Cheap Fiction

trigger warning: depictions of sex, murder, and self harm

I didn’t want to kill anyone this time around. I almost did a couple of days ago, while shopping for gummy worms and paper towels. I overheard a toddler screaming furiously when he and his mother passed by the candy aisle without stopping. I listened as the mother tried to bargain with the kid for several minutes before giving up and letting his tantrum carry on. That’s when I opened the journal I took everywhere with me, and wrote:

The mother tried to ignore her toddler’s tyrannical crying, but after thirty minutes she reached her breaking point. Calmy she abandoned her shopping cart and exited the Target with her angry child. The child was silenced forever. She was finally free to start her own clothing line, her lifelong dream.

What amazed me the most was how I did not have to specify how she left with the kid. She could have let him penguin walk beside her hand-in-hand (which would have been insufficient as the kid might have made a break for the candy aisle) or dragged him across the floor like a heavy sack of potatoes (which would have caused a bigger scene than the little boy’s crying). The mother instead carried him away, like any mother rushing out a public establishment with a noisy, embarrassing brat would. Like how I imagined she would when I wrote it. 

But before she’d gotten too far, the thought of her murdering her son and creating a mediocre clothing brand disturbed me. I crossed everything out. The mother stopped, as if coming back to her senses, and returned with her whiny child to the cart of groceries she just abandoned. 

Don’t get it twisted; if I had allowed it, she would have definitely killed her son and started that clothing line. I ran enough tests to know that anything written in this particular journal becomes factual. 

I found it, randomly, or by fate, sitting by its lonesome at a booth in a Wendy’s a month ago. Its covering is black and wrinkly and leathery, as if it were made with the flesh or an elderly Ethiopian woman. Luckily, I was needing a new journal at the time. And no one noticed me taking it because no one else eats Wendy’s—except whoever last owned it, I guess.

Its last entry read:

Phat ass mamacita behind the register lets me take her home and hit it raw.  

The journal was filled halfway with twenty-three different handwritings that always start out as private entries or college notes before ending…explicitly. Raunchy. Pedophilic. It really does have an irresistible cover, used or not, but it is apparently forgettable once your wildest sexual fantasies are brought to life. 

-

I sat at a Barnes & Noble, sipping a mango dragonfruit lemonade from the Starbucks café, tapping on the journal with the butt of my pen. I could’ve made myself a billionaire. I could’ve ended world hunger. I could’ve ended both the Ukraine and Israel-Hamas wars. All I had to do was scribble the words on these magical yet limited pages. But as a writer, armed with pen and paper, I must scribe something more artistic than any of that. 

A muffin top, white-haired man wearing bifocals typed vigorously on his Chrome laptop. A fellow dreamer. The inspiration hit me. I wrote:

Lance placed all his hopes and dreams into his passion project: a fantasy novel where an ancient dragon saves the kingdom and teaches its human counterparts how to live fulfilling lives. A revolutionary concept, one he believed could change the lives of millions. Sitting alone, seemingly invisible, he poured his soul into his work. 

I looked up and noticed an older woman walking past with three books cradled in her arms.

Florence noticed him from the corner of her eye. She took note of Lance’s dancing fingers, the perspiration on his forehead. Instantly she admired how dedicated he was to his goal. She had not seen anyone carry such passion since her late husband. She swore to herself she would never love again, but her little legs moved toward him on their own.

“Excuse me,” said Florence as she stood above him. “I don’t mean to interrupt, but I’ve always admired a writer who puts his all into his craft. If you don’t mind, can I read some of what you’ve written so far?”

Rage flashed within Lance. How dare she ask to see what he’s written so far? He’s only on the first draft! He closed his laptop, shoved it longways between her lips, grabbed a fist full of her thinning hair, and slammed her into the laptop, onto the café table, dislocating her jaw.

“Sure,” Lance responded. “I don’t mind.”

As I continued writing this spontaneous romance, I realized how much more gratifying this must feel than publishing short fictions for the New Yorker, or winning a Reedsy writing contest, or even seeing my name and “bestseller” written in the same sentence. I’m writing real life. I author the world.

I walked to my silver Nissan so satisfied, as if the universe kissed me on the lips. As I was about to open my car door, I was approached by two men in black suits. They leave their unmarked BuCar in the middle of the parking lot, stalling two SUVs behind them who were just looking for a parking space. 

“Ciryl Logan,” one of them announced. “I’m Agent Padalecki. This is Agent Ackles. We have a couple of questions for you if you don’t mind.” They flashed their badges. They were both tall and handsome and serious, like TV actors playing FBI agents. But the fact that they knew my name still alarmed me. “Have you witnessed any strange occurrences as of late? Like, say, a woman attacking a stranger with a beer bottle at a bar a couple of nights ago, or a man speeding through wrong way traffic yesterday afternoon?”

He was talking about the woman who confronted her boyfriend for cheating on her with her mother, as well as the workaholic lawyer who hit his breaking point because his wife took the kids and left him. The boyfriend died of blood loss from a sliced artery in the neck, and the lawyer died driving headfirst into a Ford truck. Those were two of my most compelling pieces.

“Oh, and let’s not forget about the sword swallower who died swallowing a sword at the renaissance fair,” said Agent Ackles. His voice was raspy, in a sexy way. “Trust me when I tell you, those guys do not fuck up.” The sword swallowing incident was one of my first pieces. The sword swallower, depressed from his life decisions and forced into a career with an unstable income, just couldn’t take it anymore. It was creative nonfiction, if anything.

I flipped through the pages of the journal. Had I written about these guys at some point to bring suspense to my life? I found only one mention of FBI agents while skimming through the journal, but it was in someone else’s handwriting and involved handcuffs and leather straps and candlewax.

“What we’re saying, Mr. Logan,” said Agent Padalecki, “is that people have been killing and dying for reasons that don’t add up, and you’ve just so happened to have been in the vicinity for all of them. We were hoping you could, you know, shed some light on the matter. From your unique angle. Help us figure out what’s going on here.”

“If someone’s using hypnosis or flashing lights to fuck with these people,” said Agent Ackles. “Help us out, here.”

They both crowded me, stared at me without blinking. Their body language seemed more accusatory than their words implied. But of course I’d think this way since I’m the one who killed all the people they mentioned and many more, detailed in the pages of this journal I hugged like a little girl hugging her favorite doll.

A chorus of honking and swearing started behind them. A parking lot jam several cars deep, the final car in the chain not thinking to back up to release the others, that BuCar causing the who jam in the first place. Ackles marches toward the noise. “FBI, ASSHOLES!”

Padalecki looked away for a moment, which was all the time I needed to press my pen to a page corner.

Drivers attack agents.

“What are you doing?” asked Padalecki, who caught me scribbling.

My response: “Huh?”

Ackles started yelling. He did his best to shield his handsome face with his arms as a bunch of out-of-shape and unathletic people leaped out of their cars to jump the agent. His partner rushed to his aid, but some abuela was waiting for him, swinging a big ass Kate Spade tote. Immediately I hopped into my car and sped out of there. 

-

I drove for an hour without a destination. Would killing those agents be the smart thing to do? Wouldn’t two less attracting agents take their place?  I still had to wash my work clothes for tomorrow. Wouldn’t the agents suspect me more after being spontaneously assaulted around me? Should I do something about child trafficking while I still can?

A cop car flashed its lights behind me. As I pulled over, I noticed for a brief second the speedometer read sixty, even though the speed limit was forty. But what if, I thought, this cop is working with the feds? They would know my license plate number, the kind of car I drove. They could have been tracking me for god-knows how long. 

The cop exited his vehicle and marched toward me. I opened the journal, trying to come up with a way to get the authorities off my trail.

I disappe I am young Asian girl with thick thighs.

I roll down my window. The cop, overweight, probably in his mid-thirties, looked at my legs, then at my face, then at my legs again, then at my face again.

“License and registration,” he said bluntly.

“I’m sorry, officer. This is my brother’s car. My car’s in the shop right now.” My new voice almost threw me off. I wore a black tank top under a light navy blue jacket. I also wore fitness shorts that exposed my legs and hugged them just so. 

“Did you know you were doing sixty in a forty?” the officer asked my juicy oriental thighs.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. “I had a very intense workout sesh just now, and the adrenaline must have gotten to me. It was leg day.” 

“Well, don’t let it happen again. We don’t want to have any accidents, now do we?” He winked at me. “You have a nice day, ma’am, and good luck with your vehicle.”

He walked away. It worked. An adorable Asian face with a good bit of plumpness where it counts is a delicacy if there ever was one in this modern age.

I opened my phone camera to check out the new me. Damn, I looked amazing!

-

“So, Itachi means ‘weasel’ in Japanese, and weasels are considered devious and evil and able to hypnotize people,” some guy was explaining to me over drinks. “It’s really cool, because Itachi was a bad guy for most of the series and was a master at genjutsu. Itachi’s, like, my favorite character in Naruto, by the way.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, smiling politely, waiting for my chance to escape. I knew this dude was talking about anime because I’m Asian, which meant he assumed I was Japanese. I could’ve been Chinese or Korean for all he knew. Fucking racist. But the worst part of this one-sided conversation was how much looking up I had to do just to meet his gaze. I used to be the same height as him. The back of my neck grew sore. 

My closed jacket was two sized too big for me, so it dropped to just below where my shorts ended, giving the genjutsu that I’m wearing nothing underneath. I stood with my feet together, my inner thighs squished against one another, with the journal hugged against my bosom. I gave off the vibe of a shy girl looking for a big strong man to protect her.

I thought I’d enjoy the extra attention I’d undoubtably get with this new body, which was the whole point of going to this club, but everyone I’ve spoken to so far was so lame that I was reminded of why I usually didn’t come to places like this.

As I came to this conclusion, I accidentally made eye contact with a pretty ginger. The base dropped from the club speakers. She made a flirty clawing motion at me, which turned my insides. But she was the perfect excuse to ditch this guy I was talking to.

Two things ran through my mind as I approached this babe. 1: Everyone who previously owned the journal misplaced it during sexual conquest. So I needed to be careful. 2: I’ve never slept with someone using a vagina before.

I scribbled in my journal I have a big penis. I could feel my new, blacker set of dick and balls filling the space once occupied by my vagina. What kind of backstory would I give myself for being a transvestite? Was I transitioning from a man to a woman or the other way around? How has my family’s attitude towards my alternative lifestyle influenced my upcoming decisions?

“Is that your diary? Did you just write about me?” the ginger teased.

“Yeah. I like to describe pretty things as I see them.” That was a lame line, but she didn’t seem to mind. 

We started dancing, her and I, plus some guy she introduced to me whom I’d instantly forgotten. I felt my fitness shorts getting tighter. I didn’t usually dance so I probably looked awkward. It dawned on me at that moment how easy it is to be a girl. I could approach other girls without receiving funny looks. I could quit my job and sell feet pics online. I could break the law and get away with it for the most part. The possibilities seemed endless.

Until Agent Ackles appeared before me. “Have you seen this man?” he asked grimly. He waved his phone in my face with a picture of me in my old body—it was a selfie I posted on Instagram a year ago. In the distance, Agent Padalecki did the same thing to some other poor, drunken youth. 

“Uh, no,” I lied. “I don’t know who that is.”

Ackles studied my face, then glanced downward “Where did you get that?” he said, pointing at the journal which must have looked familiar. He took a step closer.

I said nothing. The panic froze me. The agent’s keen attention to detail has seen through my attractive disguise. 

“Hey!” cried the ginger hotty. “Leave her alone! Who the fuck do you think you are, huh?!” She stepped in between the agent and me, pushing him back. 

I took a step back and bumped into that one guy she knew. “I need to get out of here,” I told him. Without hesitation, he took my hand and led me away. For a moment I looked back and noticed the beginning of a struggle.

The redhead and her male companion shared a hotel room. I wasn’t sure if they were meant to stay there for a night or a week or longer. I wasn’t sure if they lived locally or were visiting for vacation. I couldn’t even confirm if they were a couple. It’s possible that he told me their situation because he talked for five minutes once we settled into the hotel room. His words went in one ear and out the other. Everything about him was so generic. 

What I did learn was that the hot ginger’s name was Tess. He left Tess at least ten voice messages before sitting next to me on the queen size mattress and burying his head in his hands. I felt bad, genuinely. Tess was probably arrested for putting her hands on federal agents without the backing of an angry mob like the one at the Barnes & Noble parking lot. I ruined the night of two strangers who were nice to me. 

Generic guy seemed freaked out over Tess’s absence. I opened the journal to try to rectify his evening with the one thing he probably wanted from the start. 

This guy and I have crazy sex right now, I wrote.

Somehow, I’d forgotten that I gave myself a large shlong, but at a certain point I knew it was too late. He and I were already doing it and I had to work with the equipment I brought with me. 

I woke up the next moment feeling refreshed, like my spirit was renewed, like the world spun in accordance with my rhythm. I sat up and stretched my arms above my head. The sheets were disheveled. Clothes were scattered. A lamp lied on its side next to the hotel phone with the receiver hanging off the nightstand. 

Generic guy’s back was turned to me. He lied naked, outstretched, holding his bum. It’s probably sore, but he’s being a good sport.

That’s when it hit me, by fate, by plot. The journal. Where did it go? I checked under the bed, where I found my phone (it was 9:46am and I was late for work). I scattered the scattered clothes. I flung the bedsheets across the room. I dug through drawers and cabinets. I thoroughly searched the bathroom. I even checked around the air conditioner that sat in the corner of the room.

I screamed.

I made the same mistake as every other owner of the journal before me. 

I fucked, and I fucked up.

The journal disappeared. Now I’m stuck in this makeshift body forever. 

-

I’ve been going by Tina Vo lately. Still working on my backstory.