“Don’t have your main character wake up at the beginning of your story,” said the expert writer. But I’m no expert writer. I’m an amateur. I did wake up at the beginning of the story. I opened my eyes and it was pitch black in my room. There was a faint smell of burned rubber in the air, wafting from outside.
Noises. Scratchy noises. I’ve heard them before. “Don’t have your main character hear things going bump in the night. It couldn’t be a more tired trope,” said the expert writer. But I did hear them. I’ve looked for them before. Sometimes they seem to come from under the bed. Sometimes from across the room in the corner. Other times, they seem to come from upstairs.
“Think about that which hurts you the most, the thing which keeps you up at night, and write about it,” said the guy in the video. I remember now. It was Manny. Sitting on the concrete bench, he smiled his toothy dark grin at me. It had been years since I had seen him in my head. Something, or someone, had invoked him. He had stared at me with those empty eyes.
“Write about him. Tell me your pain in lopped-off sentences and capital letters,” the voice had said. The voice in the video. It had been Manny, the one. THE ONE. The one who died in a car accident when I was sixteen. Or so they told me. I looked at him, safely wrapped inside his casket. But I couldn’t make out his face. It had been so swollen.
Scratch scratch. This time the noises came distinctly from upstairs. Now a sound like a frenzied patter of feet. Cats, maybe? Cats chasing other cats chasing mice. I hope. “They’re not mice,” said the voice. “Don’t have your main character go looking for mice in the dark.” I sighed and got out of bed. I fished for my cell phone and turned on the flashlight. Manny had been wearing a white T-shirt this time, barely visible in the dark. A wispy blur, really. There had been no eyes. Just a bright toothy smile on a swollen face.
I made my way to the front PAIN. This stupid house had stairs to the second floor on the outside. The PAIN had been left ajar. The smell of burned rubber felt stronger now, itchy. Why hadn’t they locked the PAIN? It made me feel scared and unsafe.
“Do you want to be an excellent writer?” I nodded as I walked around to the side of the house. “Then write about Manny.” The concrete staircase was narrow with no banister; one misstep and you ended up with a twisted neck and a swollen face. “They’re gonna find him,” the writer laughed. “They’re gonna find him all bloated up.” Hahaha. I smiled his toothy smile.
“Write about the DOOR”. There was no DOOR. The upstairs floor had no DOOR. There was just a wooden frame into utter darkness. The whole of the upstairs was unfinished. I remember there being rubble everywhere. “There is no light in your story,” said the expert. I looked down at my bare hands. “Manny had no light in your story. Manny had no light in his narrow hole in the ground. Manny had no light. Manny had no light.” The voice garbled on.
I stepped inside. I couldn’t see anything. There was a heavy feeling around my face as if the air was somehow pressing down against my skin. Scratch scratch, said the voice in the back corner. It was the giant eyeless mouse sitting on the concrete bench.
He smiled at me.