Aiden grunted when he finished. That was where his phone’s alarm had interrupted him.
He wished there was some way to make the scenes more… palatable, but it didn’t matter anyway. The scenes written from the perspective of the murderer never made it into the final draft. There were a lot of things he edited out, even before Jamie read it, but these he left in the first draft at least. His editor-friend liked seeing them, but agreed that they distracted attention away from the other, better characters. He wrote them just to try to get some of the nastiest of the Ideas to stop.
He always felt outside of himself when he was writing scenes like this, like the him that was Aiden was just watching the him who was channeling a cold-blooded, murdering bastard. If this was the way actors felt, there was probably a reason so many of them died of drug overdoses.
And he never wrote in the murder-scenes themselves, even if he experienced them in nauseating detail. There were some things that were worse when committed to paper.
Even thinking about that ignited the urge to drink something more potent than water. Instead he closed his eyes and tried to recapture the the fleeting Ideas that had forced their way into his brain as he was leaving. Then, as much as it turned his stomach, he tried to push his way the rest of the scene. It felt… forced. Dry. Draining.
Aiden deleted it. He didn’t know why he even bothered to try anymore. It was exactly the same every time he tried to write away from home.
He shut down the writing program and meandered around the internet until dinner time, and he could justify heading down to the hotel bar.
Seated at the polished oak bar he met a lanky redhead who hid her age well under artistically applied makeup. And who turned out to be neither a fan, nor too hung up on looks. Aiden was willing to ignore the age difference and the ring glinting on her hand if she was. They shared a few drinks, some dinner, Aiden’s bed, and parted amicably in the early hours of the morning.
************************************************************************
At 8 A.M., John came to pick him up and the whirlwind began again. At its center was Aiden, feeding off the attention.
The afternoon found them in a small bookstore, crammed to the rafters with attendees. Flattered that so many people had come to see him on a Friday night, Aiden was in a good mood through the reading and into the Q&A session afterward. Those good spirits came to an abrupt end when a balding bearded man stood and asked “So, is it true you get your ideas from your cat?”
There was a wave of chuckles in the audience. The question was so out of the blue that all Aiden could do was blink and respond, “Excuse me?”
“I read it in an article online last night. You said you got your ideas from your cat,” the man persisted. A bead of sweat rolled down his temple and was trapped in the wild expanse of black beard. Small, intent eyes glittered strangely in the dim light. Why do these kinds of fans always wear ratty black jackets? Aiden wondered
“Oh. That was a joke,” Aiden said, annoyed that he hadn’t seen the article before his audience. He and John had both missed it, somehow. “I haven’t seen the article yet, but the interviewer asked the typical ‘Where do you get your ideas’ question. I was holding the cat at the time, so…” He shrugged and pointed a middle-aged blond woman with thick-framed glasses, who lowered her hand. A painfully vivid flush spread across her cheeks as she stood.
“What is your cat’s name?” She blurted before plopping back down on the hard plastic seat.
“Its name is Holmes,” Aiden pointed at the next hand.
