Marcus,, rubbing his eyes, stepped away from his computer, notes and outline. He had finally gotten used to writing his murder mysteries late at night and falling asleep later without the fear of a murderer getting the jump on him in his sleep. The words to the story always just came to him; he couldn’t explain it. He never needed to edit. He hadn’t finished outlining this one, but that didn’t matter. The ending would present itself soon enough.
Marcus woke up the next morning with a start. His alarm didn’t go off. He was a professional writer now, so it didn’t really matter what time he began his work, but something was still off. He checked his clock to see what the matter was with it. No time appeared on its usually blood-red display. He checked the lights in the room, but the power was still on. He went to check the plug and discovered it was unplugged. “I don’t remember tripping on this on the way to bed. The dog must have messed with it.” Marcus plugged the cord back in, but the clock still wouldn’t turn on. He tugged on the cord, and the other end flew to him, with no resistance. Hanging the dangling, frayed cord quizzically, his first thoughts drifted towards Summer, his teething Siberian Husky pup. Where was that dog? Investigating further, he realized the cord was not chewed, but cut. It was too clean a cut to be a puppy. ‘Where is Summer anyways?’ The dog normally slept at the foot of his bed, needing to be let out first thing in the morning and yipping at Marcus when he needed to go out. The house was oddly quiet. He allowed his mind to recede to the previous night, when he was writing his story; this was uncomfortably familiar to how the story went. But he hadn’t decided if the character lived or died yet.
Marcus went to make breakfast, and as he pulled the eggs out of the fridge, Summer came flying out of nowhere, tackling him and licking him to death. ‘The story. It’s real.’ Sprinting to the computer, the words were already pouring out of his brain. ‘I don’t have time to track the murder. I can only stay ahead of him.’ In the story, the murderer was already in his house, just waiting for the time to strike. Currently, he was only a minute ahead of the real world in his story. Sitting in the chair, Summer curled up on top of his feet, seemingly half asleep.
‘The murderer peered around corners, but he knew his target was distracted. That’s why she was doing this.’
A gender. Finally. The words kept coming. He didn’t have time to stop.
‘He had always loved his work more than her. But now, it would be his downfall.’
No. Not her. It couldn’t be.
‘Nanette leaned around the corner and the dog jumped to his feet, running over to her.’
As Marcus typed these words, so leaped up Summer.
“Nanette!” He shouted without moving. “I love you. I always have. I did this for you. I wanted to be successful, so I would be good enough for you.”
Footfalls that were silent before now approached him slowly, with intent and purpose. Marcus slowly turned around in his chair to face the barrel of a gun. But, it wasn’t Nanette’s finger behind the trigger. Her beautiful but heartbroken eyes weren’t the last thing he would see, because those eyes didn’t belong to her.