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Page One: Untitled
“Look over there, isn’t that Gon Haiiro?”
“You mean the dude who wrote Under the Skies? No way,
man, isn’t he like, retired or something?”
“I
heard that he quit after his girlfriend jumped in front of a
subway train.”
Voices. Just voices in a faceless crowd. It didn’t
matter that Gon saw their faces, for they would soon be gone in
one second, completely gone out of his head. The world no longer
looked real, the colors simulating the ones displayed by an old
TV. Bland, tasteless, no longer jumping out in bright and style.
The autumn wind brushed through his dark short hair,
as the summer slowly lost its control over the town of Lestfield.
Gon walked among the falling leaves, the breeze carrying around
the scent of sleeping trees and perishing flowers, the sun
covering itself up in the cold damp air. The grass in the park
were slowly dying away, shivering as they prepared themselves
for the winter’s coming. The park no longer looked alive.
Although Lestfield was about an hour north of New
York City, it still seemed to share the cold climate that the
Big Apple had suffered during its notorious life. Yet Lestfield
was peaceful, unlike New York. Lestfield was just an average
little town with its small police force and volunteer
firefighters. A town where nothing seemed to happen, yet nothing
made it boring. It reminded Gon very much of his own hometown,
Putama City, for Lestfield’s row of houses looked the same as
Putama’s, in their small sizes and orange-brown roofs, with
floors no higher than two. Except that Putama was warmer than
this little town. Putama felt warmer than this little town.
“If I’m able to jump above your height, will you go out
with me?”
“Huh?” Gon remembered saying then, when he had first
met Kara, under the orange lights of the setting sun. “What did
you say?” The race tracks of the field seemed red at this time
of the afternoon, the school’s shadow covering the parking lots
and streets that were in front of the building.
“I said, if I’m able to jump above your height, will
you go out with me?” She had repeated, smiling innocently, as
her loose T-shirt fluttered gently in the whispering winds. The
colors had still looked so bright then, as her blue eyes
reflected the sleeping sun.
Gon didn’t even know why he had said yes then, as she set up the
bar at exactly his height. Her face looked set, as she prepared
herself for the coming jump. Gon had watched as she sprinted
herself into a run, sweat, felt tense as she jumped…
Clang.
The
sounds of a subway train rang inside Gon’s head again,
proclaiming the end of a future way. Her face always smiled in
his mind, as she walked into the lights of the train, her figure
seen no more.
Gon
rubbed his eyelids now, as if by doing so his memories would be
erased away. He dug into his pockets until he found the cold
metal of his keys. “Gon!” He almost dropped his keys as he heard
the familiar whiny voice. “Gon, over here!”
He
pretended not to hear it. He pretended that the voice was not
there. He quickly pushed the key into the lock of his dark green
door, hoping to get inside his sanctuary, hoping to let the
golden locks deal with the unexpected visitor. Too late though,
as he felt the sweaty palms of the fat man grab his shoulders,
talking into his ears. “Hey, Gon. How are you, my man?”
“Tired.” Gon responded as he turned the key, the door giving way
to the master of the house. He knew that the man was following
him in, for his presence was just too strong to be ignored.
“Come on in, Danny, make yourself at home.”
“Thanks, Gon.”
Danny looked around the place, nodding as he followed Gon into
the living room. “Nice place you got here.” Danny was Gon’s
agent, who also owned a book-publishing company of his own.
Danny was infamous for signing authors as an agent, and then
making them write exclusively for his publishing company, even
if other companies were offering higher prices for the author’s
work. Of course, this didn’t bother writers like Gon, who wrote
only because they wanted to write, not because they wanted to
make a fortune out of it. Yet this was the main reason why most
authors avoided Danny at all costs, leaving him now with less
and less clients by the year, and his company with less and less
new books.
“The only reason I got it, was because it was in a walking
distance to the campus.”
“Oh, really? Well, it’s still pretty nice.”
“Thanks.” Gon let Danny sit down on the couch, considering that
Danny’s older body might appreciate the cushioning that the
couch gave. “How’s the company doing?”
“Oh, real good.” Danny had one of those fake smiles on, a big
pearl of sweat hanging on the side of his cheek. “We reprinted
most of your materials, and most of them got into the top five
best-selling lists.”
“Great.” Gon nodded, sitting on a chair opposite Danny’s. “So,
how are the new authors doing?”
“They’re…” The smile faded from Danny’s face, as worry seemed to
surface in his dull brown eyes. “They’re doing fine…” Danny
shifted his huge body on the gray couch, his elephant hands
coming together, his arms now resting on the brown pants
covering his legs. “Gon…” He started, as his eyes turned up to
look at Gon’s motionless figure. “Have you considered to start
writing again?”
“I
told you before, Danny, I have no intentions of writing anything
again.”
“But, Gon… You’re just twenty-five, and there’s still so much
ahead of you… Don’t you think it’s time to put your past behind,
and get back to what you loved best? I mean, readers are still
waiting for your comeback, and your stories have always easily
reached number one…”
“I
can’t, Danny. I’m sorry.”
Danny let out a sigh, as he slowly pushed himself off the couch.
“All right, kiddo,” he said sadly, as he headed toward the exit.
“But as your agent, Gon, I gotta tell you to start being mature,
and start putting your life together again.”
Gon just sat on his seat, motionless, as he heard
the front door open and close. “A writer can’t mature,” he said
to himself, as the darkness of the evening slowly enclosed the
room. “Or else he’ll lose the imagination and daydreams that
fuel his stories, and become nothing more than a normal shell in
the sea of a thousand faces.”
He
remembered the time when he had first said this to Kara, under
the falling petals of a cherry blossom tree. His head had
rested on Kara’s legs then, as they looked out at the sun in the
end of its working schedule, the stars excited in being released
for their nightly play. Her long blonde hair had seemed so
mystical then, dancing in the rhythm of the sunlit winds. “I
guess that’s what makes us writers so special, for we die when
we stop writing the tales of our dreams. If not physically, then
mentally…”
Is that the
reason why I stopped writing?
Gon
thought as he tried to solve the chemistry problems on his
notebook, his mind not clear anymore as his pen touched the
surface of the paper. His college freshmen year seemed to be too
easy for him to be interested in, and the classes offered no
challenges at all.
His
parents had suggested for him to enroll into the University of
Lestfield, a highly known private college in the world, and
maybe get a medical degree while in it, as opposed to just lying
in bed day after day, staring blankly at the grainy white
ceiling in his room. Gon had agreed to it, for maybe the classes
could distract him from the memories of Kara, maybe the
textbooks could erase her temporarily her smile from his mind.
He had stayed mourning in his room for a year then, it was time
to start learning how to live again.
He felt tired
now, as he took out another notebook, opened it onto a clean
surface, and tried to solve the math problems that his other
book posed for him. Is that the reason why I stopped writing?
Gon
thought again, as his chin rested on the waxed surface of his
desk, his hands trying as hard as possible to hold the black
pen, his eyelids heavy without remorse. He fell asleep after
only five seconds.
He
dreamed of the time when he was invited to some publisher’s
party, a memory from so long ago that he did not want to
remember. It was about the time when he became hugely famous, a
little after the release of his fifth novel. He was only
twenty-one then.
“I’m sure Rex
would be furiously mad if he learned that your most famous
success comes from his murders and trials.”
Gon remembered hearing Kara say that, as they danced
slowly in the mildly crowded room, the band playing a soft
symphony in the course of the night. “Why do you say that?” he
had asked then, as he playfully kissed her neck.
She laughed, as if tickled by his lips. “Stop that,
Gon, we’re in a public place.”
He did, lifting his dark eyes to her, obeying the
request to stop, as they once again twirled under the crystal
chandeliers. “It’s not like I made Rex’s character terrifying in
order to sell books,” he said as his forehead touched hers,
their eyes looking deeply into each other’s souls. “It’s just
the character that made him do all these bad things. If he were
a different character, with a different past and life, then he
wouldn’t have done the horrible things that his character does.”
“Then why did you make his character the way he is?”
“Because I needed a reason for the character to kill
a lot of people.” Gon smiled as he said this. “Besides, it’s one
of the rules for being a good writer that made me do this.”
“And which one would that be? No normal person can
be a psycho killer?”
They both laughed as she said this, drunk in the
atmosphere of the night. “No, the rule that no character can die
without a reason.”
“And so, Rex is your reason?”
“You can’t think of a better one, can you?” Gon
kissed her as he said this, tasting the elixir that was inside
of her mouth.
A sharp scream
woke Gon up then, the sunlight stinging his eyes as he opened
them. He looked around in confusion until he found the crying
alarm clock, screeching madly, as if enjoying the annoyance it
was giving to Gon. The room went silent as soon as he hit the
snooze button. Gon groaned as he walked back to his desk,
needing to seat himself for a while until he could compose
himself. He realized that he still held his black pen, as he
looked at it for a second, before letting it hang in his right
hand once again. He wondered how he was able to hold the pen
throughout the long night.
Just
then, he heard the rustling noises as he walked toward the desk,
the papers yelling out as he stepped carelessly onto them. He
looked down at them, and felt the shock completely overcome him.
He felt the black pen slip out of his hands, as it fell
soundlessly onto the carpeted floor, now littered with pages and
pages of his handwritten papers.
He
stared at them for a long minute before he decided to pick some
of them up. The papers had numbers on the right lower corners of
each of them, and none of the backs were written on at all.
Before he knew it, he was picking them up, sorting them, slowly,
his hands trembling as he gathered them all, the last page
half-filled, still not torn out of his notebook. Gon blinked as
he read the last sentence, trembling still in the morning
sunlight. “The Heavens and Hells are full, now the stories are
the spirits only refuge.” |
