Unfettered III

  He stood looking at that blank sheet and thought about his own few pieces of fiction. He thought about how his dad seemed so mildly to encourage him to write. He thought, too, about Professor Brentley and his tangents. Steve tossed “Let’s All Wear Coxcombs” onto his bed, pages fluttering against the staple. Then he took four quick steps, slammed his Coke onto his desk, and seized that piece of college-ruled paper. He turned it over once, then crumpled it viciously.

  “There. How’s that feel? Am I all paid now, Mr. Paper Man?” Steve squeezed harder and harder on the crumpled ball, and then threw it across his room toward the can. He missed miserably. But the point had been made. He’d do as he damn well pleased. Always did. Still, his anger hadn’t bled out the frustration. It sat mute and heavy on him: he still wasn’t writing.

  When he looked down at his desk, he saw that he’d spilled Coke everywhere. Almost right into his keyboard.

  “Shit.” He picked up an unlaundered shirt and wiped it up. Then he sat heavily in his rolling office chair and stared at the screen. It was lifeless and lackluster. Like my own writing, he thought. The screen was dust-covered to boot.

  “Revision, huh. I can do revision.” He booted up his system and clicked into Word. He chose the filename Coxcomb and launched review mode. Then he turned on his printer. It startled him at first, that tiny, siren-like sound, screaming at a high C. The red “no paper” light strobed with the sound.

  “Wouldn’t you know,” Steve said to the blinking red light, which looked like a miniature of a car hazard light. He fetched a new ream of paper. As he ran it into the tray, one hand slipped.

  “Ouch, dammit.” Steve pulled his hand back and had sliced a neat groove into his third finger. Blood began to seep through the cut. “Paper cuts are the worst,” he muttered.

  A few drops escaped before he clamped it off. He made a cursory glance at the paper, silently indignant at its seeming conspiracy against him, and saw that the top sheets had red splashed polka dots. Rather Jackson Pollock, he thought bitterly and exited to get a Band-Aid.

  He returned in better spirits. He always felt better when he’d decided to write, even if it was revision. And even if it was for Professor Brentley. Deciding was the hard part. The rest was okay. And he’d decided. Hot damn!

  He sat again, and even with a bandaged finger, he meant to show Professor Brentley a thing or two. He went at it. His thoughts formed clearly, logic came nicely, thank you. Tangents deleted, and insights abounding. Hot damn, indeed. He spent four straight hours, which actually felt like four minutes. The writing just went well, and when it was done he felt cleansed. No more guilt. He might even try a new story, if he could get an idea.

  He punched up the print mode and almost ran the document before remembering the stained sheets. He reached to remove them, but the paper was clean. “I thought there was blood on it,” he said to himself. But he turned the paper back in and began printing “Let’s All Wear Coxcombs: Revisited.” He got up to go downstairs while it printed. Stopped. Picked up the crumpled ball of paper and plopped it into his oversize cola bottle trash receptacle on his way out, with nary a thought of the paper man.

  “That was a mistake, my friend.”

  Steve opened his eyes. There was a crumpling sound, or rather an uncrumpling sound, coming from behind him and to the left. He turned onto his side and pushed himself partway up. There was nothing for a moment, and then the paper man’s short arms curled over the lip of the trash can. He lifted himself out, actually grunting minutely. He was creased everywhere. But all the creases gave him a surreal quality, kind of like personality.

  “Ah, shit,” Steve muttered, rolling over onto his back again.

  “’Ah, shit’, yourself. You don’t seem to take my meaning. On top of that, you do this to me.” He hopped down onto the floor, and Steve heard the crickle-crinkle of his short gait toward his bed. He was afraid all of a sudden. He didn’t know what he thought an eleven-inch piece of paper could do to him, but he thought it could do something, would do something. And he suddenly didn’t care for being a writer or writing, or paper.

  “You’re a lazy ass, and an asshole. And goddamn if you aren’t starting to piss me off.”

  As the paper man pulled himself onto Steve’s bed, Steve said, “What? I thought I—”

  “You thought you what? Wrote?” the paper man interjected. “Putting multisyllabic hogwash together, linked up by ‘Thus’ and ‘Therefore’ and ‘Whereas.’ You suppose you had thoughts never before entertained and expanded on? Wanted to contribute to the body of knowledge known as the corpus Shakespeare, did you?” There was a flat, merciless tone in the paper man’s voice. He wasn’t at all amusing to Steve tonight. “You’re a fuck, Steve Kreig, a real righteous fuck. Starting to buy into your own horseshit.” The paper man’s sullen tone began to grow more fevered, more furious. “But, more than that, you don’t seem able to understand the proper line of credit. So, let me tell you something—”

  “No, let me tell you,” Steve interrupted with his own sudden anger. No surprise on the paper man’s non-face. “I don’t give a hang for that paper, or Professor Brentley and his Oxford education. But I got my share of pride, and I could hear the patronage in his voice when he asked for a revision. Not directly patronizing, but like he knows what everyone else doesn’t. So I just decided to put it to him. Told him I know all right.”

  There was a short pause where the paper man might have smiled if he’d had a mouth.

  “Well there you go. Be damned if that isn’t the Steve I wanted to hear.” The paper man walked across Steve’s chest and climbed onto the desk.

  A little of the comedy in the paper man, as he hefted his featherlight body onto the desk, eased into him.

  “You talk like you know me,” Steve said, anger fading fast.

  “Sure. Known you since you penned “Dark Child” back in ‘86. Senior that year weren’t you?” The paper man had once again gained his place atop Steve’s crappy shop-built PC. Right between Einstein’s eyes.

  “Yeah, I wrote it at work. How’d you know?” Steve was sincerely puzzled. Though why he might be would later astound him.

  “Was there my boy, was there. Got a working relationship with quite a few people to be frank. Course, some I like better than others, and some are much more accommodating that. But I’m there at the first, as well as the last.” As he spoke Steve noticed that the wrinkles were pressing themselves out. Slowly, but surely. “There’s a bit of magic with the first moment someone touches pen to paper, or fingers to keys, for something other than school, work, or money. Those things want to bleed feeling out of writing, Steve. But when it’s true, the way the crack of dawn is true, or a child’s prayer is true, well, then, it starts a life. Not really a writer’s life, not the way that beast more often than not turns out. But it starts a life. A way of turning things in the mind. Kind of a need too. But then, you can push that thing way back if you try.” The paper man manipulated his little tube body and half-cylinder legs into a sitting position, his legs hanging down over the edge of his monitor.

  And so much sense. The little guy, which Steve was beginning to equate with conscience, and which Steve thought could only have real dominion in sleep, was making so much sense.

  “It’s a bitter irony, I suppose. Or at least, an irony. That thing is alive, very much like a pet, a good pet like a dog. But if you push it back, try to forget about it, it eats you. Makes you know you’re unhappy, but isn’t got the power to force you to feed it.” The paper man leaned forward an inch, seriousness practically written across his lines. “It’s writing, Steve. Just do it, that’s all, just do it.”

  Steve saw that all the wrinkles were gone now, save one that ran through the paper man’s single flat eye.

  If it hadn’t been abundantly clear last night, it was now. But SOS (same old situation). I want to write. I need to write. But what do I write. Maybe he didn’t understand after all. It made him feel pretty miserable too. Because now that life that the
paper man had spoken of, the one Steve had sealed away, was open, and bleeding freely.

  In a small voice, with his eyes turned toward the floor, Steve said, “What if I can’t?”

  “Now there’s a disappointment, my friend. There’s a real ass-licking disappointment. I sure hope there’s more to you than that.” Steve listened to a voice mixed with honest anger and disarming sadness. But it had no head to shake in disheartened reproof.

  Steve would not look at the paper man. He was a mock right down to his material component: paper. It was a long time before sleep claimed Steve’s embittered mind.

  The paper man said no more. A final ka-thop sounded as the last crease in the paper man’s eye pushed straight.

  Steve awoke feeling glum. The dream was so vivid still. And so absolutely dead on. He ran a hand through his hair and sat up. He saw but one thing: a perfectly uncrumpled piece of college-ruled on top of his computer. Maybe it wasn’t a dream after all, he thought. But the truth was he’d already decided the paper man was real enough.

  Steve had been working at a fever pace almost since he’d gotten up. He’d felt dreary, pessimistic, and a little tired. He hadn’t stopped to eat, or take his ritualized morning shit, or anything. He’d started to write and he hadn’t stopped, hadn’t wanted to stop, had, in fact, been afraid to stop. There was a piece of paper, no wrinkles, laying quietly beside him on his desk.

  By two o’clock he had a good twelve pages of “Under the Wood” hammered out. It was the idea he’d had the day before on the way to school: the slavering beast. Somehow it found him again and had demanded to be written. And Steve thought it was coming along pretty well. He always felt better when he was writing. No, amend that, he felt when he was writing—it was the only time he ever really did.

  By two-thirty he had cramps so bad in his hands that he had to stop. That was welcome. It was a physical side effect of writing. Some pain relieves.

  He switched off the power after saving the document under filename Slaver. Now what? he thought, then realized he’d missed school. Not just missed it, completely forgotten about it. He didn’t mind. Losing himself in a story was perfectly acceptable, even admirable, as far as he was concerned. He did have one errand at the university, though. He had to deliver to Professor Brentley the revision he’d promised him. He’d do it after office hours so he didn’t have to see the man. Less hassle.

  Ron had passed by Steve’s door that morning ready to rap at it and let his son know he was late for class. But he hadn’t. He’d heard the hollow echo of keys from behind the door, and hoped it was writing, not homework, his son was doing. And the thought that a crazy dream about a paper man might have lit a fire under his son’s ass, that he was now starting to write again because of it, tickled him to death. If only I’d had a paper man, Ron mused. In any event, it was the sole reason for his chipper mood all day long. And now, as he pulled into the oil-stained driveway, which usually reminded him of his ex-wife’s ratty old Corolla, he wanted nothing more than to hear those keys clacking from his kid’s room and maybe take a peak in at the next Asimov.

  What Ron got was a disenchanted, disheveled picture of his boy-author.

  “Hey pal, you don’t look too good,” Ron said, looking at Steve sitting at the kitchen table with about a dozen sheets of printed paper in his hands and an open bottle of Coke in front of him.

  “You’re not winning any contests,” Steve said, still looking at the story in his hands.

  “What’re you reading?” Ron asked with a vague sense that it was the fruit of his boy’s latest literary efforts.

  “Shit, Dad, pure shit.” Steve dropped the manuscript into a slight fan configuration on the kitchen table. He sat back and blew out an exhausted breath. “It’s a story I just started working on, but it isn’t going anyplace. God, I really didn’t think it was that bad.” He picked up the Coke, took a pull, and grimaced. “Coke’s even gone flat.”

  “You mind?” Ron queried his son. He wanted to see what could be so bad. His mind was telling him that the author-critic was always overly dramatic.

  “Help yourself, but don’t expect much,” Steve answered, drinking more of his flat soda.

  Ron read it, all twelve and a half pages, and hated to concur with his son’s assessment of “Under the Wood,” but he did. The story was dry. The slavering beast in it was cartoonish. Steve sat watching the sky cloud over outside, watching his dad turn pages.

  Ron finished. “It’s not that bad.”

  “Like hell. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever done, and that’s saying something.” Steve had finished his drink and got up to return it to the rack of empty bottles.

  As Steve’s dad, Ron wanted to be reassuring, positive, supportive, but he didn’t want to pretend, either. That would be more damaging. The story wasn’t very good. Of course, it wasn’t done. But it didn’t seem to have anyplace to go. Not in any literary sort of way. Ron could give a damn less about literary levels of appreciation. The story just didn’t make you want to finish. So Ron didn’t know what to tell his son. The truth at an angle, he decided.

  “I do like your other stories better, but I wouldn’t give up on this one. I think you could do a lot with it.” That wasn’t too bad.

  Steve knew the truth at an angle, but the other thing Ron said seemed to land, as if it was something he’d stepped past in his need to write again: the work.

  “You always have to write out the clots,” Steve muttered. “Maybe you don’t forget how to ride a bike, but you sure as hell don’t do it well after years of driving a car.”

  Steve hadn’t written for months. How had he expected to mount that keyboard and churn out publishable, or even readable, fiction the first time out. So Ron had done it after all. He’d steered his boy back to brass tacks.

  “Thanks, Dad,” Steve said with quiet sincerity.

  “So,” Ron asked, “you gonna go do something with it?”

  “Yeah, you bet your ass I will. Give me that.” Ron handed the pages to his son and watched him head back up the stairs to his room. The keys echoed down to him after a few minutes. He smiled and thought for the first time that maybe he was doing okay by his boy without his aerobically conditioned ex-wife.

  “It’s shit, Steve, and you know it’s shit.” The incessant papery voice startled Steve out of his dream. He’d been dreaming of winning the Pulitzer. The first man to do it with a piece of horror fiction. And in a banquet hall, giving his acceptance speech, all he’d been able to say is “How should I presume? How should I presume? HOW SHOULD I PRESUME?!”

  “C’mon, Steve, I think I may have to walk you through this once. You’ve gotten hopelessly out of practice.”

  Steve opened his eyes and saw the paper man standing next to the monitor near the power switch. The monitor was humming softly and glowing a mellow blue. The color caught on the paper man’s featureless face and made it look ghoulish. This was all too fucking crazy, too . . . scary. Gooseflesh rose on Steve’s neck.

  “But I’ve been working, dammit, really!” He stared at the paper man, who remained motionless. There was something predatory about him tonight. It might have been the blue computer screen and its witch-light, but the paper man was not a grouchy yet well-meaning goad anymore. He was here for something, and there was a dreadful purpose in him. His one eye was glowering and hateful. And it was all the worse because the paper man didn’t breath. If it had ever been funny, the way he crinkled, the way he unwrinkled himself, the size, the tiny mouthless voice, it wasn’t funny any longer. And the blank look it gave Steve was more horrid, more pitiless, than any fanged or screeching creature could have managed. Steve was frightened. Goddamn frightened. The paper man was small, but he instilled a feeling of power. Holy hell, a piece of paper that was alive! What was he capable of?

  “Get your ass up and let’s get started,” the paper man said with a slightly lower and more measured voice.

  Steve obeyed without discussion. He knew the paper man meant to show him how to writ
e. And he meant now. Steve sat in his rolling swivel chair in his boxers.

  The blue light spread onto Steve’s face, basking him in a hellish luminescence. It made him feel sluggish and the room feel kind of dead. The paper man still hadn’t moved.

  “Give me your hand,” the paper man said with that imperative, calculated voice.

  Steve did so, bringing it up toward the paper man slowly, palm upraised.

  The paper man lifted one short arm and slowly cut a groove in Steve’s first finger. The pain was exquisite. The paper man’s arm sliced easily down into his flesh with a searing heat. He pulled his paper edge across the skin, a hot, uncomfortable friction biting the blood. The paper man seesawed his arm back out of Steve’s finger and the blood welled up.

  “Now, hold it over the paper.” Steve did as he was told, spellbound, slivers of pain still rising through his arm. But he was getting it. There were dues to be paid. And he understood why his attempts at “Under the Wood” had failed. So he obeyed, his eyes glowing with the light from the monitor. Drops of blood fell onto the computer paper for a long time.

  As he drifted away he heard, “One great big dilly of a dent, you bet. Just remember who you owe. There’s dues, Steve.”

  The next morning Steve slept late. When he finally awoke he remembered the paper man in the pale blue light and he shuddered once under the covers. Then he jerked his head and saw that one single piece of fucking college-ruled paper on his keyboard.