Day #10, Hide and Seek – by Amber Averay
He should have been writing. Trouble is, lately he was far better at procrastination than he was at actual creativity. It was frustrating, but every time he sat down to write he was too easily distracted. Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Amazon…well, anything that wasn’t to do with his work-in-progress was more interesting than the project itself.
Perhaps that was telling him something? He needed a new idea. A fresh one. Not this beast that he’d been working on for the best part of six years, fighting with daily and often not speaking to the characters out of pique. Many was the time that he’d try to guide them in the direction he wanted them to go, only to have the figments of his imagination rebel and dig their heels in and stubbornly refuse to compromise.
‘Oh, but you created them. You’re their God,’ people would dismissively state, as if writing were that easy. ‘Just write what you want them to do.’ But they weren’t writers. They didn’t understand that it wasn’t that simple. You could suggest a plot or an idea, but you couldn’t force the characters to do something they didn’t want to.
Now they were at a stalemate. Had been for months. He’d plotted out the next chapters with precision, noting down how his heroine – strong, brave, but impulsive and reckless Lara Jarrett – was going to launch her revenge plan and attack the man responsible for killing her boyfriend in a hit-and-run. She was furious, heartbroken, filled with rage and a need for vengeance. Her retaliation was going to be quick and brutal.
But when he tried to write, Lara would fold her arms and ignore him. Every entreaty, plea, threat, enticement he offered made no difference – she didn’t agree with his plan and so refused to cooperate.
When he’d sat staring at the blank screen for a good thirty five minutes Stu put his head in his hands and glared at the computer keyboard as if it were the source of his problems. He knew what Lara wanted – as clearly as if she’d verbally told him face-to-face of her preferences. But while she desired a slow hunt and leisurely, torturous punishment for the careless driver, he wanted a faster, bloodier, shocking result. Swift, violent, horrific.
And this was why he was so good at procrastinating. If he couldn’t see eye-to-eye with his main character, what was he to do?
So it had been months since he’d made any progress, and was close to throwing in the towel completely for something new. Maybe something fast-paced, with violence and action and gratuitous sex…
That decided, he opened a new document and then sat in thought a moment. The hardest part of writing, he lamented, was beginning. He needed a killer opening sentence, snappy and witty and gripping…
A mocking chuckle sounded from behind him, and he spun around, almost toppling off his chair.
Alone. As he knew himself to be.
He straightened up, shaking his head at his foolishness, and once again faced the computer – and froze. Reflected in the screen was the image of a woman standing at his back, her hazel brown eyes alight with wicked intent. Before he could react a hand gripped the back of his head and shoved his face down onto the keyboard. ‘Ouch!’ he growled, wriggling and flailing and flopping like a fish on a deck. ‘Who are you? What are you doing?’ He put his hands against the edge of the table and shoved, ploughing him across the small room.
The anticipatory thump as he collided with the woman never came, and slowly Stu spun his chair around, eyes darting suspiciously in search of her.
He. Was. Alone.
Scrubbing at his eyes he groaned, and decided he’d earned a break. In the kitchen cabinet was waiting a brand new tawny port, and now seemed as good a time as any to crack it open.
Of course, it wasn’t there. Stu scrabbled through the cupboard, his movements at first controlled, quickly becoming frantic. He knew it was there, he’d put it there only yesterday.
Deep within the house, toward the back where the shadows accumulated in the darkened rooms, came that teasing little laugh again. Stu jumped, growling at the stupidity of his situation. Where had he put it?
‘You can’t find me.’
The fine hairs at the nape of his neck prickled, his skin pebbling as gooseflesh rippled across him. He hadn’t imagined that. The feminine voice came from the same direction as the laughter, and it was eerily, oddly, disturbingly familiar.
Easing the cupboard door closed, Stu quietly slid a sharp knife from the butcher’s block and slipped into the hallway. ‘Who are you?’ he called out, wishing his voice hadn’t trembled on the last syllable. ‘Where are you?’
She giggled, playful and yet sinister. ‘Hunting through the shadows,
Sifting through the dark,
What evil lurks within your house?
Dry tinder needs a spark.’
‘What the hell…?’ Cold prickled over him, and Stu paused, finger set upon the light switch. Nobody should know about that – Lara had been singing that to him for weeks, irritating, flustering, annoying him. He’d not written it down, or spoken of it to anybody.
So how…?
‘Illuminate the wickedness;
Burn bright that you can see
The face of devastation
Borne of deepest cruelty.
Running, running, running far
Heart pounding like a drum.
I am coming after you
We’re going to have some fun.
I hear your rough breath rasping,
You know your future’s bleak.
This is a game you can never win;
You can’t hide from me.’
Palms sweating, Stu reached for the door handle leading to the back room. His breath caught in his throat, rasping and rattling, and sweat dripped into his eye.
‘You want to play?’ he whispered, cracking the door open. Darkness knotted the space beyond. ‘Hide and seek.’
He pushed the door open.
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