The Author Behind the Screen Read online

  Chapter 3

  Emily woke up to the gentle sound of distant traffic.

  She rolled over and checked her alarm clock, which had been more clock than alarm recently. 1pm. She had slept for a solid 8 hours which was more than she had slept for in a few days. She sat up in bed, adjusted her shoulder-length dark brown hair and straightened her glasses on her face. She hadn't washed in a couple of days, so she decided that now was the best time to clean up. Besides, she wanted to type up the notes she made when she was remembering Sam's last day. The least she could do was make herself presentable when documenting their last day together.

  The shower was hot, and the steam had filled the bathroom by the time she had finished. She brushed her teeth, flossed, and dried herself off. Next, she got dressed. She put on a pair of jeans, a cute cat T-shirt and a thick woolen sweater – one of Sam's old ones she had stolen from him a couple of years ago. After she was dressed, she opened her perfume drawer and took out her bottle of Addiction. ‘This was the one,’ she thought, giving herself a quick spray of the perfume. After that she headed downstairs and fixed herself a quick lunch of scrambled eggs on avocado toast and a mug of tea. She was a creature of habit, and the simple things like food and smells helped to keep her sane and moving forward.

  She sat down in front of her laptop, which was still on from earlier, and began drawing up a rough plot. She wanted to write about her husband’s last day in the best way she knew how – through a story. Emily was a firm believer in creating a cohesive and believable plot, and it’s something she always harped on about to her coaching clients.

  Whenever she was interviewed on a podcast or on the internet, and someone asked her what the secret to her captivating stories were, she would always reply with an answer like this:

  “The most important thing is definitely the plot. A good story needs a plot as much as it needs words. Without a plot, your words will never become a story. Your plot acts as a road map, so your words can become something at the final destination. And this is what makes fiction different from real life. You see, real life has no rules. Anything can happen at any time. Real life doesn't have to answer to anyone. A fictional story is different. It has rules. It has people to answer to. It has to be believable to the point that the person reading it believes it could happen. You need to make your fiction so good that it could be real life. And to do that, you need a good plot."

  After mapping out her plot, she got to work. It felt amazing. For the first time in months, her fingers were dancing over the keys. Words poured onto the page. First sentences, and then paragraphs. The cursor only blinked when Emily paused for a second to think of the next part to write. She was in her element. With each word that she wrote she felt more alive.

  Suddenly, she was documenting each minute of that morning with Sam. How his brown hair stuck up at the back when he woke up. How he was in desperate need of a haircut. How she lay on her side in the bed with her back to Sam waiting for him to put his phone down and make the morning coffee. Her eyes teared up when she described their conversation as Sam was getting out of the shower. Sam saying “Babe, I won’t be too late back today. We have an important client meeting, but then I just need to sign some papers and I’ll be outta there” rang around the room as she wrote it.

  Saving her work, she decided it was time for another drink. The sun was retreating behind the clouds and it was getting darker outside, so Emily turned on the kitchen light as the kettle was boiling. She threw a teabag in the mug and waited. ‘These teabags are really good,’ she thought to herself. ‘I’ll have to ask Kyle where he got them.’

  “Ah… Kyle!” She said out loud. She had completely forgotten about their arrangement to go out to eat for dinner. She checked her phone and saw that it was 4pm and he hadn’t called her, so she assumed that Kyle was probably busy or had also forgotten. She felt a little deflated, but she also wanted to continue writing her story.

  With her mug in hand, she sat back down at her laptop, and within a few minutes her fingers were tap-dancing across the keys again. She continued describing the morning up until the point that Sam left. That was a difficult scene to write. The lingering kiss. The comment about the perfume. The closing of the door.

  She sat back in her chair and sighed. ‘That’s where the story ends,’ she thought. But it wasn’t. She still had the most difficult part to face. The murder.

  She finished her tea. This was a big area of conflict for Emily. She couldn’t say that her husband had died. He had been killed. Murdered. He was supposed to die after spending many, many years with Emily. They still had a lot of life to live, and she wasn’t about to accept that he was dead.

  But that’s where she froze.

  She just couldn't start typing. Her fingers once again hovered over the keyboard. The cursor blinked at her. Again and again. Steady, slow blinking that seemed to hypnotize her. She couldn't take her eyes off the cursor. Her hands were poised as if she was a cat waiting to pounce, but only her eyelids moved. Slowly she blinked, and her hands rested on the keyboard. She took her glasses off, put her head down on the table in front of her laptop, and closed her eyes.

  “I’ll just rest my eyes. I’ll continue in a minute”.

  Chapter 4

  Bang! Bang! Bang!

  Emily jumped up startled. Her heart pounded through her chest.

  Bang! Bang! Bang!

  “Hey! Em! Are you all right?!” A loud voice came from outside.

  It was Kyle. Emily took a deep breath. It’s okay. It’s Kyle. She got up, straightened her glasses, went to the door and opened it.

  “Emily!” Kyle hugged her as she opened the door. “Oh man, I was so worried about you. I’ve called you loads of times. After yesterday, you know, I thought something had happened.”

  The hug caught Emily off guard. The warmth of Kyle’s body, and the strength of his arms wrapped around her made her feel secure. She sunk into his hug. “Oh sorry. I must have fallen asleep.” She pulled her phone out and checked it. It was 7:20pm She had 10 missed calls and three messages from Kyle. The first call was at 2pm.

  “That’s strange.” She said, confused. “I didn’t hear my phone ring”.

  "I'm just glad nothing happened," Kyle replied with a sense of relief in his voice. "So, have you eaten yet?"

  Emily hadn’t eaten since lunch, and she suddenly felt very hungry. “No, I haven’t.”

  “Good. There’s a really nice Italian restaurant a few blocks away. They do really tasty pasta if you want that?”

  “Sounds good. But I need to get changed.” Emily shuffled.

  “No, you’re fine. Don’t get changed on my account. We’re just getting food”, Kyle reassured her. “If you’re ready to go now, let’s go before it gets too late.”

  “Okay, give me a minute”, Emily said. She ran into the house, grabbed her coat, saved her work and left the blinking cursor to blink all night. In her mind, she was teaching the cursor a lesson. She locked up and got into Kyle’s car.

  The restaurant was really just a few blocks away. It was small, busy, and well lit. Inside, the smell of tomatoes, garlic, fresh bread and just-cooked food flooded over her. She hadn’t eaten out for a long time, and she had forgotten just how inviting the experience of stepping into a busy restaurant was. From the buzz of the waiters and kitchen staff calling out orders, to the intimate conversations of couples on dates, and the cheers of a party celebrating a birthday, Emily almost felt out of place. As she followed Kyle and a waiter to a small booth, she felt oddly self-conscious being around people who were dressed up and having a good time.

  The waiter came and took their order. Kyle ordered a seafood spaghetti while Emily settled for the carbonara pasta along with some bruschetta to share. The waiter showed them the wine menu, but Kyle turned it down and ordered a couple of glasses of water instead.

  The glasses of water arrived with a small dish of olives and some freshly baked bread and butter. The bread was still warm, and the butter melted into t
he bread creating a soft crunch when Emily bit into it. They ate the appetizers in silence until the food arrived. When the food arrived, it smelled delicious. After the first mouthful, Emily spoke up.

  “This place is great. How come I’ve never been here before?”

  “I think it’s quite new. I only found out about it a couple of months ago,” Kyle said while separating an oyster from its shell. He ate the oyster and picked the shell up. The inside of the shell glittered in the light, and Kyle’s eyes met Emily’s. “You know oysters are pretty special, and I don’t mean their nutritional value. An oyster takes something that irritates them, like a grain of sand or a parasite, and turns it into something valuable. A grain of sand gets in, and then the oyster covers it in this shiny material. A few years later, you get a pearl. It’s like nature’s way of making a good thing out of a bad situation. You could write about it in one of your books.”

  Emily looked down and thought for a moment. “Hmm. But for the oyster, the pearl isn’t necessarily a good thing. They’re valuable to us, but what about the oyster?”

  Kyle considered his response carefully. “True, but just because they make something that we like out of something that hurts them doesn’t mean it’s not valuable. I guess the point is that you never know if something valuable will come from a difficult situation.”

  Emily ate her spaghetti carbonara. The rich cream and cheese sauce balanced nicely with the salty bacon.

  “How’s your food?” Emily asked.

  Kyle and Emily chatted for the rest of the meal, Kyle’s misty green eyes occasionally meeting Emily’s. They were old friends, after all. Kyle went to the same high school and was in the same group of friends as Emily and Sam. In fact, Kyle and Sam had been best friends since high school. Kyle was more outgoing and had a larger stature than Sam, and his hair was a fiery red. Because of this, he kept his hair cut short as a teenager, but now he was in his thirties, he let it grow out a bit.

  They finished their meal and Kyle picked up the bill. He insisted and wouldn’t listen to Emily’s protesting. Once they were in the car and on the way back to Emily’s house, she said, “Thanks for tonight. I think I needed to get out of the house.” She paused for a moment, and then continued. “It’s just, going out… eating at a nice restaurant… talking… laughing… I feel guilty, you know?”. She looked down.

  Kyle took his eyes off the road to look at Emily. “Hey, it’s all right, Em. You don’t need to feel guilty. Sam wouldn’t want you to feel guilty. He’d want you to continue living, laughing, eating nice food, wouldn’t he? He wouldn’t want you stuck in the house all on your own, would he?”

  Emily sighed. “Ah I guess not. I know what you mean.” She went silent.

  “Listen”, Kyle said. “It’s not good to be alone with your thoughts all the time. You need human interaction. You need to chat and be around people. And you did good today. How do you feel?”

  “I mean, I feel good. It was nice hearing people talking all around us. And it was good to eat something other than eggs and avocados!”

  They both laughed together in the car as Kyle pulled up to Emily’s house.

  “Then, I’ll tell you what” Kyle unlocked the doors so Emily could get out. “Give me a ring in a couple of days, and we’ll do this again, yeah?”

  “Sounds good,” Emily replied. “Thanks again, Kyle”. She waved him bye as he pulled off and drove home.

  Emily let herself into her quiet house, went into the kitchen and put the kettle on. She’d had a good evening with Kyle. As the kettle boiled, she could hear the fans in her laptop whirring. ‘Not tonight. I won’t ruin the rest of the evening staring at that damn blinking cursor.’ She made herself a mug of tea and climbed into bed feeling optimistic about the future.

  She drank her tea in bed.

  Perhaps time is the greatest healer, after all.

  It had been four months since her husband had passed, and she had withdrawn herself from almost all human contact. Maybe a connection with someone was what she needed.

  As she succumbed to the darkness of sleep, she felt something shift in her house. Her body was already sinking into her bed, and her eyes were heavy.

  Whatever it was it could wait until the morning.

  Chapter 5

  As Emily slept, the house was awake. There were no visible signs that the house was awake, just a slight change in the air to those who were attuned to feel it.

  When we sleep, we are more susceptible to the wills of unseen forces. As she slept, Emily restlessly fought her own unconscious battles. She tossed and turned, moaning loudly at times, but she didn’t wake up.

  In fact, when she woke up in the morning, it was as if nothing had happened. She felt rested and positive. She even had a slight spring in her step when she rolled out of bed in the morning. It was a little after 9am and the sun was pouring through the shades in her bedroom. She stretched and went to the bathroom to brush her teeth and take a shower.

  It was then that she noticed it – a small, dark blue mark about the size and shape of a cherry on the cheek just below her left eye. It looked a bit like a bruise, but it didn’t hurt when she touched it. Thinking it could have been ink from a pen, she tried to clean it off, but the mark persisted. She did a quick diagnosis of the mark: it didn't hurt, it wasn't ink and she didn't have it the day before. That meant it must have happened when she was asleep. It wasn't a pressing concern, so she decided to keep an eye on the mark.

  After having a shower, Emily headed to her office – the kitchen. She turned on the kettle and put a teabag in a mug. While waiting for the water to boil, she decided to make breakfast. Opening the cupboards, she found that she was out of bread and avocados.

  “That’s what happens when you don’t go shopping and you only ever eat the same thing, Emily,” she told herself. And with that, she turned off the kettle and headed out to the grocery store.

  The grocery store wasn’t too far away. It was only a 10-minute trip in the car, and by the time she had picked up her essentials and driven home, it was almost 11 in the morning. She took the groceries inside and got to work on her breakfast. Avocado toast and scrambled eggs. It was a simple but nutritious meal, that demanded a bit of respect whilst being easy to assemble.

  First, you needed ripe avocados, but not over-ripe ones that you can crush in your hands. You want avocados that have just the right amount of give when you squeeze them. Next, you need really fresh, good quality bread. Emily liked whole-grain bread for the thickness and the textures. Once you have the two main ingredients, you smash the avocado in a separate bowl and mix it with a little salt and pepper. Then all you need to do is toast the bread and spread on the avocado. Teamed with some creamy scrambled egg, the dish was equal parts luxurious and romantic.

  After she had plated up her breakfast, Emily sat down at her laptop and switched it on. The fans whirred into action. She stopped for a moment. “Did I turn my laptop off last night?”

  She was certain that she had left her laptop on overnight, so that damn cursor could blink at nothing while she slept.

  Just then, as she was in mid-thought, her laptop beeped, the fans switched off, and then the whole system rebooted again. She watched the machine with bated breath. The laptop rebooted again, went to the start-up screen, beeped, and then rebooted again.

  An endless loop.

  “Shit!” Her heart sank. She took her head into her hands and sobbed. She took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. Silent tears dropped onto the table in front of her as the laptop went through the motions of starting up, beeping and rebooting.

  Just when she thought things were beginning to get better, really everything was falling apart. The air of optimism that had surrounded her earlier that morning had been replaced with a solemn air of despair. Her laptop, her words, the damn blinking cursor – they were her constants. Without them, she was just someone who ate avocado toast and had a dead husband.

  She unlocked her phone intending to find the number of a com
puter repair service, but her thumb found Kyle's number. She took a deep lungful of air and called him.

  Kyle answered after a couple of rings and sounded surprised that Emily had called him.

  “Hey Em, is everything all right?”

  "My laptop," Emily said through sobs. "Sorry Kyle, I didn't know who to call. My laptop's broken. And this is so stupid but... but –”

  “Hey, it’s all right. Want me to call a guy I know and come round while we wait for him? I’m working from home today, so it’s no problem”

  “Are you sure that’s ok?”

  “Yeah that’s fine. I’ll be over soon.”

  True to his word, Kyle arrived at Emily’s house pretty quickly, and not long after he arrived, Kyle’s friend, the computer repair guy, also arrived.

  The prognosis wasn’t good. Something inside the computer had fried overnight. Perhaps from overheating, but that didn’t really make sense since it wasn’t warm the night before. The technician suggested that it could have also been caused by a powerful electrical surge, but nothing else in the house seemed to be affected. Either way, the computer repair technician said that he might be able to save the hard drive of the computer and fit it a portable device, but it would take a few days. Seeing as it was the only option, Emily accepted the offer, and the technician left with the laptop.

  “He’s the best guy I know with computers” Kyle said, “If anyone can sort it out, he can.”

  "I hope so. Thanks, Kyle. I'm really sorry I called you here for something so stupid."

  “No, it’s fine really. But are you all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m feeling a bit better now. Not as hopeless as before.” She let out a weak laugh. “Would you like to stay for a drink?”

  "Sure, what have you got? I'll have to head off after though, I have a few calls to make," Kyle said, sitting down at the counter.

  “I’ve got coffee and that tea you gave me.”