I’m sitting within a crowd of a few hundred in a seminar hosted by one of my favorite authors. He spent about an hour and a half going over some of his musings on writing fiction in the current landscape. Now we’re at the part where he takes questions from the audience.
Did you know that these community centers sell these tickets in bundles? There’s one where you can buy a year’s pass to writing seminars just like this one. I’d know; I bought one. A friend told me I might gain some insight. The first two or three of these gave me some strong inspiration. After the tenth one you start to see the pattern.
You ever seen a video of rats getting caught in a trap? You’d think after the first one got caught, that the rest would steer clear. Except they all think they’re smarter than the trap. The more they move, the more pinned down they get. Eventually they all start eating each other. I wonder if they taste the cheese.
The next five questions are all routine and mundane. There’s gonna be a gem real soon about writer’s block and we’ll all just pretend that the shit-eating grin on the speaker’s face isn’t forming in the corners. Cause that’s what we’re doing here ultimately, stroking their ego. With two hands and a tongue. You’ll never get the answer you want, because most of these guys will never say the real truth of the thing. Sometimes it’s luck, or it’s the unknowable thing. Some have it, some don’t. Chances are if you’re here you might not.
I got a call from my boss during one of the questions. I was bummed out that I had to miss some of the answers. I was really looking forward to hearing one more way to fight my writer’s block. She needed me to come in to work today. Said that the project deadline was moving up and she needed my work turned in as soon as possible. I told her I was out of town.
“No you aren’t. You’re downtown.”
The only way she’d know that is if she used the time clock app to track me with GPS. We both know that’s borderline illegal, but she doesn’t give a shit. What am I gonna do, quit? There’s a silence and I say, “I’m in the middle of something, can’t get out of it. Sorry.” She wasn’t pleased.
I have a sneaking suspicion that Eren, my boss, likes to go through my computer when I’m out. She’s walked in on me a few times working on my writing during lulls at work. I only think that because she brings up some weird analogies that have striking similarities to the stories I’m working on. She only does this when she decides she needs to humiliate me for her perceived slights. Not that any criticism from her is valid in that department.
I’ve seen the books she reads.
She’s the type to buy premiere tickets to the fan-fic turned novel, turned blockbuster smut. She buys large cucumbers in packs of four.
I’ve been thinking about quitting. Not that my wife’s insistence on it has anything to do with it. I should accept that maybe this is a hobby. I might never do it professionally and if I was healthier I might be able to accept that. Except maybe I’m not. Maybe I need hard lines and definitive answers. I keep hoping an agent will send me a response to my manuscript with a note that says, “Don’t quit your day job.” Maybe I’ll be happy then.
I’m pretty sure my wife is cheating on me. I think it might be with one of my closest friends, Paul. It could be David, my neighbor. I’ve seen the way she looks at him. She butt-dialed me while I was at work. I could hear hushed whispers in the background. She managed to compose herself quite well actually and came up with some sorry ass excuse. Told me not to forget to bring wine.
I’m pretty anti-social-media. Something about catching the online journal era of Facebook kinda made me check out of the whole thing. I didn’t join up to watch people melt down online and I had even less interest in watching people fake their happiness. Except I thought I’d make one to promote my writing. Maybe get some feedback. I thought some fresh eyes would do me wonders. It didn’t take long before I was swarmed with message after message from strangers, asking me if I’d like them to promote my posts and therefore my works. There’s always a catch, these fucking parasites.
This is when it all dawned on me. I should have seen it, it was in my face the whole time. Scrolling through book-stagram, influencer after influencer. Memes about the process of writing. Thousands of posts with lists about how to be a better writer. Except they’re all bullshit, cause if any of it actually worked, you’d only need one. I realized at this moment you could make more money pretending to have the secrets to writing, than actually succeeding at it.
So in that spirit, I’ve decided I’d make a list of my own. This one is just for you. If by the end of this list I’m not famous, well, then it won’t matter. I’ll be dead.
Cut The Fat
This one is all about removing the deterrents from your life. You need a safe space to create and just like the title, sometimes you need to make some cuts. Not all of them will be pleasant.
My bed has a large frame. I’d never thought about checking it, not until I needed some sort of validation. I found a little camera bag tucked into the inside of the frame. I always wondered why my wife decided to buy a tripod. She wasn’t really an avid photographer.
I found out it was both of them, Paul and David. Sometimes together, sometimes solo. Turns out Jen liked to make movies. She had a very healthy catalog, it went back almost a year I think.
I bought a lockpicking kit online, it arrived in a week. I started practicing on my door. I won’t lie, I got pretty good at it. I started timing myself, twelve seconds was my best time. I could work with that. I don’t know what it says about me or even what it says about Jen. It was pretty well known that David was a recovering drug addict. It ruined his marriage. He had a real bad relationship with heroin. Maybe Jen is drawn to the aimless type. I don’t know how I feel about that, honestly. He once tried holding a conversation with me about The Maze Runner. I didn’t volunteer anything in regards to talking about writing, I think he just thought that we could bond over it and that was the best he could do. I’m not going to judge his tastes. I will judge him for trying to make it into an intellectual conversation and suffocating me with it. So I figure, that’s what I’d do for him.
I hid in his closet until I heard him in the shower. Once he stepped outside I wrapped a belt around his neck before he turned to see me and locked it in as tight as I could. He struggled and tried swinging back at me. He was a big guy, much taller than I was. He managed to crack me in the ribs. That is until I kicked in the back of his legs and brought him to his knees. He flipped me over and got a few shots into my chest and legs. I started to panic about the mess. I thought about kicking him in the face before realizing that I’d be leaving evidence of a struggle. I managed to jump on his back before he got his footing. This time I wrapped the belt around my arms and held him in a headlock until I felt him go limp.
It was a struggle to get him and the belt locked into the hook behind his bathroom door. I pulled down his pants and went searching through his apartment for some magazines. Found an old Esquire with a Kristen Stewart photo-op on it. It was all beat up, in some untouched cabinet in his end table. Must have been his ex-wife’s. I thought it’d be fitting.
I detest violence against women. So, I wouldn’t be following in the same steps I went through with David. Even if I wanted to, something like that would make me suspect number one. So, instead, I messed with the outlet in our bedroom closest to the bed. I also left the gas on in the apartment just in case. I even decided to drain the battery on her little camera. This way if she decided she wanted to make another movie, she’d be doing it to herself. Also I wanted to give them both a chance, Jen and Paul. There was still love there. It just felt right, seeing as she decided to blow up our marriage.
If you’re wondering how I searched up how to mess with an electrical outlet like that, I did some research. I’m not a moron though, I did it on David’s laptop. Do you know what happens to a body after it’s died? That’s right, I did that for you Jen. I watched a grown man defecate onto his floor and then I sat in the stench for you. It’s amazing what you can find online with a little vigor. Judging by the way David is hanging from his bathroom door, I’d say he’d agree.
Kill Your Masters
This one is about your idols, those we put on pedestals. That we allow power and control over the daily function of our lives. We’re all just blind rats in a sea of blind rats. Except some rats think they’re better than the rest. Some of them even learn to make traps. It’s funny, Animal Farm was the book that made me want to be a writer. I didn’t even really see the historical allegory at the time. In the pigs, all I saw was greed.
It wouldn’t be fair to take out my frustration on Eren. She’s only a product of a system that rewards her behavior. She’s incentivized to act in the way she does, because it yields results. No, to harm her wouldn’t do anything. It wouldn’t even punish the right person. No, I wanted her boss; her boss’s boss. I wanted the person who allowed and fostered a system where HR complaints were logged, brought up the food chain and then dismissed. I want whoever allowed her to bully those who made those attempts. Eren is just the hound, she doesn’t really hold the key.
That would be Colton Bosch, founder and CEO. Colton lives alone, I know this because I snuck into the HR system after hours. It didn’t matter much at this point, I knew I was getting fired soon. I sent Jen a text letting her know I was going to another seminar, this one was out of state. She didn’t seem too disappointed by the news. I’m guessing David’s body hasn’t been found yet. I also needed the alibi.
I found some photos of him online. You don’t really see him in the office, it’s a big company and headquarters is in a whole different state. He has a house here though, that he visits often. I know cause I’ve seen it before on the drive home. It’s a nice place, pretty isolated. The kind of place that screams of old money.
He’s a dog owner, with two beautiful great danes. I found pictures of them running in his backyard. I wonder if they think he’s a good owner. He doesn’t have staff over at his place when he’s in town. Probably doesn’t want to be reminded that he has staff care for his home. I looked around. It almost seemed kind of sad, living alone in a place like that. His daughters are off to college already. One is graduating in the summer, the other about to start her first year.
His assistant logs his travel plans and correspondence with the HR manager at our office. I had his itinerary and I knew roughly when he’d be home. I waited until the staff left the property. I make my way to one of his daughter’s bedrooms. I sit inside her closet and wait for the sound of his dogs.
I hear the sound of their paws running downstairs.
“Hey, don’t make a mess.”
I had brought some meat. I toss the uncooked beef into the kitchen pantry and wait for the dogs to run in before shutting the door. They didn’t even register me as a threat. He doesn’t hear me as I sneak up behind him. I shove the blade into his back. He flinches then cries out in pain. I made sure to hit him in the head with a bust I grabbed in the hallway. I work fast and I slice through his achilles heel. I don’t want him running anywhere when he wakes up.
I don’t care anymore about making this look like an accident. This is intentional, this is sending a message. I make some deep slices into the back of his thigh as I rip his pant legs in the process. I came prepared with a little tool bag I had stashed upstairs. More meat, this time I heavily tape it to his legs. I let the dogs out of the pantry. As I make my way out of the house I wonder how long it’ll take before they see him as food.
Get Honest and Constructive Feedback
I’d been staying at a motel a few miles outside the city. I paid in cash and only stayed for two nights while I prepped my plans for Bosch. This next one was gonna require me to travel a bit. I guess I really was taking that trip. I found a delivery driver while he was on his route. I offered him a hundred bucks if he gave me his vest and said he lost it. He didn’t seem to mind much, except he tried to haggle me for another fifty.
This took some time to find, he had a few houses but I needed to know which he’d be at. The first two weren’t too far from each other, I could reasonably make the drive. He had a cabin where it seemed like he’d go to do some writing. I won’t be mentioning his name. It wouldn’t do him any good. Except to say he wrote a book about a clown. I’m sure you’ll find this all out on the news eventually.
I park the car a bit away from the cabin. I see the lights turn on at night. He’s here.
The next morning I show up to his house in full gear, holding a package that I pretend is his. I don’t give him much time to tell me I’m wrong. I pull a gun out and force myself in. It was a BB gun. It didn’t even really register to him that it was a toy. This was my favorite author. I wasn’t going to hurt him. He hadn’t done anything wrong. No, I just needed an answer, something definitive. I tossed him my manuscript and I told him to read. He looked all confused; he didn’t even really know what to say. He sat down by his desk and I hovered over him with the gun in hand. It took a few hours. At first he wanted to placate me and tell me how much he loved it. That’s the thing about getting criticism and feedback. You never really know where it’s coming from. Sometimes when you skim and give notes off the cuff, you’re not really digesting it. I tell him to read it again. I start raising my voice, I put my face to his ears. I want him to know that I need the full and honest truth. His truth. I wouldn’t accept the answer from anyone else but him.
It takes him about three hours to get through the whole thing. When he’s done he looks at me and he says, “So what do you wanna know?”
“What did you think?”
“I think the plot works, the characters work. I think all of it works, honestly. The thing is, it just feels disconnected. I don’t think it has a voice.”
And there it was. The thing I had been looking for this whole time. So this is my final bit of advice.
Bleed For Your Art
I nod and I thank him. I try to apologize as much as I can for what I did and what I’m about to do. You see, I just slit my wrists. I don’t have a lot of time. I sent a mass email with this very thing to every one of my victims. There’ll be no way to deny that this was all me. I even posted this online just for you. This is my final work of art.
So the thing is
Turns out the EMS was pretty quick about getting to the scene. So you’re probably wondering what happened. Turns out Jen and Paul survived the blast. I might have screwed up a bit with my tinkering. Or maybe she just realized the stove was on. As for David, they really just think he died by auto-eroctic asphyxiation. My new author friend decided not to press any charges, I think he just felt bad for me. He thinks I’m suicidal and was looking for him as an audience. Jen wants a divorce, so that’s great. Oh my mass email, right. Well, I guess in the state I was in with blood covering my phone screen as I typed I think I just forgot to hit send. Also it turns out mods were pretty quick to take down my post. I don’t think anybody even saw it. Funny, huh?
Here’s the best part.
They think an old coworker of mine, Jeffrey-something I forget, might be suspect number one. They brought him in for questioning. Turns out he was a victim of targeted harassment and was forced to quit, which fits the profile. Seeing as I wasn’t fired apparently, I do not. So I guess there’s one final piece of advice I can give you.
Nail Your Climax And Your Endings
Fuck.