Author

David had never written anything good in his life. Not in his school essays, not in his postcards, not even in his diary. He had always found something to blame his failure on, but lately he was running out of fingers to point. It had now been an hour since he set out on his hunt to find something, anything, he could write about, but none of his ideas were working. All of them featured violent, unpleasant deaths and made no sense. They were, as his father called them, ‘a waste of ink’.

At first, David’s father had been supportive of his love for writing, but he had finally lost hope after spending loads of money on pens and books, which were supposed to improve his writing skills. None of them had worked. He was just that bad. And for a guy whose last name was Author, this was frustrating.

“Damn it!” said David as he ripped out some pages from his notebook. He then began to dart his eyes around, looking for something to take out his anger on. Just as he was about to yell at the pigeons that were in front of him, something interesting caught his eye.

About fifty yards away from him, across the street, a dog was attacking an old lady, and she had unwillingly backed up onto the road. To top it off, a small bakery truck was hurtling towards her.

Although everyone was fearing for her, David could not wait to write down every juicy detail. He looked like a kid in a candy store. He was so excited that he even crushed the pen in his hand. But, just as the truck was about to cream her like corn, the driver swung it, and it instead hit a car that was parked on the side of the road. She was saved.

As if the bones in his knees were gone, David fell back in the bench. Why? Why did the driver have to see her? Why was she spared? Why would God do this to him? His blood was boiling. If he was the one behind the wheel, he would have spun the truck over her until she disappeared. This was nothing compared to the anger he felt when the people celebrated such garbage.

On his way home he kept replaying the ordeal in his mind. And when he came around the corner where the local bookshop was, his anger got the best of him. He just had to kick the stupid dummy they had placed outside.

“Hey!” said the bookie as he approached David. “We’ve all had a hard day, but you don’t have to take it out on Booker.”

The bookie sympathized with him. He could see the sorrow in his face, and so he told him to visit the store the following day.

After a long and restless night, David decided to take the bookie’s offer. He sat quietly in a corner and watched as readers browsed through the organized shelves, looking for something to feed their minds. David was a reader himself. His favorite genre was crime thriller. That was what he was focusing on.

He analysed each book that was sold, and he just couldn’t get it. The stories people liked were ‘no different ‘than his. Sure, his stories did not have happy endings, good characters or believable plots, but they still had deaths.

“Isn’t that what people want, death?” said David to himself.

“No!” said the bookie who had overheard the ‘conversation’. He then added, “It’s not about death, it’s not even about the thrills. It’s about the people, how they feel, how they behave, how they influence a reader’s imagination. That’s what each and every one of these people wants. Well, that’s just my opinion. But hey, you write. Let’s see what you’ve got going.”

David took out his notebook and gave it to him. The bookie tried to be as nice as possible when he shared his thoughts about David’s work, but he did not take it very well.

“You don’t understand art!” he told the bookie. And just like that, an argument had started. Although the bookie had tried to ease the situation, he eventually snapped, and some words slipped: “Maybe you’re just not a good writer.” For David, that was the last straw. “Oh! You want a good story. I’ll give you a good story.”

Not even David himself knew what happened afterwards. All he could remember was dropping the bloody telephone that had somehow made its way into his hand and had beaten the bookie to death. He shook like a leaf when he saw what he had done… when he saw the blood on his hands.

He quickly locked the door so that no one would enter. His heart was racing at 100 km/h. And as he paced up and down the shop, he asked himself how he had arrived there. This was all the truck driver’s fault. If he hadn’t turned, he would have gotten a story. He would have went home.

“If someone had died, I would have…” But then it came to him. He realized that someone had died. He could finally write a story.

By now, people had begun to gather outside the bookshop. David quickly cleaned himself up with his jacket so that the blood would not stain his notebook. It seemed like ideas poured out of his head faster than the pen could put them on the paper. He was writing so fast and so hard that he even sprained his wrist. When he was done, he put his notebook in one of the plastic bags they would give to customers and snuck out through the back door.

The bookie’s body was discovered later that day. Most killers would be worried about their alibi, but not David. He was too busy perfecting his story, and after a whole day of writing, there it was, a story with meaning. Just like that, he had gone from disaster to professional. Questionable, but his father didn’t care. He was very impressed. To him, all of the money he had spent on his son’s hobby was finally paying off.

******

“Mr. David Author?”

“Yes!” said David as he nervously shook the famous book critic, Linda Grey’s hand. This was his first interview. David’s book was a hit, and this was just the icing on the cake. Everything was going great until an eager fan asked him when he would release his next book. Just like that, David went from pro to amateur, but that was a good question. When exactly would he impress the world?

David thought very lightly of this. He was still oozing confidence, but when the pen was in his hand again, it put down ideas faster than they poured out of his head. What was wrong with him? Surely if he wrote a masterpiece once, he could do it again. He still had his pen. He still had his book. So, what was missing? Death. He didn’t have death.

For the next couple of days, he worked out a plan for how he could, in his words, 'make death'. He had been lucky before, but he was not going to count on that this time. After it was complete, he had to carry it out.

******

“You can do it. You can do it” he repeated silently to himself while standing at the bus stop, waiting for the nurse who lived next door to him and his father. She would get off the 9 o’clock bus every day. She lived alone, and for all everyone knew she did not have anyone who would be concerned if she went missing. She was also fat, so she would not put up much of a fight.

David had already begun planning his story when the bus came down the street.

Unaware that he was stalking her, she stepped off the bus and began walking home. David followed her, knife in hand. She eventually went into an alley where he was sure that no one was around. But just as he was about to attack her, he heard her speaking to someone.

“Hello, Mr. Author. How are you doing today?”

He almost ran away thinking that she could see him, but then he saw who it was, and it made him furious. David stormed off. He didn’t look back as his father called out to him. He could not stand to see his face. If he had, he would have torn him limb from limb.

By the time his father arrived home, however, that fire was out. He found him spread across the couch, and when he proceeded to ask him why he had left like that, David remained quiet. And when his father’s shouting got louder, he went to his room. Not even when he yelled through the door did David respond.

Of course, he wouldn’t respond. The old timer had just ruined his plans of finishing his new story. And to think that he did all of this for him. Besides, it wasn’t anything new. He just went on with the usual ‘you need to move out’ and ‘I can’t treat you like a little kid anymore’ nonsense.

Although he had heard all this before, there was something about that day’s yelling that made him angry. If only there was something to shut him up.

The next day David’s father was nowhere to be found; the house was cleaner than usual, and David had finished his new story. And it was much better than the one he had written before. Everyone loved it, everyone loved him. A miracle, right? A miracle which, sadly, could not last forever as he soon found out. He again found himself staring down at the clean, empty lines in his notebook, which were begging for his award-winning ideas.

He did have ideas, but they were not award winning. According to him, they were not even worthy to be put on paper. It was obvious what he needed, but how he would acquire it proved to be a more challenging matter.

He could not attack the nurse because she had grown suspicious of him, so much so that she moved out of the apartment complex. No matter. Another lady had moved in next door to him. She was also fat, plus she had asthma. Perfect.

And there he was, waiting for the 9 o’clock bus once again. His plan was cut-and-dried, and this time his father would not be there to stop him. There was a sort of confidence in him. He smiled at himself when he saw the bus cruise towards the bus stop. Like clockwork, she got off the bus, and David followed her. This time, he did not even look suspicious. He was really enjoying the moment. In fact, he was so lost in the excitement that he did not notice that there were slightly more law enforcement vehicles than usual. If he had, he would not have been so surprised when she called out, and two police officers appeared. They were there for him, and that was clear.

What David didn’t know was that the nurse had decided to inform the police about her suspicions of him. This was shortly after his father went missing. She probably told them something like: “He would have done something to me if his father hadn’t shown up. You should have seen the way he looked at me. He was definitely not expecting that. So, when Isaac disappeared, I knew that he had something to do with it. He probably took his anger out on the poor man. He may have even used him as a sacrifice. I mean, his father goes missing and he becomes rich. That can’t be a coincidence.”

Whatever she told them was enough to make the Pennsylvania State Police launch an investigation. They had managed to link him to the bookie’s murder with the jacket he had left behind at the bookshop. And now they had caught him in the act. He knew that if the police officers caught him, a life sentence would be the least of his problems. So, when he spotted an opening, he made a break for it.

Although David was a skinny guy, he pushed people out of his way like a bulldozer as he ran down the street. When he came around the corner where the bookshop was, he thought that he saw the bookie standing behind the large glass window, but he was too busy running to get a decent look.

The officers were hot on his tail, so after crossing the road in only four steps, he decided to climb over the park fence instead of going around it. Whether his jacket got ensnared on one of the spikes on top of the fence, or whether one of the police officers had gotten a hold of it, he didn’t care. He just left it behind. By the time he reached the other side of the park, he had created a large gap between the two cops and himself.

After climbing over the park fence again, he stopped and turned to see where they were. He did not notice that he was walking onto the road until the edge of the pavement caught the sole of his boot. The fall disoriented him, but just as he was about to stand, he saw a broken pair of glasses, the type that belonged to a grandma. They looked familiar, but from where? But then he saw it, the bench he was sitting on that day. He was not here by accident, and he knew it.

David knew that it was over. He knew that the screams he could hear were from the mouths of people who were fearing for him. He knew that the teenager standing across the street, with a camera in his hand, was waiting to capture every juicy detail. He knew that the lights hurdling towards him had to be from a small truck. And he knew that this time it would not turn.

“Now that’s a good story.”

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Special Thanks To Mr. Vike Rivoningo for help with the editing