The Beast of Rose Valley
Page 24
Gregory sighed. “Okay, okay, enough with the lectures. What is it?” He accepted the large, bulky box, and ripped the gift-wrap paper away to reveal the typewriter. The moment became an eternity.
“Breathe, boy, breathe,” his mother said, then turned to his father. “Baby, I think he likes it.”
“I think you’re right. Gregory, breathe, knucklehead.”
Gregory managed to stammer, “I just... I can’t.... I can’t believe this, you guys. It’s just what I wanted. I love you guys.”
His mom beamed. “We love you too, sweetheart. We’ll let you two be alone to get acquainted. Happy birthday, baby.”
“Yeah, happy birthday, knucklehead.”
“Thanks, Mom. Thanks, Dad.”
Gregory’s jaw hung nearly to the ground and tears pooled in his eyes. Without looking away from the amazing thing, he ripped a sheet of paper from his diary, ran it into the machine, and began to type.
Diary entry #467
Hot damn, a typewriter! Happy birthday, indeed, Mom and Dad. Happy birthday, indeed.
You’re beautiful—a little tattered and beaten, but a thing of sheer pulchritude. Hypnotizing, you are. You’re the key to my self-chosen future. You’re my friend. Now, what shall I call you? What would be your name? Later. First, I must care for you with hands like a feather. Alluring, you are. Stimulating! Unquestionable pulchritude! What thought-yanking motivation.
I now shall use my bleeding number-two pencils as a guide for organizing my thoughts, and not as a necessity. I’m now heavily armed to a T. I’m ready to venture deep into my chosen shtick. I’m armed with an arsenal in comparison to none.
Writing is my destiny!
“You and I forever; you and I together....”
Fourteen-year-old Gregory jumped. His head snapped up and he looked around the room. The voice had broken his focus like a whip-crack. He’d been fully immersed with his new typewriter.
“What?” he blurted out, his heart pounding with fear from the voice. There was no one in the room.
“You and I forever; you and I together....”
“Who’s saying that?” Gregory snapped, his heart beating so quickly that his Flash Gordon T-shirt vibrated on his chest.
The voice came directly from in front of him. “You and I forever; you and I together....”
Gregory looked at his typewriter in fear and curiosity. “My God, is that you?”
He started typing again.
Diary Entry #468
A sudden change of events has just wickedly set the surface cortexes of my mind afire. I thought it nothing at first, perhaps just more of my continuously morbid thoughts, but....
This gift of mine has spoken to me.
Oh, yes, I will be a great writer. The words spoken from my gift confirm it. This can only be the beginning of an unstoppable relationship.
Writing is my destiny!
Gregory tossed the dusty old journal back onto the shelf, chiding himself for the pause from his work. He fed another sheet of paper to Buford and began typing away, feverishly filled with new inspiration.
On the other side of Gregory’s office door, Jamie Stillingsworth knocked lightly to get his attention. Growing frustrated, she took a deep breath and knocked again. She’d been attempting to coerce her husband out of his lair for fifteen minutes now, because he had a book signing to attend, but as usual, Gregory remained immersed in the completion of his new novel.
Under normal circumstances, Jamie knew not to disturb Gregory. She prided herself on her accommodation of his work habits. While most authors’ wives longed to see their husbands look upon them with the same passion they bestowed upon each new manuscript, Jamie had adapted to the detachment and frequent eccentricities of this relationship. If she hadn’t been able to do so, she suspected there would be no relationship.
She figured all writers had certain traditions and superstitions that made up the Chi, or energy force, of their work, as did anyone in any career. The curse on the family of Bruce Lee, she recalled, had created havoc within the lives of himself, his father, and possibly his son. In the Lees’ world, one followed ritualistic traditions passed down through the generations. These traditions stayed one’s existence. Actors tended to live psychologically-split lives in order to do their jobs, another example of queer tradition through craft, yet however mentally disturbing this may have been, they usually lived their lives without a hitch.
Jamie knew Gregory’s traditions, the decades-driven superstitions he indulged in every time he closed his office door. In fact, she knew his traditions almost too well, for she breathed his work in the same manner he did, albeit to a lesser degree. She was more than simply his wife, which she knew all too well. She was the last piece of a highly complex puzzle, and the guiding force that kept him together.
It certainly hadn’t been easy. Often lonely, she’d started to consider bringing up the “kid question,” but something always told her to wait. The words remained buried behind the lips that always held a smile for her husband.
An exemplary and dedicated wife, Jamie had become something of a secondhand author herself, understanding all the peculiar writer’s quirks and boundaries. Thus, as she raised her fist to knock on the door once more, she frowned at the taboo.
But this is different.
Gregory’s latest book, Rapture in Season, had entered its fourth reprint.
Gregory must go to this signing.
Lost in his thoughts, Gregory ignored the knocking and tapped away at the typewriter.
The blood drips slowly from the fingertips of the carcass, flooding the canvas with red....
The knocking persisted, but hardly aware of the sound, Gregory stayed immersed in his story.
Dr. Nuserus stands there in a state of shock, overlooking the dangling body. The blame could not be his own! He holds a blood-streaked axe in his hands, with bits and pieces of rotting flesh hanging from the sharp blade. Suddenly—
The pounding outside his door finally distracted Gregory enough to elicit a response. “Honey,” he called, “give me a minute, please. I have to finish this.”
Jamie responded in a frustrated tone. “But we’re going to be late for the signing.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Gregory muttered to himself, still lost in his emerging novel.
Detectives Young and Fox bust through the door with the SWAT team at their heels, pointing their weapons straight at Dr. Nuserus’s back.
“Drop the axe and get the fuck down on your knees,” Fox shouts.
Dr. Nuserus turns around—
Jamie’s loud, perturbed sigh came through the door. “Honey, come on.”
—slowly, looking as though he’s lost his mind, draped in blood and still bearing the axe.
“Put the axe down, you crazy son-of-a-bitch,” Young warns.
Dr. Nuserus begins to scream at the top of his lungs. He lifts the axe and charges the detectives.
At once, the whole SWAT team, along with Young and Fox, unload a series of shots into him. The gunfire that rang out was so deafening that it drowned out the sound of the bullets violently penetrating his flesh.
Little Cary Times, Dr. Nuserus’s most recent captive, kneels frightened in the corner.
Detective Young picks her up with gentle ease and carries her out the door. “It’s going to be okay,” he says as Cary, still shaking with fear, grasps his shirt collar and lays her head on his shoulder. “The monster’s dead.”
“Thank you,” Cary’s sweet voice whispers in his ear.
Detective Young manages a grin, relieved that the monster is off the streets. The case that has taken them eight years to close is at its final hour.
He who writes is the martyr, seen through the eyes of the unassuming doll.
THE END
“That’s another one for the record books,” Gregory told himself with a sigh of great satisfaction. He rose from his chair, shuffled across the room, and opened his office door to a beauty far more magnificent than the famed
Mona Lisa.
Jamie, his wife of fifteen wonderful, love-bent years, stood at the door adorned in a shimmering evening gown, and a black gloss of hair lay gently upon her creamy skin.
Gregory allowed himself a moment to admire the fantastic beauty before him: eyes of subtle strength, legs and physique reminiscent of an angelic swan, the energizer of Gregory’s world, his power pack, his Wonder Woman, his Sada, with the soothing voice of a songbird. She was his reason, his life, and his world.
The glow in his heart for this woman hadn’t faded a bit throughout their marriage; gazing on her now, it was just as radiant as ever. Impulsively, he enfolded her in his arms and showered her with kisses, then danced her around the hallway in a foolish display of affection. Her delighted laughter was a joy to his ears and a chime in his heart.
In Gregory’s world, Jamie fit completely: full-time proofreader, personal attorney, and business-affairs liaison. These roles she served totally of her own volition, primarily because she trusted no one else to handle his fiscal properties without projecting personal agendas that could prove dangerous. In addition, she seemed to hold an ecstatic love for reading his work, and an even deeper love for Gregory himself.
Not so very long ago, she’d been a kick-ass defense attorney with a master’s degree from Mississippi State University. During her stint as a law major, she minored in technical literature. Upon completion of her master’s, she went on to obtain her law degree at Harvard.
She and Gregory had been an on-again, off-again couple since a mutual friend had initiated their meeting in college. After Jamie had finished school, the two decided to take their relationship to the next level. Following Jamie’s graduation, they got engaged, but she had insisted they not jump the broom until she’d taken and passed the bar exam.
Gregory fretted not, knowing her passion for law was as intense as his own love of writing. He fully understood the meaning of personal goals, and he had marveled at the commitment in her eyes.
She brought him back to the moment with an adoring grin. “Rack one up for the record books, huh, honey?”
“How’d you guess?”
“Funny. Now, we have to get moving. Your signing’s in less than an hour.”
“Okay, okay.” Gregory sighed, gently allowing her body to slide from his embrace.
He paused to lovingly brush a strand of hair from her face, tucking it behind her right ear. The moment seemed to stand still, and the universe balanced itself within this one frame. Their eyes locked and their hearts seemed to beat in unison.
The moment ended, and with a sorry attempt at humor, Gregory drew his right foot up, paused dramatically, and then skipped off to the bedroom like Tom in the infamous Tom and Jerry cartoons.
Jamie smiled, feeling a glow in her heart as she watched him. Her love for this marvel of a novelist was as permanent as a diamond, with all the beauty contained in its meaning and purpose. Every movement, touch, smile, and gesture was enough to make her day, her love for this man like a fairy-tale romance.
While she waited for him to dress, she wandered into his office and started to read the end of his newly finished project. She stood flabbergasted as she turned page after page, smiling from ear to ear.
Moments later, from the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of a figure leaning with one shoulder against the office door, and jumped.
“Gregory,” she scolded, holding a hand over her thumping heart. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.”
All suited up, her husband looked as if he’d stepped right out of a current edition of GQ. He stood before her in his double-breasted, pearl-black tailored Armani suit.
Looking at him, Jamie wondered if she’d be able to make it through the night at the side of this “sexual beast,” as she would affectionately refer to him.
“I’m sorry.” Gregory smiled but did not appear apologetic. “I just didn’t want to disturb you.” He pulled back his perfectly smooth printed sleeve to reveal gold custom-printed cuff links, a gift from Jamie upon his last publication, and looked at his wristwatch. “You ready?”
“Yes, let’s go. I don’t know where you would be without me, Gregory.”
“You know,” he told her gently, “I was just thinking the same thing, sweetheart.”
They intertwined their fingers and shared a brief, sweet kiss before heading downstairs and out of the house.
---End of Special Sneak Preview---
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