REWRITE
The writer woke up from his dreams and stretched. Time to start tapping out another story. No rest for the wicked, right? Definitely no rest for him. He would make up a whole new character, the perfect woman. Maybe not perfect for all those cretins out there in the world, but perfect for him. Too bad he would have to use her in the dreck he was scheduled to write. But anything to make his days a little better. Time to go straight into the story.
*
Kate’s mother said she was “quite worried, darling, about your inability to finish things”. Of course, her mother was a former hippie who had initially named Kate ‘Windsong’, and brought her up in a commune for the first ten years of her life. The tenth year was when her mother saw the light of capitalism, moved out of the commune, and changed Kate’s name. Her mom was a fantastically good real estate agent now, and this meant that she could do subtlety with the best of them.
What her mother really meant was probably something like: “Good God, child, can’t you manage to achieve anything? You’ve failed at everything in the known universe!” This was ridiculous, of course. Kate hadn’t tried everything in the known universe. Probably.
But she had tried to make a living selling jewelry, homemade candles, as a beekeeper, a library clerk, an herbalist, a potter, etcetera, etcetera, and etcetera. It would all go well for a few months, but then Kate would get bored, or something else would catch her attention, and the current job would fall into a shambles. This last one had been pretty horrific. Kate hadn’t even known that teddy bear stuffing was flammable. That really didn’t seem safe to her at all. The candle had just tipped over, so it wasn’t like it was really her fault. And she was sure that little boy wouldn’t have to go to counseling for very long.
But she had an interview today, and Kate generally interviewed very well. She looked into the mirror, trying to pretend that she didn’t know herself. The woman in the mirror’s curly brown hair had been tamed into a waist-length braid, and her hazel eyes were nicely highlighted by her slight application of eyeliner around the rims. Her skin was a nice gypsy tan, with olive undertones. All in all, this was an interesting face, Kate thought. Not gorgeous, but not bland.
“If I were the boss, I’d hire me. I’d hire me so hard.” Kate said, giving herself a little pep talk. She was wearing her no fail interview outfit, the one that worked eighty percent of the time. She had retained much more of the commune’s influence than her mother would have liked, right down to her clothing preferences. Her shirt was a dressy version of a peasant blouse, made of natural linen dyed blue. Her skirt was a full black silk panel skirt, beautifully embroidered in blue silk thread that matched the color of her top. Putting on her good-luck silver spoon ring, Kate headed out the door.
*
The writer continued to tap out his story on his modified typewriter, imagining a bizarre and horrible future for the woman and the man as they started the harmless interview. In a way, he really hated these science fiction stories. They were so unbelievable, while at the same time they were used predominately to make moralistic points about the present through metaphors. And the range for the lead characters was tiny, male or female! Heroic and beautiful, or weird looking and funny.
*
When Kate got to her interview, the woman ahead of her was just coming out of the office. Kate checked in with the secretary, making sure to smile pleasantly at the girl, even though she looked like a model playing the part of a secretary on TV. “Mr. Jones will be able to see you in ten minutes, miss.” Kate took a seat, and started her meditative breathing exercises, quietly. After what seemed like the longest ten minutes in the history of time itself, the ‘trophy secretary’, as Kate had been thinking of her, announced that the boss would see her now.
Kate walked into the room, and instead of the middle-aged boss she had been expecting, Mr. Jones was… hot. He made her think of an action hero from one of her favorite blow-‘em-up movies. His name even fit, Dirk Jones. And in this summer’s newest blockbuster, Dirk Jones fights the evil guys, gets the girl, and saves numerous small and cute children, all without losing his cool! But as the interview started, it was pretty depressing. He was… a big ol’ whiny loser. Even his voice grated on her nerves. And he was a little short, too. Kate was on the tall side and she always noticed that.
*
This was not going as planned. Dirk was supposed to be a paragon of manliness, not a loser. The inner monologue for his ‘Kate’ character was not working out. Maybe it would work out better once the action started.
*
Suddenly, the door flew open and the ‘trophy secretary’ was standing there brandishing a taser. “You bastard!” Kate scooted out of the way as the distraught woman strode over to Dirk’s desk. “You knock me up, give me a week’s notice when I tell you, and start hiring my replacement already! After all the times I went down on you in here, it’s your turn to go down!” And she zapped him with the taser.
Breathing heavily, she turned to Kate. “Uh, no argument from me. Sounds like he totally deserved it. Not that I saw anything happen. I’ll just be going now.” Kate grabbed her bag and got out of the room as quickly as she could. It was a shame to lose a job prospect, but she wouldn’t want to work for a putz like that anyway. If he had really been the perfect sort of man, like the one in her dreams, then maybe she would have tried to fight the secretary off. But the guy in her dreams wouldn’t do things like that. Not Bill.
*
Okay. He really needed to take a break. Drink some coffee. They were paying him for an alien story, not some random woman avenger shit. And getting so tired that he put himself into the story as the dream guy? That was seriously messed up. Instead of some coffee, maybe he would take a nap.
*
Kate went back to her apartment. That definitely topped the charts as the weirdest job interview. It had all felt so staged somehow, like this morning had been a play, only someone else had been moving her around and saying her lines. And now she had creeped herself out with a ventriloquist dummy reference. She didn’t even know why she had applied for the job as a secretary in a law firm. She hated lawyers. She kicked off her heels and stretched out on her couch. Maybe she would take a little nap before lunch and get her head on straight. If she was lucky, she might dream about Bill. Most of the time when she dreamed about him, he was just typing, or eating, or doing normal stuff like that.
But sometimes he was sleeping, and then she would curl up beside him and they would sleep together, with his arms wrapped around her. Those were the best dreams. She did dream of him today. He was curled up on his mattress, and she slipped into his arms. He held her close, and she felt his heart beating against her back.
She knew there was some kind of seriously weird kink in her brain that made her dream about the same man for ten years. Especially since they never really talked, or interacted. Except for the naps, it was like she was watching him in her dreams. She knew all about him. He was tall. Really tall, over six and a half feet. He was pale, because he didn’t go outside much. His hair was blond, and long most of the time. Occasionally, he would whack some of it off with a pair of scissors. He wore faded black shirts, and really old jeans or pajama pants.
Sometimes, the other man, the bad man, came by to see Bill. He took Bill’s stories away, and he was mean, always yelling about rent and groceries. The amount of food he would bring was definitely not enough to keep Bill healthy. Kate could see Bill’s ribs sometimes. Once in a while, Bill would go out at night and then come back with some food, but it would take him days to recover from it. Kate thought he must be agoraphobic. There was only one real room where he lived, that and a tiny little bathroom that didn’t even have enough room for Bill to turn around in. He slept on a mattress on the floor.
Most of the room was taken up by the gigantic printing press/typewriter. It was like a bizarre steampunk version of a computer. Bill typed out his stories on the typewriter part, but it didn’t type onto paper. It arranged the printing press blocks with long wires and widgets somehow. Kate wasn’t really technically gifted enough to understand how. When Bill was satisfied with a page, he hit a button and the printing press went into action, and a broadsheet was printed and then hung up to let the ink dry.
*
When he woke up, he remembered dreaming that Kate had been with him in his bed, in his arms. Great, now he really was going mad. Since he couldn’t write the story they wanted at the moment, he decided to just write what he wanted to happen.
*
Kate checked her mail and found an envelope in her mailbox. When she opened it, there were just five words on the scrap of paper. “Come and find me. – Bill” Looking at the return address, she realized that it was only a few miles away. She felt a strong compulsion to go to the address, and she got in her car and started driving. Soon she reached the road, and her mouth dropped open. This couldn’t be the right place. The only place on it was the local dump.
*
Shit! Why did he write that? He was going to make up some wonderful house to live in and write some great sex with this ‘Kate’ and then maybe he could get his head on straight and write the story he was paid to write. But he was writing the truth. Well, he could get rid of her like this just as easily, even if it wasn’t fun. He heard a car pull up outside. The timing was eerie. Somebody’s bag of trash must be named Kate.
*
Kate went to the little shack at the opening gate. A fat, rotten-looking man was sitting there watching television. He actually did look rotten, like his face was beginning to decay and sink in on itself. “Um, hi. I’m looking for someone named Bill? Do you have any idea who I talking about?” He stared at her in sullen silence, and then let out a coarse laugh.
“Sure, girlie. Go on in the dump, down this road until you reach the house. Have fun with the idiot when you meet him.” His breath smelled like onions and cheap beer. She nodded thanks, and walked in through the gates. The rotten man had a mean looking dog chained up behind his shack, and it started barking madly at her, straining at the chain. It freaked her out a little, and she broke into a run until she was past the first curve in the road.
*
He heard Jack’s dog start barking at the other end of the road, and paused, his heart in his throat. They were just coincidences. She was not here. It was not possible. This was just a story he was writing.
*
She kept going down the road, and there was a tiny house, with junk piled all around it. Kate didn’t even know if she would call it a house really, or more of a shack. She looked back up at the guard’s shack. Had he been messing around with her? Bill couldn’t live here. No one could live here.
*
What sort of masochist was he? Typing out shit like this. He knew where he lived and what sort of place it was. That didn’t mean he had to have someone from a story come and criticize it. Next, he’d be having her insult the inside after coming in. Of course, this Kate seemed to be polite enough to
*
She knocked on the door. “Um, Bill? Hello?” The door was flung open, and there he was. The man that she had dreamt about the last ten years was right in front of her. And he looked scared to death of her. And then he shut the door in her face.
*
She wasn’t real. She couldn’t be real. He made her up, just this morning. Obviously he was going crazy. If he was going crazy, though, shouldn’t he enjoy it? And not be rude to his hallucinations? It wasn’t like there was anyone to care if he was bonkers or not.
*
The door opened up again and he spoke. “I’ve decided to be nice to you, even though you are a figment of my clearly unstable mind. Come inside.” She walked in the door, and it was all just like her dreams. “Bill, why do you think that you’re the crazy one? Okay, you live in a dump, but I’ve been having dreams about you for the last ten years. And they’ve all been set in this room. Maybe you’re a figment of my imagination.” He looked really offended by that. Oops. “I mean, obviously, you spend your time creating, writing your stories. And you just live on the same road as the dump, not in it…” Bill still looked really ticked off.
*
“I am not a figment of your imagination! I made you up this morning. Your mother is named Sara Beth Cooper, and she’s a real estate agent. You were born in a commune and named Windsong until you were 10. At your interview with Dirk Jones today his secretary tased him because he knocked her up and fired her. How would I know that unless I made you up?” Kate looked fairly worried now. Good. He was the one in charge. “Bill, I’ve dreamed about you for the last decade. Do you write stories? And does a man come and collect them, and bring you food? Not that he brings you enough food. Sometimes I can see your ribs in my dreams, Bill. You really need to eat more, even though you don’t like to go outside. Also, did you make this printer thing? Because it’s really amazing.”
*
He looked a little appeased by that. “Um. Yes. I made out of scraps from the dump that surrounds my house.” Okay, maybe not so much appeased as less angry. She reached out a hand to touch the printing press thingy. Bill went to grab her hand. And his hand went through hers. Kate sucked in a breath to scream and sat up in the bed. Not again. Bill was real. And someday she would prove it. Maybe today, after her interview with Mr. Jones. She had never hoped for a secretary with a taser so much.
©2012 Erin Sharp