5
When Melanie had made it home, after visiting the bank and depositing the cheque, it was well past eleven. Upon entering her apartment, she felt less than whole. The thin folder in her hand, sans cheque, was placed on the already large pile of rejected manuscripts. It looked right at home, adding to her enormous list of failed endeavours. She had always been prolific.
Her thoughts suddenly raced, in a surge of pure inspiration for her final chapter. She almost ran to the study, but maintained caution, as though to prevent the ideas falling out of her skull. When she reached the room, fumbling around desperately for a writing implement, the fireworks were already detonating in her mind. She found a pen, and started scribbling on paper feverishly.
Remember that million dollars I told you about? That very prospect is taunting me right this very moment, but the irony is that honestly, I do not want it. I am not interested. I just want my feeble scream to be heard before the growing pressure within my mind causes the blade of the dagger in my hand to gash this innocent man's throat.
Don't take a step closer otherwise he's done for. I swear to god if you come any closer...
You've caused me enough pain to realise for yourself that I'm not joking. I'm deadly serious here, and if you do take one step closer...
You're trying to make me stuff up now, aren't you? Do you think it's really going to work? Now the dagger is upon an innocent man's wrist, much more painful and wicked, yes?
Oh now you've done it. You had to take that one step closer...
I could feel my face warp into a gaze of insanity as the knife slowly dug into his wrist. Feeling a sudden stinging at my own wrist, I looked to see what was causing the pain... Me.
I blinked in disbelief, witnessing crimson seep out through the fresh wound. There was no innocent man. I was the innocent woman in the middle of the dilemma who got injured.
Do you know where the irony in lies? I am not the innocent bystander. I am the perpetrator. I have failed my task, and your suicide is MY fault, and this is my karma coming back at me like a rubber band.
The silent night greeted me as I opened my eyes. It was all a dream, a fiendish hallucination in my mind. Dean wasn't dead. He couldn't be dead it was all a dream...
The telephone screamed out in the silence, an air raid siren in the darkness. I quickly rose to my feet, trying to grope in the darkness for the handset. My hand connected with its cold plastic casing, a burning coal in my hand.
Raising it to my ear with uncertainty racing through my mind, I spoke into the receiver, with a fatigued "Hello?" The silence on the other end of the line was broken quickly by a tireless, yet gentle male voice. It was full of authority.
"Ms. Roberts, we're so very sorry to wake you at this time of night, but we have some awful news. Do you know a man by the name of Dean Young?"
"Yes, yes indeed I do." There was a sigh at the other end of the telephone.
"This is the part of my job that I dislike the most. I'm sorry to inform you that he has... Passed. He committed suicide."
Fear overwhelmed my every thought and instinct, before a surge of disbelief washed away the fear. It couldn't be real. It can't be real. It won't be real.
It was real.
She looked up from her writing, with glazed eyes and a self-satisfied look on her face. Smiling, she closed the writing book, a Pandora's Box of her thoughts. It was complete. Failed novel attempt sixteen was now almost ready to be sent to the publishers. She picked up the phone, dialing an all too familiar number.