Prompt: Author writes his own murder before it happens.
“Yah, yah, yah.” I drawl to my editor who has been hounding me all month about my new project. He’s been practically down on his knees, begging for even just a chapter to show the publishing team. “I’ll send it to you when its ready, John.”
I listen to him point out that I have been saying that every day for two weeks straight. I can’t imagine how he would squawk if he knew that I didn’t have a damn thing written on this project that I should be well than halfway through by now.
“Okay, John. You will be the first to lay eyes on it, I promise.” I offer, keeping my tone calm and casual while a raging storm of anger swells in my chest. It is mimicked by the late October storm going full tilt outside my window. The clouds had rolled in a few hours ago and the downpour is giving no signs of letting up anytime soon.
John is yammering on about deadlines and contracts, but I need to get off this phone before the feeling in my chest creeps up to my throat and I rip him a new one. “Okay, my guy. You got it.” I say cutting him off. “I can’t creature genius while stuck on the phone with you. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” I click off the phone before he can retort.
“Fuck!” I yell, slamming my phone to the top of my large oak desk, not caring if I crack the screen. I can afford a hundred phones without making a dent in the fortune I have amassed. Daisy Jones and Her Marauders has had sold out, midnight releases in sixteen different countries for the last eight books. They are written for children ages ten to fifteen, but I’ve seen them in the hands of their parents as well. The problem is that the readers are eating it up faster than I can write them. I used to push out a book every nine months to my publisher for years, but now it has taken me that long to come up with what Daisy and her fucking marauders will do next.
They are a thrown-together gang of teens that would make unlikely friends but have worked past their differences to help solve the criminal happening in their shitty small town. All lead by the beloved Daisy. That little bitch who I used to dream about, now haunts my nightmares.
I’ve tried to end the series multiple times, wanted to kill off the cunt so I could sit back and actually enjoy my life, but my idiotic manager signed a contract for six more of these fucking books without even telling me. What’s the point of having millions if you cannot take a little time to spend it?
The irony of saying this in my hilltop mansion out in the middle of the rolling New England hills surrounded by anything and everything I could ask for is not lost on me, but I want to go places and do things that does not include listening to adoring fans stutter the same little comments or their oh-so important compliments for my books. As I sit at those read-ins and signings, all I think about is getting totally shit-faced and fucking their moms.
I slam my hand atop my phone, ready to pick it up and call some whore to come and distract me from the pressure of the trouble my own excellence has landed me in, when I glance to my floor-to-ceiling wall of books. Not my own of course, I have a single copy of each first edition tossed somewhere in the damp basement. My maid tried for years to display them around, but after I flung one at her head, she quickly gave up. No, I look to the books written by truly great authors. Authors that have no problem, spewing out masterpieces every six fucking months. The authors my fool of a younger self aspired to be like.
I leave my phone and instead finish off the last of my glass of brandy. My fourth glass I think, but with the storm roaring on outside, who cares. I’ve driven home from a middle-school book signing with more in my system. With that note, I pour a fifth.
Thunder shakes me awake from the nap I didn’t know I was taking, still sitting at my oak desk in the study. I sit up slowly, sluggish with the glasses of brandy burning a hole in my empty stomach and jab a finger down on the intercom.
“Yes, sir?” That grating, high-pitched, whining voice of my maid responds seconds later. “Do you need something?”
“Obviously.” I snap. “Bring me dinner in the study.” I order.
I used to be relatively nice to my staff, but every house I moved to was larger and larger and with more and more names and faces to remember, so I stopped caring. They are always so damn formal and proper. I don’t know why they put up with my bullshit, I used to see how far I could take it sometimes. One of those times landed me with a harassment charge, borderline assault, that was quickly swept under the rug by a little hush money and the enforcement of a non-disclosure. Since, then I couldn’t be bothered with their feelings, especially if the staff would turn on me to the press like that bitch Marie did.
Taking a deep breath— like my overpaid, too-hot of a therapist taught me in my court mandated anger management session— I close my eyes a moment.
Opening them, I lay my hands on my keyboard, lighting up the screen after it went dark from the lack of activity. “Daisy and her marauders…” I start to murmur as I type.
Fuck. If I have to write about these bastards one more time, I’ll blow my damn brains out with that revolver Clint Eastwood gave me one year as a birthday gift.
Leaning back, my leather chair creaking with the movement, I drain my glass again and immediately pouring the sixth. I belch loud as the warm liquid drops in my still empty stomach like a weight. Where the fuck is my food? I think, the anger I just blew away like a yogi master is jacking up my blood pressure again.
I hit the intercom button again.
“Yes, sir?” She squeaks too close to the mic.
“Dinner?” I ask, annoyance in my tone. “Today?”
“Yes, sir. Coming in just a few, sir, the cooks are—“
I cut her off by hitting the do-not-disturb option on the phone. I know it has only been four minutes, but again, what’s the point of having all this fucking money if I can’t get a nice bloody steak in the blink of my rich eye?
My fingers lay back on their stalled positions on the keyboard. I paid six-hundred dollars for this fucking thing, just because it sounded nice. Not that I ever hear it with the writer’s block that has plagued me since I squeezed every ounce of my abilities into the last book five months ago. No, not writers block, a whole fucking wall.
“Whore Daisy and her gang-bang marauders.” I jokingly read the only words I have typed back to myself. Tapping that beautiful whisper of a backspace key till the page is blank again, I stare at the screen.
Nothing. Literally, fucking nothing comes into my head.
I’d like to say it’s the brandy dulling my spark, but that spark has been long gone for a few years now.
I start absentmindedly typing an A then immediately deleting it. Over and over and over and over. Just to hear those whisper clacks of my overpriced keyboard.
I look up to the large bay of windows that are displaying the entirety of the storm out over the cliffs that this room is perched on. As if in some witty and perfectly timed scene from one of my earlier works, a flash of lightning fires off at my exhale, its roll of thunder shaking the panes a few seconds later.
“Cute.” I snark to the dark clouds.
I am still typing my A’s out when there is an annoyingly soft knock at the door. As if that gentleness will tame my temper that all the help has no doubt expected from me by now. They tiptoe around me like I’m the great beast of their lives. As if that tiptoeing will make them invisible to my sight. Good fucking luck. They are the only people I see now. Outside of those snotty, grubby kids and my nagging manager. I haven’t even laid eyes on my ruddy-faced editor in damn near five weeks but he’s not exactly a sight to behold either.
My A’s are clacking out as… Julie…Jillian…. Whatever-her-fucking-name-is creaks the door open and rattles in a food cart.
“About fucking time.” I murmur under my breath as she pushed the cart over to the side of the desk. She wordlessly clanks down the plate with my steaming steak, blood gushing out on to the china, just how I like it. There are some roasted vegetables alongside, but all I see is that blood pooling around the hot flesh.
“Is there anything else I can get you, sir?” The ditsy girl asks, hopeful she might turn my mood.
I shove back my too-expensive keyboard and slide over my plate of meat. “No.” I bite out, not even deigning her a glance. She gives a weak curtsy and leave, clacking that cart with her. I stare at her ass as she walks out. If only she could keep her mouth shut, I wouldn’t mind her hanging around.
Once I am alone, again, I make quick work of the steak, fully ignoring the veg. With another glass of brandy down and my plate discarded to the far end of the desk, I continue clacking out my A’s.
Daisy. Daisy. Daisy.
My eyes catch another flash of lightning out the long panes. I close my eyes and count. 1…2…3…FLASH!
I stop my A’s. Scooching my chair in a little more, I lean over my keyboard and begin to type.
It was a dark and stormy night, when Daisy Jones was headed home for the evening after a particularly curious case.
My fingers hover over the keys as I read the line again. Twice. My fingers begin to tremble from either frustration or brandy. My face heats and I feel an anger-attack coming. Most people will have at least one anxiety-attack in their life, but not this guy’. My therapist titled mine, one of a kind ‘anger-attacks’, something like how people see red when they kill someone, but mine is just on a hair-trigger. Thought I was going to end up in some medical journal, maybe then she would fuck me.
It was a dark and stormy night, when Daisy Jones was headed home for the evening after a particularly curious case. It was that of an author’s suicide. While he was greatly loved by the public, little did they know the resentment he held for them.
Little did he know that he sat in his great big mansion— paid by them— drinking his liver into a rock.
No, no. I backspace that last line and stare at the one before. An author’s suicide. Could that work? Too dark for the younger kids, but Roger, my manager, could spin it to something about mental health awareness or some shit.
Daisy made it back to her flat and shrugged of her coat as if shrugging off the day. Dropping the takeaway for her boys who would soon arrive on the table, she plopped down to her plush couch.
I look to my own couch along the far wall of my study. I had the fucking behemoth shipped in directly from Morocco, cost a fortune and we had to take out one of the windows to get it in, but it is gorgeous. But…when was the last time I had sat on it? Fuck if I know.
She kicked off her shoes and sighed. The author had…
Thank you, Clint Eastwood.
The author had blown his brains all over his study walls. He had been sitting at his large oak desk, a discarded bottle of brandy sat tipped over, wetting the papers strewn about. The gun was in his left hand, and a quick look about told Daisy that this man was right-handed.
She had snuck onto the crime scene, for that’s what it was, and overheard the officers interviewing the staff. They had kind words about the handsome man, but none of them thought he would do such a thing. I believed them, for why would a perfect man such as him, get blood all over his Armani suite? No, surely if he was to make such a horrific mess, the damn idiot would change into something less expensive.
I backspace the last three lines with a sigh. With another flash of lightning, I glance over to the safe where the gun is. I rise— a little dizzier than expected— and retrieve the gun. Clint gave it to me for either my fourth-second or forty-third birthday after meeting him some months prior at a book signing. His granddaughter is utterly consumed with Daisy fucking Jones. It was .45 Colt of course, no bullets, but the handle was etched with a quote from one of his movies I’ve never bothered to watch.
Back in my chair, I flip the gun over in my hands. Its heavier than I remember, but I like the weight of it. Clearly it is a real one, not a prop, but just sentimental without its bullets. I guess that does make it a prop.
The gun gave a dull thud as I set it on the desk and readied my fingers.
She had snuck onto the crime scene, for that’s what it was, and overheard the officers interviewing the staff. They had no kind words for the man. That he was hateful, rude, arrogant, and even dangerous. The only thing they felt sorry for was the fact that they had to find another job now. They said that killing himself made him even more selfish.
I look to the gun again, then back to the screen and backspace the last three lines again.
She had snuck onto the crime scene, for that’s what it was, and overheard the officers interviewing the staff. They had said that he was a quiet man, kept to himself and his study most of the time.
There we go, that will create some secrecy about him.
Daisy’s door opened and her boys came piling in, immediately going for the takeaway. “How’s it going then there, Daze?” Johnny asked, shoving his mouth full of kung pao.
“Not good, Johnny Boy. There’s something amiss with this author-suicide business.” Daisy began, “just something really off about it all.” The three boys listened intensely to every word. She explained how the gun was in his left hand, when clearly, he was right-handed. She walked them through how the door was locked from the inside and he had the only key. None of the windows opened. There was no evidence of another person even being in the room last night. The staff did not really know him.
The cramps apartment was silent as they all mulled over the facts she lay before them.
This is good. This is good. I take a swig from my bottle, foregoing the glass now, my back hunched over my keyboard as if that will keep the spark from disappearing.
“Now, boys.” Daisy announced clapping her hands together and rising. “How does someone kill a man in a locked room and leave no evidence.” She glanced around to each of them. “I just know this was a murder.”
“Well the killer did not know he was right-handed. Maybe….” Ryker trailed off with his piss-poor thought.
Backspace. I shake my head. How can I write about a murder if I don’t even know how it would have been done?
Pushing back off my desk I rise and clap my hands like Daisy. I begin to pace, surveying my study. There are of course the bookshelves, couch, desk, chair, artwork, globe, dust-collecting knickknacks. The lower panes of my windows do open, but we can eliminate that possibility from the story at least. There’s only the large, double doors that lead in here, but I don’t even know where the key is. No secret rooms, trap door, or hidden passages, but….
I run back to my computer and hit enter a few times, making a note for later.
Secret door in study. Behind picture/tapestry/bookshelf. Killed with own gun. Killer was….
Who was our killer going to be? I’m sure there are plenty of people who would love to see a bullet lodged into my skull, but who would actually do it? I’m sure John my editor would hire someone, but a hitman is not as personal and not good for a story like this.
I got the idea for Daisy and her Marauders from Scooby-Doo. I was forced to watch hours upon hours every day when I was baby-sat by my mother’s cousin. We were poor for a bit growing up, so both my parents worked, and family would watch us for free. The only issue was Scooby-fucking-Doo.
There was a time that I enjoyed the show. The first two months my sister and I were there, I couldn’t wait to see what episode was next. Figuring out what the crime was and who did it drew me in to mysteries and crime shows, then books. I said I would write my own one day and look where that got me.
But after months of sitting on that stained carpet, we had seen every episode about a dozen times. We were not allowed to play outside because my mother’s cousin was ill and could not watch us properly out there. Her constant eating of all things processed probably did not help either. So, we had to sit there, every day, watching those fuck-heads and that stupid dog solve elementary crimes.
Killer was…
My blinking curser seemed to mock me as it usually did. As if the flashing bar was taunting me, egging me on. It pissed me off. I tried to hire some computer nerd to make it stop flashing, but he told me it was impossible. Some genius he was.
Killer was…
Another swig of the warm brandy had my mouth puckering.
Killer was…
Wife? God no. Staff? Too scared. Fan? Hmmm.
I mulled over who would actually have the gall to kill me. Who would have the motivation, resources, and determination to kill me.
While I have always behaved myself around my younger fans, most of the time, some of the adults have caught my drunken stumble a time or two and felt it was their place to say something. Wrong choice. I didn’t hit the guy or anything, but what I said and how I said it— in front of sixty kids nonetheless— is what landed me in court-ordered therapy. Nothing I said was enough to get me killed by any means, but I did piss off a lot of people. My PR guy had to work weekends to handle the backlash.
None of my ex’s would have the balls to hire someone, let alone do it themselves.
Something akin to surprise, I think, entered my body. No, not surprise. That was realization. Realization that the only person who would bother to kill me was me. Definitely something my therapist would latch onto, but that spark, deep down where my heart should be flickered, and my fingers met the keys.
I planned it all out, wrote it all out. Dawn was peaking over the rain-heavy tree tops by the time I was finishing the last chapter. I think I sobered up somewhere around three in the morning, but I could not take my hands away from the expensive keyboard. Its price was absolutely worth what it has just allowed me to create with it.
It was a suicide, but a suicide to frame his manager for stealing money under the table and pushing him to write more books that were only killing his soul.
It was true, actually. Roger had been double-dipping, taking funds out for “partner meetings” and “general expenses”, on top of his generous salary for a while now. It was only a couple hundred a week, and like I said, I was God-damn filthy rich. So, I let it slide. He helped me hid my drinking and I let him take a little extra. Well, a lot-extra, and untaxed, but that’s on him not me. Maybe when he reads this, he will at least lighten up the workload for me. Longer deadlines, no more deals without consulting me first. I’m a realistic, not an optimistic, but I cannot wait to see his face when he reads this shit.
Fuck. When was the last time I was actually excited about something I wrote. I chuckle to myself, it’s been fucking years.
Now for the the last, closing paragraph. These always end on some big cliff hanger to keep the reader buying more and more, needing to know what happens to Daisy and her fuck-boys. Maybe “Reggie”, who is playing or dear Roger, will escape from the police car after he’s arrested. Or maybe he will get murdered in prison and Daisy goes in to solve it.
After re-writing the trademark cliff hanger a few times, hating each one more than the last, I just type in big, bold letters:
CLIFF HANGER TBD. DEPENDS ON IF ROGER PISSES ME OFF SUGGESTING ANOTHER BOOK TOUR.
That ought to get his attention. Rubbing the back of my neck from the sharp ache of craning over for so long, I read the last bit again.
I save the file as ‘Daisy and The Bloody Study’ and e-mail it over to Roger for the first read. He’s probably still asleep next to that horse-faced woman he calls a wife and will be overjoyed to see that his golden child as done it again when he wakes. Normally I would send it to John first, but seeing as Roger is the star, I though it only fair. Wow, look at me being…what… kind? I shiver.
I lean back in my chair all too content with myself and still reeling from the high of writing a damn good book. I reach for the brandy, accidentally knocking it over. There goes my moment of fleeting joy.
“Fuck!” I shout as my favorite brandy goes wasted all over the contracts I was supposed to read a week ago. I slam my finger down onto the intercom and yell for whoever to come and clean this up.
With the napkin from dinner, I do my best, wiping down my Armani suite pants, surely, they will stain, but my hands fumble and drop the napkin.
“Fuck.” I mumble as I look to the ruined sheets of paper. That when I notice the overturned bottle still lolling back and forth from the knock.
That is also when I see Clint’s gun is gone.
A phone dings from behind me, though mine still lays cracked on the edge of my desk some three feet away.
I know that ding. It’s an e-mail notification. Roger’s e-mail notification. I’ve heard it a thousand times. He always has it on full volume because the old bastard is too numb to feel it vibrate and too deaf to hear it at a reasonable level.
I hear the sound of metal sliding against itself then a click. The click of a cylinder on a .45 Colt locking back into place.
Turn your body, your head, you stupid fuck! I shout silently to myself, but I cannot move. Fear? Is that you? We have tangoed before, but you were always outshined by anger. Hell, I’ve seen joy and happiness more than you and they are a distant cousin.
Fear, if you are listening, just let me turn and see who the fuck is playing this sick joke. But I actually cannot move. Maybe it is not fear come to play, but something else.
I feel a leather glove wrap around my left-wrist and pull it up to hang by the side of my head. It holds in the air as if suspended by string, but I cannot feel it. I cannot feel anything. My mouth is dry, but I cannot swallow.
I try to lick my lips, but that is when I hear the gun cock. I can barely feel it’s cold metal slide into my upraised hand, the barrel resting against my temple. My left temple.
My eyes would flare if they could, but I do not think I have even blinked in the last thirty seconds.
The mystery hand curls my fingers around the grip and carefully positions my finger on the trigger. I have never shot, nor cleaned this gun in the three years I have had it, but damn me if my fucking finger twitches in this moment.
The hand releases mine, which somehow still remains raised. I am now pointing my own gun to my own fucking head.
I try to speak, to scream, do something, but only a slight squeak makes it out of my throat. So much energy wasted on such a useless sound.
There is more rustling behind me, and I hear the bastard’s leather fingers typing away something on his phone. He doesn’t seem rushed. Odd. Then he chuckles. The bastard has the balls to laugh right now. What the actual fuck is happening?
My suspicions are confirmed when Roger rounds in front of me so I can see him, have to see him. My eyes are now watering from the inability to blink. I bet it looks like I’m fucking crying. Perfect for his charade.
“Well, thank you.” He says with a larger than life smile as he is reading whatever is on his phone. “I knew the life insurance was going to be enough, but another book too? You really are too sweet.”
He turns is attention to my face, which I am trying my hardest to school into something like rage and disgust.
“Don’t bother.” He states, flashing a syringe to me before placing it inside his coat. Not the typical neck pain then. “You should focus on your breathing while you can.” He sits down on the edge of my desk and surveys the spilled brandy. He plucks up the empty bottle frowning at the label. “Now, that’s a damn shame.”
Setting it back down, he jumps off the desk and begins to wander around, looking at the art, furniture, knickknacks maybe? I can’t see him anymore because I cannot turn my fucking head.
He wanders back into view looking at a signed Agatha Christie novel I have on its own shelf. Honestly, it is my favorite fucking thing in here. “You know,” he began, “stealing from you felt right, felt like justice.” He scrunches his face at a photo of me shaking hands with J.K Rowling, his disgust for her clear. “Felt like the right thing to do.” He added stepping to the giant oil painting I had done of my own fucking self, hanging above the now lifeless fireplace. At this, he just shakes his head. “You are a real fucking bastard, you know that?” He comes closer, bracing his hands on the desk as he leans toward my face.
This whole time I have been trying to turn my hand, just enough to shoot the dick in the dick. I don’t give a fuck about the shit he is spitting. He is just as slimy as I am. Hell, I have seen him snort coke out of a hookers ass right before telling his wife that he was working late. This guy is no fucking saint.
He hangs his head a minute as I try to turn my hand again. Nothing.
After a few shakes of his head, he levels a look at me. Now, this is not a look I have ever seen on Roger’s ugly-ass face. Is he seeing red?
Yes? Hello? That is one-hundred percent fear knocking down my door.
We lock eyes for what seems like forever, but his eyes lighten and a smile creeps across his face as the mantel clock chimes, I think that’s a five, in the morning.
He says nothing as he pushes off the desk and practically skips with joy to his place behind me. His gloved hand wraps around mine as he leans down into my right ear. If I could pull the trigger now, I could at least kill the bastard too.
I try.
Nothing.
Roger chuckles again as if he could tell what I was doing. “Good try, lad.” He breaths in my ear, though I cannot feel the warmth of his rancid breath. He straightens and readjusts his grip on my hand with a little too careless of a jerk.
“Now this is for all of those kids you take money from yet cannot fucking stand to say one word of inspiration. One kind offer of advice. One little smile for a photo. For your staff, that you make miserable every day of your pathetic life. For all the woman, we have to pay off because you get a little too drunk and a little too hands almost ever fucking weekend. This is for John who really believed in you and yet you can’t be bothered to even thank him for all he has done for you. Or me, for that matter, but the money I will get from your death will repay me for my misery.”
He laughs again. “Oh, yah, lad. Those ‘contracts’ you singed a few weeks ago when you were already fucked up by ten in the morning, yah, that was your will. I took the liberty of rewriting it for you. So, easy to convince a judge that you really do want your fortune and estate to go to your trusted employees aaannd to make a considerable donation to children’s aid.”
He pulls our hands around the gun away to gesture to the room, the house. “Including your fine estate here. This will be used to house, teach, and nurture all those kids who love your story. Love Daisy and her gang because even the parentless, homeless, and different can make it in life. You showed them that. Showed them that but could not give them one fucking ounce of your gratitude for their admiration.”
The gun is back on my temple and his hand tightens around mine. I can only tell because the force he is squeezing with, knocks me to the right a little. “Sometimes I thought you had a ghost writer. Surely, you of all fucking people could not produce such moving and inspiring stories.” And lighter laugh. “But I just watched you now for the last hour. You really do write these.” He said more to himself than to me. “Fuck.” He whispered.
It hit me then. The real feelings of the real lives that I affected everyday. I never thought about what those kids went home to as long as they bought a book and didn’t dirty up my designer clothes. I did think about how I treated my staff. That one did bother me a bit, but clearly not enough to stop doing it. The women were just too sensitive or sending the wrong messages is all. I never thought about how Roger or John might feel about me. We are grown men for fucks sake.
All of the horrible things I have done in life though, do they real deserve me being shot in my own fucking house with my own fucking gun, by my own fucking manager?
Well, shit. Maybe they do. Maybe he is right. Part of me thinks that all of the people he mentioned are in on it. That Roger is just the knight to slay the dragon to save the townspeople. A monster, that’s what I am.
Maybe that’s why I wrote this story. So, book me could do the riotous thing and kill himself when I know I never could.
We didn’t move, or at least I couldn’t feel it if we did, for a few moments before he cleared his throat, finger around mine and the trigger. “What do you think Daisy would make of this?”
A little longer than I planned, but love where it went. Was trying to get out of my own writers block with this and while I am writing fantasy, this was a fun exercise to get my brain back into gear. Give it a go and/or tell me what you think.
Thanks for reading.
Write. Read. Repeat. 
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