(Trigger WARNING: contains insinuated sexual violence)
The Rewrite
By
LJ Jacobs
He told himself he would have a ten-minute rest, but after two minutes he changed his mind. He couldn’t wait to get to the computer in the nook at the side of the main bedroom. The draw of the art was just too much.
The lovemaking had brought a sweat to his forehead and a heavy breath to his chest, while the wife lay at peace.
The room was dark except for the streetlight which fell through the slits of the blinds and onto the bed, basking the quilt and the mounds of the bodies beneath in prison like bars of illumination and shadow.
He shuffled over and kissed her cool head, then pulled the covers back and stepped out.
The carpet was soft and fluffy between his digits. In the semi darkness of the room, he stepped onto his clothes, which had been thrown at the height of passion. He kicked them out of the way and heard the heavy buckle of his belt hit the side of the bed.
He stopped quickly and looked at the wife.
No reaction.
Good.
He hoped the tap tap tap on the keyboard wouldn’t wake her, either, because he wanted to get to work and finish his new book without being interrupted.
He reached out to the pants and put them on, then went to the nook, sat and turned the desk lamp on. He pushed the power button on the monitor before him. The entire system had been sleeping, but a few taps on the keyboard brought the computer out of its slumber. It hummed like a contented lover. It wasn’t a very environmentally friendly way to leave an electronic appliance, but at least it saved time waiting for the thing to boot up from scratch.
The screen flashed into life and he searched for the folder he wanted. He moved the cursor to the file titled, The Dragons Of Karusia Part 5: The New King.
The New King? That was a joke. There was nothing wrong with the old one. The new king character was as boring as a crossword loving, church going gardener. He was two dimensional and had angered a lot of the fan base.
He right clicked on the digital manuscript and went to the delete option. His finger hovered above the button on the mouse for a moment.
You know you should, he thought to himself. You know it’s crap. It’s out there now in the shops and on book sites so there’s nothing you can do about that, but you should at least pretend like it never happened and move on.
After a few minutes of pondering, he clicked the ‘bye bye’ button, closed his eyes and breathed a heavy sigh.
It’s for the best, he thought. Time to complete the real climax to your most famous work. The publishers should be ashamed of themselves for buying that piece of shit in the first place. It wasn’t worthy of you. Iconic characters were killed off for no real reason and the plot deviated too much from what went before. And that ending was not what the fans deserved. Not after all those years of loyalty.
I’m going to put that right.
He opened a new folder. He would upload the new book minus the last chapter - he would write that here and now, while the morning was quiet and the inspiration from his surroundings was fresh.
The first obstacle he had to overcome before beginning the new book last month was how to bring the deceased characters back from the dead.
He first thought of witchcraft or sorcery as a deus ex machina. It was an easy way to get out of the corner he had painted himself into.
The second obstacle was how to get back to the original timeline of the series. He thought about a prologue that would take all the errors of the last story and turn them on their head.
One thing was for certain… he had to rewrite that poorly received ending - the main criticism of Part 5: The New King.
In the end he decided on the old classic trick - something which would remedy all the other points as well - Part 5 was all a dream. Or, as The Artworld Express review came close to calling it… A Fucking Nightmare.
This new entry would be Caesar Marten’s masterpiece.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a dongle. He pushed it into the front of the computer and waited for the manuscript to appear.
It read… The Dragons of Karusia Part 6: The King’s Victory, the definitive ending to a fantastic fantasy…
That’s what the series needs… its true central hero back.
He then waited patiently for the large eight-hundred-and-fifty-page manuscript to upload to the new folder.
When it finally did, he went straight to the last page and typed Chapter 61: The Final Battle For Karusia.
In the previous novel, the land of Karusia had been destroyed along with the old king. But not this time. He would now take back the city from the invading forces on the back of his dragon, Paljeta, and marry Princess Delainier, who had also perished in Part 5.
He wanted the final chapter to be finished before sunrise, then he would email the whole lot to his editor. He worked for hours and forgot the time, so immersed in the story was he.
Just as he finished the last sentence, there came a noise from downstairs. It sounded like the front door opening. He thought he may have imagined it at first, due in no small part to a lack of sleep, but then he heard the same door shutting.
From below came the sound of a booming voice. “Bonnie? Bonnie? I’m back from comic con. I thought I’d drive through the night and get back early. Are you awake? It’s eight thirty, darling!”
The alarm clock on the night table started to ring, but the wife made no movement. It soon faded.
He quickly finished the grammar check on the final page of the manuscript and attached it to the rest of the new book. He then attached the whole lot to a blank email and sent it to his publisher’s address and clicked on the send icon.
He sat back in the chair and breathed a sigh of relief.
He got up and went into the main bedroom and waited.
The door opened slowly. “Honey? Didn’t you hear me? I’m ho- Who are you? Who the fuck are you?”
The fat semi naked man stood in the middle of the room before the refined gentleman who had just walked in. He glimpsed himself in the wardrobe mirror and suddenly stopped feeling like the author he so desperately wanted to be.
The refined man repeated himself, “I said who the fuck are you?!”
“I’m… Craig Malone, your number one fan. I was you for the night, Mr Marten. I decided that my fan fiction novel was far superior to that last god awful novel you produced in the Karusia series. You’ll thank me later for emailing it from your computer to your publisher. I’m sure the rest of the fans will love it, too.”
The real Caesar Marten looked horrified and angry all at once - his mouth was quivering and his face was red.
“Bonnie, get up! There’s a bloody loon here who thinks he’s me.”
He pulled the quilt back and saw the lifeless naked body of his wife. Her skin was blue, her eyes bulged and her tongue hung outside the mouth like an overindulged leech.
The fat greasy man spoke again. “I thought I would play your husband role and fulfil your marital duties, too, while you were out of town. She didn’t reciprocate at first, until I put my belt around her throat.
“She’s a good, quiet wife - the tap tap tap of the keyboard didn’t bother her at all…
“You can thank me later for getting your career back on track…”