All My Colors

by David Quantick

  He slammed his hands together.

  “Todd Milstead,” he said. “I just realized. You’re Todd Milstead.”

  Todd didn’t know what to say to that. He’d never been recognized by a dead person before.

  “That’s why you’re here,” said Jake. He laughed. It was a pretty nasty laugh. It was a laugh that actually smelled bad. Good trick, thought Todd.

  “Fuck me, Todd Milstead. You know, you’re kind of a legend in here.”

  “I am?” said Todd, almost pleased despite himself.

  “Yeah,” said Jake. “You know why? Because you’re the copyist. Come on,” he added before Todd could ask him what he meant. “There’s a lot of people want to meet you.”

  As Jake spoke, two figures stepped out of the shadows. Todd almost screamed. One of them was Timothy, or used to be him. Where Timothy’s mouth should have been, there was a red hole like a ragged fleshy bomb crater. And the other was Billy Cairns. Billy didn’t even have a face. The front of his head looked like someone had been using it as a skating rink.

  “I guess you already know these guys,” said Jake. “Come on, let’s go.”

  And before Todd could move, the things that used to be Billy and Timothy took one of his arms each and propelled him gently back into the shadows.

  They kept walking, and they kept walking. Todd didn’t know if it was miles, or hundreds of miles.

  “Where are we going?” he asked, even though he knew it was a ridiculous question.

  “Oh, you’ll see,” said Jake. “Say, Todd,” he added, “there’s something I wanted to ask you.”

  “What?” said Todd.

  “Where do you get your ideas from?”

  Jake laughed. Billy laughed. Timothy laughed.

  Todd screamed.

  * * *

  “Here we are,” said Jake. Timothy and Billy fell back into the shadows, and Todd rubbed his arms. For dead and mangled corpses they sure had a strong grip.

  “You see, Todd,” said Jake. “There’s a special place for the likes of you and me, and it ain’t posterity. It’s not the shelves of fancy bookstores and it’s not the bestseller lists. It’s this. You want to know what this is?”

  He gestured around him, at the miles and miles of empty shelves.

  “Is it… Hell?” asked Todd.

  “Oh no,” said Jake. “It’s much worse than that.”

  There was a sound behind Todd. And above him, and around him. It was a rustling sound, like leaves or tiny wings. Todd was reminded of one of Sara’s favorite movies, The Birds, the part where the woman is in the children’s playground. Only these weren’t birds. They were books, suddenly appearing on the shelves.

  “Hell is for people,” said Jake. “People come and go. If they didn’t, we’d be knee deep in our ancestors. People are just flesh and bone, and then they’re dust and ashes. But books go on.”

  He gestured around him. The shelves were full. Book after book lined the walls.

  “Books are our memories,” Jake said. “They’re like babies, in a way, in that they contain something of us when we’re gone. Books outlive us, right? Books get passed on from generation to generation, and books are kind of unforgettable.”

  “But this place—” he said, and pulled out another book: All My Colors by Todd Milstead, “—is where books come to die.”

  Todd almost laughed at that.

  “Come on,” he said.

  “You think you’ll be remembered, Milstead?” said Jake. “You think future generations will fall in love with your work? Kids will study you in school? Movies will be made of your book? Ain’t gonna happen. Your book is going to be forgotten, just like mine was. Your little head’s gonna slip beneath the surface of history and drown.”

  “Bullshit,” said Todd. Suddenly he was angry, and why not? He was having a fucking terrible day. “I’m going to write a new book. A sequel. Maybe. Maybe not. But it’s going to be the real deal, this time. It’s going to be massive.”

  “Oh right,” said Jake. “Of course. You fucking idiot, what do you think I was doing when the truck hit me? I was working on the follow-up, Milstead. I was writing the sequel to All My Colors. And I tell you, it would have been a damn sight better than whatever jumbled atrocity you were bashing out. And I wasn’t a fucking photocopier like you, I could write.”

  Todd pushed Jake. He was surprisingly solid.

  “Fuck you!” he said. “I’m a writer! Fuck you!”

  Jake stepped back, laughing.

  “Okay, have it your own way,” he said. “You’re a writer. You wrote All My Colors, you’re a writer. I wrote All My Colors, I’m a writer.”

  He smiled at Todd, and it was a horrible smile, with too much knowledge in it.

  “You don’t get it, do you?” he said. “This isn’t about the book. This isn’t even about writing.”

  “What is it about then?” said Todd.

  “It’s about her,” Jake said.

  * * *

  They were in an old part of the library now. Todd hadn’t really noticed, on account of the two animated corpses, but the shelves had gone from modern metal to Victorian polished wood, and there was a smell of age in the air. The motes of dust caught in a shaft of sunlight (and where was that coming from? There were no windows) seemed heavier here.

  “Welcome to the stacks,” said Jake. “You know what stacks are, right, Todd?”

  Todd knew what stacks were. They were the backstage part of libraries, the storage areas.

  “I told you this is where books come to die,” said Jake. “And these books are scheduled for the furnace.”

  He gestured, and Todd saw that the shelves were stuffed with old books, a careless jumble of hardbacks and paperbacks, parchments and manuscripts, books without spines and books with illuminated covers.

  “All trash,” said Jake.

  “Is that why you brought me here?” said Todd. “So I can see my book being burned?” He laughed. “My New York Times best-selling book?”

  “Todd,” said Jake, “you don’t think my book was a bestseller? Jesus, you heard of it, didn’t you? And if you heard of it, it must have been a bestseller. All My Colors by Jake Turner was huge, pal. Just like you thought All My Colors by Todd Milstead was going to be huge.”

  “It is huge,” protested Todd.

  “Size Matters For Todd Milstead,” laughed Jake. “Todd baby, your book—my book—came out of nowhere and it went straight back there. You think people remember stuff? They forget their friends, Todd, they forget their parents. They’re not going to remember some stupid book.”

  “Why not?” Todd said, stubborn now.

  “Because is why,” Jake replied. “Because she makes people forget.”

  Todd was about to ask Jake what he meant when he saw it.

  The shelf.

  “What the fuck?” said Todd.

  “Oh, you noticed,” said Jake. “Take a proper look, why don’t you?”

  Jake pulled out a book, a worn paperback.

  “All My Colors,” he read out. “By Henry Mortimer, 1946. Nice guy, Henry, cheated on his wife and strangled her when she found out. Stole the story from a girl he met in a bar.”

  He grabbed another, a distinguished-looking hardback.

  “All My Colors,” he said. “Frederick Schwimmer, 1924. Freddy killed his mother for the insurance, but not before he wrote down the story she told him had happened to her cousin.”

  Jake began tossing books at Todd.

  “All My Colors, Edward Graham, 1907. Killed his sister after she threatened to tell on him. The story came to Eddie when his sister visited him in a dream…

  “All My Colors, Martin Portland. Chemist, poisoned his wife, got the story from a lady customer…”

  Jake looked Todd in the eye.

  “You beginning to get the picture here, Todd old boy? You beginning to join the dots?”

  Todd didn’t answer. He was looking inside the books.

  “They’re the same book,” he sa
id disbelieving.

  “Of course they’re the same,” Jake said. “They’re All My Colors. By you, by me, by Tom, Dick and Harry, John Doe, and everyone bar, of course, Jane Doe.”

  “That’s impossible,” Todd said.

  “Right,” said Jake. “You’re in a library with a dead guy and you’re telling me that that’s the impossible thing?”

  “But I thought—”

  “You thought we were the only ones,” said Jake. “Like the sailors shipwrecked on the Rhine thought they were the only ones.”

  “I don’t understand,” Todd said. “Why are there so many books?”

  “Buddy,” said Jake. “I told you. It’s not about the books.”

  He scratched his head. Something came off in his hand.

  “Whoops,” he said. “Looks like I’m running out of time.”

  He dropped the something onto the floor.

  “You think you remembered the book—my book—because you got a good memory, don’t you?” he said. “You think an entire fucking novel—a best-selling novel—just floated into your head one day like a fairy godmother at a time of need? Just when you could use a few dollars, there it was, the answer to an asshole’s prayer?”

  Todd nodded. There was no point denying it. Besides, this guy knew.

  “And that’s what I thought. When I worked out I could write down Helen’s story. Oh sure, I was devastated by her death. But I knew I’d get over it. And there would be the money, and the success.”

  Jake paused, then laughed.

  “Even when she died, part of me thought, now I won’t have to split the writing credit. Because men like you and me, Todd, we’re kinda cold.”

  “I’m not,” said Todd. “I’m one of the good—” But he thought of Janis, and Sara, and Leah in a hotel room, and he shut up.

  “You ask me, that story came to us for a reason,” said Jake. “Sure, I got it from Helen herself, and you got it from me, but truth be told, that story’s been around for a long time. Maybe this guy—” Jake threw a book at Todd. “—heard the story at a cocktail party. Maybe this other guy—” Jake threw another book. “—read it in a magazine but never could find the magazine again. And maybe this guy and these guys heard it out bear-hunting, or saw it in a movie, or it happened to a friend of a fucking friend—”

  Jake was almost crying now.

  “It doesn’t matter. Don’t you get it? It doesn’t matter. You steal the story, you die. Doesn’t matter how you got the story. You steal the story, you die.”

  “I didn’t steal it!” Todd heard himself shout. “It just came to me!”

  “Buddy, it came to all of us,” said Jake. “And all for the same fucking reason. We did someone wrong. We did her wrong. Ain’t that right, boys?”

  At first Todd had no idea who Jake was addressing. Then he saw them. There were dozens of them—no, hundreds. Every one was carrying a book. The book. And the books were old, and they were mildewed, or they were fresh, or they had never been opened, but they were all the same book. His book. Jake’s book.

  They were all men. Men dressed like him. Men dressed like his father. Like his grandfather. Victorians, and further back. Now they weren’t even Americans, but men whose sons would settle America. They came from every place, and every time, and they had all told the same story.

  “Jesus,” whispered Todd. “How many of them are there?”

  “How many of us, you mean,” said Jake. “As many as there are years, old man. As many as there are years, and as many as there are men. They all wrote the book, Todd, just like we did. They all stole the idea and wrote the book. So they had to die.”

  “But I didn’t steal it,” Todd said in a not-fair kind of voice. “It was in my head.”

  “Jesus, Todd, you are slow,” said Jake. “There was nothing in your head until she put it there.”

  “Why?” said Todd. “I never killed anyone. I never harmed—”

  He stopped.

  “Yeah,” said Jake. “See, Todd, you’re an asshole. An asshole who treats people like shit. I say people, I mean women. And I guess she just wanted some fun. So she dropped an idea in your head to see if you’d steal it.”

  “I didn’t steal anything!” Todd almost wailed.

  “You wrote the book. You took the credit.” Jake shrugged. “Also, you’re an asshole. I guess that’s enough for her.”

  “But who is she?” asked Todd. He felt wronged. Dammit, he was wronged.

  “I told you. She’s Helen. At least that’s the name she uses,” said Jake. “The Helen I knew, that was her, and the Helen who killed your friends on account of they were witnesses, that was her too.”

  How did you know about that, Todd wanted to ask. But he didn’t, because Jake was just getting warmed up.

  “Oh, yeah, Helen can do a lot of things,” Jake said. “That conversation you never had with Janis’s lawyer? The time you saw Janis at the truck stop? All those people who read the fucking book and bought the fucking book and forgot all about the fucking book and then fucking remembered the fucking book? She did all that.”

  “But how—”

  “That’s what she does.” Jake almost spat. “Todd, she put a fucking book in your head, how hard would it be to make you see someone who wasn’t there? She made you think Janis was seeing the Dyke with the Bike, she made Behm think it too…”

  Jake leaned into Todd’s face.

  “And that’s not all she wrote,” he said.

  The room was suddenly empty again. Todd and Jake stood alone amongst the shelves.

  “You’re an educated man,” said Jake. “You’ve heard of the Muses. The Greeks, they had a fucking Muse for everything. A Muse of Dance, a Muse of Poetry, Theater…. they even had a Muse of Tragedy, did you know that?”

  Todd didn’t know that, but he wasn’t going to admit it. He still had some pride left.

  “But Helen is something different,” said Jake. “She’s the Muse of Death.”

  Todd looked at Jake.

  “Okay, fine,” he said. “She’s getting revenge on men, I can understand that. None of us is perfect. But I just screwed around. I never killed anyone.”

  “You killed your private eye buddy,” said Jake. “You killed Timothy when you opened your mouth about the story. Oh, and Billy. Poor old boozehound never harmed a fly. But someone had to tell you about their trip to the hardware store else how would you remember the book, Todd? So that’s why he died.”

  Todd was barely listening now. In amongst the terror and the disbelief an old familiar emotion rose up: self-pity. All he could think was how dare someone do this to me.

  “I still don’t see how any of this is my fault,” said Todd.

  “Okay,” said Jake, and this time his teeth were blades. “Don’t take my word for it.”

  In the distance, Todd could hear a familiar roar.

  “Ask her,” said Jake.

  And there she was, in leather and black, straddling that damn motorbike. She was smiling at him, as if to say Do you get it? Do you get it now?

  She had a knife in her hand. It was sharp, and it dripped.

  She gunned the engine.

  “Run,” said Jake.

  Todd ran. He ran through the stacks and past the shelves. He ran like he’d never run before, like he never thought he could run before. Behind him, the Harley’s engine roared. Silence in the library! Todd thought mirthlessly. He could hear the bike getting nearer by the second. Desperately, he tore through the building, looking for a doorway.

  And then, miracle of miracles, there was a doorway. Todd grabbed the handle. It was stuck. The bike was rounding a corner now. Todd tore at the handle, and it turned. He looked behind him. The bike was bearing down on him now like a missile.

  She grinned.

  Her teeth were white.

  Her teeth were red.

  Todd yanked the door open, leapt through, and slammed it behind him.

  * * *

  The truck was only doing fifty when it hit him but
it splashed him across the sidewalk like paint.

  A small crowd gathered. A man who said he was a doctor bent down.

  “There’s nothing we can do,” he said.

  “Ambulance is on its way,” said a store owner.

  The driver of the truck jumped down from his cab.

  “I saw it all,” said a woman. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  They looked down at the body on the ground. It was still moving.

  “He just jumped out,” said the truck driver. “He just jumped out right in frunna me.”

  * * *

  The Harley and its rider waited in an alley until the paramedics came. They put Todd’s body on a gurney, and placed a sheet over his face.

  The Harley roared away into the night.

  EPILOGUE

  It was a Saturday night in June, 1986, in Madison, Wisconsin. “Live To Tell” by Madonna was number one and a group of college students were talking in a bar.

  “No,” said one of them. He was wearing a greatcoat with the cuffs rolled up and his Ray-Bans were brand new. “Women aren’t like that.”

  “Kevin,” said a girl. She was called Zoe and had just discovered Marlboro Lights. “I am a woman. You need to defer to me on this.”

  “She’s got you there,” said another guy. He was called Lewis and he was uncomfortable in his tight Depeche Mode T-shirt.

  Kevin shrugged. He wasn’t going to defer to someone because of mere facts. Facts were tools, and when tools didn’t work, you discarded them. Like his girlfriend back in Wisconsin.

  Kevin adopted a conciliatory expression.

  “It’s like the guy said…”

  “What guy?” said Lewis.

  Kevin ignored him and took a deep breath.

  “Men were men, her father always said, and women were women. But looking at the flabby old fool now, sitting there in his vest like a soft queen of some race of grubs, she saw that some men were not men.”

  Even Zoe was impressed when Kevin quoted stuff. When he was done, she said, “Wow. What was that from?”

  Kevin looked at her over the top of his Ray-Bans. You are mine, he thought. He didn’t voice that, though. Instead he said, “Whoah! You’re kidding.”