Louise Eldritch didn’t have an umbrella. By the time she walked the six blocks from the bus station to the hotel, she was soaked through to the skin. She stood there, shivering a little and dripping water on the floor, while she signed her name to the register, a false name that came to her in the moment before she wrote it down. The night desk clerk smiled at her familiarly, as though he knew her. (He had the same smile for everybody, no matter who they were.)

“I have a nice room for you on the eighth floor, Miss Whitehead,” he said, reading the name off the register.

“It’s Mrs. Whitehead,” she said. “Don’t you have anything on a lower floor?”

“Not cleaned and made up. With all this rain, you see, we’re short-staffed.”

“I guess the eighth floor will have to do, then.”

“It’s nice and quiet up there and you’ll have a fine view. The elevator is in working order, so you won’t have to walk up the stairs.” He handed her the key.

She took the creaking elevator up to the eighth floor. As she walked down the hallway to her room, she heard the yammer of muffled voices coming from behind one of the doors. She couldn’t make out what the voices were saying, but it sounded like a heated argument involving at least three people. There was a man’s angry voice and then a different man’s voice, and, in the background, a woman’s voice crying and pleading.

The room was as dreary as she expected. The walls were covered with a faded green-and-brown wallpaper and the ceiling spotted with water stains. She turned on the lights and stepped out of her wet shoes and draped her jacket over the back of the desk chair. She took a towel from the bathroom and dried herself off the best she could. She longed to get into a tubful of hot water to try to soak the aches out of her body but she was just too tired. The day and a half spent travelling on the bus had taken its toll. She wanted only to sleep.

There was one window in the room and beside it a small door that opened onto a tiny fire escape landing. The window and door were both covered with a heavy green curtain, the kind that completely shut out the light. She pulled back the curtain and looked out at the rain, which hadn’t diminished and was, if anything, coming down heavier than before. She looked down the eighty feet or so to the street but couldn’t see much of anything, other than a streetlamp at the next corner and the lights of an all-night drugstore in the next block.

It could be any one of a thousand different towns in America. In the two days she had been traveling, she crossed several states lines and had lost track of where she was. If she had known the name of the town when she arrived there, she had forgotten it, but she derived a sort of perverse pleasure in not knowing where she was. If she didn’t know where she was, didn’t it follow that nobody else would know?

The room, for all its shortcomings, was warm and dry, and for that she was thankful. After she smoked a cigarette, she took off her clothes and got into the too-soft bed underneath the pile of peculiar-smelling covers and switched off the light. She could still hear the voices coming from down the hallway but underneath the soothing sound of the rain they seemed detached and far away.

She lay on her back in the dark for perhaps half an hour, smoking one cigarette after the other. As tired as her body was and as much as she needed to sleep, she knew she wasn’t going to go to sleep without a struggle. She had the sensation of still being in motion; her head reeled and she had a knot in her stomach. She got out of the bed and switched on the light and opened her suitcase and took out some pills, one to calm her down and another to make her sleep. She washed both pills down with a swallow from a bottle of Kentucky bourbon that she had bundled among her clothes to protect it from breakage.

While she had the suitcase opened, she took the diary out of a zippered compartment and opened it and sat down on the bed and held it open on her lap. The diary was for her more than just a book; it represented the end of her old life and the beginning of a new life, the kind of life she had always wanted.

In the diary, in Byron’s own handwriting, was his own confession. She didn’t know why he would confess in writing to having two business associates killed in five years, but that was just his way. He was thumbing his nose at the world. He believed he could get away with anything and outsmart anybody; he believed he was infallible. He kept the diary locked in a safe to which only he had access and he believed nobody would ever even know of its existence.

He slipped up, though, and she found the diary and read it, as wives sometimes will. She recognized it at once as a gold mine. Byron would pay a lot to get it back. She had wanted to get out of the marriage for years and now here was her chance, as if dropped into her lap from heaven.

When she got a safe distance away—and she didn’t know yet exactly where she was going—she would contact Byron and make him an offer. She would start at five-hundred thousand; she didn’t want to be overly greedy. That amount would be enough to keep her comfortably well-off for the rest of her life. She could travel and keep a nice apartment and have friends and give parties and never have to worry about anything; live the kind of independent life she had always wanted.

Byron would kill her too, though, of that she was certain. He would use any means at his disposal to get the diary back. She wasn’t certain that he hadn’t been following her or having someone else follow her—a hired killer, perhaps. For that reason she had taken a meandering course across four states, had changed buses five times, and had stopped at a dreary old hotel on the edge of nowhere—a place that wasn’t even on the map. She didn’t think she was being followed, but still one could never be certain of anything, especially when dealing with a man like Byron Eldritch.

Almost immediately the pills began to take effect and her eyelids began to feel heavy. She put the diary away carefully for safekeeping and got back into bed again. Soon she was asleep.

She dreamed she was walking along a flat country road. She didn’t know where the road was but it seemed somehow familiar, as if she remembered it from her far distant past. Looking down at her legs and feet, she saw they were covered with the dirt of the road.

As she walked along this road to an unknown or uncertain destination, she heard a car coming up behind her. She stopped walking and turned around and faced the car. She was interested in knowing who was driving, but apparently no one was, or, if there was a driver, he was invisible. An invisible driver didn’t make any sense, so it was easier to believe the car was moving on its own.

The car was bearing down on her and she had the sudden sickening realization that it meant to run her down in the road and kill her. When it was no more than thirty or forty feet away, coming toward her very fast, she jumped out of the way just in time and it went on past her in a cloud of dust.

She was awakened from the dream at that moment by a crash down the hallway, as of something being thrown against the wall, and then a scream. After that she could hear the voices, louder than before, as though the argument was still going on and had intensified. She tried covering up her head with a pillow but it was no use; she could still hear it. She got out of bed and turned on the light and picked up the receiver.

“Night clerk,” the voice said.

“There’s an argument going on down the hall from my room, loud voices and shouting, and it’s keeping me awake.”

“What room are you in?”

“846.”

“Oh, yes. The eighth floor. I believe they’ve been celebrating. I’ll call them and tell them to keep it quiet.”

She heard the phone ringing faintly down the hall and the murmur of voices, followed by laughter and the slamming of a door, and then stillness. Whoever they were, they seemed to have finally stopped the arguing and settled down for the night. She switched off the light and covered up her head and went to sleep again.

It might have been ten minutes or an hour or two hours before a knocking on the door jerked her violently awake. She sat up in the bed, her heart pounding, uncertain for the moment where she was. When the knocking came again, she got out of bed and went to the door.

“Who is it?” she asked.

“Mr. Mendel calling for Mr. Sloan,” a raspy voice said.

“What?”

“I said, ‘Mr. Mendel calling for Mr. Sloan’.”

“I don’t know who you are,” she said. “You’ve got the wrong room.”

“I need to see Mr. Sloan right away.”

“There’s nobody here by that name.”

“He said room 846.”

“You’ve got the wrong room.”

“There came one day a lovely box of flowers.”

“What?”

“Will you let me in?”

“You’ve got the wrong room.”

“So you say, but can you give me a good reason why I ought to believe you?”

She heard a huff of breath and faint footsteps as the man turned from the door and walked away. A few seconds later she heard the elevator door open and close and then the faraway creaking as the elevator descended.

The next time she awoke she could still hear the rain, but underneath that was some other sound. She pushed back the covers and sat on the edge of the bed and stared into the darkness. It took a few seconds before she was awake enough to know that she had been hearing someone calling her name outside the door to her room, softly yet insistently. She went to the door and put her ear against it.

“Who’s there?” she asked softly. “Is anyone there?”

There was no reply but the unmistakable sound of someone breathing in air and letting it out again.

“Who is it?” she asked, louder this time. “What do you want?”

There was a long pause, after which a man’s voice said, “Aren’t you going to tell me I’ve got the wrong room?”

“Who is it?” she asked.

“What’s the point of asking such obvious questions?”

“I’ve got a gun and I know how to use it.”

The man laughed. “All right, all right,” he said. “No reason to get excited. So I’ve got the wrong room. No need to shoot me!”

She heard him walking away, followed by silence. She longed to open the door and look down the hall toward the elevator, but she was afraid he was playing a trick on her and when she opened the door he would force his way in.

She went to her suitcase and took from underneath the jumbled clothing the little .22 caliber handgun that Byron had given her in happier days when he traveled a lot and she was left at home to fend for herself. Having a gun nearby had always made her feel safer, even though she had never had any reason to fire it.

Clutching the gun to her breast, she got back into bed and sat against the headboard and pulled the covers up and stared into the darkness. The rain blew in gusts against the window. She went to sleep again.

She awoke to the phone ringing. She dropped the gun to the floor, forgetting she was holding it, and grabbed the receiver to silence the ringing.

“Yes?” she said, her voice breathless.

“This is the night desk clerk.”

“Yes?”

“I wanted to ask you if you’ve been bothered any more by the guests on your floor. We always follow up on these things.”

“What time is it?”

“It’s exactly one-forty-seven, Central Standard Time.”

“There was a man knocking on the door a while ago. He was looking for somebody he thought was in this room.”

“Did you open the door?”

“No.”

“If he comes back, don’t open the door. You never know who might be lurking about. We try to keep people out late at night who aren’t actually paying guests of the hotel, but sometimes they come in unnoticed for one reason or another.”

“Do you have the number of the local police force?” she asked.

“The police? What do you need to call the police for?”

“Well, I can’t say for sure. I have an uneasy feeling.”

“You don’t need to be calling the police, ma’am. I’ll be here all night, until seven or so, and if you’re bothered again pick up the phone and call me. Just don’t call the police.”

“I’m going to leave this place. I don’t feel safe here.”

“Where would you go in the middle of the night in the pouring rain? The dam might be breached and if it is this whole area could be under water. You wouldn’t even get a cab.”

“I’ll sit in the lobby or I’ll go to the all-night drugstore down the street and wait there until morning.”

“No need to do that, ma’am. Just go back to sleep. Everything will be all right.”

When she hung up the phone, her hands were shaking and she felt dizzy and short of breath. She took two more pills and drank the rest of the bourbon in the bottle.

Suddenly a pounding at the door brought her to her feet. She stared at the door in the darkness, as if expecting to see through it to the other side.

“Who’s there?” she asked.

This time a different male voice (with a hint of a foreign accent) said, “Open the door and stop fooling around!”

“I said ‘who’s there’?”

“If you don’t open this door, you’ll have to answer for it later.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s the middle of the night. I’m trying to sleep!”

“Do you know how silly that sounds?”

“You’ve got the wrong room.”

“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll open the door.”

“Go away!”

For good measure, he pounded on the door again and kicked it with both feet.

She returned to the bed and pulled the covers up over her head, hoping to shut out any further disturbances. She longed to be at home where everything was certain and where nobody would dare bother her in the middle of the night. She was thinking about getting out of bed again and checking to make sure the door was double-locked, when the phone rang again. Unlike before, she let it ring ten or twelve rings before she picked it up.

“Yes,” she said groggily into the receiver, holding it several inches from her ear.

“You’re not fooling anybody,” a voice said quietly, followed by a click and the dial tone.

“Who is this?” she said, even though she knew no one was there. “Why are you doing this to me? What is it you want?”

When she hung up the phone, she felt ill and took two more pills to calm herself down. Unable to remember how many pills she had taken, she took two more. She then pulled all the covers off the bed and piled them on the floor and lay down on them and tried to cover herself up. She would make herself small on the floor underneath the bedclothes and no one would even know she was there. She would roll herself up in the corner and make herself invisible if that’s what she needed to do. She was more resourceful than people were willing to give her credit for.

There came then a rhythmic pounding on the ceiling and then on the wall behind the bed and then on the opposite wall. It was coming from every place at once and no place at all. She let out a scream and wrapped herself in the blankets on the floor like in a cocoon and covered her ears with her hands but she could still hear the pounding, loud and then soft like tapping and then stopping altogether and starting up again in a different place. When she could stand the pounding no longer, she stood up and made her way to the phone and picked up the receiver.

“Night clerk,” the voice said.

“What is that terrible noise?” she asked.

“This is the lady on the eighth floor, isn’t it?”

“Someone is bothering me, harassing me!”

“How so, ma’am?”

“It sounds as if someone is hitting on the walls and the ceiling with a lead pipe.”

“That’s just the plumbing, ma’am. Air gets trapped in the pipes. This is an old building. You hear all kinds of strange noises.

“It has to be something more than that.”

“Just try to ignore the sound and get some sleep, ma’am. Nobody is deliberately trying to bother you.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Good night, ma’am.”

The pounding continued for some time, growing louder and fainter and then stopping altogether. When all was quiet again, she went to the door and put her ear against it. She imagined she could hear blood coursing through the veins of whoever was standing there, just on the other side of the door. She wanted to call out to the person and ask who they were and what they wanted with her, but her own heart was pounding in her chest as if to strangle her and she seemed to lack the breath to get the words out. She backed slowly away from the door and, as she did so, the doorknob turned quietly one way and then the other. Someone was trying to come into the room.

She picked up her gun and, holding it in both hands, lay down again on the blankets on the floor and covered up, leaving only her eyes exposed.

From her vantage point on the floor she could see the crack underneath the door that admitted a sliver of light from the hallway; in that sliver she could see shadows as people moved silently back and forth, in and out. She had stopped trying to figure out who they were and what they were doing. She trained her gun on the door, holding it in both hands, ready to fire when needed.

She focused all her attention on the door for the remainder of the night, determined to stay awake to protect herself. She lay on the floor in the dark, listening to the rain, waiting for the next thing that was going to happen.

The pounding on the wall had stopped. People were no longer moving about in front of the door. There were no more phone calls, no more voices. She began to feel toward morning that everything was going to be all right. The awful night was almost over. She could get up in a while and get dressed and order some breakfast and catch the next bus out of town. With these thoughts in her head—and in this more relaxed state of mind—she fell into an exhausted sleep.

She had been asleep for only a few minutes when the door to the room opened slowly, without making a sound. A small sound—a footstep or a sigh or the clearing of a throat—woke her up. When she opened her eyes, she wasn’t terribly surprised to see two men in the room with her. They were wearing dark clothes and had no faces; they were only outlines in the dark. She reached for the gun but was unable to find it. She stood up and made her way around the bed to the far side of the room.

Standing in front of the door to the fire escape, she turned and looked at the men. They seemed for the moment to not know she was there. They weren’t looking at her but were instead intent on rifling through the clothes in her suitcase. She believed that when they turned their attention on her they would kill her, so she must somehow get out of the room. Since they were blocking the way between her and door, there was only one way out.

She opened the door and stepped out onto the tiny rain-slicked fire escape landing. She felt the cold sting of the rain on her face as she gripped the railing and looked down into the darkness for the steps that would lead her down to the ground and to safety. Hanging onto the railing with both hands she eased one foot down on the top step and then the other foot. When she stepped down to the next step, she misjudged the distance and her feet slipped out from under her. Try as she might, she wasn’t able to regain her footing. She held on for as long as she could but it was no use. The railing slipped from her hands and she was gone.

The awning over to the entrance to the hotel broke her fall. She was only knocked unconscious and would have survived if she had not fallen face-down into the water that had accumulated in the awning and drowned. Her body was discovered in the daylight and retrieved by firemen with hooks.

When interviewed by the police, the night desk clerk was voluble. Enjoying the unaccustomed attention, he disclosed everything he noticed about the woman. Something about her seemed terribly amiss. She seemed unusually nervous and appeared to have been drinking. He spoke to her several times in the night and she seemed distraught; believed somebody was bothering her for no reason. She complained about noise that only she seemed to hear.

After completing their investigation and establishing the identity of the woman, the police ruled her death a suicide with no indication of foul play. Since she had left no suicide note, maybe she hadn’t intended to commit suicide, but if that was the case what was she doing out on the fire escape before dawn in the rain? It was just one of those silly things that people do for which there is no logical explanation.

            Oliver Bowman was a solicitor. He had never particularly wanted to be one. But never the less thats what he was. He had a wife who was pretty despite giving him a child and a dog. They lived near to place of work in Ironbridge. Their life was good.
            Even now in times of credit crunches and low house prices they lived in reasonable comfort. They had a charming house in the semi-countryside, good friends and best of all they still felt a lot for each other. Ok so the honeymoon period was over but none of them had ever strayed and they still had a good sex life.  Their son James was doing well at school and his wife Tabitha was working part time for a school as well. Everything was well good.

            Their house was a truly lovely quaint place where no one else seemed to go. There never seemed to ever be any gangs, chavs, grebs or any other social misfits. It might possibly be the best place on the Earth. Everyone was reasonably well off and most neighbours were post retirement. There was never any crime either. Or at least that was until.... well you see nothing good ever lasts. And a charming perfect idyllic piece of happiness was doomed to come crashing down in flames. And it did...I know you're confused you want to know how and why? Why Mr Author do you have to ruin these peoples life’s? You bastard Mr Author who the fuck do you think you are God?
            Ok OTT yeah? But it did go wrong. Horribly. The most grotesque horrors took place as one man was pushed over the edge by...a violin.
            Yeah now your confused right. Anti-climax you be thinking. Well I assure you the Bowman family didn't think so when their lives were destroyed in the most...gory of fashions. Now you're thinking "Ok Mr Author point made. You've sold us the story we're reading but our patience is wearing thin so get on with it".

            Well fair point Mr/Mrs reader. So please do read on. But I feel I must warn you that this story is not for the weak of heart. I have written many a horror tale but none as...just read and see then.

Mr Author

            Oliver Bowman sat behind his desk. He looked over at his shiney new silver clock which read the time as 16:37. Eve his receptionist come assistant was sorting out the DX post to go the next day. Today Oliver was pleased by the work he had got done. He had finally made progress on the Evans case which had been a thorn in his side for many months now.
            Oliver watched as Eve ferried around the office getting all the post done on time. She was fit twenty something dirty blonde who generally used too much make up and ended up looking like a Barbie doll. Oliver had been carrying a torch for her ever since he first emplyed her. Of course Oliver would never do anything about it. No he was in love with Tabitha far too much. Their live was too good to indanger over a fling. Besides Oliver had often masturbated and thought of Eve in reality she could never ever be as good or as dirty as she was in his imagination.

            Come the end of the day Oliver locked up and waved goodbye to Eve as she walked off down the road. He stopped to admire her behind. Then he walked to his car and climbed inside. He started the car up and made sure that he drove past her.

            It was the next day that...that it begun. It was a Saturday and the Bowmans had decided to visit an auction being held in the country at a recently converted Farmhouse. As Oliver drove through the country roads with his young son in the back of  the car and his wife smiling he felt...peaceful. Not especially happy, no rush of seretonin but..peaceful.

            As Oliver parked the car up he felt a sensation which he had not felt for such a long time. A shiver ran down his spine. It was so strange it was a hot day and he felt restful. Yet never the less. He decided to push it from his mind and carry on.
            Inside the auction it was a fairly mediocre day but the sunshine and the smile on the face of his wife and child raised the day for Oliver. Then, then there was that strange sensation and for no logical reason Oliver found himself being drawn to an item. It was old but not in particularly great condition. It was a violin. Oliver saw the item and for unknown reason he had to have it. It...it called to him. It whispered its seductive voice of a thousand sirens. Oliver heard the call and obeyed without question. He won the bid and paid a mere £15 for the item in question. His wife thought the bid was out of character commenting-
            "But you can't play can you darling?"
            "No dear. No I can't". Came the honest answer from Oliver.

            The rest of the day passed reasonably calmly and peacefully. Although that night Oliver had the worst nightmare he ever had. The dream had begun with a young Oliver playing with a butterfly knife. Then...then he was older something else happened something...then, then he was older as he is now staring down at his dead wife. The knife sticking out of his wifes eyeball. The blade buried deep into her brain.

            The image made Oliver wake up in a cold sweat. To forget this nightmare he went down stairs and grabbed the whisky bottle. He needed to drink. He needed to forget the image.

            That next day was a quite family day. Deep down Oliver loved these days. He was a privilaged child but never felt 100% comfortable under his parents rule. Here he was happy. His child loved the same sci-fi fodder he so loved. Today was quite. He decided as the sun ws bright to do some gardening.

            As Oliver went into the garden to begin his work he decided to light up a cigarette. Ever since uni he had always smoked the same Marlboro lights. He looked around the garden and he began to realise just how lucky he really was. He had it all really. A nice house, well paid job and a loving wife. He felt...at one with the world.
            Then as Oliver began to sweep up under the heavy sun he thought that what he really wanted to do that day was to play his violin. He couldn't play, never had a lesson but, but he felt that was what he really wanted to do.

            Oliver woke up on the Monday with a dry sore throat. His head was throbbing. Am I ill? Oliver wondered as he plodded into the bathroom. All around him were images of his family. His wife's elaborate cleaning products. His son's elaborate toothbrushes. Oliver realised it as bizarre as it was it was his families presence that were making him feel this way. He had work to go to. It was alright for some. Oliver's mind grumbled.
            Instead of climbing back into his lavish bed he decided to go downstairs and stand in front of his giant bookcase where his impressive DVD collection was housed.
            Oliver stood there half naked just staring at them in the blackness of the morning. All those stories were calling out to him. Screaming their tales at him. And yet his mind was not acting as a receiver. Instead he was shouting. But not out loud. He was shouting in his mind. He was warring with himself.
                                    "You fucking bitch! Why does my dog shake when I enter the room! If I find out you've been hitting him then I'll takew a fucking knife to you!"

            So the argument went on. But as for Oliver's physical body it just stood there. Silent motionless switched off. He was being de-tuned. From the "normal" human wavelength to...to something else. And then again he thought of his violin.

            Hours later it was 07:00am. The clocks had only recently gone forward an hour. In the kitchen the radio was playing some irritating local station. Tabitha was in her dressing gown buttering some toast as James was playing with the dog. It was then that Oliver entered the kitchen yawning and smoking.
                                    "Oliver I thought we weren't going to smoke downstairs you know James doesn't like it". Tabitha cried.
            Oliver stared at her and for a second his eyes were dead. Then he shrugged and put the cigarette out. Oliver for some reason felt compelled to apologise. He hated it when he did that.
                                    "Sorry James". Oliver said as he stared at the toast. James didn't answer just shrugged in someway which indicated something else.
            The dog was jumping up and down James. Oliver felt compelled to speak.
                                    "Is that a clean uniform? In fact is that even hygenic?" Oliver asked as he pointed to the dog. Unknown to him his words were slurred.
                                    "Are you ok dear?" Tabitha asked. Oliver didn't reply instead he left the room and slowly climbed back upstairs. When he had left the room James turned to his mummy.
                                    "What's up with dad?" James asked.
                                    "Nothing. Nothing at all" came the reply. But somewhere within Tabitha she felt it. Just for a second. Some kind of atmosphere it was...wrong and inhuman.

Oliver stripped naked and stood in front of the mirror. He began to twitch again the violent arguments begun in his head.
                                    "What the fuck! No one thinks about me! No one! Every girl I've been with has turned into a slag! No one No one thinks!"

            Tabitha entered the room. Oliver didn't notice her for a second and then he shook his head as though he was coming out of some sort of trance.
                                    "Oliver are you ok?"
            Oliver just stared at her with the dead eyes.
                                    "Yes. Yes what is it!" Oliver dropped onto the bed. Tabitha stood there for a moment shocked. This behaviour isn't like Oliver she noted. He hardly ever got agitated and when he did he would try not to show it. Even dropping onto the bed was out of character.
                                    "I'm going to take James to school".
                                    "Yeah fine". Came Oliver's quick reply even without thinking.
            Tabitha stood there trying to just think. What was up with Oliver? Immediately she felt guilty. He had been so perfect and understanding during her post natal depression. Whatever was up with him she knew she had to be understanding. She decided that the conversation was going nowhere and so she gently closed the door and collected James and then scooped him out of the door and into the car. Slowly Oliver stood walking with somebody elses body language he watched his wife and child drive away. Then came the pain.

            It was intense, like no other. It was like the worst migraine he ever felt multiplyed. Oliver dropped to the floor screaming. And then...it was gone as quickly as it struck? Was the pain even real? Or a daydream that got out of hand?
            All Oliver wanted was too play the violin. That dusty relic that had for so long had no purpose now had one. Oliver didn't understand why but never the less knew it was vital. Somehow he had to see it, smell it and play it. To say it was calling to him seemed...inaccurate. No and yet he heard it's melody, it's sirens call gently calling to his mind.
            Oliver walked downstairs and stared at the relic in it's dark scratched case. He rubbed his hand along it and then raised them and sniffed. It...it was like no other sense of recollection he had felt before. It was...it was like an old flame someone he had been intimate with and then seeing them again in passing years later his stomach jumped. Jumped with confusion and recollection. Again he reached out and touched the case and again he felt it. Oliver fell back and unable to control himself started to giggle. Then as suddenly as he started he stopped.

            Oliver slowly slid into a memory. A memory that was not his. He was sitting on a train with a pale girl next to him. Slowly he stood and saw the ticket man bearing down on him and without thinking he pulled out a flick knife and buryed into the mans neck. The man a burly man with no hair in his thirties suddenly became a whimpering child. He fell to the floor. The girls eyes snapped open at the sight of the blood. Oliver just smiled then dropped the knife looking again he saw the dead man was in fact his....

            ....son. Oliver sat bolt upright in his bed. Sweat beads desperately trying to flee his body and sought refuge upon the duvet. He looked down at his sleeping wife. Slowly he turned his head and saw the time on the clock. It read 13:37. Slowly Oliver climbed out of his bed. He was wearing a tight red T-shirt and boxers. He then slowly began to strip naked. He had to cool down. Then he was overcome by another sensation. He had to check his son was ok.
            Oliver creeped out of his bedroom and stood on he landing outside Jame's room. Slowly he opened the door and saw his son snorring happily in a world of his own creation. Then Oliver became distracted as he looked down and became aware that he had an erect penis.

            The next few days seemed to come and go with equal ease and quickness. Work was relatively simple. Homelife was as good as ever and Oliver hadn't had anymore strange dreams. That was until he came home on the Thursday with the urge once again. He found the violin and the same pang of excitment ran through his body. It was electric. He smiled.
            Then Oliver opened up the case and held it correctly as he slid the bow up and down. The sound he made was unpleasant, but the feeling he got felt so right. After only playing for a short while Oliver's mind did not hear the horrid untuneful noises. No in his mind he heard a most delightful sound. It was as if the Violin was an extention of his own being.

            The next few days brought to Oliver similar periods of distraction and nightmares. So much so that he decided to take some time off. The usual reaction when a colleague went off on sick leave was instead of choosing a replacement on the partner merit they would opt instead for a bimbo with good tits.
            But Oliver didn't care he had other concerns. At home he would play his violin and nothing else. He would go to where it sat after Tabitha left in the morning and when she returned he would be sitting in the same place. The dead look in his eyes.
            After three days she had enough. She marched to where he stood with his violin and got right in his face.
                        "What the fuck is the matter with you! I'm sorry but we've had enough!"
            Oliver cocked his head as he looked at her.
                        "The kid gets free digs. Who the fuck is he to complain".
                        "You don't even sound like you anymore!"
                        "Careful that's an oxymoron". Replied Oliver mockingly.
It was then that Tabitha's attention turned to his violin.
                        "That! You became this...this thing around the same time as you had that". Tabitha pointed to the instrument as she spoke.
                        "Sounds familier doesn't it?"
           
            That was it. Tabitha had enough. She picked up the violin. Olivers eyes suddenly became fearful.

                        "Put it down...please. Please put it down...".
            Tabitha couldn't believe what was happening to Oliver.
                        "No. No Oliver this thing is not good for you. I'm getting rid of it". With that Tabitha began to walk away. Oliver stood there is silence heartbroken for a moment and then he saw red. He ran after Tabitha and pushed her to the ground. Tbaitha dropped the violin and lay there for a second shocked. Then the fear seeped through her.
            Oliver grabbed her by the throat and threw her against the wall.
                        "I have to put up with you and that little bastard! No! You want me to suffer! Well you wont take my friend away! Never! I'll fucking kill you first!"

Oliver punched Tabitha twich in the head hard. Then as he let go she fell to the ground. Oliver looked down at her body. The woman he loved. And loved him.
            Then he saw something else. He was somebody else looking down at the body of a prostitute in an alleyway. She was pouring with blood from a knife wound to her womb. Oliver smiled.

            When Tabitha came to she looked around and realised she was in the garage. She was tied to one of the roof beans and hanging down. She tried to scream but she was gagged. Then perched on a chair like a macabre observer sat the violin. A shiver ran up her spine as she realised Oliver was standing behind her.
                        "You forced this you bitch. Oh and don't worry about that little bastard. I                 spoke to the Tannir's. I asked of they wouldn't mind picking James up and letting him stay the night. Told them it was an emergency. Still teaching your wife respect. Never thought I'd have to".
            Tabitha's eyes were wide with fear. She saw the look on Oliver's face. It was not a natural glare for him. It was then that she truly realised what a stranger this new Oliver really was.

                        "Now I'm going to show you some fucking respect missy!" Screamed Oliver into Tabitha's ear. She watched in horror as he walked out of view and then returned moments later with a pair of sissors. He then cut her top to pieces and left her hanging there naked. He then bit on her breasts she scremaed and jumped up and down. In discust Oliver slapped her hard in the face.
                        "I'll fucking kill you and your bastard son if you carry on!" Tabitha immediately stopped.
                        "Now...you need some...mark to remind you not to fuck around anymore.               What mark? Let me see".
            Oliver walked around her and then pulled his belt off.
                        "Oh yeah. One like this!" With that Oliver standing behind her began to whip her violently with the belt she screamed in agony.
                        "Come on bitch you can take this!" The whipping continued as blood poured from the wounds. The pain was so intense. Then after a few minutes Oliver stopped.
                        "I think you have learned don't you.Although I have just one last thing to               teach you".
            As Oliver opened the door three old dirty tramps walked in unsure. Tabitha immediatelt recognised them from the town.
                        "She's all your boys". Announced Oliver as he stood back and watched. Tabitha starred at him in shock. Slowly they began to pull at her underwear whilst another began to suck on her breasts. Tabitha screamed Oliver just laughed and walked out.
           
            As Oliver left the garage he fell to the ground and began to cry.

            Forty minutes later Oliver returned to the garage. He had drunk three quaters of a bottle of cognac. As he entered he found his wife hanging their her nose bleeding and her clothes ripped. Semen on her legs. The tramps had seemingly used her as a punch bag after fucking her.
                        "You've had your fun now fuck off". Oliver shouted to the tramps. They looked at him and seemingly contimplated attacking him. But instead they sulked out of the garage and back into the night. Oliver walked over to Tabitha and removed the gag. She looked at him. Oliver felt a pang of guilt but it was quickly buried.
                        "This was your fault. Don't lookt at me like that. I blame you. I blame you for                       everything. I blame you for my life. I blame you for that little bastard you                 wanted. I blame you for your parents hatred of me. I blame you". Oliver stopped and waited for her reply. But she was broken.
                        "Why Oliver..why?" she cried. Oliver looked over at the violin perched on the chair. Please. Please listen you know this isn't me. It isn't....I am...we are...the pain...it's watching. It's watching us right now. Please...I'll let you go. Yes. We have to forget this and move on. Please".
Oliver untied Tabitha and she fell to the floor. He helped her up.
                        "I'll go and get you some water. Stay there".

            Oliver ran from the garage into the kitchen. When he returned the first thing he felt was a sharp pain in the head. Then again. Tabitha attacked him with the claw hammer screaming as she did it. Then after the pain came the blackout.

            Slowly Oliver came too. Light and memory flooded into his mind. As he opened his eyes he saw Tabitha standing there. His mouth was taped up and he was naked. Then she smiled as she produced car battery and two cables. She then attached them to his scrotum. Desperately Oliver tried to plead but she just smiled and switched it on. Volts of agaony tore through Oliver's bbody. He screamed in agony as Tabitha laughed and looked over at the violin siting there.
                        "It doesn't want you anymore. It wants me. Me!"

            After the initial torture Tabitha dragged Oliver over to the workbench and laid him on there.

                        "It's time baby".

With that she took the clawhammer and began to bury it into his stomach. Again and again until his entrails began to slide out.
            Tabitha laughed out loud and looked back at the violin.

            When Tabitha awoke she heard a sound. It was terrifying and totally inhuman. It felt like a vicious roar of some demonic creature. A wail so furious in sound and scale that it appeared to transcend all time and space. Her eyes opened immediately.

            She rolled over and saw Oliver fast asleep. She had the nightmare again. What the hell was going on? Tabitha had no idea. No logical idea anyway. All she knew, she felt was that that damn violin was somehow responsible. It had been effecting Oliver and now it was trying to drive her insane. She knew she had to destroy it. She could not allow it to fall into anyone else's hands. It was far too dangerous.

            Oliver was changing. As much as he wanted to deny his psychological map he could not help but see his priorities had changed. For now he knew. He had received a message from God. He knew his family were evil. And he knew they had to suffer. His wife was a witch. Cold hearted and unholy. She was draining his lifeforce. She was just the same as all those other vile hoars he has had to represent over the years. Useless vermin who thought just because they were human that gives them the right to reproduce. Well no it doesn't! Why the fuck should proper people have to pay for them. Women have always fucked things up! Look at Adam and Eve, The Beatles and Red Dwarf. No if he was ever to break free and find real happiness then the slut must die!

            Tabitha stood down stairs staring at the violin sitting in shadows like some monolith. Tabitha wanted to smash it she had felt herself filling up with rage. But now. Now she could not. Instead she stared intently at the instrument. She found herself unable and unwilling to damage it. It was alive. She could feel it's presence like any other human being. It even talked on some other level. She could feel it's beautiful persuasive thoughts gently filter and swim through her mind. Now she understood the attraction that Oliver had made to such, such a delicious thing as this. Tabitha took a step forward. She could hear the beautiful noise of the violin playing through her mind. How could Oliver appreciate your true beauty? Tabitha wondered.
            Then she realised with much chagrin just what a threat Oliver posed. he was not just acting strange he was...cheating. he was seeing another. Another so beautiful that Tabitha could no longer keep him. The violin had warned her and she would save herself and her child whatever the cost even if it meant Oliver must die.

            That night they all sat around the dinner table. Oliver and Tabitha sat opposite. Slowly they munched on their TV dinners. Occasionaly casting a suspicious eye on one another. Then James slowly stood and headed to the bathroom.

This is your chance! Whilst the little bastard is out of the way! KILL THEM KILL THEM!

The thoughts echoed painfully over and over inside Oliver's mind and as if she knew Tabitha tightened her grip on her table knife. Then James slowly crept back into the room behind his father and gripping a large heavy metal rod brought it down upon his father's head. Oliver fell to the floor. Suddenly Tabitha jumped up and grabbed a large kitchen knife and began to stab her husband hard in the neck and face. He shook violently under the shock but it didn't take long for his life to be over. Then Tabitha sat back. A huge smile across her face. She held out her arms for her son James. They embraced and then began to kiss passionately. Slowly James lived his mother's top up and began to suck on her breasts. Tabitha moaned in delight as she began to stroke his penis and then began to suck hard on it.

            They made love over and over in tune to the beautiful erotic caressing of the violin.

-1-

The Jesuits place a high value on the written word, so much so that they hire an outsider to run the literary magazine.  Under the direction of Batya Pinter, The Millstone garners recognition as one of the finest publications produced by any high school, private or public, in the United States, its stories and poems one step removed from the divine Logos, its contributors destined to achieve great things, heirs to the throne of Carver and Cheever, tutelary gods that guide the pens of these fledgling scribes and lead them toward the sweet promises of alcoholism and self-destruction. 

With the release of each issue, agents and publishers scour the journal, hoping to discover and capitalize on the most original voice of a new generation, some enfant terrible who will gleefully stir up trouble on the literary scene, but The Millstone has, at least so far, produced only well-mannered boys who dwell on mainstream subjects that are almost hagiographic in their depictions of common people.  According to these young writers, the world is populated not with millions of cynics and miscreants but with unrecognized saints who feed the poor, provide shelter for the homeless, and give hope to the hopeless.  They do, however, recognize the sad fact that life is not without its tragedies and injustices, and occasionally they write about the unexpected loss of a loved one--an ailing grandmother, parish priest, family dog--as well as the conventional love story chronicling a forbidden liaison that, depending upon the temperament of its author, ends in either catastrophe or farce. 

Despite the journal’s repetitive themes, Eddie Campbell invariably picks up the latest edition.  Copies are scattered around campus like stale breadcrumbs left for the screeching grackles that swoop from their roosts high on the bell tower.  With the magazine tucked under his arm he hurries to the library, glancing left and right to make sure no one sees him.  Alone in a corner, sheltered from the ridicule of his friends by an endless maze of forgotten books, he strokes the glossy cover page and holds the magazine to his nose, takes in the heady perfume of glue and ink.  For several hours he immerses himself in the stories, his eyes growing misty at the splendor of the imagery and the slightly discombobulating effect of the terse, parataxis style of the prose, the journal’s trademark. 

As he finishes the last story he burns with envy, but no matter how much he wants to hate these elegiac tales, he cannot easily dismiss the fact that the budding writers who publish in The Millstone possess an uncommon ability to translate their experiences into words that mystify and evade him.  How do they intimate suffering without sounding puerile and self-serving?  How do they describe the mystical without sounding like lunatics and zealots? 

Eddie, who is the sports photojournalist for the school newspaper, assures himself that he can rise above the mediocrity of journalism and write something subtle and profound, but whenever he stares into the formless void of a blank piece of paper he finds himself recoiling in dread, reeling from a lack of inspiration.  He hopes the condition is temporary.  The Millstone is holding its annual fiction contest, and the great Batya Pinter will personally judge the finalists and decide on a winner.  Eddie decides that if he ever wants to make a name for himself he must learn the secrets of narrative, the techniques of plot and pacing, and somehow, someway he must get an acceptance letter from Batya Pinter before he graduates.

Normally competition is something Eddie abhors, but at this stage in the game he has few options.  He’s a senior now, time is running out.  Action must be taken.  No sense dreaming about things.  Sooner or later he must find out if he is to be one of the chosen, the anointed, or if he is to be dismissed, forgotten, tossed aside.  Because the simple fact of the matter is that the school newspaper is a publication that appeals to the less promising students, the ones of middling intellect who have yet to prove themselves worthy of ascending the treacherous steps of the extracurricular hierarchy.  Serious writers, those whose philosophical meditations and deft, ironic tales of middle class despair are featured in The Millstone, shun the newspaper for its sloppy reporting and the derisive, needling tone of its editorial columns, a critique that is not without justification.

Truly compelling stories are scarce at a boy’s prep school, so Eddie and his friends on the paper resort to writing cruel reviews--of the annual musical, of the band concert, of the garish décor at the homecoming dance, and especially of the foppish and effete authors who contribute to the literary magazine.  Eddie frequently succumbs to the old temptation of sarcasm.  Sarcasm is cheap and easy, an indispensable tool for a newspaperman with a limited palette of ideas and a deadline to meet, and as he walks into the newspaper office on Friday afternoon he recognizes this sneering tone in the voices of his fellow reporters.  It’s shameful reminder of his own failures, his lack of creativity.

“Where have you been?” they ask.  “Busy writing your masterpiece? Your great American novel? Your magnum opus?” 

Once again Eddie has forgotten the time and arrives late to the editorial meeting held in a small windowless room located in the subbasement of the main building, a gloomy little space called the Bunker.  Its dozen or so inhabitants sit at a rectangular table under a glaring white bulb as if awaiting the Final Judgment.  On the portable stereo they blast Die Walkure, Siegfried, Gotterdammerung, death metal operas that thunder like a firestorm.  The music drowns out the constant whistle of the radiator and loosens the cracked paint from the walls and ceiling.  Stacked neatly on the wooden shelves are provisions to last them a year--pretzels and potato chips and packs of cigarettes that the boys distribute after the Jesuits leave the building for the day.  On the table they set up dozens of small green soldiers, plastic figurines with bazookas on their shoulders and grenades in their hands.  Mayhem lurks at the fringes of this reinforced concrete vault.  There is much suspicion here, duplicity, paranoia.

“The deadline is tomorrow. Did you forget?”

As writers for the school newspaper, his friends are inquisitive by nature, Eddie must always keep this in mind, and no question they ask is ever an innocent one. 

“No, I didn’t forget. I was busy.”

“Sure you were. Pulling your pud.”

“I was writing a term paper for you know who.”

Yes, they know who, but he hopes they don’t notice the way he shifts uneasily in his seat.  They’re experts at detecting a lie and are always ready to exploit it to their advantage.  If they ever uncover his secret desire to write for The Millstone they will torment him without mercy.  Worse still, they’ll call him a traitor and ostracize him.  Never again will he be allowed to step foot in the Bunker.  He must watch his step.  Without the newspaper he would have no social life at all.

-2-

Though they never tire of saying that everyone is equal in the eyes of God, the Jesuits clearly favor some boys over others and lavish undo praise on a dolt like the Minotaur, the starting quarterback and swaggering captain of the football team.  Meanwhile they castigate their star reporter.  Is it because that of the two boys the Minotaur has the more compelling personal narrative--an underprivileged kid from a rough and tumble neighborhood who has been given a rare opportunity to achieve fame and fortune?  Eddie can’t compete with such a story.  He’s a born subordinate destined to live out his best years in an office cubicle, editing copy for a community newspaper.  

At the start of the season the priests insist that Eddie run a full-page feature on the Minotaur.  He grudgingly accepts the assignment--what choice does he have?--and before the team begins a scrimmage on Friday afternoon he snaps several photos of a bare-chested Minotaur running laps and doing calisthenics.  In the golden sunshine his pecs and abs glisten with sweat, the fibrous muscle tissue rippling like chain mail under his taught skin, the great dome of his shaved head shining like a gazing ball.  The pictures seem pornographic in nature, homoerotic even, and Eddie, who is both clever and devious, makes sure the Minotaur poses in such a way that his fingers appear to be grasping the mighty shaft of the brick bell tower in the background. 

During the interview, the Minotaur tries to dampen expectations and hints that he may not live up to all the hype.  “If things don’t work out with football, if the agents don’t come pounding on my door with endorsement deals, I’ll just become an English teacher. That way I can coach high school football, see. Big money these days in high school football.  Look at Coach Kaliher. Guy’s gotta have, like, a hundred grand in the bank by now. Or I might study journalism, become a sports columnist. Like you, right. But I can give readers an athlete’s perspective of the game. There’s money in that.” 

Eddie smiles but doesn’t bother to explain that in the writing profession, if it can be called a profession at all, money is hard to come by.  Why should he explain any of this?  What does the Minotaur know about the subtle nuances of human language?  Has he ever read the great books?  Probably not.  And while it’s true that Eddie has never read them either, not from start to finish, he has made a concerted effort to try to read them. Moby-Dick, Ulysses, Gravity’s Rainbow, grandiose works of fiction that demand a mediator stand between them and the common reader, a new priesthood of self-appointed critics and college professors charged with interpreting the avalanche of words that make as much sense as certain passages from the gospels, Gnostic or canonical.  Eddie is not troubled by his inability to comprehend the esotericism and obscurity of these books.  One day he will conquer them.  All it takes is a little perseverance.  That and brains, something the Minotaur clearly lacks.

As the season gets underway Minotaur Mania infects the entire city.  Hundreds of avid fans line up outside the doors of the school to buy season tickets.  The cafeteria staff names a series of gruesome dishes after the beloved quarterback--Minotaur Meatball Subs and Minotaur Meat Pies.  Eddie, obligated to photograph these steaming piles of inedible mush, holds the plates aloft to better attract the flies that dive like fighter pilots and bounce off the grease-speckled, glass partitions of the buffet.  The principal even asks the students to get down on their knees and pray on the Minotaur’s behalf.  Can the man be serious?  Does he actually believe the creator of the universe will answer such prayers?  The Jesuits would never dream of disrupting class to ask the entire student body to pray for an aspiring writer, to hold an all night vigil in the hopes that someone like Eddie Campbell will write a timeless work of fiction.  What the priests don’t understand is that prayer, like writing, is a completely solitary pursuit.  There is something secretive about it. 

In his weekly column Eddie includes a passage from scripture: “But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”  His pen drips with special contempt for the Minotaur who, as the Jesuits like to say, “is blessed with talent and natural ability.”  But herein lies the conundrum that Eddie is quick to expose. 

“Is talent really a blessing,” he asks his readers, “a supernatural phenomenon bestowed by God upon the pious, the humble, the meek? Or is it a purely natural phenomenon inherited from selfish, battle-hardened genes and exploited, often by the least worthy among us, to attain goals that are less than admirable? The Church seems to hold contradictory views on the subject.”

The Jesuits express their consternation with this pabulum, particularly the principal, who suggests that maybe with a little more humility Eddie will one day be blessed with a special gift.  “From piety comes wisdom and from wisdom comes greatness.”  Eddie bows his head and patiently endures this minor tongue-lashing, but he can detect the insincerity in the principal’s voice and plans to one day write about it. 

-3-

Eddie may not be a great prose stylist, but he does excel at writing papers for English class, what he thinks of as miniature masterpieces on Lord of the Flies and The Catcher in the Rye.  The Minotaur, on the other hand, can write simple declarative sentences but only under great duress.  Revision is a waste of time.  Rather than correct the errors in his term papers he often inserts more of them.  Eddie knows this because he has personally edited many of these papers (for a reasonable fee of course), a morally dubious enterprise but one he is able to justify since he uses the money to buy paperback editions of the classics he claims to admire, Joyce, Beckett, Borges, names he drops in class in a desperate attempt to impress his teacher.  Unfortunately for Eddie, trivial knowledge of this sort bores her utterly.  She doesn’t even try to disguise her yawn, doesn’t lift a hand to cover her mouth or apologize for her bad manners.  Like the other instructors at the school, Batya Pinter has mastered the indispensable arts of insouciance and Schadenfreude and can wield them about with great cunning.  Although he knows he is making a fool of himself, Eddie rambles on and on.  He can’t help himself.  He has a little crush on her.     

The Minotaur laughs at him.  “You actually get a hard-on for that crusty, old cougar?”

“Old?” 

Eddie seems genuinely puzzled.  It’s difficult to ascertain her age--forty? forty-five?  Though she is rumored to both smoke and drink, she looks much younger and obviously spends as much time working on her appearance as she does on editing the award-winning journal.  Her dark hair and eyes have a supernatural power that trumps that of the conjuring priests with their tiresome trick of transubstantiation.  Seated behind a massive oak desk cluttered with dog-eared manuscripts, drinking one cup of coffee after another, shaking her head, snickering, scowling, murmuring strange and unholy things under her breath, Batya Pinter has, despite her small stature and her status as a lay person, an aura of inquisitorial wrath about her.  In her hand she holds a red pen the way a butcher holds a serrated knife before a steaming carcass on a slaughterhouse floor, and she uses it with skill and precision to slash sentences and to scribble hostile comments in the margins.  She tears out entire pages and feeds them to the shredder conveniently located next to her chair.  It’s no secret that she finds most of the work she publishes contemptible. 

“Insular melodramas,” she grumbles, “written by molly-coddled schoolboys incapable of examining the wider world around them.”        

Her demeanor is more than merely serious, it’s severe, and when she begins her daily lecture, she paces up and down the rows and makes her students sit up straight and scribble in their notebooks as though taking dictation.  Eddie finds it all very arousing and has to cross his legs to hide his erection.  Only the Minotaur ignores her.  Most days he falls asleep in the back of the classroom, his textbook propped open by one shaggy elbow, drool trickling from the corner of his mouth and forming deep pools around his chiseled jaw.  He farts and belches and picks his nose.  Sometimes Eddie feels like a primatologist studying the behavior of a snorting baboon in the wild, observing it scratch in the dirt with a pointed stick to capture termites.  To his amazement Batya Pinter rarely reprimands the Minotaur for his crude behavior.  In fact, she treats him like an adorable circus bear, gently taps his head, yearns to smooch his enormous muzzle, and invents ridiculous reasons to detain him after class. 

Eddie is convinced that if Batya Pinter is smitten with the Minotaur it isn’t because of his imposing physique or his good looks, no, it’s because Eddie has composed so many insightful papers for him.  It’s the writing that she truly loves about the Minotaur, it’s his mind, his intellect, and Eddie, delirious with desire for his teacher, has to continually resist the temptation to confess the truth to her.   

-4-

It’s Halloween, a day of mist and clouds, a day of black and gritty winds, a day when the ripe breath of autumn has turned stale and rank, a day for mischievous school boys costumed in motley, in rags, in Venetian masks and flowing red robes, boys transformed by the distant smell of wood smoke and rotting apples into dumb lumbering beasts that howl and leap in anticipation of the moonrise; it’s also the last day to submit a story to The Millstone’s fiction contest, the final day for fate to intervene and rescue one gifted writer from the slush pile, but Eddie Campbell, sickened by the idea of having his story dissected by a critical reader and too unnerved to present his manuscript in person, signs each draft with a comic non de plume--Pink E. Vintage, Kit Van Peeking, Kate E. Kingpin.  But who is he kidding?   A serious editor like Batya Pinter will see through the ruse and recognize his style.

After the last bell of the day rings Eddie goes straight to the library.  Sequestered in the shadows like a medieval monk hard at work on an illuminated manuscript, he labors over every word of a tale that he thinks might help him penetrate The Millstone’s inner circle.  The plot concerns a seventeen-year old boy who over the course of the semester becomes so infatuated with his teacher that he boldly makes a pass at her.  She resists his advances, but the principal, who happens to be passing through the hall, sees what’s happening, misinterprets the situation, and immediately has the woman sacked. 

Eddie flips through the pages a final time.  The manuscript is neatly typed and properly formatted, its grammar and mechanics flawless, but for all that the story is an absolute piece of garbage, there can be no denying this, and Eddie won’t attempt to do so now.  The prose is mannered, the symbols obvious--white doves, candles, roses.  He has revised the story so many times that it no longer makes any sense to him.  Maybe like his vigorous jackoff sessions it never made sense to begin with, and yet a long time ago someone pondered the sad and ridiculous life of Onan and made even that a sin.  The most pitiful attempts at distraction are said to be evil, and Eddie is surprised that the Jesuits haven’t yet condemned creative writing as the spilling of intellectual seed, the murder of a million sacred ideas.

With each passing hour frustration sets in and deepens, and as the five o‘clock deadline approaches thoughts of failure begin to rattle his nerves.  He tries to rationalize his fear and self-doubt by imagining a luminary like Vladmir Nabokov submitting one of his own stories to a silly contest.  Had he been a young man writing today, Nabokov would probably need to enroll in a creative writing seminar, forced to listen to the inane comments of his fellow students, those sensitive and easily offended poets who complain without end that they don’t feel the story, that it’s well written, yes, but that it’s still missing something, that it’s crude, nasty, hurtful, all under the aegis of an instructor who pinches her chin and silently ponders her own successes and failures.

He begins to wonder why any reasonable human being would want to write for a living, why anyone would do something so egregiously masochistic.  He comes to the conclusion that for the true artist life needs to be unnecessarily difficult and unpleasant, that there must be a part of the psyche that yearns for anguish, and when misery cannot be found, writers simply invent anguish for themselves.  It keeps things interesting.  And that’s the main obligation writers have to their readers, isn’t it?  To keep it interesting?

-5-

Eddie gathers up the pages of his manuscript, but before he climbs the stairs to slip the story under The Millstone’s office door he must first go the Bunker.  Tomorrow night is the Holy War, the biggest game of the season, and Eddie is responsible for capturing the team’s legendary performance.  He descends into the subbasement and is relieved to discover that the other staff members have already cleared out for the weekend.  For close to an hour Eddie sits alone at the table and studies a brigade of plastic infantrymen staged for a horrific siege.  He hums a march by Wagner, moves the soldiers around, and wonders if it’s bravery or insanity that inspires so many young men to go to war.  Maybe it’s xenophobia, maybe immaturity.  Whatever it is and whatever regrets they may have once the fighting begins, some of those boys, the fortunate ones, learn the meaning of self-sacrifice, what the priests call agape, which is the highest form of love, and return home with a compelling story to tell.  Eddie, on the other hand, is a coward, he’s well aware of this, and will never have a story worth telling.  He realizes this now.  Best to stick to practical matters.  After grabbing his camera, lenses and several rolls of film he turns out the lights, leaves the Bunker and plods up the stairs to the sixth floor. 

The offices of The Millstone are a honeycomb of six interconnected rooms, each one guarded by a set of gargoyle bookends squatting on cluttered shelves, their unblinking eyes scanning the stairway for any unworthies who dare enter that sanctum sanctorum.  They are the devourers of uninspired tales, shitting them out in hard little pellets and leaving them on the windowsills to freeze against the frosted panes of glass.  Eddie imagines the gargoyles fluttering down from the shelves late at night, creeping through the crackling maple leaves to whisper their secrets in the ears of those who have the gift to decipher their cryptic tongue and to transcribe it for readers who will then tremble at the superiority of their vision.

Once he reaches the landing, however, he is surprised to see the door wide open and the room suffused with a muted gray light that blurs the edges of things.  The editor sits at her desk, wearing a strange smile.  She looks ghostly, phantom-like, a dark presence extracted from a beautiful body.  Backing slowly away from the office, cringing every time the floorboards creak and echo through the desolate corridors and gothic archways, Eddie decides to leave the building without submitting his story.  It’s the word “plagiarism” that convinces him to stop, to observe things from a distance, to listen closely to the sibilant whispers. 

She is not alone, beautiful women rarely are.  A silhouette looms over her desk.

“There’s no work on your part,” she assures the figure, “none whatsoever. Just relax. Relax and enjoy.”

“What if someone catches us?”

“No one visits this office. Least of all the Jesuits. It’s six flights up.”

 “I don’t know.”

“Trust me. Here, let me help you with that.”

 “I’m not so sure about this.”

“You want to pass my class, don’t you?”

“I guess so.”

“Plagiarism is a serious offense, my boy.”

“Oh, hell.”

“Wait. Let me take it out. There. That’s no petseleh you have there, gunsel.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing, nothing.”

“This won’t take long, will it? There’s a party…”

“That’s all up to you.”

Batya Pinter laughs at her own pun, but she is so mesmerized by the monstrous thing pulsing before her that the laughter dies deep in her throat.  She wheels her chair forward, positions her head, opens her mouth.  Her eyes roll back until they are white.  The Minotaur stamps his feet.  He moans, runs his fingers through her shining hair. 

Shaking with outrage, feeling betrayed in a million different ways, Eddie staggers against the wall.  His fingertips go numb and he almost drops the pages of his manuscript to the floor.  He tries to breathe, forces himself to count backwards from ten.  There is no way he could ever outrun the Minotaur and can easily imagine the awful things he will do to him if he is caught.

“The hell was that?” the Minotaur whispers.

But Batya Pinter can only gurgle and choke and try to reassure him with her bulging eyes.  She never stops bobbing. 

Eddie has a sudden flash of inspiration, an idea so achingly beautiful, so vulgar and salacious and unambiguously American that it cannot fail but change the course of his life. Soon he will be the master, the person in control of the situation, and it is he who will dictate the terms.  The sensation is so alien to him that for one terrible second he feels nauseous and fears he might vomit.  He snaps open the camera case, carefully loads the film, attaches a telephoto lens.  Focusing the camera as best he can, he snaps several pictures in quick succession, one after another.  It’s a lowlight situation, the pictures will be a little grainy, that’s to be expected, but Eddie has faith in his abilities as a photojournalist. 

He may not be a great writer of fiction, but he can take a damn good picture, and he has just stumbled upon the story of the year, or at least the story of the week (stories rarely last much longer than that these days), a scene of complete and utter depravity.  It will lead to an arrest, criminal charges, a drawn out legal battle.  The talking heads will salivate, the public will devour it, this simple story of a scarlet woman who has robbed a boy of his innocence and reduced a mighty empire to ashes. 

-6-

The Jesuits have their spies everywhere, this is something every student understands, and when Eddie races from the main building he is hardly surprised to see a half dozen figures smoking cigarettes under a streetlamp like a cadre of secret police.  In the dread silence they walk toward him, the entire staff of the school newspaper.

 “Up in Batya’s belfry, Campbell?

“Tell us, has the bitch gone batty yet?”

“Were you drowning her in the roiling river of your powerful prose?”

“Were you seducing her, plundering the putrid pink petals of Pinter’s pussy?”

“Or is it purely platonic between you and the supreme priestess of poetry?”

As they unfurl their gaudy banners of alliteration his friends snicker, but beneath the rush of words there is real disgust and anger.  They long to see him fail and have come here tonight to deliver an unequivocal message: that when the results of the fiction contest are announced and his name is not among the list of honorees they will be waiting for him in the Bunker, unforgiving tormentors eager to apply the screws to his inflated ego.  They will publish the names of the finalists and make a special point of mentioning how Eddie Campbell submitted a story but failed to garner any recognition.    

“We’ve been observing you.”

“You can’t hide from us. We’re the press, the paparazzi.”

“We know what you’ve been up to.”

“You lust for accolades and awards.”

“And the favors of the quintessential literary slut.”

Eddie turns from them and hurries away.  He must escape this wicked labyrinth of hunger and ambition.  As he passes the chapel he hears voices.  The priests are holding their vigil for the football team.  He wants to throw stones at the stained glass windows but doesn’t dare.  If it’s true that god punishes talented people for their hubris, what does he do to the mediocrities of the world when they behave in the same way, how does he rectify their arrogance?  But Eddie knows the answer to this, has always known.  He panics, opens the carrying case slung over his shoulder and examines the camera.

“No,” he whispers, “no, no, no….”

“Why do you look so pale, Campbell?”

“Guilt is written all over your face!”

Suddenly he has the uncanny sensation that the whole universe is just a thin sheet of paper.  At any moment it can be ripped apart and everything, every word, every letter, every trace of meaning, will spill off the page and plunge into the void.  Things that now seem permanent and imperishable are no more concrete than a tale written in vanishing ink.  Clutching his head, lurching along the slick cobblestones, he bemoans his nightmarish fate, that for the rest of his life his own unceasing stupidity will follow him around like a curse.  He concedes defeat, and though his friends fail to understand the meaning of his words, he repeats them over and over again.

“The lens cap!” he cries.  “The lens cap! It’s still on the camera!”

“Hey man, you can't live without internet, can't you? As a fact, your whole life is inside that box, isn't it? Ok, this was a joke. You have your life, and it's outside of the computer, am I right? You are just temporarily hooked up, with no intention to spend your life in a front of the screen, whatsoever. You just need some time to post some replies, to make some updates, close some accounts and so one. I believe you, don't worry. After all, who am I?“

“Yeah, who the hell are you and why are you telling me this? My business is internet, and my business is my life. Mind your own business man, leave me alone!“

“No, I won't leave you alone. You are alone, already. You probably like to be alone. That's why you are online, at first place.“

“Who, me? Oh, no! I'm not alone! I've got lot of friends. I've got family, friends, so many of them!“

“Really?! Didn't know that. Tell me where are your friends, when did you see them last time?“

“What do you mean?!“

“You know what I mean. When did you last time spoke with any of your friends?“

“Well, if you really want to know, I just had a nice chat with a few of my friends and they were really curious about what…“

“Hey, hey, stop for a moment, will you! Are we talking here about the online friends, that you think you have, or about your real friends that are online at the moment?“

“Oh, man, you are something! Of course they are my real friends. They exist, just like you. But, they don't bother other people. Unlike you, they are nice people, with the nice manners…“

“Oh, I know what you mean! I have some nice friends, too. I have a lot of friends at MySpace, Facebook, everywhere.“

“Here we go! What did I tell you! You see?“

“Yeah, sure. I am a happy guy having so many friends. I am so happy, especially when my friends send me some beautiful images with links all around, and I press them and they take me at different places where I can buy my friends products. Oh, Gosh how I love to help my friends to earn some money, really do! They must be a truly friends sending me these nice little images all the time.“

“That's mean, man, so mean!“

“No, it's not, really! My friends are great! And they are so polite, they don't even try to tell me that they're selling something, isn't that cool?“

“Come on…man! What's wrong with the selling? Everyone wants to sell something, so what? Doesn't mean they don't care about you? I am also trying to sell something. I've just came up with a new product! As a fact, I'm building a new landing page, and this blog I have, I just need to…“

“Ok, ok! I got you. I see where you heading. Making money online! I just love the issue. Don't say anything more about, you probably calculating keywords right now. Am I right?“

“Well…“

“Well what?! Are you on the way to get rich, or not? Come on, be a pall. Tell me about it. Let me hear your dirty little secrets, ha?“

“Well…it's not so easy, you know. There's a lot to do, and I need some more time to make everything work. You see, I was on this SEO webinar and it was so great, and there's this guy, you know, he's a really great guy…“

“Don't tell me! He's willing to share his secrets with you?“

“Yeah, how did you know?!“

“No, I was just guessing. It's fisherman.“

“Who?!“

“Fisherman, the guy.“

“What guy? No, this guy's name was Marcus or something, I don’t remember right now…“

“No, I mean it was a Fisherman, that guy, whoever he is. He is Fisherman and you are the fish!“

“What's that suppose to mean?“

“Look, just try to type a word "money" or "making money online" at Google, Yahoo or elsewhere, and what happens? You'll get millions of pages and millions of linking sites and products about your query. Seems to me that money is the number one selling product as well as the number one buying product on the planet. Ha, ha!“

“So…!?“

“So, nobody cares why they are selling you this "money making" product. You got to look this way, pall. They are selling you "selling"!? Why they are doing that, why? Can't you see? It's because they can't make really money by really selling real things. So they sell you "selling dream". And that's the best product they come up with! Yeah, surely the best product ever. And still everyone is immediately hooked up!“

“…?“

“Yeah, I know, I'm speechless, too. And if they can't make money, they sell you "selling" and you buy this "selling" and then what?! You can't sell anything, either. So, finally you end up with nothing, except lost time and money! So you start selling this "selling" thing to someone else, to gain back your losses.“

“I don't know, man, it sounds ...“

“Yeah, I know how it sounds. It sounds like "money word", "keyword", "PPC", "SEO", "affiliate", "niche", "automoney" or any other word. The most powerful of all "Fast Money" sellers are those with these featuring keywords. They are most successful fisherman in the Web Ocean. They catch easy fishes like you every single day. They do it with very sophisticated and nicely looking hook that shines like a gold, using a simple green bite (a big double striped "S" one) and keep fishing wherever and whenever they want.“

“ (LOL)! “

“You just keep on smiling. There is a plenty of fish everywhere in the Web Ocean, my friend. And there are no possibilities to endanger or extinct this population of the species (that means - you). But, they are just one link in a chain, although a very important one. Their job is to keep the ocean alive and to keep the permanent hunger by feeding the fishes with the crumbs from their plates.“

“That's funny, you know! Keep talking, you're really amusing!“

“And you know what?“

“What?“

“These fisherman, they are just a small fishes like you, also!“

“How come?“

“'Cause they are fed with the crumbs from the Webmaster's plate.“

(LOL)
“And who are the "Webmasters"?“

“ "Webmasters" are the Masters in true meaning of the word. They invented the web at first place. People who own big web companies are the masters of the Web Universe, in a way, Gods. We all know their respectable names. They invented it, and not just that. They invented viruses and reinvented antiviruses, bugs and updates, first versions of their software and the every second one to keep you alive, so called "updated", so that you won't escape, you won't die out there. They invented, own it and exploit it all, from the first day and forever. And when they die, they'll leave it to their children's children, and so one. Have no doubts about it! Their famous motto "Web belongs to all of us" is a bed time story, and we all go sleep every night believing in that story, with the same big smile on our faces. We are happy, they are happy, fisherman is happy, everybody's happy! The whole world is happy!“

“Wow! You are crazy guy, you know! Anyway, what's wrong with being happy?“

“Nothing's wrong, if you think you're happy. Are you?“

“Well, I'm happy right now, I must tell you that!“

“Are you really? Are you really going to say to me that you like the things are going on, on this planet, in this very moment? I don’t think so. I would say, you are disappointed too, just like me. But you can't do anything about it, you can't make things changed.“

“Oh, now we are talking global, ha? And why is that so? Why can't we change the things they are?“

“Can't we?! Or, maybe we don’t want to? Maybe we like the way the things are? Maybe we like to be hooked, to be fished, and catch some crumbs along by. Maybe we need our dreams. Maybe we can't live without our dreams.“

“Now, we're talking!“

“Yes, but, what would happened, just imagine, if we could pulled out our cables from that monster, just for a day, week or even month!? Just to go offline for a while, to unplugged this misery of virtual life for a second and go outside among the real people, real us!“

“Sounds good, man!“

“Think about it, would it be great? And don't you forget, Web is not a virtual, it's a real. You could be seriously hurt over there, emotionally, financially, in any way! Think about this for a moment, will you?“

“Yeah, I'm thinking, I'm thinking …“

“So, what do you see now?“

“Let me see…hmm…I see a LOSER! You!“ (LOL)

“Ok, you disagree. You think I am a loser, it's easy to be a looser and for losers, there is no place on the web. So, you must be a winner, a natural born winner, ha?“

“Hmm, sounds good...“

“ You know every how to, every where and when, you are not like me, you have all essentials in your hand, all the facts, all and more! Yes, you are the man!“

“I'm the man!“

“Yes, I must admit, I am defeated, I am a failure. You're the boss! You are 'KNOWHOW"!“

“Knowhow?! I like that!

“Now my "boss", let me go back for a moment at the beginning of your "making money online" story. This is "stuff" you like, I bet!“

“Yes, how did you know?!“

“ Well, I’ll go right to the point. This is something deeper than a simple tale, something more real, ok. Here we go!
There is no chance for you to seriously make any money online if you are not highly qualified, highly educated in informatics, computer science, or whatever you want to call it. You have to be a computer software guru and freshly updated with the tons and tons of materials. This is something that nobody will tell you, at least no one from the other side of your game board, but it's a fact. Face it!“

“I'm faced!“

“Computer knowledge, software and computer languages, and everything that goes with it (and everything goes, believe me) is just a part of the "Easy Making Money" story. Marketing is another big part, too. Basic education and intelligence of the person, another. Time and money that goes with it, another one. Some of the mentioned are the specialties for which you have to finish a few colleges. For another you need experience, which cost you time and money. You can't do it from a scratch. "Scratch" is a big lie! There is no scratch in a life. The only one was when you were born!“

“I was born without a scratch! Really, my mom told me!“

“It's not funny, man. Face it, you are alone out there!“

“I am?“

“Yes, you are.“

“So, now what? I kill myself?!“

“Hey, but don't worry, you are not alone! Here am I! I'll help you.“

“Will you? Lucky me! How?“

“It's easy. The only thing you have to do is to take that piece of wire hanging out of your lovely PC machine and cut it! They will be cut off, and you could become someone's real friend...let's say mine, for a start!“

“Wow! Now we are talking! Your friend. Let me see...your true friend?!“

“Why not!“

“Ok, cut the crap, man!“

“No, you cut the wire!“

“No, man seriously, you really mean what you're saying? And what do you think I suppose to do right now? Leave everything, just like that?!“

“Yes…but first you have to try to look at the big picture! “

“The BIG PICTURE?!“

“That's right. In this case, it means that EVERYTHING YOU SEE, HEAR OR YOU'RE INVOLVED IN, AT THE WEB, IS JUST INSIDE OF THAT PICTURE, that box, hard disc or this temporary connection you have, and that’s it. There is nothing more to it. The World is outside, not inside, can’t you see?! Your wife, son or daughter, your mother, father or your friend is waiting for your look, for turning your eyes away from that window, for a moment, for a day, forever maybe?“

“Wow, I don't know about that!“

“You see, I told you, you can't! You became a machine! A machine connected with a thousands of tweets, feeds, comments and updates, logins and logouts, sources and shares, classifieds and emails, blogs and posts, url's and ftp's, groups and supports, patches and crawlers, links and filters…and no one can stop you.“

“ (LOL)“

“Nobody has right to stop you, either. One could become an anti-social element, trying to stop you. The whole world is gone upside down, whole world! I just wonder about a poor skinny child from some deserted part of the planet - does he know what even television set is, a computer? Does he need any of that stuff to feed the hunger, to heal the pain in those big blurry eyes? I don’t know. Maybe we deserve such a self destructive end of the humanity?!“

“We do, I know!“

“Yeah, we probably do. To poison our own future…well, that’s us! Nothing new about it.“

“Nothing new.“

“You know, someone once said; the better I get to know men, the more I find myself loving dogs!“

“I know the guy. He's name is Fischer, Martin H.!“

“Yeah, that's the guy! What a true!“

“Yeah, maybe he's fisherman, too?! You know, Fischer…Fisherman, who can trust the guy with such a name?!“

“Get the hell out of here! You are really something, you know! You make me sick, sometimes. You are acting destructive right now, don't you know that?“

“It's true, I am destructive. I like to be destructive. I'm a true-born anarchist!“

“I bet you are. You are making a fun of me, and you know I'm right!“

“No, I mean it! I am!“

“Well, we are all destructive, not just you, and not just for ourselves. We are hurting our mother Earth, hurting badly. And she is going to fight back some day, maybe soon.“

“She is?!“

“Yeah, she is going to shake us from her back like a bunch of fleas...just like that!“

“And then what?“

“Then, we are going to cry...yes, cry like a babies, wondering what happened, why, whom to blame, who's going to help us?“

“And who is going to be so stupid to help us, what do you think?“

“Well, Martians maybe! Or, maybe God, in whom we trust so much!“

“Yes, that’s it! God! He's the only one who doesn’t care if we sin, he forgives. He's the only one we can count on.“

“ Maybe. Although I doubt that we will wait for that moment, that we will not prevail, change, change things and prevail.“

“Aha, what did I tell you! I knew you are a true believer in a human race!“

“I am! After all I'm just a man, full of optimism and hope for humanity. I wish that same lies in each of us, and I just wish that every bad turns out good.“

“Now, I really don't need mother Earth, you make me cry already!“

“I hear your cynicism, all right. So, if you don’t want to turn back from your "links", don’t worry, I will survive!“

“Web will survive, man. Web!“

“Yeah…I know…sad!“

“Oh, come on, don't you die on me now! You are a great thinker, you know! You almost got me! I was nearly ready to give up on everything!“

“Did you really?“

“Yes, man. I almost cut the wire in one moment. If you weren't there…who knows!“

“You're kid'n me, right?“

“No, man, seriously! I believe in you. I believe in everything you've just said. And I'm going to reconsider the whole matter, really! If you are right, it means that whole world is wrong, and it's a hell of the fact! Shocking! Amazing thing! You should start thinking to write a book about the stuff, you know!“

“Think so?! Oh, I don't know, I didn't have any thoughts about a book.“

“Yeah, sure! A book! Maybe an article…for a start!“

“You know, I have to be honest, I was thinking about article or two, maybe just a few short ones, for a beginning, just to feel the market, you know!“

“Wow, now we talking! You know what? I got some great ideas that I picked up from this guy I was told you about…“

“Really, can't wait to hear, what…can you send me some text or something?“

“Are you kid'n me! I've got tons of scripts, pdf's, whole bunch of stuff! We can make money of it, piece of cake!“

“Great, I was hoping you'd say something like that…“

“Something?! Wait 'till you see this stuff I'm sanding you! You'll be online tonight, will you?“

“Oh, sure! Don't worry about that. I'm online, sure I'm online. I was born online. I'll fuck’n die online, man!“

“That's a speech! See you pall, over and out!“

“I hardly wait! Roger, over and out!“

“Sweetheart, it’s 7:10 already, you gotta get up.”  After she turned on the light, Sharon left the door open and went back to her bathroom.  She woke up late too and was rushing for the 7:47 bus.  She looked in the mirror undecided if she should laugh or scream that her hair never flowed right when she was in a hurry.  Instead she gave up and went in the kitchen to make a bag lunch for her daughter.   More...

Todd Thompson was a nice guy, but a chronic dreamer; his naiveté and increasingly odd behavior at home and at work bothered everyone – his parents, his friends and lately, his otherwise tolerant boss. At twenty-four, Todd still lived with his parents, disinclined to survive alone in the outside world. Todd had one supporter: Ellen, his sympathetic, optimistic girl friend. “Todd’s very smart with a good heart,” she’d say. “One day, he’ll do something that will astound all of us.”
Todd Thompson, a tall, handsome man with thick dark hair and large brown eyes, worked part-time at a brokerage in Boston, but the job bored him; his blazing ambition was to be a screenwriter – a prosperous and powerful independent filmmaker – an auteur. More...