Adrian Hackett was one hundred and twelve pages into his latest novel when writer’s block had set in. He’d made countless attempts at page one hundred and thirteen to no avail. Each stomach-churning try at additional prose had gone into the virtual wastebasket, where it rightfully belonged. Page one hundred and thirteen remained a big effing blank. The story had been mired at one hundred and twelve pages for way too many days now. The situation was a looming catastrophe. If he didn’t finish this manuscript the consequences would be dire. Worry about the possibility of failure had caused chronic insomnia and erased his appetite.
Maybe what he needed was to take a walk, go fishing, just do something different and see if that would shake something loose and let him get on with his writing. And he would, except it was May. May in New Hampshire. Black fly season. He couldn’t stand the swarming little gnats that attacked him, bouncing off his eyeballs, crawling in his ears, landing all over him . . . and biting. Adrian was allergic to black fly bites, which swelled and itched and burned and made him miserable.
He doodled on a yellow legal pad and stared at blank page one hundred and thirteen when an idea occurred to him. Maybe if he backed up a chapter or two and started reading with his hands placed on the keyboard, the momentum of the already-written words would shake things loose, his fingers would get in gear, and he’d just keep right on writing beyond what was on the screen. But when he did that, the unfinished story came to a sudden, jarring stop right at the end of page one hundred and twelve. He just couldn’t seem to get that next word, next sentence, next paragraph, next page, next chapter underway.
He tried skipping ahead, bypassing page one hundred thirteen to write some future chapter and take up the story there, figuring he could return later to fill in the blank spot. No dice. That future page also remained a blank. The story had simply come to a crashing end at the bottom of page one hundred twelve. The same thing—the same nothing—happened when he attempted to write the ending of his story, thinking he could work backwards. The simple fact of the matter was that he was stuck, stymied, unable to proceed.
This was his third attempt at writing the third novel of a three-book deal. He’d been sure this version would see him through to completion of his contract. At first, the words had just poured out for days on end and then … nothing, nil, nada.
The phone rang, startling him. His agent again. He listened to himself advising the caller to leave a message as he let the call go to voicemail.
“Adrian, you’re not returning my calls,” Fredrick Thurston said. “The publisher is getting nervous about what seems like a disruption in your schedule. They’d like to see some new chapters, please. You are making some progress, I hope.”
The fact that his agent and the publisher were looking over his shoulder as the deadline approached didn’t make his situation any easier. He was facing some real consequences if he failed to produce this manuscript. He’d already spent the advance against future royalties. If he didn’t finish this novel, he’d have to return the money he didn’t have anymore. His concept of himself as a professional writer was also at stake. He took deadlines seriously, and prided himself on never, ever having missed one.
Maybe he should have outlined this work first. But he’d never done that before. The way he’d started all of his past books was to create a concept, fashion the characters that populated the story, and then just turn them loose to let them take the tale to its natural conclusion. It was his process, and it had always worked for him before. But something had gone wrong this time. He was left wondering if his creative juices had somehow leaked away. Was he washed up? A has been? Over the hill?
Out of desperation he tried creating an outline, but that didn’t work, either. He simply couldn’t see where the story progressed from page one hundred and twelve. He was stuck, mired, foundering.
He stared, transfixed, at that last written page and unconsciously doodled on his yellow legal as he considered his future as a destitute, washed up hack. And to make things even worse, a black fly had managed to get in the house and had just taken a bite of his right ear. The little bug hovered in the air between his face and the computer screen for a few moments, then all of a sudden it turned and flew to the screen, landing smack dab in the middle of page one hundred and twelve.
Attracted to the light, Adrian thought.
For a moment he considered smushing it with his thumb, but he didn’t have the energy, didn’t want to have to wipe away the remains, so he simply watched instead, thinking the tiny annoyance would soon fly away. While he waited for that to happen, he watched the bug crawl from word to word and lift off to float on the air in front of his eyes before landing on the screen again in a different place, on another word on the monitor. Out of boredom, perhaps, his right hand, the one with which he doodled, wrote down the words the bug landed on.
To his great astonishment the words actually made sense. How could it be that this bug had chosen noun, verb, adjective and conjunction in such perfect order, with exact punctuation? Was his mind playing tricks on him? And even stranger was the fact that this seemed like the perfect sentence with which to start page one hundred and thirteen.
One sentence followed another. One paragraph prefaced the next. Each page begat its successor. Was this tiny bug not an insect at all, but a manifestation of the muse? Once the writing was underway, he didn’t dare disturb the flow. He simply refreshed the pages by editing earlier chapters so the bug would have new fields of words to select from while he copied those it chose, jotting them down in longhand. Sometimes the bug was so fast it was all he could do to keep up. Adrian Hackett was pleased beyond belief to actually be writing again.
Meanwhile the itching and swelling began. His right ear was now bright red and resembled a small ruby cauliflower.
The bug was a daylight phenomenon. When it disappeared at sunset, Adrian transcribed what amounted to insect dictation, tapping out the words on the keyboard as the story they created grew. Morning after morning he waited anxiously for the reappearance of his little helper. Day after day they labored together to advance his manuscript.
On the third day, the little demon took a bite of the edge of his eyelid. By the end of the day his left eye was swollen shut. The right one still worked fine, though.
In the late evening, after he’d closed the file and shut off his computer for the day, he debated the ethics of what he was doing. Was this plagiarism? And what were the odds of being caught if it was? In the end he concluded it could not be a matter of copying someone else’s work. After all, the words the little bug chose for him were his own words, weren’t they?
It happened at page two hundred and one. One day the bug didn’t come to the monitor. He’d studied up on black flies and learned they had short lives, measured in weeks as a rule. Had his muse kicked the bucket? Perished of old age? Bitten the dust? What was he going to do now? Without the assistance of the bug his writing came to a standstill. He was stuck again. Then it occurred to him that perhaps there were more generations of these talented bugs lurking in the pipeline of things yet to come.
If future generations held the key to progressing beyond page two hundred and one, then he’d have to foster them. Adrian began to cultivate the insects, simply by leaving the doors and windows of the house open for a while during the day. It wasn’t long until he had a home filled with the nasty little biters. Then he ran into a problem. When he shut the house back up to trap the little bugs, they flew to the windows, seeking the light, and stayed there bouncing against the glass and screens trying to get out. That wasn’t going to get his book written. Even when he drew the opaque white shades the little insects gathered there.
He solved the problem with a trip to the art supply store, where he purchased many large sheets of black construction paper and rolls of scotch tape, which he used to cover the windows in his den, where he also trapped the bugs by keeping the door to the rest of the house tightly closed. But it was to no avail. None of the new insects seemed inclined towards literacy. He was stuck again, at page two hundred and one.
Soon there were hoards of the little insects flitting around his head and landing on his lighted monitor at any given time. They were so thick he took to wearing a medical face mask to avoid inhaling them in his wait for another literary bug. The problem he now faced was how to keep track of which bug was which, and what words they selected and how those words should be arranged. It all made no sense. The crumpled notes on yellow lined paper that gathered around his desk were simply incomprehensible.
***
Adrian Hackett wasn’t answering his phone. The message machine informed callers the mailbox was full. Agent and editor began to worry about the author’s health. The problem was, he lived at a considerable distance, out in Witcherville. To ease their minds, they called on local police to do a welfare check at his home. What they heard back was cause for deep concern. Police reported that Hackett was at home, but wouldn’t open the door, only speaking from behind it to say he didn’t dare let his muse escape. All the windows had been blacked out, and they couldn’t see whatever might be going on inside the house. That’s when the publisher decided to send literary agent Fredrick Thurston to see firsthand what the problem might be and to take a look at the new pages Adrian had earlier claimed to have written.
Thurston wasn’t sure what to expect. Writers tended to be loners, introverts, somewhat eccentric, occasionally alcoholic, and once in a while just plain nuts. Hackett had always struck him as rational, if also a bit insecure and reserved almost to the point of inhibition. With these creative types there was always the possibility of insanity, though.
When Adrian Hackett yielded to Thurston’s demands and finally opened the door to admit his agent, a small cloud of tiny flying insects escaped into the outdoors. Hackett looked terrible. His face–the portion not covered by a medical mask–was a mass of golf-ball-sized lumps, one eye swollen shut, a bright red cauliflower ear bulging from the side of his head. Inside the house Thurston asked Hackett to explain the swarms of bugs and blacked out windows.
“Just keeping my little helpers happy,” Hackett chortled.
“And the trash?” Half the floor of the room was covered ankle deep with crumpled pieces of paper.
“Discards from recent days,” Hackett said. “I’ve had a small setback.”
Thurston picked up a couple of the discards and smoothed them out. They were covered with gibberish, written in longhand scribbles, not a real word in the bunch as far as he could tell. He squashed a bug that bit his lower lip.
“Don’t do that. You’ll kill my muse!” Hackett yelled.
Thurston humored him by waving his hand to shoo the bugs instead of swatting and squashing them as he would prefer. At this point he was thinking about the possibility of insanity.
“May I see your latest pages,” Thurston asked.
“Most certainly,” Hackett said and handed over the sheaf of eighty-nine pages he’d created with the help of the first bug. “Enjoy.”
Thurston started reading the top page. Puzzlement wrinkled his brow. He turned to the next page and then to the next and finally just ruffled through the stack of pages. He turned to Adrian seeking some explanation. Adrian simply smiled and said: “Brilliant, right!”
An incredulous Thurston handed Hackett a page. “Read this one to me, please, out loud if you would.”
Adrian focused on the page. Several times the surgical mask stretched as he opened his mouth to speak. But nothing came out. His confusion was evident.
“For some reason I can’t read these words,” he said. “Perhaps I’m overtired. Everything is a blur.”
You can’t read them because they’re not words at all,” Thurston said. “They’re nonsense, gibberish, pure gobbledygook.”
Hackett took the stack of paper back from his agent and rifled through the pages. Sure enough, each was covered with nonsense, a jumble of letters and symbols and spaces that made absolutely no sense at all. Where had the words gone, all those beautiful, brilliant words he’d written with the assistance of the bug?
“What happened to my lovely story?” he said. Confusion was evident on his face. “What have you done?”
“The better question, Adrian, is ‘what have you done?’ I know what I’ve got to do, though.” He took out his cell phone and called for help.
“Writers’ Rehab. What is your emergency?”
“This is literary agent Frederick Thurston. I’m located at 114 Hog Hollow Road in Witcherville. I have another writer with a mental health issue, a severe case of writer’s block, as bad as I’ve ever seen. I believe he has cracked under deadline pressure. Please send an intervention crew immediately.”
