Aiden surfaced from the story with a groan. He felt beaten and bone-tired - as if he had run through a gantlet and he wasn’t sure if emerging from the other side was winning or losing. He rubbed a hand over his numb face and then fumbled in a desk drawer for some eye drops to help ease the dry feeling of his strained eyes.
“What the hell…” he glanced back over what he had read in disbelief. He shook his head. All that time denying to everyone, to himself, that there was a serial killer. But he knew this twist was good; it was visceral, it would punch his readers and they would crawl back for more. But he hadn’t expected it and hadn’t wanted this.
For a moment he felt as lost as Bet. Eli? Why?
Slowly he stretched, and then glanced over towards the patio garden, just to focus his eyes on something other than the computer screen.
Halfway between his desk and the massive glass doors sat the cat, staring at him, pelt flaming in the light of the setting sun. Aiden stared back, mind still foggy. Then the cat deliberately lifted one paw… one six-toed paw… and started to wash it.
Aiden jerked back and nearly fell off his chair. His eyes returned to the words that had just flown through him, and then back to the cat. “Goddamn it!” he yelled, but the cat only closed its eyes in a feline smile as it licked down one leg. “You’ve finally gone too far, Holmes! I can’t cut out… cut out your signature, and still salvage one word of this goddamn scene. That’s what you wanted, right?”
All these years he’d carefully sanitized the books, meticulously removing every reference to cats he could get away with. And the books had been rife with them - he knew very well that every piece of the puzzle Bet had just put together had been in the original drafts, and probably more. He swore again, eyes darting around the screen. Too much, too many places, too integral. Cats. No, not just any cats. Holmes.
Something inside him snapped. Maybe it was from the exhaustion, or maybe it was the bitterness that after years of telling everyone that there was no serial killer, he now had to eat his words. Shit, he knew less about his books than the trench-coat squad. All he knew was that he couldn’t take it one minute longer.
“I’m going out,” he announced to the empty apartment. Empty of course except for himself and Holmes. He turned to the fiendish little beast, still calmly washing itself on the $10,000 rug, “And if you want your book written, you little freak, maybe you should use those thumbs and learn how to type your own goddamn self!” Then Aiden stormed down the stairs, out of the apartment, and to the nearest bar.
