Whatever Possessed You? (3 page)

She turned away from him and started tossing dirty breakfast dishes into the dishwasher.

Gerard attempted a recovery.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, “you’re right – I am an asshole, a
major
asshole. But I’m also a very, very sorry asshole.”

Sonia didn’t bother to look at him as she wiped the table.

Gerard grabbed a broom and began sweeping the floor. He was going to need to change his strategy or else this argument was going to become the opening salvo of their relationship’s World War III.

“I have to finish this
one
book. I
have
to finish it,” he pleaded with her, “I’m going to go crazy if I don’t get it done. In fact, I think I’m starting to go a little crazy already.”

He smiled and stuck out his bottom lip like a sad puppy, hoping she would find it hard to stay mad at someone so cute.

She finally relented.

“Okay, okay,” she said. “At least you got it done before your deadline. Now maybe you can take a little break from writing for a while.”

“My deadline is tomorrow,” Gerard said. “I promise I’ll do my best to have it finished by then.”

Sonia stopped what she was doing and gave him a funny look.

“What are you talking about?” she said. “You already finished it - I mailed the manuscript off yesterday, overnight mail. I have the tracking number around here somewhere.”

She dug through her purse.

“What manuscript? Gerard asked, confused. “I haven’t finished writing it yet What did you mail?
To who?
”

Sonia’s irritation returned with a vengeance.

“Are you just screwing with me now? I’ll tell you
what manuscript
- the three hundred and fifty-two pages you left by my side of the bed yesterday with a handwritten note asking me to overnight it to your agent in New York - Jerry something-or-other.”

She turned her frustration back to the search in her pocketbook. Seconds later she withdrew her hand, clutching a shipping receipt.

“I didn’t give you anything to mail,” Gerard stated flatly.

Sonia glared at him, squeezing the shipping receipt into a ball inside her clenched fist.

“You know what? I’m done,” she said. “You can take your stupid book and you can stick it straight up you-know-where. I’m finished.”

She threw the receipt at him. It hit him square in his forehead and rolled under the table.

He stared at her, blinking and confused.

“I’m taking a shower and going to work,” she said, trying to calm
herself down. “I’ve let you waste enough of my time,
my life
, already. We can figure out what we’re going to do about living arrangements later.”

Gerard felt the pounding in his head growing louder, faster.

Maazo Maazo, Maazo Maazo
, it thumped, each word stabbing like a knife deep into his brain.

The room began to sway around him, and Gerard saw the edges of his vision turn black, like he was being sucked into a dark tunnel. He held onto the kitchen counter to keep himself from falling.

Then his voice started talking, but he wasn’t trying to say anything.

“Sonia, baby,” he heard himself say, but his voice was different, like it was coming from somewhere else, somewhere far away.

Darkness swallowed him. He was passing out.

***

He startled back into consciousness, clawing at the kitchen counter to keep from falling. He was surprised to find himself clutching linen sheets and a comforter instead of a smooth granite counter top.

He wasn’t in the kitchen anymore, he realized; he was lying in his bed, nude, the sheets cool against his skin. A shower hummed in the master bathroom.

How did I get here?
he wondered.

“Are you going take the whole day off, or only the morning?” His wife’s voice echoed cheerfully from the stall in the adjacent room.

He jolted up in the bed and looked at the clock on the nightstand. It was almost noon. The shower stopped.

“You want to go grab some lunch with me?” she sang in a delighted tone as she danced into the bedroom, hair wrapped in a towel.

She shook her glistening naked hips.

“What?” he
asked, confused.

“Oh, did I bang my poor baby’s brains out? Is that why you look so silly?” she baby-talked, and kissed him hungrily on the mouth.

He struggled to get away, but she jumped on the bed, straddling him.

“What time is it?” he asked.

She bounced up and down on his crotch, eager and playful.

“It’s almost noon. Why? Do you want me to take the whole day off so you can have your way with me for three more hours?” she asked, sounding hopeful.

“No, I need get ready for work myself. Shouldn’t I save some strength for later?” he asked, trying his best to go along.

“You’d better, lover boy!” she squealed and rolled off him. She started getting dressed for work.

He touched his head, checking for sore spots.

“Sonia, did I hit my head when I passed out in the kitchen?” he asked.

“What are you talking about, silly? You didn’t pass out in the kitchen! Practically raped me in the kitchen, yes – and in the hallway and on the bed - but I wouldn’t exactly call that passing out.”

“So I didn’t fall down?”

She laughed at him, and slipped on her shoes.

“Only once, when you were trying to screw me
and
carry me down the hallway at the same time, remember? You might have to keep working on that move. Why do you ask? Did you hurt yourself?”

“No, I thought…never mind.”

“Well, don’t you think about it - keep on lovin’ me like that and we’ll never fight again, I promise. I’m just jealous of your keyboard. If only you fingered me half as much as you do that thing,” she laughed, only half joking.

“It’s okay,” Gerard mumbled. He still had no idea what was going on.

Sonia grabbed her briefcase from beside the dresser and headed for the door. She stopped and looked back at him, a wistful expression on her face.

“You know I love you, right? I’m really sorry about this morning – and I do hope you have good luck with your book. I didn’t read your finished manuscript, but it did look very nice, very professional. I bet you it sells a ton.”

“Thanks. Fingers crossed,” Gerard said. He felt more confused at that moment than he had in his entire life.

As soon as Sonia’s car left the driveway, he threw on some clothes and went into the kitchen to find the shipping receipt Sonia had thrown at him earlier. He fished it out from under the table, and headed for his study.

A thick ream of printed paper was stacked neatly in the center of his desk. He was sure he hadn’t printed anything so large in the last few weeks. Curious, he picked it up.

A cover sheet read in large, bold lettering:

Serenity’s Termination

A Novel by Gerard Faust

It was the title of his novel, the one he had thought he would never complete. The heft of it in his hands quickened his pulse. He flipped to the last page. Three hundred, fifty-two pages - like Sonia had said.

His book was real.

He had no recollection of finishing it, though; no memory of printing it, no idea how his book could have been completed.

Had he been working on his book the whole time, managed to actually finish it while banging away in a daze? He opened it to a random page and began to read.

The writing was a beautiful flowing prose; its literary sophistication and tonal resonance surprised him. He had no idea he was capable such elegance.

The beauty of the writing stood in stark contrast with the depravity of the content, however. Sordid, revolting images bloomed to life inside Gerard’s head as he read. Deeds so vile, he was filled with shame.

Gerard flipped through it, reading snippets here and there. It was foreign to him; the things he read barely resembled the book he had intended to write
under the same title. Entire passages of the book had been written in an unknown language. Notes from the author encouraged the reader to repeat those passages aloud, in order “to fully appreciate the alliterative and musical properties they contained”.

Those tonal passages were followed by English-language descriptions of unspeakable brutalities, acts so profane and malicious Gerard was repulsed by even the possibility they had been written by his own hands.

One such section told the story of a man bound by wire to a luxurious, velvet-covered chair facing a golden vanity, complete with desk and mirror.

Beside him sat another man, dressed in white and holding a gleaming scalpel.

The man in white began to slice the skin from the bound man’s face with the razor-sharp scalpel, piece by piece - not saying a word, his face expressionless.

As the story told, the man bound by wire to the velvet chair was powerless to do anything other than watch his misfortune unfold in the vanity mirror before him. As each new sliver was cut from his face, it was placed beside the others neatly arranged on the vanity’s tabletop.

Slice after slice, his face was removed. After the last piece was cut away, the bound man saw that his former face had been transformed into a grotesque mask that stared at him from now-empty sockets, a bloody jigsaw puzzle of human flesh.

The short tale ended by telling that, once finished with the task of cutting, the man in white plunged his scalpel into the bound man’s heart, and then began to feast upon the delicacy he had so carefully prepared.

Gerard tossed the stack of pages away as though diseased. It slid across the smooth surface of the desk, knocking over the ink well Sonia had given him. The shipping receipt slipped off the desk, catching his eye as it fluttered to the floor.

His heart sank when he finally realized what the receipt meant. Had he left a note asking his wife to mail this profanity posing as his finished draft to his agent? Was he insane?

Panic surged inside him. He had to get that manuscript back; he had to destroy it. Were the stories in it even legal? What if the publishers had called the police? Was it possible he might, even now, be mere minutes away from being arrested and dragged from his home for mailing such obscenities?

Gerard sat down at his computer to compose an e-mail letting his agent know that someone was playing a prank on him, that what he was receiving was some elaborate joke that wasn’t funny.

He opened up a new e-mail and began typing
Jerry Rogers
the name of his agent, into the address field; but his fingers typed something different:
Maazo Maazo
.

He tapped the delete key several times and tried again. Still, the words
Maazo Maazo
appeared every time he typed.

“Maazo Maazo,” he muttered out loud. He felt a spark of energy as he said the words, and then his hands no longer belonged to him. They typed, dancing across the keyboard

Words scrolled across the screen:
Maazo Maazo. Maazo Maazo was me. Maazo Maazo is now we. Stop resisting and listen up. This is your one chance to make it, to get published, to be a big-shot writer. Do you want that chance? Then you had better take it now or else they’re going to say you are crazy and lock us both away.

The writing stopped.

His hand grabbed the mouse and opened up a word processor program. His fingers resumed typing.

Are you reading me Gerard?
The words taunted him.

I’m going crazy, he thought.

Say something Gerard. Say YES if you read me,
his fingers typed.

“Yes,” Gerard whispered.

Good,
the writing on the computer screen resumed, Gerard’s fingers dancing along the keyboard.

I want to be a writer, too. If you are successful, I am successful. I am trapped inside you. You don’t want me here forever. I don’t want that either. Your wife might be the only person that wants me inside her forever, judging from how many times she came when I fucked her with your sorry body this morning, – but that’s not important. Are you still with me, Gerard?

“Who are you?” Gerard asked.

Maazo
Maazo, of course; you invited me in by name - don’t you remember? How good you felt when I first came into your body that day. I bet you felt almost as good as your wife did when I came inside her body this morning – but I shouldn’t brag. We can’t all be good lovers - or good writers, for that matter. But at least I can make you look good, and you can enjoy my success, too – if you listen up.

“What do you want?”

The same as you: to be a famous writer. I want to be the world’s MOST famous, most widely-read author in history. You know why? I want to see the world, I want to travel. I want to come and go as I please anywhere throughout humanity. But the only way I can do that is if someone invites me in, like you did.