Ghost/Writer

"I start to think,
and then I sink
into the paper,
like I was ink"



HOME.

He threw his bag, stormed the granite and chrome expanse of his kitchen, emerged triumphant in his favorite room in all the world. Encased entirely in glass, like a greenhouse with a view of the open ocean and miles of rocky coast, entering his living room was like diving into a deep pool of bright sunlight. It always made him feel safe, and the feeling washed over him now like a warm blanket.

There had been trouble, yes, but now he was back. He was home. He had a deadline, a huge advance in-waiting and shitgoddamn he needed it. Austin had been a hot wet mess.

As he'd gotten older, he'd seen his messes had become more complex, much more expensive, and far less susceptible to expedient resolution.
But gazing, now, through his beveled, triple- pain living room wall, out over his boathouse and the natural rock lagoon that formed his back yard, Paul Jacobs wasn't the least bit worried. After all, Paul had Cort, and Cort was on his way.

The rest would fall into place, as always. He was so jacked up he was almost ready to knock the fucking thing out now himself and have done. He could finish before dinner, call that sanctimonious prick Thomas before bed with word of his completion...

No. Fuck no. Cort was on the move, and he needed him. Besides, Paul was fucking tired. Austin - such a fucking mess - had sapped him of his energy along with all his cash. He needed food and THC. No, there'd be no calling Thomas tonight, as much fun as that would have been. Instead he'd let the ideas languish a bit while he tended his depleted stores. After a night's solitary feast, and a long sour diesel- induced sleep, he and Cort would bang out the final sections of "Them" and be done with it. After that, he'd make that call to Thomas.

There was a tap between Paul's shoulders. Not hard, not really, but firmly felt through the leather collar of his coat and the thin cotton of his shirt. At the same time, he saw a flash of red arc through the sunlight and stall low on the glass, near the bottom of the window where deep eggshell shag met beveled triple-pain.

It was a spot of red.

Paul'd meant to whirl, to see who'd tapped him on his back. That's what one does, he thought, when one is

(is what?)

Is..

(tapped?)

Tapped.

But still that red spot. It was tiny, but so well defined on the glass for which he'd paid so much. He could see it down there, in sharp black relief against the blue sea beyond. It was red, and liquid. Almost like paint, or...

He noticed another spot, just above the first. Another just above that. What the hell was happening to his window? Who had...

(tapped him?)

He tried to whirl. The red though...he was sure it had been red against the sunlight, and now black in silhouette.

(blood...)

He bent to it, and the spot began to grow. The drops began to join and now all of them grew and he was falling. Falling from a high place toward that liquid crimson.

Paul's vision began to fray at it's borders, going first grey, and then bright white. He wanted to turn around, but there was red on his window, on his expensive fucking...
He realized he'd bent down too far. His face was on the glass, and his hands.

He died like that, with the red coming up for him, his hands smearing blood-tracks down the heavy, expensive glass, his face stalled out in deep egg-shell shag.


The last thing Paul hears in this life are the voices of unfamiliar men - one calm, one tense - both mushy and distant, as if he were listening underwater in the deep end of a pool:

Jesus fuckin Christ now what? Oh fuck. Fuck...

Take it easy what's different? We needed a place, it's still a place. Whatever. Fuckin guy...

Whatever. Right. We're fucking dead, but whatever. Goddamned FUCKIN' guy.

Paul Jacobs died then, cursed even to the very last by the men who'd killed him.