Alter Echo

Eight days

Kenneth saved up money from his day job and rented a cabin in the woods somewhere on the North Shore of Lake Superior for a week in November. But the sky blew just the last of the leaves from trees and spared him the early white of years before.

Kenneth sounded nameless in the ears of other writers. A modest list of form rejections splayed around their file in his inbox. Quick lookup to evade duplicate submissions. A folder for passing agents. A folder for receipts for all the contests left unwon, retreats left unattended, for hyped and costly reader notes left biting and unheeded.

Seven days

Kenneth poured coffee from the shoddy cabin maker on day one, pinched out floater grounds, plopped in front of the laptop. Took the brown scent in through the steam and savored it, opened a fresh page to start the greatest American novel of our time. So began it thusly in a fit of spurt.

“Gabe Jerome hadn’t published a novel in five years, not since the fiasco with his fourth and most controversial book which rubbed the publishing establishment the wrong way. Not that he had ever had much love among that crowd. Even his New Yorker story a year prior was thought to be bought in a desperate attempt at legitimacy. It didn’t work. Then there were his comments to a female interviewer, something off the cuff that wouldn’t have gotten more than a shrug even ten years before.

“Gabe was a vet, though. Had he been starting out, he would have been canceled for sure, kicked to the curb like the serial-killer antihero in his books that made all that moola, Johnny Echo. As it was, Gabe made his apologies and minded his Ps and Qs like a good boy and scraped by on his legacy despite walkouts at his publisher from all the spoiled Gen-Z’ers. Still, he laid low at the advice of his agent.

“Gabe came back from his tropical purgatory tanned and ready to get back in the saddle. He had found himself at last, a rich hack, and proud of it, and ready to get richer. He knew his readers, and they loved him. Gabe’s next target would be the literary establishment itself, come hell or high water, and Johnny Echo was going to help him.”

Kenneth knocked out pages before the high night wind whistled off the lake, felling him from stupor. He rubbed his eyes, looked at the time on his phone. Another blast upon the window by the door and he rose, faced the noise, stretched, opened and stepped out the frame. A mild breeze upon the trees but nothing more. A thin excuse of a November.

Six days

“Gabe traded his royalty-bought Italian villa for a cold winter in the Montana Rockies. He’d given himself three months to scrape together his next big hit, made all the easier since he and has wife had separated before he flew off to Panama. Mistresses abounded, but this time he wouldn’t have to suffer the guilt and nagging. By the time Gabe sat down to write, his favorite hot cup of joe beside his Royal 10 typewriter, he knew what Johnny Echo was going to do next.

Johnny always killed his victims through the ear on account of his parents being deaf. An icepick through the eardrum, acid poured down the canal, poisonous spider eggs inserted into a sleeping victim. His favorite, though, had been a device he’d taken off a mad scientist that could be calibrated to a person’s brainwaves and cause their head to explode with a few minutes of exposure time. But Johnny was getting older, wiser, and bored—a lethal combination. He had a new trick up his sleeve.

“Gabe was on a roll. By the end of the week he’d finished three chapters with no signs of slowing down. He treated himself to a drink at the local watering hole. Gruff and bearded like Papa, with the charm to boot, Gabe had no problem attracting townie girls to his presence even if they had no clue who he was. The high-class bitches in Manhattan made him drop a few bills before dropping their designer panties in the men’s room. But here in God’s country, Gabe never had to buy a drink, especially on ladies’ night.”

Kenneth called it a night at the first yawn, well after dark again. He ambled to the kitchen and filched a Bud from the bottom of the fridge, set a pot of water to boil, and slapped down a box of Kraft mac and cheese next to the stove with a rattle. He leaned his back against the counter, one arm on his hip, the other nursing the beer at his lips, eyes down, fried empty brain on reboot.

Kenneth jerked when the high wind peaked again, sung louder through the cracked window. He set the beer on the counter and approached to bring the pane down, arms hugging himself from the cold. As he reached out, he felt nothing. Heard the wind scream in through the crack. Darkness there nothing and nothing more. He pulled his hands back, looked over his shoulder, turned back, then threw them out again and shut the window with a bang.

Five days

Kenneth flicked sleep from blurry eyes and fingered the weather app on his phone from bed. The rest of the week was to be as mild as the previous days. No low temps, no high winds, no storms. A November out of time, an old September only. He put the coffee on and fired up the laptop.

“Gabe got a call from his agent. The news was all over social media. Didn’t he know? The publisher was getting pressure from Twitter and their low-level staffers to pull the new Johnny Echo book from publication, with another walkout planned that day. The complaint was that Johnny coming from deaf parents and turning out to be a serial killer was insensitive because it suggests that having deaf parents makes one dangerous and insane. Gabe pushed back, said Johnny himself wasn’t even deaf and that he’d already dealt with this issue in the previous book. His agent agreed but offered two options from the publisher: either retcon the character, make it a lie, like he only thought his parents were deaf but they really weren’t; or else scrap the project and write something else, maybe a spinoff with one of the supporting characters from the earlier books. And if I don’t? Gabe asked. Then we find a new publisher, his agent sighed.

“Gabe hung up without giving an answer. All the more reason to keep writing a nice fat fuck you to the industry pussies who couldn’t keep their mutts leashed. Retcon Johnny Echo? Not a chance. He poured himself a glass from the blue label, straight as a razor, and slid a new sheet into the Royal.

Johnny waited in the alley for the publisher of Monsoon-Ransom Hill to emerge from her corner office on Broadway. She was only a cog in a vast machine of cancel culture and political correctness and who knew how many careers she’d ruined by taking all her cues from online trolls. But Johnny wasn’t there to kill. He had a new MO. Johnny still had a code that the punishment must fit the crime. People got inside her head, sure. Now it was his turn. And let’s see who could speak louder.

“Gabe hung it up for the night before dinner, then glanced at the pink lace panties a townie girl had left him as a souvenir that morning on the back of the couch. He grinned. Another notch on a bottomless bedpost. He refilled his scotch, heated up the skillet for an elk steak, and listened to the winter storm pick up outside. If his gut was right, he’d have to wait the better part of a week before sowing his oats again.”

Kenneth shut off the nightstand lamp and lay in bed, closed his eyes and tossed for a while then looked up at the ceiling, pale ambient moonlight ricocheted off the lake. He nabbed his phone and thumbed right on pretty local girls, expanding out wider when the clip ran empty. Slim pickings here.

Kenneth listened to that high cold wind pick up again and slam against the cabin. He rested the phoned hand near his body on the bed. Strained his ears. Thumps outside. Slow, broken apart. One, two…three. Not on the cabin or the door. On the ground. Slushy, muffled. That familiar stretching sound as the boot pivots slightly to move forward. Footsteps in the snow.

Kenneth caught his breath, shot upright, put his hand to the lamp string and gripped it. Another frosty thud. Kenneth left the lamp off and the tassel swing there as he snuck from under the covers. He threw his shoes on, donned his jacket, stood in the dark before the front door and nocked his ears. Slowed his breath as the breadth of silence widened. No steps. No wind. Kenneth emptied lungs and grabbed the handle and opened the door. Still mild November. Still no snow. Still just simple breezing off the water.

Four days

“Gabe weathered the storm by writing at odd, random hours. It’s why the nine-to-five gig had never suited him. Not that he’d had much experience in that. He’d been writing since high school, including his first sold story. He’d dropped out of Iowa after one semester, then taken an overnight warehouse job while he wrote his first novel, the debut of Johnny Echo, during the groggy days and lonely midnight lunches. It turned out to be a smash hit and Gabe never looked back.

“Gabe ran out of all the blue label around dawn on the third day of the blizzard. He lit a Cuban and savored it out one side of his mouth while he kept going on the best damn Johnny Echo story he’d ever written. He went at such a clip that he forgot to eat, chomping on the butt of the dead cigar well into the afternoon. That’s when a sharp knock came at the cabin door.”

Kenneth jerked in the chair in front of his computer, read the lines again. Felt the eyes flit left to right in their sockets. Read the last line again. Frowned. Deleted it. Started over.

“Gabe chomped on the butt of the cold cigar well into the afternoon. He looked through the dining room window at the savage whiteout, spurred on by the isolation. He grinned and closed his eyes. He was in his happy place now. Free from worries. Free from meddling women, his meddling agent, his piss-ant manager. Then a loud pounding at the cabin door. Gabe twisted his neck. Who the hell even knew he was here?”

Kenneth stopped again, glared down at his hands, weighed them as dense foreign objects. He fumbled one to his mug and downed the cold swill and a chaser of bitter grounds. He rose from the table in a sweat, padded his damp balding head on the way to the door. Opened it to the calm November wind and harmless sky. Nobody in sight. No bodies. No alien objects to shunt against deep wooded hovels in waning light. He corrected the story once again.

“Gabe twisted his neck toward the door, then got up and grabbed his shotgun from the bedroom. He stood in front of the door, then opened it quickly. There was only a large branch lying on the ground. The storm had blown it down and crashed it against the door. That was all.”

Three days

"Johnny spied his second target deep in a parking garage on 42nd Street, CEO of the telecomm giant that owned the pussy publishing house. The pulse from the unlock button on the key fob echoed around the empty level. Johnny slithered out of the shadows against the wall and pursued his prey in the tan Brooks Brothers overcoat in deft silence. By the time captain bigshot eyed Johnny’s shadow behind him, it was too late."

Kenneth worked in blocks of smaller time now. He popped the last of the beers for lunch and nursed it during swipes of left and right. Checked the matches tab on the app to find it empty. Widened the search area again and found more options, quickly vanished. Put the phone away and watched the treetops dangle in the breeze of mild November, running hops over his bitter tongue.

“Gabe made love to his Jack Daniels and fended off another text from his agent. Back in the real world of social media, pressure was mounting for his lynching, his publisher pushing for a solution that wouldn’t have to forego the millions of dollars of revenue the new Johnny Echo book would bring in, much of it no-doubt due to the controversy itself. But Mr. Hot Shot Agent would have to wait. Mr. Manhattan born and bred. Gabe was focused on the story first, then the dogs could fight over the scraps.

Johnny sat behind the rich groggy prick as he came to in front of the steering wheel of his Bentley. The chief executive swirled his head about like waking from a nightmare, shook himself out of it, but when he reached for the wheel his hands didn’t move, tied at his sides by the seatbelts. He groaned, then saw Johnny’s face in the mirror and screamed again. He started to call for help but Johnny put a finger on his, Johnny’s, lips and put the straight razor to the man’s ear canal. “You’re gonna publish that book, now,” Johnny said. “You ain’t gonna listen to nobody else but me. You comprehend me, boy?” The rich asshole nodded and the smell of fresh piss hit Johnny’s nose. “Good,” Johnny said. “Now I got just a few more words fer ya to hear.” Johnny stuck his mouth right up to the man’s ear and whispered, nice and slow. And when he was finished, Johnny slipped out of the page.

“Gabe finally—”

Kenneth caught himself again to see what he’d written. The last line in Johnny’s story. He laughed at himself and shook his head. He slumped his dull hands back over the keys and corrected it.

"Johnny slipped out of the car, then wandered out into the dark."

Kenneth called it a night.

Two days

Kenneth wakened to a ping on his phone. A match. He tapped open the app to see a beautiful young face and then a message from her. It was a link to her profile on an adult content site and the immortal words “add me lol.” He unmatched and smacked his phone back on the nightstand.

Kenneth reheated yesterday’s coffee in the microwave and sat in front of the laptop and lifted the screen and stared at the words and the white space beneath it. He stopped and started and retraced his fingers the better part of the morning before he found a rhythm again.

“Gabe looked out the window with his liquid breakfast at the calming skies. The snow had stopped overnight. The roads would be treacherous but as an outdoorsman it would be worth the risk to venture out to civilization to get a lay of the land, or, better yet, just a lay. He felt the stubble on his face, set down his drink, and wandered into the bathroom for a shower and shave.

“Gabe finished dressing, cuffed his flannel at the wrists, and tied up his Timberlands. He glanced at the shotgun, back in the bedroom corner, then pulled on his winter coat. He lit another Cuban for the road, or the walk, as it may be, then opened the door. There in front of him stood Johnny Echo.”

Kenneth jumped out of his chair, tipping it over to the floor. He leaned down to check the screen and there the words sat, boldly staring out at him. He slapped the laptop closed and checked the fridge for maybe a rogue beer, checked the cupboards for maybe a phantom bottle of blue label. He was empty. He glowered down at his shaking hands and turned them over. He wiped his mouth with one, rubbed his thinning hair with one, turned to the door. Silence there. Mild November out there.

Kenneth put on his jacket and approached the front door. His head spinning. Thin air passing through the lungs. He turned the knob, cracked it, stood there. Closed it again. Locked and relocked and doublechecked the locks. He went to the bedroom and dug through his suitcase to find a little stack of books, emergency backup reading in case of block.

Kenneth called it a day.

Last day

Kenneth back at the table where he found words again. His glazed eyes staring at the screen, fingers tracing back, deleting back and writing forth as Gabe found words again and Johnny—

“Gabe opened the door to see Johnny—"

“Gabe pushed the door closed on Jo—"

"Johnny pushed open the door to see his final victim. He rubbed his eyes, rubbed his temples. He was seeing two men there. No, not two men, just double. Johnny had always liked a challenge, but it may mean going to old standbys. He approached the first, just a mirage.

“Gabe stood helpless as the icepick shot out and into his ear. He fell dead. His phone throbbed and buzzed away with his agent’s good news.”

Johnny’s vision returned. No more illusions. Just one target left. The very last. He dug into his breast coat pocket and opened the straight razor. He slithered to the last man, seated at the table. Thrust it—

Kenneth felt the hot red splatter on his alien hands in a flash of white light. The splayed fingers, then the empty into—

Wait. I think I hear something.