by Amy Cross
“Are you going to kill me?” I ask, my voice trembling with anger. “If you -”
“No,” he says firmly, interrupting me. “That would be… I would never do that to you, Beth. Besides, it would be rather unimaginative, wouldn’t it?”
As the words leave his mouth, a figure appears in the doorway, and moments later Jason enters the cabin, carrying two large hold-alls which he dumps on the floor. He glances at me, and I can see a look of guilt in his eyes as he quickly looks away.
“You too?” I ask.
“Jason is a wonderful doctor,” John explains. “He’s very skilled at plastic surgery, he can take a face and make very small, very subtle changes that really alter everything, without leaving any noticeable scars. He also happens to have a huge gambling problem, which means he has massive debts, which in turn means his services weren’t too difficult to acquire. The one thing he insisted on, however, was seeing you in the flesh before tonight, because he wanted to get a look at your skin and your facial features. He said photos wouldn’t be enough, so we had to engineer his little encounters with you.”
“It was all just lies,” I whisper.
Again, Jason glances at me, but he can’t maintain eye contact for more than a few seconds. Instead, he opens one of the hold-alls and starts taking out cases of medical equipment.
“I told you I had writer’s block,” John continues, stepping toward me. “That was true. I couldn’t work out how to end all of this, how to bring your story to a conclusion. And then, finally, it came to me. I mean, I am a writer, and a damn good one, so I realized it should all come back to a book. That’s how it should end. With someone holding a book, with someone writing and someone reading.”
“I swear to God,” I tell him, “I will get out of here and I will kill you.”
“No you won’t,” he replies. “You won’t remember any of this. I still have a lot of money left over from the movie rights to some of my books, and I’m going to use it to give you a whole new life. A new name, a new identity, a new family…” A faint smile crosses his lips. “New memories, too. This time I’m going to hire actors to play your parents, and maybe a husband, another child… I’ve already arranged the basic details, and you’re going to spend the next year in a kind of advanced therapy, forcing you to accept the new memories and believe that your new life is real. By the end of it, you won’t remember any of this. You won’t remember David and Hannah, you won’t remember Jacqui, you won’t remember me, you won’t even remember the name Beth.”
I shake my head.
“I’ll still be writing your life, though,” he continues. “I’m not sure what kind of story it’ll be this time, but that’s the part I enjoy most. Coming up with ideas.”
“I’m ready,” Jason says as he finishes emptying the second hold-all.
“You won’t remember a single part of this,” John continues, “and you’ll be convinced that your new life is real. You’ll have false memories of a whole other life, and they’ll be so convincing, so complete, that you’ll never doubt them. The actors playing your new family and your new friends… They’ll be perfect. And yet…”
I watch in horror as Jason pours some kind of clear liquid into a bottle, as if he’s preparing for a medical procedure.
“I’m going to turn all of this into a book,” John tells me. “I think it’ll be a fairly short novel, maybe a novella, and I think I’ll write it in the first person, from your perspective. It’ll just tell the story of the past few days, of your slow realization of the truth. I’ll call it… The Puppet Master. Or… No, that’s too dramatic, I’ll call it The Writer. That’s a nice simple title. It’ll be a book that sets out exactly what happened to you, although no-one will ever believe it could be true, they’ll think there’s no way I could ever accomplish all of this. But it will be true, every word of it. I’ll write it under one of my pen-names and it’ll be like a confession, except that no-one will realize that it’s anything more than a short psychological horror story.”
“No,” I whisper, watching as Jason fills a syringe with the clear liquid and turns to me.
“And the best part?” John continues. “One day, I’ll make sure that a copy of The Writer ends up in your hands. Maybe in paperback, maybe as an ebook, whatever… I’ll make sure you end up reading it. And when you do, you’ll think it’s outlandish, that nothing like this story could ever have actually happened to anyone. Even when you read this ending, which explains it all, you’ll be unable to accept that this is what happened to a human being, let alone that it actually happened to you. All the false memories of your new family, your new life, will seem so real, you won’t be able to believe that you were once someone else. And when you finish the book and put it down, maybe you’ll briefly wonder… what if? What if you were the character in the book you just read? And then you’ll tell yourself that it can’t be true, that it’s impossible, and you’ll go on with the false life I’ve created for you. After that, I’m not sure where I’ll take your new story, but I’ll still be in your life somewhere, plotting a new horror story for you.”
“No!” I shout, trying desperately to get free as he moves around behind me and holds the chair down. I watch as Jason comes closer with the syringe, and finally the needle slides into the side of my neck. “No!” I scream again and again, struggling violently until I feel myself starting to sink it a pit of darkness.
The last thing I feel is John kissing the top of my head as the needle delivers its load directly into my jugular, and the last thing I hear is his voice.
“There,” he whispers. “It’s okay. Trust me. When you wake up, you won’t remember any of this. You’ll read about it one day, though, and you’ll never realize it all really happened to you.”
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Table of Contents
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