The Only Novel Ever Written

NINE

When I was finally ready to open the door my hand was cramped, my mouth was parched and I felt as though I could fall over. I was sure it had been more than 36 hours, but there was no time in that windowless room.

I opened the door, covering my eyes.

I came upon them in the living room. They were sitting there, huddled over a plot diagram - Strayer with his red pen in hand. The girl must have been Anna Lefevre. At least, I assumed so. Her eyes were wide. Not with fear, but with confusion. She looked at Strayer for an explanation, but he was as speechless as she was.

"Funny you didn't notice," I said. "I took your pen." I nodded towards the mantlepiece. He wheeled around in his seat then shot a look back at me, his mouth still hanging open.

Silence.

I looked to the girl. "You should leave now," I told her.

She looked at Strayer, who nodded.

Then she packed her things in a hurry, eyes trained on the ground and disappeared - the door slamming behind her. I wondered if she saw me the way I saw Edgar or Ralph. Was I so different from them? Maybe I was also aman broken by his own ambition.

"What do you want?" he said. "What are you doing here?"

"I want to be done with this," I said.

A gust came through the open window, scattering papers.

"We've talked about this," he said. "Only way out it to give me what I want."

"I know," I said and turned down the hall.

"What the hell are you doing?" he said. "How did you get in here?"

I said nothing and he followed me to the boiler room, careful not to get too close. We stopped in front of the boiler room and I pulled open the door.

"You were here?" he said.

I nodded.

"If you touched any of my work -"

"Your work?"

He scoffed. "Yes," he said. "My work." He sifted through the stacks of manuscripts as if he could count and tell which ones were missing. I could see what he was then - really see him. Everything that mattered to him in the entire world could fit in a room slightly larger than a broom closet.

"I'm curious," I said. "Have you ever written anything before?"

I shut the door behind us.

"Don't try to pull anything," he warned. "I have failsafes. If anything happens to me -"

"Trust me," I said. His face indicated that didn't.

"What is this?" he said. On the table, beside his beloved pen was a neat stack of 215 pages, written by hand in ink. He picked up a page and turned it over.

"I used the back of the pages that were lying around," I said. "Hope you don't mind."

"Do you have any idea-"

"You never answered my question."

"It's a stupid question," he said. "Look around you." He shuffled through my pages, then set them down, frustrated. I waited for him to speak. "You all think this belongs to you." He removed his hat. Then his scarf and jacket. "You think that because put the words down you're entitled." He was like a snake, shedding dead skin. "You're not entitled. I've written everything in this room. I just didn't use a keyboard."
A cold feeling rose in me, climbing up my spine until it reached the base of my skull. Suddenly I didn't want to be in that room any longer. He rolled up his sleeves It was the only time I'd seen his arms uncovered. Now I knew why he did it.

"Sometimes they scratch," he said. "Sometimes they punch. Sometimes they bite and claw and scrape. But no one ever leaves this room without giving me what is mine."

His arms and legs and neck were a macabre tapestry of scars. Part of his ear - normally hidden beneath the cap and his untrimmed hair was missing. He was a skeletal husk of rotting flesh. His eyes were full of violence. His knuckles tense.

"You're right," I told him. "It is yours. All of it."

His face twisted in surprise.

"That's why I don't want it," I said. But he only stared at me, his eyes wary. I gave him a poisonous smile. "Go on," I said, pointing at the handwritten story on the table. "That's yours too."

"That's not what -"

"Oh come on," I said. "Don't you want to see what you've written now?"

Temptation flashed across his eyes. He wanted to know. He had to know. It was the only thing he had left. I opened the door staying just long enough to watch his eyes go dark as they traveled down the first page.

"Strayer," I told him. He looked up. "It's your best work yet. A story about yourself."

The cover page was turned over on the table, where we both could see it.

Parasite |Peter Strayer.

###

The air was brisk and people hurried, but I had no place to go. For the first time in my life, that wasn't a bad thing. I walked to the park and surrounded myself with trees and sunlight and sat in the grass without a single goal or challenge or desperate need to progress. I lived for a day.

On my way home I took a detour to visit the bookstore my mother recommended me for. I stayed and read until it got dark, then finally went to the front desk and asked to see the manager my mother knew to ask her about a job application.

###

I thought I might never write again, but I never really stopped. Only one day after thing ended with Strayer, I cleaned out the writing room. I tried to scrub the walls, gave up and painted over them in a color my mother selected for me. (She claimed that a soft blue with splashes of yellow would help me be focused, but creative).

I sat at that computer for weeks on end and nothing came out of my head until one day, I ripped the dropcloth off the window in frustration. That day I saw a young boy in a wheelchair, towing a wagon behind him. The image wouldn't let go of me and all of the sudden the words flowed from my fingertips like magic. The idea became Stand, the first novel I ever published. It was about a young boy in a wheelchair who builds himself a set of robotic legs, only to realize he doesn't need them to be a hero.

In the summer of 2009, I realized I couldn't be anything but a writer. I worked at the bookstore. I worked as a door-to-door salesman. I worked at an advertising agency and then another and another. I spent my days writing clever things that no one ever read, wading through mediocrity every morning until something extraordinary happened. People started buying my fifth book. Fifth time's the charm, I suppose.

###

Twenty-five years later a New York Times headline ripped me out of my universe: UPON DEATH, 74 YEAR OLD RELEASES BACK CATALOGUE OF 78 NOVELS.

I was at a book signing when I saw it tucked away in a recycling bin. I don't know how I'd missed it, but it was old news. I was at the bookstore I had (embarrassingly) promised my mother I would own one day - a promise I never should have claimed and never made good on. When the signing was over, I scanned the shelves, the way I used when I was younger, hoping to stumble upon something that would spirit me away to another world.

"This one any good?" a voice said. Her face was familiar, but I didn't know her name. She'd been at the book signing. "I figure you're a good person to ask," she said. She held Parasite in front of me and I stared at the cover art - Gregory Strayer's name was emblazoned across the front.

I tried to think of something to say, but nothing came out. She skimmed the copy on the inside sleeve.

"They say that after he finished this one he never wrote again," she said. "Have you read it?"

Looking back, the memory wasn't as sour as it should have been. There was something more there. I was glad for it. I wouldn't have changed it.

"It's well-written," I said. "Just not for me."