The Big Fear

Guests were arriving at 1pm which was exactly one hour away. Ted was lying on the floor because his bed was too soft for the kind of thinking he was doing. His laptop was beside him. The carpet was taking a beating from his hands which clenched and unclenched dramatically and with a steady increase in urgency whenever he checked the time on his computer screen. An hour of peace remained and still the paragraph he’d typed yesterday remained unfinished and hopelessly inadequate.

You’re a failure. You can’t even write a full paragraph, how could you ever write a full book you lunatic?

His doppelganger was sludging up his brain again. The man was identical to him but with oily skin and a curling, ever-present smile that curled tighter every time he made a snide remark.

You’re not a writer at all. You haven’t written anything worth talking about.

Ted clenched the carpet. It was a familiar dismay that sat on his chest, but now there was an added time pressure. Normally, he could vanish the sludge, but he was feeling low, so he let the sneering man spew all over him while 1pm approached at a torturous pace.  

Your ideas aren’t worth a damn thing because you can’t express them. They’re going to stay jammed up in your brain right here with me forever and when you die they’re going to die with you.

This was the big fear. The one that, if he wasn’t careful, would collapse him. If there was one thing in the world that Ted was certain about, it was that he had ideas. He wasn’t like his mom who would lose entire evenings to her phone game, Star Shooter, or whatever it was called, its bubblegum pop soundtrack looping endlessly in her pink polished brain. He was part of the dying class, the thinkers, the inventors, and artists. Those cursed with the responsibility of lifting society from the ineptitude and mediocrity it so inherently craved. Sometimes Ted wished he were more like his mother. Unburdened by enlightenment and free to spend his life in a sort of mindless, numbing haze.

The doorbell ringing brought a swift and piercing end to Ted’s thoughts. He felt a sudden whisper in his chest. The doctor said it was just a heart murmur, completely innocent, nothing to worry about. Ted repeated this to himself in the voice of someone trying to rationalize with a simpleton. When the whispering stopped, he focused his attention on the sounds firing off from below like distant bullets.

“So good to see you! I’m glad you could make it.”

His mother had a distinctly nasal voice that exhausted the voices of those around her like an unpleasant odor. From his position on the floor, he couldn’t hear whoever had arrived. Any second now, his door would open and there’d be a knock and he’d be pulled from his room and forced to suffer the company of those who worshipped at the feet of some electronic deity or other. He wondered dismally what it would be this time. Were they all Star Shooter radicals like his mother? Or perhaps there was some hot new game or TV show on the market that needed to be discussed in tireless detail.

Rufus was barking from his pen in the front yard. It wasn’t the usual plea for attention, there was a threat in each howl which meant whoever entered had brought a man with them and as far as he knew Lucy was the only one of his mother’s teacher friends that had a husband. The rest of them were recently divorced, or in the process of getting a divorce. That was the other problem with them. None of them had any real conversations with their spouses. They’d rather spend time on their devices than put in the time to actually get to know a person. He suspected none of them really knew anybody.

After a moment, Rufus’s barking trailed off into pitchy whines, which signaled that the party had moved into the living room out of the dog’s line of sight. He imagined Lucy and what’s his face were likely helping themselves to the deviled eggs his mom had made that morning. That would be his first plan of attack. He’d make chit chat about the food, update them about his career when they asked (that would be an easy one—nothing new), make a few noncommittal inquiries, and then pose a topic he knew his mother would jump on so that he could retreat beneath the shade her enormous opinions afforded.

His door flung open and hit the stopper on the wall. His mother’s figure filled the doorframe to capacity. She knocked on the side of the open door.

“Guests are here, Ted.”

Ted felt an acute burst of rage.

“And…?” He asked. He knew there was no avoiding his fate, but her aggressive invasion incensed him. He wanted to make this difficult for her.

“And you need to come down and say hello.”

“Why should your having guests over impact me? I’m not the one who invited guests.”

“Are we really doing this right now?” She asked in the exasperated tone of someone who knew they would ultimately get their way and didn’t want to participate in the theatrics leading up to it.

Ted stubbornly thrust his jaw out by way of answer.

“I better see you downstairs in 5 minutes,” she said and thundered back the way she came.

Ted sat in furious silence. He picked himself up and moved by increments out into the hall.

Lucy and her husband were indeed eating the deviled eggs and expressed their enjoyment with frequent and aggressive mmm’s. They rose from the sofa when he approached and appraised him generously.

“There he is. There’s the writer,” Lucy proclaimed loudly. She turned to her husband. “He told me he was going to include me as a character in one of his books.”

“Oh really? Well isn’t that something.” Her husband had a sly, wiry voice that seemed entirely unsuited for his oversized frame.

Ted didn’t remember telling this woman that he would put her in one of his books. They had only met twice before, but it sounded like the kind of thing he’d say.

Lucy beamed at him, her teeth perfectly straight and alarmingly white. It looked like a shiny metal bear trap was wedged in her face. He made a note of this delightful bit of imagery for later use.

“So what have you written?” Lucy’s husband asked.

A flush rose in Ted’s cheeks. He knew this question would come up, but to be assaulted by it so immediately was inhumane.

“Nothing….yet. But I have a few short stories I think are real winners that I plan on getting published soon,” he croaked.

“Ah,” the husband said, comprehending. Ted felt himself being sized up once again in a new light. He squirmed uncomfortably and grabbed a deviled egg for something to do.

“He’s trying to write the next great American novel.” His mother’s nasal voice sounded from the kitchen and she emerged with a bottle of wine in each hand.

“Don’t you think we ought to save some wine for when the other guests arrive?” Lucy giggled.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got 2 more bottles back there.”

“The next great American novel, huh Ted?” Lucy’s husband was still watching him.

Ted tried desperately to remember the husband’s name. He was too embarrassed to admit he’d forgotten, but felt powerless without it.

“That’s right. He spends his morning and most of the afternoon holed up in his room working on it. And he doesn’t like to be disturbed. I have to leave his lunches outside the door for him,” his mother stated.

“That sounds like me binge watching the latest season of Camella Craps, have you been watching it Maya?” Lucy asked eagerly.

Ted felt a burst of warmth towards the woman for changing the topic and waited for his mother to pounce on the bait.

“No, I haven’t seen that one,” she said. She looked about to ask more, but the husband jumped like lightning.

“I want to hear more about this great novel,” he insisted, licking his lips.

“What do you want to know?” Ted asked. He took a bite of his deviled egg and immediately regretted it.

“Can we read some of it? After all, it’s not everyday you meet the next Mark Twain.”

Ted’s stomach twisted painfully. He didn’t understand why this man seemed to have a problem with him.

“I’m not really comfortable sharing it with anyone at this point,” Ted swallowed down something that burned.

“Of course, but you’ll have to share it with others eventually. One day the whole world will be reading it. It’s the next great American novel after all.” Everything about the man was oily and his pale fingers hung limply over his wife’s shoulder like encroaching worms.

Ted nodded and mumbled something noncommittal, then ate the rest of his deviled egg so that he had an excuse to keep quiet, much to his stomach’s despair.

“Oh that reminds me! I’ve got an app that you’d adore Ted. It’s a writing app.” Lucy exclaimed with a little jump.

Ted started. For a moment it seemed like the voice had come from somewhere beyond, piercing the oblivion in which Ted and the man were the sole occupants.

The man leaned back in the sofa with a small, satisfied smile on his face. Ted’s mother leaned aggressively forward, “What is it?”

“It writes stories for you!” Ted’s eyes darted towards her with sudden and acute interest. “Watch. You can input all different kinds of things right here…genre, subjects, themes, motifs, and whatever nouns you want. Then you can set how long you’d like the story to be. And hit this button here ‘tell me a story,’ and then watch! These dots mean it’s writing. It takes a few minutes, depending on how long you want the story to be.”

Ted lounged against the sofa, but his attention was trained fully on the screen as it wrote.

“And it’s done!” Lucy cried, she was evidently enjoying the attention. “See, it wrote a whole story for me.” She thrust the phone forward and Ted reached out to grab it but his mother snatched it first. Her eyes darted quickly over it.

“This is good,” she concluded after a moment and handed the phone back to Lucy.

“Isn’t it?” Lucy squealed.

Ted felt as though a slow flame was climbing up his body. He reached out a shaky hand, “May I?”

Lucy dropped the phone in his palm. It felt strange and final. His eyes scanned the text and his stomach churned worse than ever. After a few minutes in which his mother poured Lucy a glass of wine, Ted had read the first page of the story. There were 100 more to go. The walls of the room were closing in on him like the walls of his stomach seemed to be. The story was good. In the first page alone, he could tell the writing was good too. It was authentic and uncanny. He handed the phone silently back to Lucy and then he vomited on to the sofa.