by Z. M. Wilmot
***
A knock awoke him the next morning, and he blearily woke up and rubbed his eyes. Staggering over to the door, he peered out into the face of Greta. Tears ran down her face.
He hurriedly pulled her inside and shut the door behind him. “Greta? What’s wrong, my love?”
She sniffed and rested her head upon his shoulder. “Daniel… is dead, Emilio… he died last night. Just as he was closing the printshop. Someone in the street said the place slowly went dark, and then...” she began sobbing again, and Emilio held her in his arms, his heart growing cold.
“What… happened to them?” he asked hesitantly, fearing he knew the answer already. And the next morning the three were found, no cause of death immediately apparent. Inspectors were, as always, baffled.
“The bodies… are in the morgue… they said… the inspectors… that there was no outward way to tell how they’d died. They just… died. Very quickly.”
Beautiful, said a voice in the author’s head.
This cannot be, the author thought to himself. Just a coincidence…
That’s right, the voice said soothingly. A coincidence.
Emilio nodded slightly to himself and hugged Greta harder. Daniel had been a good friend to them both. Emilio’s shock was still too great for grief at the death of a friend, and it was that which allowed him to comfort Greta. She stayed with him for several hours, until she said that she must go, and left.
Emilio spent the next few minutes in silence, staring at the typewriter before him.
She distracts you, the voice said. See how your story is yet unfinished? Had you but been writing instead of trying to comfort her, your greatest achievement could have been completed!
Emilio nodded slowly, the hinges on his mind slowly beginning to fall off. “Yes… I must concentrate and focus. She must be removed. But first… the story.”
And with that, Emilio again lost himself in the Words. As he reviewed what he had written so far, he decided that something was not right. The order was all wrong; the printshop attack should occur just before the murder in the graveyard, not the other way around. Mr. D’Arcy shuffled around his papers until the order was correct, and began to retype the pages so that the reordering would be smooth and flawless. After due consideration, Emilio also tweaked the identity of the gravestone Emile laid his flower down upon. The flower was laid upon the grave of the printshop owner, not his mother.