Blink….blink
The cursor flashes at me from the top of my empty word document. Writer’s block. That’s what they call it. Only, I’ve been staring at a blank screen for what seems like decades at this point.
The rattle of my phone temporarily breaks me from the trance of blue-light hypnosis.
Old texts from my agent shuffle through my mind like memories I’ve been purposefully ignoring:
“Great news, publisher wants to go to print by the end of the year, can’t wait for the next James Printzler novel!!! Knock ‘em dead! - Coop”
“Quarterly update, where are we on our first draft? - Coop”
“Dude, I haven’t heard from you in weeks, what’s the status of your new book? - C”
“J, it’s been nine months - give me something, anything, that I can bring to the publisher.”
I shake my head like an etch-a-sketch, hoping to erase them again. Start over. Blank slate. Like my screen, my brain. But I glance over at the now still phone and there’s a new one:
“James, I hope to god you have been working on something incredible up there in all that self-isolation. Our deadline is in a week. If I don’t hear from you before then, I’m chartering a plane out to you myself.”
Fuck. If Cooper comes all the way out here…
Still in my computer chair, I do a quick 360-swivel as if seeing the surrounding cabin for the first time. The space is only dimly lit by recessed lighting; the mere thought of sunlight choked by blackout drapes. Every solitary inch of floor space is covered in take out containers, to-go bags, stiff napkins, plates, and in some particularly shameful instances, remnants of what must have once been leftovers. Each piece of furniture is overburdened with draped, dirty clothes I fully intended to wash. The small murphy bed in the corner is packed up; unused. My makeshift bed - borne out of complete exhaustion after my trip up here - still in disarray on the loveseat. A package of toiletries mocks me from the corner by the door, winking at me as the glare from the overhead lighting reflects off of the shrink-wrap that still surrounds it. It suddenly dawns on me that I haven’t showered in weeks.
I shake my head again, but this time, at myself.
Eleven months I have been up here and all I have to show for it is this…. kingdom of filth?
I sigh and get up. There’s nothing for it. I am fully and properly fucked.
Eighteen months ago I was named the New York Times Young Novelist of the Year. I had written what critics hailed as, “a particularly haunting modern-day suspense thriller that will keep you guessing until the very end.” Sinner had put me on the map. I had made my debut in the literary world all the way at the top. Unfortunately, there’s only one way to go from there.
I glance over at my now empty glass. Definitely time for a refill. There’s a half-full bottle of Jack in the pantry. I make my way there, subconsciously stepping over and around each obstacle along the way. Opening the pantry door, I think back to my first day up here, unloading all of the liquid creativity I brought with me into this very closet. Bottles upon bottles had filled these shelves. I was so eager then, eager to get started, eager to become a great novelist, eager to take my place among the Pattersons and Kings of the world. Booze always helped the words flow for the Greats, and I had come prepared.
The single remaining bottle now stared back at me, lonely. What was once meant to be a measure of how much I had accomplished in the year now represented only my abject failure. I put down the glass, grabbed the bottle’s neck instead, and walked back to my waiting laptop.
Still blank. As if I had expected anything different.
I open the bottle and take a deep pull, musing over Coop’s latest message. One week. I had one week to produce something convincing enough to keep my contract. The publisher had given me a $50,000 advance (“We can’t wait for the next great James Printzler novel, and we have every faith in you!”). And I had spent the money. All of it. Like I said, fucked. I took another healthy pull.
A second option creeps into my mind like a spider: death.
Like a man electrocuted, I feel myself go rigid. Death. I had never thought of death before, certainly not my own anyway. And I had never considered doing it myself. How would I even go about doing something like that?
I shake my head again, a habit now, and muster a chuckle. Wow, I must be in dire straits if suicide looks better than facing my publisher. I laugh again, heartier this time, at my own sorry state of affairs. Another pull on the bottle and I’m practically giggling.
____________________________________________________________
When I wake up, the room is completely dark. Disoriented, I feel around and discover I’d almost made it to the loveseat before passing out. The empty bottle lay clutched in my hand like a dead man’s sword.
Real classy, James, I think to myself.
Then, another thought emerges: why is it so dark? I look in the direction of my laptop - the lid is closed. Huh. Eleven months here and I had always forced myself to sleep shrouded in the nagging light of the still-lit screen; at first daring me, then begging me, and now guilting me to write something. Every single night. Like a penance. Punishing myself for failing to appease it. Failing to feed it. To give it what it wants. What it needs.
But now, instead of under the harsh glare of a hungry god, I find myself in complete darkness. As I stand up, I think that’s odd, only fleetingly before the room starts to sway violently. I sit my ass back down, this time on the loveseat’s sunken cushion, and notice the bottle still in my hand. I don’t remember drinking that much, but the empty long neck tells a different story.
Okay, I tell myself_, steady. Let’s get up and write some words. Just ten. Ten words. We can do ten. Two sentences._ Taking a deep breath, I brace my hands against my knees and slowly stand up. The room sways again, but this time just enough to remind me I’m still drunk.
I carefully creep to my desk, battling not only vertigo but several old piles of take out-containers I do not recognize. Pathetic, I think to myself. I don’t know what’s worse, that I’m a disgusting slob or that I’m apparently such a drunkard I can’t remember placing any of these orders. Another shake of my head - my new hallmark of disappointment - and I sit down at the computer chair.
Without warning, my ears fill with the sounds of a woman screaming. Heart pounding, I reach for my phone and my hand meets empty air. Trying not to panic, I scramble to get out of the chair, but the room around me has changed. I can’t feel the computer chair beneath me, I can’t feel the desk before me. The sound is everywhere at once. I clamp my hands down over my ears as the world around me dissolves into the sounds of a woman being butchered in the darkness.
And then it stops. In fact, it stops so abruptly I realize the sound I heard wasn’t a woman screaming at all. It was a high-pitched ringing in my ears. Idiot, I think to myself, you drank too much and got up too fast. You’re too old for this shit. My still closed laptop seems to disparagingly agree.
After a deep, steadying breath, I lift the lid to get started.
A full page of text stares back at me. And not just one page, more, dozens of pages are written. And not just written, no, the prose is … incredible. Vivid. Well-paced. Brilliantly structured. Impeccable grammar. The characters have unique and individual voices. The imagery is immersive. It was the best thing I’ve ever written. And I don’t remember a minute of it.
I wrote about a young man, desperate for human connection, in endless pursuit of happiness, who spends his entire childhood under the thumb of a ruthless father and useless mother. She watches, detached, while the young man endures horrific abuse at his father’s hand. She ignores his desperate pleas for help, having long ago been silenced by that same hand. But the boy endures. He escapes. Starts his own, adult life. But he is haunted, deeply haunted by his past. It manifests itself in physical ways and he starts to believe he is being actually pursued by his demons. He starts to spiral into beautiful, inescapable madness until he meets a woman and everything changes.
I tear through the chapters. Eating every word whole, starving for more. Pretending like I was remembering it as I read it, but in reality picturing each and every scene for the first time. When I finish, I’m struck with a strange thought: I didn’t write this. Immediately ashamed of myself for the fear accompanying that thought, I laugh and glance back at the empty Jack bottle now illuminated in the glow of the screen like a beacon. I have got to cut back on the brown.
Having reached the point where drunk-me stopped, I feel inspired and encouraged. That last text from Coop must have really lit a fire under my drunk ass. With my fingers hovering in their familiar positions over the keys, I start to type.
And nothing comes out. Not one single word. Damnit. How?? How was I able to write eighty pages without knowing it and now I can’t seem to get a single word down? The answer dawns on me slowly, and I swivel around to look squarely at the empty bottle on the floor. Fuck.
___________________________________
Thank god for booze delivery, a true marvel of our modern age. When my phone rattles again, announcing my liquid creativity has arrived, I open the front door and am instantly assaulted by blinding sunlight and a burst of fresh air. I recoil. Wow, been cooped up here so long I forgot what outside smells like. I shake my head with a laugh, gather up the bottles and head inside.
The pantry seems pleased to have been filled. I swear I can hear it sigh in satisfaction. My glass is still where I left it on the shelf the night before. I refill it and start to head back to my desk. Hesitating, I turn back and grab the whole bottle.
As I turn to leave the pantry, a small sound makes me pause. Curious, I stand stock-still trying to place it. I’ve been alone up here for so long that I have become familiar with the moans and groans of the cabin. This is not that. It’s a scratching sound, like a critter trying to get in. Goddamn racoons. I hear it coming from in front of me, somewhere in the kitchen. Bottle still in hand, I creep slowly forward, focused on the origin of the sound. It leads me to an old fashioned radiator nearly hidden between the stove and the refrigerator. This little baby keeps the whole cabin warm all year round. So where is the scratching coming from?
Placing the bottle on the stovetop, I crouch down to get a better look at the wall behind the radiator. As I inch closer, the sound becomes clearer, it’s not a scratching sound but more like a sawing sound. It has purpose and direction, like old fashioned logging saws. Or no, wait, more like metal on metal? I creep a little closer and I notice, behind the radiator, the wall is covered in scratch marks. Deep, long, too big to have been made by a racoon, I think. I place my hand flat against the wall and feel the gauges. These were made by something desperate, there’s intensity in these marks. I shudder. But there’s only about six inches of clearance between the radiator and the wall…not enough space for something big.
Shrugging, I stand up. Just some old critter marks I never noticed before, and why would I have?
Still, something about the marks doesn’t sit right with me. I snatch the bottle from the countertop and take a deep swig. It warms and steadies me. I cock my head in silence and wait. I can no longer hear the filing sound. A second swig gives me courage. I head back into the living room.
___________________________________________________
I’m awoken by a dull feeling of pain in my side. I realize I’m laying on my stomach with my face firmly planted into the floor as I come to. The pain is persistent. I reach underneath me and pull out the bottle of Jack I must have fallen asleep on top of; its angular shape had been digging into my ribs.
The room is once again completely dark. But instead of confusion, this time I feel giddy. I must have written more that I can’t remember. I make my way to the desk, abandoning the now half-empty bottle on the floor. I open the laptop and begin to read.
It only got better. The young man, on the precipice of a full psychotic break, meets the love of his life. She brings him out of his darkness and makes him whole again. She picks up the tiny, fractured pieces of his psyche, and rebuilds him, reminding him what it’s like to be human. For the first time in his life, the young man feels what it means to be loved. They are blissfully happy for a while, but the past is never far. The young man’s father dies, and his new wife encourages him to go to the funeral, “for closure.” After that, cracks start to form in his life. Small things at first. Things would go missing only to be found in places he didn’t remember leaving them. He would wake up in the morning to find the front door unlocked despite locking up the house before bed the previous night. The mileage on his car would be higher than it should be; gas would run out more quickly than usual. He tried to ask his wife about these things but she would just laugh him off as being silly or, worse, careless. Slowly, his asking became accusing, and his wife began to look at him with pity instead of love.
Brilliant once more. Absolute genius writing. I can’t believe I wrote it. Again, as I was reading I had the strange thought that maybe I didn’t, but logic and common sense told me I was well and truly alone in the cabin. My grandfather had built it after the war in the event of nuclear fallout or societal collapse or whatever fabricated doomsday the government was preaching back then. The fastest way to get up here from the nearest town was through 20 miles of dense woods, impassable with any car-sized vehicle. There are no roads, but instead, old, overgrown horse paths criss-cross the property like snakes. The knobbly underbrush has narrowed them considerably - if you don’t want to take a 20 mile hike, you’d better have a horse, or, like me, an ATV.
Not only that, but the cabin was a single, L-shaped floor. The living room/bedroom combo where I currently sit is housed at the far end of the long arm of the L. Through an open doorway at the end of the room is the galley-style kitchen, and around the bend into the short arm is the bathroom. Between the two arms is a triangle-shaped pantry, now fully stocked. The only door is directly in front of the loveseat. I’d have seen or heard anyone coming in or out. There is not a single place to hide in a cabin this small.
Also, I think, sardonically, anyone trying to sneak around here would have a real hard time with all this shit on the floor. Any intruder would send up alarm bells in the form of toppling chinese food containers or crinkling tinfoil. Nowhere is safe here, even for ninjas, I chuckle to myself.
Encouraged by my drunk-me’s progress, I get up and reach down for a large, plastic takeout bag. Slowly, I file through the room like a zamboni, sweeping everything in my path into the bag. When it’s full, I bring it to the garbage in the kitchen and fill another. Then another. Another.
When I finish, I survey my kingdom with something approaching satisfaction. The cabin is still in abject disarray and there are still dirty clothes hanging off of every conceivable surface …. But it’s a start.
My eyes are drawn to the now half-empty bottle of Jack sitting in front of the loveseat, and my body follows like a well trained dog. The old couch springs groan in protest as I sit, and groan more deeply still when I lean back, sinking into a long pull from the bottle. That first sting of brown fills me with a warm, glowing feeling. I almost feel something like pride as I think of what I have written so far. I also cleaned today. An errant thought which should bring me no pride as a 36-year-old man, and yet it does. Standing, I smile and bring the bottle back to my lips.
________________________________________________
When I wake up, I find that drunk-me made it all the way back to the loveseat this time. I’m even actually under the blanket. Aww, I’m taking care of me, I laugh to myself.
The room is dark, I realize. I smile.
The young man is being hunted. His life is no longer his own. Unknown enemies, likely from his troubled past, have caught up with him and will stop at nothing to make his life a living hell. He starts to take more dramatic action to avoid his stalkers, changing his normal daily routine; buying a second cell phone; going out at night after work instead of directly home; locking his computer; even avoiding speaking to his wife on the phone in fear of being recorded. His young wife’s attitude changes from one of pity to one of suspicion. Her husband’s actions are erratic, his behavior makes no sense, she accuses him of cheating. His desperate attempts at denial and explanation fall on deaf ears. To his wife, his story sounds like the lie behind an affair. Why else would he suddenly be staying out at night? When she finds his “burner” cell phone, she packs a bag and leaves. The young man spirals further into darkness.
Fuck, I let out a long breath I didn’t realize I was holding. This story is so fast-paced I feel like I’m being dragged along by a rip current. The title. Right there. Ripcurrent would be the perfect successor to Sinner. I find myself eagerly anticipating the ending. I had apparently blazed through another hundred pages of sheer literary brilliance while blacked out. I’m too excited to be concerned about what this might mean for the future of my career. Or the future of my liver.
Stretching, I swivel in my chair, but a crinkling sound stops the movement short. I reach down and dislodge a take-away wrapper and accompanying tinfoil from the chair’s wheels. Strange, I don’t remember ordering that. I shrug, chalking it up to drunk-me’s munchies, and carry the wrapper to the kitchen garbage, where the too-full bags from yesterday’s cleanup still sit. I think maybe today is the day we go for a nice walk. I gather the bags in my arms and make my way to the front door. When I open it, I am surprised by a sky full of stars. Damn blackout shrouds, like a fucken casino in there. I shake my head to catch my brain up to speed, and start the ten or so minute walk down the front path to the dumpster.
I guess I have become used to the stale, stagnant air of the cabin because the night air feels foreign to me, wrong against my skin … like a suit that doesn’t quite fit. I make my way hastily to the dumpster, trying to shake the strange feeling that I don’t belong in the fresh air. The feeling stays with me even as I walk through the front door. Once inside, I head for the pantry.
Okay, okay, relax. You’re starting to acclimate to being back inside ya damn hermit. What are we, allergic to freedom now? I try to force a laugh but the feeling of unease has abated only slightly. I reach into the pantry for a fresh bottle and put it directly into my mouth. I’m immediately overcome with a feeling of warmth and calm. Another long drink and I actually do manage to laugh at myself this time. You’re such an idiot. Chuckling, I head back through the kitchen.
_________________________________________________
This time, I wake up in the Murphy bed. It’s fully made, and I’m surprised to discover the sheets smell clean. I lift my chin and my forehead makes contact with something cold and hard: glass. The empty bottle of Jack is resting next to me on my pillow. Ugh, only the Jose twins left at this point. But the room is dark, so I don’t dwell on this thought for long.
I sit down at my desk and continue to read.
The young man, feeling like he is out of options, thinks up a plan to save his marriage and himself. He packs their things, and moves with his wife to another city in another state, far away from his pursuers. For added protection, they change their names, their appearance, their phone numbers. The young man begins to realize that they will never be safe until he learns the truth and puts a stop to his tormentors. Until then, no one can be trusted, so he cuts off all communication between them and any former friends and family members. He frantically starts to navigate the rabbit hole of his past in an effort to understand his present. Always, he keeps his wife safely protected within their new home. She is his entire life. He got her into this mess. She saved him and now it’s his job to save her.
Damn! I think, now we’re getting to the good part! I can tell that the story is working towards its epic climax, and I find myself desperate for the ending like a kid on christmas eve. I start mulling the themes of the novel around in my mind. While it’s not quite a sequel to Sinner, Ripcurrent is definitely its spiritual successor. Both stories, told from different points of view, deeply explore the classic thriller themes: a haunted past, being hunted, a life turned upside down. But they also touch on grief, loss, and guilt. I wanted to bring a sense of reality to Sinner, so I drew from my own past. I guess I hadn’t realized those emotions were affecting me, even now, as I write Ripcurrent.
Sinner had inadvertently been my therapist’s idea after the death of my wife three years ago. She was brutally killed during a home invasion. I’d been out at the time. Those responsible were never found. I was incensed. The police kept meeting dead-ends. I was wracked with guilt. With grief. I was destroyed. They never found answers, and I couldn’t move on. That’s when my therapist suggested I write something. Write how I feel. Write anything. Something. It could help me work through my grief.
So, desperate for closure, I did. The result was Sinner. It wasn’t an instant best-seller, but social media quickly picked it up and it went viral. Before I knew it I was on the New York Times List, I was being interviewed by Oprah, and Sinner was on every bookshelf in the country. In less than nine months I was named Young Novelist of the Year. Fame was a rocketship and Sinner had booked me a first-class ticket.
The irony of the entire thing was that Sinner was basically just a dark reflection of exactly what I was going through. I had really poured my soul into it: one man’s account of the grief that ate him alive to the point where he turned to violence as an outlet. The narrator in that novel, too, had a dark past he could not escape. But love and grief are irrevocably intertwined, if there was no love, how can there be grief? So, in the end, Sinner was about acceptance and moving on. And I thought I had.
But now, reading Ripcurrent, and looking around the cabin, I realize that my grief and guilt are still very much present. They hide better these days, around corners, in the shadows, but they are always lingering, hovering just outside my awareness, ready to pounce. I tried to hide myself away in a remote, forgotten cabin, and bury myself in them. I nearly succeeded, too. If Sinner had helped me find closure, maybe Ripcurrent could help me forgive myself.
I smiled at the word-filled screen, swiveled around, and decided it was time to do some laundry.
_____________________________________________________
Out behind the cabin is an old clothesline that was strung between ancient oaks some time during the Eisenhower administration. Nestled in the roots beneath one of them is an equally ancient metal washing basin with a scrub board. As I begin to disentangle it, I freeze. The basin is covered in blood. Dry and flaking, unmistakable blood is spattered across both its interior and exterior. I flinch and drop the basin. The echo of its gong repeats through every corner of the empty woods. Birds scatter as if it had been a shotgun blast.
Fucking rust. Jesus. It’s just rust. I mentally slap myself, pick up the basin and carry it to the well-pump out front. When it’s full, I return to the clothesline and begin to scrub. The feeling is … cathartic somehow. As if I can wash away the past and start fresh with Ripcurrent. I’ll show them. I’m ready to be on top again. Coop can suck it.
I finish hanging my damp clothes and reflect on how I have traded one penance for another. No longer do I force myself to sleep and wake beneath the watchful glow of my monitor, instead I spend every conscious moment cleaning. I chuckle at myself, clearly I’m still atoning.
When I’m done, the sun is setting. I can feel myself getting hungry. Time for a drink. I head back to the cabin.
_____________________________________________
I wake up again, in the murphy bed, this time with a bottle of Jose instead. It is empty. I don’t even remember opening it. Damn, back down to one bottle? But my thoughts return to the present and I scramble to the desk. I flip open the laptop, eager to begin.
The young man is starting to feel optimistic in his search for the truth. He learns that several individuals involved in his messy past have collaborated to infiltrate almost every aspect of his life. He begins to set his plan in motion to take back his life, when his own wife assaults him in their new kitchen with a carving knife. He understands that she is part of the conspiracy against him. Devastated, he attempts to fight back, but she is strong. At one point, while she has the upper hand, his wife slowly begins unraveling the truth: that after she left him for cheating, he suffered a significant mental break. Her rejection of him had finally sent him spiraling and he became completely overtaken with his delusions. He hunted her down, stalked her movements, and abducted her. He then took her thousands of miles from home to a new city, cut her off from her support system, and forced her to change her name and appearance so she couldn’t be identified as a missing person. He’d been holding her prisoner locked in their apartment, to which only he had access. She spent most of her days chained to the radiator while he’s out. He wasn’t going to stop her from escaping this time.
Damn, what a plot twist! I think as I finish. And I don’t even remember coming up with it. Now, absolutely convinced that Ripcurrent would be award-winning, I allow myself a brief moment to become lost in the fantasy of my future success.
A pungent odor brings me violently back to the present. Gross, we might have a dead rodent in here. I stand up and glance around the now nearly spotless living room. With horror I realize the smell is coming from me. Guess it’s time for a shower, I think, letting out a low whistle.
I swear the toiletries by the door smile at me as I remove them from their shrinkwrap prisons. They’re just excited you’re finally bathing, I think bitingly, you have smelled for weeks. But, I laugh to myself, I’m sure they’re proud of me too, for finally coming clean.
The shower is hot and cathartic. As I scrub myself free of grime I also feel like I’m scrubbing away my failure, my guilt, my grief. I try not to think about what a disgusting slob I have been for the past year. I realize how desperately filthy I have allowed every nook and cranny on my body to become. I vow never to let it get to this point again. I scrub until the skin is raw and then I scrub some more; there is no world where I feel like I’m fully clean. But, eventually, satisfied that I’m clean enough, I emerge into the tiny, steamy space and grab a fluffy towel.
Wrapping the towel around my waist, I step through the door and open the pantry, grabbing the last bottle of Jose on my way back to the living room. I exchange the towel for an old pair of sweats and I allow myself to relax, just for a little, into the worn loveseat as I crack the bottle and tip it to my eager lips.
_____________________________________________________
I awake in the bed and hear birds chirping - a first since I’ve been here. I notice, too, bold sunlight is streaming through the windows, the blackout curtains are neatly folded up on the loveseat. I spend a moment musing on why drunk-me would have done such a thing before I remember drunk-me’s main objective. I leap up so aggressively that the murphy bed folds itself into the wall. Without looking back, I flip open my laptop.
The truth, finally exposed, sends the young man into a rampage. He lashes out and gains the upper hand, taking the knife from his wife, and brutally killing her. But he doesn’t stop. He stabs her again and again, blood splattering everywhere - his clothes, his hair, the apartment - until he exhausts himself. The young man then stages the apartment to look like a home invasion gone wrong. Then, he methodically cleans the kitchen, his clothes, and his body. He runs over every aspect of the apartment with a fine toothed comb, ensuring no trace of his deed could be linked back to him. He then leaves the apartment. For hours. When he returns, he feigns surprise, calls 911, and reports that his wife has been killed in a break-in. After months of searching, the killers are never found. The young man, confident he’s gotten away with it, seeks therapy to continue to demonstrate to the outside world that he is nothing but a grieving widower.
A shiver snakes down my spine as I finish this latest addition_. I cannot wait to see how it ends for this motherfucker,_ I think as I stand up. Let’s get this done NOW. I head back to the bed and grab the bottle of Jose. The last remaining liquid glowers at me, taunting me, teasing me with the ending it holds within its murky depths. I know I shouldn’t, but I finish the rest - about a third of the bottle - in a single chug.
_____________________________________________________
A small, far-away sound wakes me up. The room is dark again, but the judgmental glow of the monitor illuminates my surroundings. This time, drunk-me left me seated at my desk. I’m too focused to think about what woke me, I need the ending. My eyes shift to the screen.
Blinking before me, as ever, is my cursor. But instead of a screen full of words, the cursor blinks on the title page. Only, there’s a new title: Confession.
Momentarily confused, another source of light distracts me from my thoughts, it’s my cell phone, sitting on the desk, the screen awake and blazing. I now realize the small sound that woke me up is coming from the speaker. I lean over to glance at it and see a call in progress to 911. I can just barely hear the tinny voice of the operator on the other line advising me that police are on the way to detain me for the murder of my wife.
Now, as I sit, watching the cursor blink back at me … expectantly … accusingly, I can hear the distant but encroaching wail of sirens.