings so hidden from him he never knew how she felt anyway. Not entirely true: she had no problem expressing displeasure with him.

Those were the last words she had ever spoken to him. He didn't return to work the next day, and she didn't call. He expected that. He knew once he quit, he would never see her again. That was why he held on as long as he did. He preferred a world with her in it to one without her, no matter how much it hurt.

That slight bit of encouragement he received from her opened a floodgate within him. He sometimes had 5 or 10 documents open at a time, jumping from one story to another as a thought struck him. He never knew he had so many ideas. He was sure if he kept on, he would eventually write something that wasn't about her.

Flash forward 15 years, His wife had left him long ago. Not that he blamed her, either. There were no more women after that. It was just as another writer had said long ago, a good story was about one, then two, then three, then two, and then one again.

His agent wanted him to do a signing tour: "It's really a good idea. Show 'em you're a regular guy, not the reclusive, arrogant freak that I know you are. Show 'em you're accessible."

Accessible. If he hadn't said that, he never would have gone. He remembered how he used to rail against people who made it and then isolated themselves from the public. He swore he would never do that. He had also swore he would never leave his wife and child. Decision time. What the fuck, he thought, I'll do it. He had even less to lose now. He had lost everything that was important to him long ago.

"O. K."

"Great. I'11 book you a flight. The publishers have a tour arranged already."

He hung up the phone.

"Vodka." he said aloud to an empty house. The house had no reply to that. He took it as a good sign.

He signed his name until his hand hurt. New York, St. Louis, L.A. One day he checked to itinerary to find the words "BATON ROUGE" under the destination column. He nearly choked on his olive. He couldn't go back there, too many ghosts. Return to Auschwitz. But he knew he had to. Contractual obligations, they were called. Even his agent's asking was a mere formality, a concession to his huge, overblown ego. A small bone to let him pretend he was in charge of his own life.

Baton Rouge, it was.

"Steward, 'nother martini. Double. Triple."

"Certainly, sir."

Fucking piece of shit asshole, the steward thought.

And he was right.

Waldenbooks-A-Billion. They scarcely even sold books anymore. They sold cd-roms, holobooks that projected a 3d film onto a table top, even audio cassettes. And way, way in the back, were the "real" books. He never would let them translate his work onto those other formats. He knew he could make millions more by doing so, but what was money anyway? Did he really need a million more bottles of vodka? Well, he felt he did, but ultimately decided several hundred thousand bottles of vodka would be enough. Last him until his liver failed, or his lungs. Or he O.D.'d.

He didn't even look at them anymore. He put on his fake, I'm-a-nice-guy
smile and wrote whatever they wanted. If they didn't ask for anything special, he usually wrote "May the farce be with you." The saps had devoured his books and asked
for more. He wrote about how stupid they were. How mindless.

And they gave him money for it. This, he thought, was their revenge.

"Would you sign this for me please?" a robotic voice asked.

He never got used to that sound no matter how many times a day he heard different people use it. A voice box. If they could miniaturize them, why couldn't they make them sound more human?

"Sure I would." he said.

The book wasn't a book, but an old magazine. No surprises there. People asked him to sign all kinds of crazy things. Someone once brought an old shopping list of his for him to sign. He didn't ask how or where they got it, he just signed. He had signed many a breast. That amused him slightly. Shades of rock stardom. He looked closer at the magazine. It was the first thing he had ever had published. He hadn't thought of that story since...

He looked up. It was her. His eyes welled with tears. They both pretended not to notice.

"I quit smoking." she said, smiling that sad little half-smile she had. He knew her three smiles. The real happy one, the sad one and the mock smile she used to flash at him when he smiled at her at work millions of years ago. He looked at the cigarette in his hand. Marlboro red. Wordlessly he moved his cigarette hand to his lap and extinguished it.

In his thigh. Hadn't done that in quite a while. Didn't hurt. He hadn't felt anything in ages. He studied her for a moment.

She wore an elegant black choker, the kind favored by Gothic girls in his youth. He knew this was really a voice box. She hadn't aged all that well. Pretty wrinkled, from sun and cigarettes. Considerably thinner. Yet she was as beautiful as ever, to him. He glanced at her hand, as he had done the day they had met.

"Where's..."

"He died." she said. "I cried."

"I'm so sorry." he said, " I know you loved him dearly." His face was a veritable waterfall at this point. She was unmoved as always. He scribbled something illegible on the top of the article.

"I really loved you, too." she said. "You should have believed me." She collected the magazine and turned to walk away .

"Wait." he cried, way too loudly.

She turned to face him once more, her face impassive behind dark Ray-bans.

He held his hand out to her as he had done so many times in the past, her eyes flicked from his face to his hand and back again. Slowly, decisively, she took his hand in hers. Only this time she didn't let go. And in this story, Constant Reader, our hero died happy.