The Green-Eyed Monster
by Mike Robinson

EXCERPT

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Writer’s Block

The phone rings, but he ignores it.

Martin Smith has never had a case this bad before, and it scares him raw. It is a common experience for authors to suffer some sort of writer’s block every now and then, a concrete wall that only grows higher and stronger with each thought launched its way. But right now, as he stands alone in the darkness of his apartment and listens to his stomach combat an onslaught of aspirin, he feels as if someone has just switched off the brain-faucet for good.

…Riiiing…

And, true to Murphy’s law, it had to happen at the worst time. He sits here now, no longer able to contain his emotion as his mind wades through the past. It had been a lesson of his parents to hold everything back, to never let one’s feelings bleed into reason and decency. Now, nothing seems to matter anymore. The world doesn’t matter anymore.

Worst time – worst time.

Why now?

John Becker had played the stalking and attempted murder card and lost. The police had hauled Martin Smith into the Twilight Falls Sheriff’s Office and punched him full of meaningless questions. But in the end, the evidence was weighed and he was released; and rightly so, given the jealous hack had attacked him in his own home. There couldn’t have been a more appropriate ending to such a story.

…Riiiing…

So why the emptiness? Why the dry faucet? The crown sits only on his head now. The kingdom stretches before him, but it is barren and uninteresting and fraught with arduous uphill slopes.

Finally the phone ceases its ringing, giving him peace.

He remembers the Old Man, and the minute that had stretched forever between that minute and the next. Inside the seconds and milliseconds he’d discovered eternity.

But he still does not believe what the Old Man said.

He opens a small drawer and begins digging through a pile of old newspaper articles. They represent his heyday. Although the mid-thirties were supposed to kick-start a man’s most productive period, it had brought about the end of Smith’s. In the last few years he’d written more novels than he could care to count, each one surpassing the other in the eyes of even the frostiest of critics. And his public…well, his public would gobble down anything he tossed them. Someone up there had left the faucet on for quite a while.

You’re like a machine, Martin, his mother had chimed as she leafed through a twenty-page short story he’d written in fifth grade. You’re going to be brilliant; you’re going to be famous. Never let anyone get in your way.

He hadn’t let that happen. And true to the Old Man’s words, now that Becker had been taken care of, the death of his talents seems to have joined him in the adjacent grave. Looking at the newspaper cut-outs only depresses him further, as the once-gleaming ink proclaims through encrusted yellow age “The 20th Century’s Edgar Allen Poe!” or “One of America’s Most Promising Authors.” The headlines only fed his widespread adoration, for which he was grateful, yet there was the occasional tainted paragraph that held a reference (or, even worse, a comparison) to the late John Becker.

He’d hastily crossed those out. They were now nothing but inky tumbleweeds splattered onto newsprint.

Smith gathers a chunk of old book reviews and hums through them like a flip book. Pictures of him smile back, grainy mirrors to better days, as do the images of him meeting fans at the rare times he did a book signing. How good those times had been. The nation had hungrily awaited every story off his imagination’s assembly line, nothing but beggars outstretching their hands to the wealthy and powerful passerby. Becker and his phantom followers would say otherwise, but Smith likes to think he knew the truth, even if it rested unrealized in some Mariana trench in Becker. His work was simply not as appreciated as Smith’s, and now he is never to write again.

Never.

Near the bottom of the pile lies a small stack of Bestseller Lists, all arranged in chronological order. They had been taken mostly from Food for Thought, a literary magazine based in Twilight Falls and the only hint of quality in the racks of supermarket celebrity tabloids. Smith has saved all the lists where his books rest in the #1 spot, but knew that it had been a constant war with John Becker. He remembers thrusting open the weekly issues of Food for Thought, shutting his eyes tight until they ached and landing himself on page seventy-two.

And it never failed; one week John Becker would nab the top spot, and the next Smith’s novel would be sitting just above it, with Becker’s at #2. As many a columnist had put it, there was an almost otherworldly sense to the way Becker and Smith wielded the language, bringing their creations to life one hair-raising word after another. Both styles were extraordinarily similar, and both of their “magnum opus” works had followed the exploits of a young man growing up surrounded by the inescapable horrors of his dreams. Both novels were considered to be revolutionary insights into the human psyche, all the while prickling every spine with a prose that never ceased its rampaging white-water terror.

Naturally, the concept of them writing a novel together had certainly clouded every internet rumor bank or newspaper editorial. They all supported the idea, completely unaware of the bitter bear trap perpetually clamped on both author’s minds.

Mr. Smith? He is nothing but a sheep that follows the leader, Becker would snarl in interviews. My next novel will be unlike anything ever seen.

Their works had become steadily more ambitious with each passing year – and steadily darker. Having begun with short noir detective stories in high school and college, their obsession to outdo one another had taken their writings from mysteries to boundless nightmares that, for many people, would not end when the bookmark was in. Some refused to buy any of their novels, while others tasted a few and swore off them for life. There had even been a woman who’d sued Martin Smith with claims of having been terrorized by a creature from one of his novels. The evidence was several cuts on her arm and neck and a bizarre fluid on her carpet that she insisted was the thing’s blood after feeding it two bullets. Fortunately for Smith, the woman was found to have a history of mental health problems, and Judge Hardwick had come to the conclusion that she must’ve planted the evidence for attention, fame and, most importantly, the dough. Lab analysis of the sticky carpet fluid had come back inconclusive.

In that eternal minute, the Old Man had told him of his power, a power that reached further than even he could ever have imagined. But it was too late now. He had failed; shaved the power bald.

Ah, but we weren’t going to listen to good ol’ Grandfather, were we?

He pops another aspirin, nestles it between his teeth and bites down. The pills are helping to calm the drumbeats in his temples, but not soothe the rest of his body. He can’t even recall a time when he’d been truly relaxed; maybe that state of mind had never even existed while he was conscious, that the only time he’d truly been rested was while babbling away in a bassinet. For even his dreams were scarred by his own creations, all staring at him through gilded eyes, and scarcely had there been a time when Martin Smith didn’t awaken with muscles cemented by tension.

A bath would do him good right about now. Yes, a bath. He makes his way through the winding corridors and enter the bathroom. The tub sits in the back, waiting.

Smith turns the knob and water vomits out into the tub. Why couldn’t it be this easy? It certainly had been before.

He leaves the bathroom and heads to the kitchen. Glancing at the clock, he sees it’s almost ten to one. It is getting late: Monday is dead and has given birth to Tuesday, yet he still has the remnants of the Becker dinner to clean up. It had been exactly a week now since Becker had turned the friendly invite into a death match, since the Old Man and the eternal moment thereafter, and Martin still has not cleaned the glasses and washed the dishes and swatted the flies that hum over the last morsels of cold pasta.

He doesn’t think he’ll ever get to them.

On the floor lies the small box his father had given him, its top flapped open in a wooden scream, frozen in time. Its lone content has no use any more – it has served its purpose well. Smith still remembers the day his father had presented the gift to him. You will use this when the time is right, Marty. Take care with it. This is in case you ever fall into that quicksand we regular folks call life.

Regular folks. Yes. People like the Beckers and Smiths were regular folks. He was not. He was their offspring, but the relationship ended there. As he grew, he realized how frail his mother and father actually were, not so much in their physical frame but more so in the mental. Their minds were equipped to handle taxes and shopping and nothing much else, to create in the most rudimentary sense, and it was a purpose that served only to accentuate the glory of Smith’s greater purpose.

That is why they were dead, too.

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