[C.1]

“People shouldn’t fear death, for it is the next great adventure.”

Joaquin Jagger narrowed his eyes on the man opposite, then returned his attention to the manuscript. He inhaled deeply, breathing in the pure cigar smoke. Held it for a moment as he chewed on the head, moving it along his lips. He grabbed the page, ripped it from the stack and held it aloft. A bright blue flame appeared from the darkness, erupting from a gold lighter. The paper caught quickly, turning black and curling on itself. The flame, initially big and bright, disappeared, and Jagger let the burning page fall to the ground with the rest of them. Ash surrounded him, a black crop circle in a darker room. He released the smoke in his mouth with a resentful sigh, meant for everyone in the room to hear it. Particularly the person sitting opposite.

Monty Dekker blinked the sweat away from his eyes as he watched his work burn, praying the floating sheet didn’t come anywhere near his lathered skin. The residue was heavy, and he was sure the overhead spotlight that bore down on him like a desert sun would ignite it at any moment. His situation was beyond anything he had ever written, a cry from anything he could ever imagine. He should have known the fear would drive away his best work. The pressure of performing had gotten the better of him, and he had faltered. It seemed it may cost him more than a critical review.

Rip. Another torn page. More carbon dioxide and water vapor. Jagger tossed the rest of the manuscript to the floor. Eyed the naked man sitting opposite through half-closed eyes. Watched the skinny writer shiver despite the heat. Balding head. A patch of turf on a sunken chest. He looked malnourished, with a pot belly that hovered over a limp penis.

Another breath, a partnered respire, clouds of smoke. Jagger shrugged. “What the fuck is this shit?”

Dekker murmured.

“Why do you insult me like this?” Jagger continued. He rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, a garment that cost more than his prisoner made in the previous financial year.

More noises, whimpers mixed with a cough. Jagger motioned with his fingers and the invisible hand yanked the gag out of Dekker’s mouth.

“Please,” he said. “I can do better. I just need more time.”

“I’ve already given you time. Given you everything you need, everything you asked for. And yet you still supply me with this drivel.” Jagger sat back. “It saddens me. Why do you sadden me?”

“I didn’t mean to… It’s just. I need more time.”

“How much time do you need? I could have crapped on a sheet of paper and created something better than what you wrote.”

Jagger leaned forward again, eyeballed the man. Gripped the cigar between large knuckles and rested his hands on his knees.

“One more day,” Dekker said. “Just one more day.”

Jagger slapped his knees. “I think we’re done here.”

Dekker watched him stand. “N… no,” he said. “I can do better. I’ll do it again. I’ll make it so much—.”

The gag transformed the words into muffled tones. He fought against his binds, but the numerous layers of duct tape restrained his arms and legs firmly in place. There would be no escape. It would be a situation he couldn’t write his way out of, and no amount of editing could save him. He looked at his captor, pleaded with his eyes, but the look he received in return permeated the coldness of a killer. Eyes that matched his skin, a mouth that never smiled, teeth that could tear through his skin.

“It’s a shame,” Jagger said. “I liked your work. I liked what you did. But you just couldn’t deliver when you needed to.”

Dekker tried to talk but couldn’t form the words. He wouldn’t know what to say anyhow. Beg? Beseech? Borrow time? A flame cracked open before his eyes, causing him to lean back in his chair. Breathing slowed, almost focused. Eyes wide, willed for the flame to extinguish, yet it slowly came towards him.

“Now you shall burn like your pages.”

Dekker’s chest shuddered as the substance caught the flame. Fire engulfed him before he contemplated the pain. A stinging sear crashed over his body. He bucked and shouted, fought until there was nothing left.

Jagger watched the flames explode and then die down, leaving a scaley char over the body. He looked over to the man with the lighter.

“Hernandez, where do you find these guys?”

Hernandez ran a hand over his shaved head. “Sorry, boss,” he said. “His name came up in my aunt’s neighbor’s book club. They all loved him. Apparently.”

“A hack!” Jagger stated.

Hernandez looked over the charred remains. “I’ll find the right one next time.”

Jagger waved him away. “That’s what you said last time. And the time before that.” Walked over to a small window set into the block wall. “Christ, with all this killing, it would have been quicker to write this damn thing myself.”

Hernandez stood behind him, rubbing his hands together.

Jagger sighed. Refused to turn around. “What is it, Hernandez?”

“I heard something on the grapevine, boss. That’s all.”

“Well, spit it out.”

“There’s a rumor the DEA is sniffing around. It’s making a lot of people nervous. Some people whisper that you’ve lost your power, that this is the end of your time. Some of our supply chain are closing their doors. Everyone’s all jumpy.”

Jagger spun from the window, his eyes bright, his face lifted. “Aha! This is why I need this book! They think they know me, but this is the chance to tell them the true story. To really scare them. Besides, the book would make me immortal, allow me to live forever in the digital archives.”

Hernandez shifted his square shoulders and screwed up his face.

“Legacy, Hernandez. Legacy.”

“I don’t understand. You’ve got plenty of money. Can’t you just buy your legacy? You could put up statues all over this town! You own the damn place!”

“Bureaucracy! Grease the wheels as much as you like, all those permits get caught up in red tape and taxes. And then some government official comes along and takes them down. But a book? Once it’s out there, it stays out there. And it will happen, even if I have to drag a thousand authors down here.” He clicked his cigar stub onto the burnt cadaver of Monty Dekker. “Besides, a statue doesn’t tell the story.”

“With everything going on—the DEA, our competition breathing down our necks, our corrupted supply chains—have we got time for all this?”

Jagger placed a hand on the big man’s shoulder. “We don’t have time to not do this. Besides, it’s amazing what someone can do when I give them the right amount of pressure and incentive. Look at poor Monty here.”

They both turned and looked at the smoldering corpse.

“So much work in so little time,” Jagger said. He waved his hands to conjure up some smoke towards his nose. Breathed in. “You smell that? That is the smell of inferiority. It’s a pity he wasn’t quite up to scratch, but there’s nothing we can do about that now.”

“I read some of it. Sounded pretty good to me.”

Conrad turned away and threw his arms into the air. “It just didn’t inspire me, Hernandez. I want the story to mentally stimulate me. I want to feel the emotion. I want my vision to come to life.” His body dropped. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand. You’re great at so many things, Hernandez, but this concept is beyond you.”

Hernandez shrugged. “Where do you want to go from here then, boss?”

Jagger patted down his pants and retrieved his phone. He unlocked it and swiped through the screens until he found what he was looking for.

“Here,” he said. “We’ll continue right here.” He held up his phone. “Get me a copy of this and find out everything you can about the author.”

“Conrad Lockhart?” Hernandez asked. “Never heard of him.”

Jagger looked at him. “That’s the point. I can’t very well drag Stephen King in here now, can I?”

Hernandez looked down like a scolded child. “Guess not, boss.”

“Best you leave the thinking to me. You just do what I ask. Oh, and give the job to Maria. Set her up with whatever she wants. I think this is a nice straightforward job to ease her into things.”

Hernandez shrugged. “No worries, boss.”

The big man just stood there.

“For the love of God, Hernandez. Just talk!”

“Well, I see his latest work only has a star rating of four point two. You think he’s going to be good enough?”

Jagger pursed his lips. “Well, if he isn’t, he’ll end up just like Monty here.”

[C.2]

Conrad Lockhart slowly opened his eyes. He forgot to close the curtains the night before, and he cursed as the sun streamed into his eyes. He coughed several times before throwing open the covers. Naked. Stayed still. Pretended the new day hadn’t arrived, yet it was no use. The morning traffic was bustling outside his windows in the distance, and his stomach growled like an angry dog. He thought he could masturbate to liven things up a little, but he hadn’t been horny in weeks.

He reached for his phone and held it at arm’s length to decipher the blurry time. Waking up naturally was an amazing experience, even though he knew it seriously ate into his creative time. Self-sabotage was a glorious bedfellow. He reached for his black-framed glasses and checked the stats from the previous day. The Last First Date sold forty-eight digital copies in the last twenty-four hours, down from the previous day. Mediocre sales at best, more than most, and certainly enough so he could afford to pay the rent at the end of the month. The upward trend had stalled halfway through the month, but that was the story of his life. Things would go great, and then BAM. He’d get blindsided and knocked down onto his ass again.

He rolled out of bed and threw on a tatty brown dressing gown. He couldn’t quite remember where it came from. Amy might have bought it for him, possibly one she threw at him in the midst of the argument, most likely one of the few possessions he walked away with. To be honest, he was happy just to get out of there alive.

Didn’t bother tying it up as he shuffled out to the kitchen, hitting a button on the answering machine on the way past. He put the phone on silent as soon as he started drinking the night before. He always found it difficult to talk to anyone once he started drinking, fearing he might actually say something sincere or divulge some emotion that lay dormant within him.

He was greeted with the remnants of the previous night when the messages started playing. The first was from Amy, instructing him to, quote, “sign the fucking divorce papers”. He looked down at his hand and was amazed how that white ring disappeared from non-use. The second was from Marty’s Car Grooming, asking him to show his face for a shift today or, quote, “go fuck yourself”. The third didn’t even bother leaving a message.

The previous day’s coffee in the percolator looked appetizing enough for him to pour a mug. The fridge was absent of milk, or anything substantial for that matter: a few slices of moldy bread, an unopened block of butter, a jug of cloudy water, and a pack of delivered noodles—empty.

Conrad leaned against the counter and slurped cold, black coffee while he read his email. Spam emails provided more interest than anything else his messages offered. An offer for teeth whitening more stimulating than yet another rejection from some agent he couldn’t remember submitting to. An opportunity to buy more data for a phone provider he wasn’t connected with more intriguing than the fact his rent was late. New updates for an app he never used more fascinating than an email letting him know his parcel had arrived at the post office.

Wait. Parcel. Post office. He was wrong about that last one. That was exciting. The parcel, not the post office. But getting it would mean he would have to leave the dwelling, and that was something he would avoid if he could. He looked around the open space, the way the kitchen melded into the dining, and the dining merged into the lounge room. Junk mail, rubbish, clothes joined them together into one unbearably comfortable abode. In the corner, an obstructed object swam around a half full fish tank, the water the color of earth after a storm. A picture hung crooked on the wall. The television was embarrassingly small. The dining table only had three chairs, and none of them matched. They were the best parts of the townhouse, and all inherited from the previous tenant.

He sighed. Not in a disappointed way, but in a manner that exuded acceptance. It was his life, and it wasn’t going to change. The plan for the day was to finish his mystery novella and kick it off to his editor. And by editor, he meant neighbor. She was eighty-two, yet had a keen eye for detail and a distaste for bullshit. So, it was good for Conrad all round.

The problem was, the story was completely shit. The characters were flat and cliched. The plot was thinner than a hooker’s panties. The thought of sitting at his laptop and finishing it made him sick. He’d rather put a gun in his mouth and pull the trigger. Maybe some crazed art critic would consider his blood splatter to be a creative effort, potentially used by psychiatrists for their inkblot tests.

Inspiration. That’s what he needed. Something that was going to spark something in him. The dynamite was in him, he just needed to light the fuse. It had happened before. He’d been stocking up on cheap booze when a man wearing a balaclava and brandishing a shot gun stormed in to rob the cash register. In a half daze, he stood in an aisle and watched it happen. The drugs he had taken meant he couldn’t distinguish between a movie or real life, and he honestly thought he was dreaming the entire sequence. It wasn’t until the delinquent smashed him in the face with the barrel of the weapon did things fall into place. It rattled the cobwebs loose, caused his imagination to run wild. He arrived home with a swag of notes he made at the police station making a statement and used them to craft a novel that was a complete and utter failure. Sold a few copies here and there, but nothing like his current levels of success. But he felt good writing it. Maybe that was the point he was trying to make to himself. continued to sell moderately well.

He had hoped the run would continue, however it ceased suddenly. Any momentum running into another release quickly diminished. He was back to square one. No ideas. No muse. No chance of making more money. Nothing until Demi stormed into his life.

He scratched his ass as he finished the last of the caffeinated ooze. He supposed he should have a shower if he was to venture past the precipice that was his front door. The drive itself would take all of fifteen minutes, and he felt secure in the knowledge he’d be back in his nightgown within the hour. Back to drinking Captain Morgan and tapping words on his ancient laptop, bloating inconsistencies in this shitty manuscript. His story about drug lord turned kindergarten teacher turned state’s evidence would have to wait until he returned.

The overwhelming sensation to vomit took over him and roared into the kitchen sink. The smell gave him course to repeat the action. He fumbled for the faucet and washed chunky bile down the drain, pushing the larger pieces with his fingers until they were all gone. He washed his mouth out and rubbed his hands through the mess of brown hair. Specks of dandruff fell relentlessly over his shoulders.

Held onto the kitchen bench. Guilt rose, as it often did, out of the blue and strangled him. It happened every time he had to go out, like it knew. He decided that before the post office, he would have to quell the obstruction, and acquiesce with the calling.

He shuffled off down the hallway to prepare himself for the onslaught of memories.