POISON PEN

This is another story from "BEHEADING THE MUSE".  It was one of the stories that started out with an opening paragraph as an assignment.  We ended up with some really interesting stories at the Midwest Writers Forum with this one.  In fact, it inspired Larry Ginensky, a member of this group as well as moderator of the Highland Writers Group, to write 8 chapters of his “Dolores and Nietzsche” story, which can be found in the anthology that HWG published called “Between The Pages” (to which I contributed as well).

The old man at the bar held the drink up to the light as if to examine the clarity of its contents.  He stared at it for several seconds and then replaced it precisely where he'd picked it up on the napkin in front of him.  No expression could be read on his grizzled old mug.  I thought no more about it until he repeated the process a few moments later.

"Hey, Andy" I whispered sideways at the barkeep.  "What's with the old codger?"

"Him?" grunted Andy, wiping the proverbial glass with a clean, white towel, "Dunno.  He comes in here every night, buys the most expensive scotch I got and then does that all night.  When I close, he has me drink it and then looks at me like I just robbed him or somethin'."

Andy bent his balding pate down towards me.  "I done hears he had a big loss or somethin'."  With a shake of his head, he continued, "Poor Mr. Sommers hasn't been the same since.  Hasn't written a lick in almost 20 years!"

"Sommers?" I interrupted.  "Charles J. Sommers, the author?  That's HIM???"

"Yeah," replied Andy, "You know him?"

"Know him?!" I exclaimed, "He's the best horror and fantasy writer there ever was!"  I glanced at the old man again who was looking at his glass, "He made Stephen King look like a pansy!  He could describe a scene in 100 words and scare the pants off you where King would take a whole page and just mildly frighten you!"

"So, he was good then, eh?"  Andy poured me another drink and then leaned against the bar, his meaty bare arms straining against the short sleeves of his white shirt.

"He was great!" I said, downing the shot poured for me.  "I've always wondered why he stopped writing though."

"You want to know why?" said the man in a raspy, nicotine-stained voice.  "I'll tell you why!"

His words jolted us out of our huddle.  We hadn't realized he'd been listening and we felt rude.  I leaned back in my chair and took off my suit jacket.  Andy self-consciously wiped a spot on the bar with his towel.

Sommers looked as if he were about to speak again.  Instead he paused, rubbed the graying stubble of his chin and then wiped his hands nervously on the legs of his pants.  I turned to look at him when he spoke again.

"I don't write anymore because it all comes true!"

"What do you mean?" I said, using an old body language trick, encouraging him to continue.

"Just that, it all comes true!"

"What came true for you?"

"My writing!" he said in a feeble cry, as if he were about to break.  "Everything I wrote came true..."

"Tell me what you mean." I said softly.

He lifted the glass again and stared at it for a long time.  I gave Andy a shrug as was about to turn back when the old man began again.

"I've always loved writing." He said.  "It was a comfort and a passion with me.  I would go into a trance when I wrote.  My first girlfriend, Katherine, noticed that back in college.  I'd just begin writing and wouldn't stop until I'd finished.  I wouldn't stop to eat, I wouldn't sleep, hell, I wouldn't even go to the bathroom because I was so determined to finish!  I would just drink about a pint of scotch and begin writing.  I'd finish the rest of the bottle as I wrote, coming out only to get another.  If I didn't have any left, I'd tear the place apart until someone got one for me!  I'd never read what I'd written, though.  Katherine did that for me.  She would gush.  She thought my ranting, my drunkenness and my trance writing made me mystical.  We both liked to drink, though.  We both loved horror stories.  That was the basis of our friendship.  Together, we devoured the cheap pulp horror novels and all the magazines.  She had the same warped sense of humor I possessed.  Perhaps that's why we've gotten along so well over the years"

Sommers took another long look at his glass.  He slowly put it down again in the exact same spot.

"It was Katherine that suggested I use teletype paper for my writing when I typed half a page without a sheet of paper in the typewriter.  That was how I wrote my first novel" Sommers looked up at me with painful, rheumy eyes.  "I locked myself in my dorm room for three days and churned out three novelettes.  Katherine went through them and picked out the second as the best."

"It was about unrequited love and revenge.  That's what Katherine had for me.  Unrequited love.  To me, she was just there for sex.  We had a love of literature in common and that was it."

"But Katherine was in love.  She typed and edited that first work for me and got it published.  When she handed me the book, I didn't even realize that I'd dedicated it to her!"  Somers laughed.  It came out a harsh bark.  "I'd thought she was the one that put it there but, sure enough, there at the beginning of the roll was my typing 'To Katherine, without whom so much wouldn't have been possible.'  Hah!" 

Sommers paused again, talking as he stared off into space.

"It was about a girl that loved a man, but went on to pursue her own destiny.  Katherine did that.  She eventually became an editor at Doubleday... MY editor!"

"Then I fell in love.  Mary was my passion, second to none except for my writing.  Mary didn't mind though!  I fell in love with a slim brunette with big eyes and a demure smile.  She fell in love with what she called 'an intriguing author.'  And to beat the band, Mary and Katherine got along famously!"

The old man looked down at his fingers.  "These hands spelled the end for Mary though.  She bore me two fine children; a son and a daughter."

I loosened my tie and got more comfortable at the bar.  Andy did as well, absentmindedly pouring us both another drink.  He hadn't yet taken the money I'd laid out.

"What do you mean by your 'hands spelled the end for Mary?'" I asked softly.

Sommers went on as if ignoring me, but I could see the flicker in his eyes that told me he had heard.

"My son grew up to be a fine lad.  Tall like his mother and strong like I was once.  Vietnam was happening then.  I was against it, of course.  I wrote a story about the pain and suffering that a soldier endures.  I wrote about life in the foxhole and the agony of being wounded, or seeing your best friend blown to pieces.  I wrote about Johnny, though I didn't know it until after he died."

"What?  How did he die?"

He was silent again, looking at the glass.  Then, looking away, he said, in a hoarse whisper, "He was killed in Nam.  Got blown up by a mortar round."

Sommers sighed heavily.  "It was Katherine that pointed out the similarities about how Johnny died and how my character in "Death Warrior" died.  It was almost as if I'd seen Johnny's future a few years before."  The man covered his face with his hands.  Speaking between his palms he said,  "I was shocked because, of course, I'd never even read my own work!"

He rubbed his face again and put his hands down.  "Marie came next."

"I wanted to write something upbeat, but I struggled for six months.  The words never came.  Then a news story about a murder came on and I got an inspiration.  I was in my room for five days, typing furiously.  I know this because that was what Mary told me when I got out of the hospital.  She had delivered the manuscript to Katherine and the girl fairly drooled over it.  At least that's how Mary described it!"

"It was about two girls who go to college, live together in an apartment and are murdered."

"So?" I said, "What did that have to do with your daughter?"

"Two years later," he replied, "Her and her best friend went to college.  I was successful then.  I bought a townhouse for her to live in.  They threw a party and they invited everyone they knew."  Sommers stopped, choking back a sob at the memory. 

"Well, one of the young men had a thing for my daughter.  She didn't like him, though.  He came to the party.  While everyone else was having a good time downstairs, he took my daughter upstairs, savagely beat her, raped her and then slit her throat."

"My GOD, man!" I exclaimed, "I'm sorry to hear that!  But of course you realize it's all coincidence!"

"To you, it may have been," he said, turning only his eyes to me, "but, when the police read my book and found that it followed the plot fairly closely, THEY certainly didn't think so!" 

Sommers went back to his glass and stared at it again, not saying anything for a long while.

"You mentioned your wife," broke in Andy, his voice sounding like a Mack Truck pulling away from a stop.  "Surely she didn't think this was anything more than coincidence."

"Mary was always loyal." He said, more to himself than to us.  "And she paid for that."

"How so?" I prodded.

There was another long pause.

"Years before," he finally continued, "When I'd written those first stories.  One of them was about a man that plots to get rid of his wife."  Sommers stopped and stared for a long time.

"He arranges things so that his wife gets mad at him and decides to go out for a drive.  She is run off the road and down a cliff.  Really sophomoric, television melodrama, but you have to realize, it was written 35 years ago!"

"OK."

"Mary and I had a fight a few years back.  She got angry over my drinking and then the way I went into a trance for days as I wrote.  The deaths of our children had really affected her.  She didn't realize that a writer just can't stop writing, that it's an insidious disease.  She felt we had enough and that we should try and make a new life together.  I ignored her and went back to writing."

"So, what happened?"

"She was run off the road and killed."

"Oh."

"Yeah," he said with a wry smile.  "I'd lost everyone.  The police swore I did it, this time.  They brought out that book of mine and used it to take me to court!  Only Katherine stood by me!"

"That's so sad!" I told him, "But you need to realize that these were all nothing more than coincidence!"

"Bullshit!" was his only reply.

"But they were!  They ARE!"

"Bullshit!" he said louder, turning to look at me.

"Why do you say that?"  I said.  "These things happen to people every day."

"People don't write about other people dying!"

"Sure they do!  All the time!"

"Not about their friends and family!" he growled, gripping the bar as if he were going to pounce.  I saw Andy reaching for the blackjack.  Sommers glare burned into me as he finished, "Not about their own goddamn death!"

"Your own death?" I said meekly after a moment.

Sommers seemed to back down as I asked that.

"Yes," he said, resignedly, "My own."  He lifted the glass again and laughed.  "That first story?  The one Katherine liked?"

"Yes."

"In it, she is rejected by the one she loves."

"OK."

"As Katherine pointed out to me five years ago, he dies."

"OK, so he dies.  So what?"

Sommers looked at the glass of scotch in his hand before setting it down again.

"He dies because the woman he jilted poisons his drink."