The Curse of Fame

What would she do for her words to be seen, to be felt? What would she do to have her words be understood? Eris’s mind wanders as she sifts through the dozens of emails on her work computer. What would she do to finally let someone see the thick draft collecting dust inside her desk? The fear of advocating for her work and the fear of never letting the world see her story battle each other in her mind while she tries to focus on the screen.

She sighs and gives up on the never ending emails, and moves towards the even bigger pile of physical mail. Heaps of hate mail, fan mail, junk mail, and where aspiring authors' novels go to die.

Eris barely gets started on the first envelope when the phone rings.

“Seshat Publishing, this is Eris speaking.”

The voice that comes through the phone is somehow both shrill and arrogant.

“Hey, yeah, Eris, it’s Zelos. Is Theo in?”

Eris stifles a sigh. “Yes, Theodore is in the office right now, what do you need from him?”

“Is my royalties cheque in yet?”

Erin rolls her eyes, “No Zelos, it hasn’t come across my desk yet.”

“Okay,” Zelos pauses. “Well, can I talk to Theo?”

Eris looks to her left through the open door of Theodore’s office, and sees him on his phone, the subtle sounds of a mobile game filtering through.

“He’s on the phone right now,” which is technically true. “I can ask him about it when he’s off,” Eris offers.

A moment of silence on the other end of the receiver. “Yeah, yeah whatever. Just let me know.”

And with that, Zelos promptly hangs up, leaving Eris to listen to the dial tone. She rolls her eyes. Then, because it’s her job, she pushes out of her chair and gently taps on the open door to Theodore’s office.

He looks up from his phone, squinting at Eris as if she’s an inconvenience, as if he wasn’t the one just playing a game on his phone. Theodore doesn’t say anything, waiting for Eris to announce her reason for interrupting his obviously very busy day.

“I just got off the phone with Zelos,” Eris starts.

Theordore sighs heavily and puts his phone down on his desk. He brings his hands up to his face and rubs them up and down.

Eris studies him. “Those fifty percent royalties on his book are making quite a dent, huh?”

Theodore takes a moment to reply, collecting his thoughts. “Listen,” he eventually says, “we’re just a small little fish in an industry of sharks who want to eat us and take our authors with original work so they can continue to deprave the book world with sellouts and oversaturate the market with garbage books. Zelos’s book gave us enough traction for this place to stay relevant, yes, but those royalties cheques are killing us.”

Eris chooses to stay silent, knowing when Theodore goes on rants about money, he just needs to listen to himself talk sometimes.

“They’re usually a good selling point,” Theodore continues, picking up his phone again. “We offer them fifty percent royalties cheques instead of giving them a big deposit up front. I mean usually they only sell a couple hundred copies anyway.”

Eris nods, pretending to listen. Theodore continues to talk, and Eris slowly slips out of his office, knowing he won’t notice she’s gone.

She walks back to her desk and picks up the first envelope on top of the stack to get back to her previous task. She turns it over and looks at the return address. Something about the name strikes her as familiar, but she can’t pinpoint it. Eris opens up the envelope to a single piece of paper, with only two sentences scrawled in the middle.

Zelos Andino is a liar and a thief. His new book is entirely plagiarized, and I can prove it.

Eris flips the page over to the other side. Nothing. Nothing else in the envelope, just this one sentence. She frowns, wondering if it’s supposed to be a joke.

She stands up and goes to Theodore’s office and shows him the page.

He waves it off, saying they get mail like that all the time, and it’s just a wannabe author jealous of Zelos’ fast success.

But as Eris walks back to her desk, she can’t help but wonder if there’s any traction to it. She’s worked as the assistant to the editor for almost a year now, and nothing like this has ever crossed her desk. And all the mail crosses her desk.

She opens her laptop and searches the name on the return address. Raven Garcia. One google search of her name shows dozens of articles about her book scandal a year ago. Apparently, she was accused of copying entire paragraphs from another novel. Her book sales soared when it first came out, but since then it seems she’s gone underground. Her social media has been deleted, there’s nothing about her going to any book events or word of her writing another one. There’s nothing on her at all.

Eris can’t help but feel a sliver of doubt in her gut. Why would Raven send in an accusation of plagiarism to another author if that’s exactly what happened to her? Does she feel jealous of Zelos?

But there’s another feeling in Eris’s gut, a feeling there might be a slight chance of truth to this. The first time Zelos walked into this office with his book pitch, he had an air of satisfaction and arrogance, as if he knew his book would be published and amass so many sales.

Eris takes all of one minute to decide she wants to pursue this. She grabs the envelope with the return address, takes one look at Theodore now snoozing on his desk, and quickly tip-toes out of the office.

The address isn’t far. She hails a cab and tells the driver where to go, and he arrives at the doorstep of a quaint townhouse not even ten minutes later. She gets out and heads to the doorstep, hesitating for a moment before knocking on the door.

What is she doing here? Zelos is a conceited asshole yes, but could he really plagiarize an entire book?

Before she has time to escape, the door whips open. Behind it stands a disheveled thirty-something-year-old woman with hair so black it looks purple, and bags under her eyes to match it.

Eris opens her mouth, preparing to say something when the woman, Raven, shoves a file into her hands.

Eris, flustered, takes the thick file. “What’s this?”

Raven’s eyes bore into Eris’s, heavy with an emotion that Eris can’t place.

“Proof,” she says, before shutting the door in Eris’s face.

Eris stands there for a moment, not quite knowing what to do. She slumps onto the steps in front of the townhouse and stares at the file in her hands. If she opens this, and it proves that Zelos really did plagiarize his book, what would she do? Does she show him? Does she try to hear his side of the story? He would lie of course, anything to save his own ass, and anything to keep his precious royalty cheques coming in.

Eris decides she needs to go through it and decide then. But not here.

She hails another cab, figures Theodore won’t miss her at the office for another hour, and heads to her own apartment.

She sits on her lumpy couch in her small studio, takes a deep breath, and opens it.

Eris doesn’t go back to work. Eris is consumed by everything in the file. Pages upon pages, photos, dates, times, everything that could prove Zelos is guilty is right in front of her. It’s overwhelming.

Later, when Eris eventually tries to go to sleep, she lays awake in her bed, her mind racing. Where does she go from here? What does she do? What can she do?

Would anyone believe her? The facts and proof are there, but Raven’s credibility isn’t exactly great with the publishing industry, or the public for that matter.

Eris eventually falls asleep, and dreams of dozens of ravens, feathers so black they look purple, swarming her, plucking at her skin over and over until she can no longer hear her own screams.

Eris sits at her desk fidgeting with the corner of the file that Raven gave her, and looking at her own file beside it, her years of hard work laid bare in between the pages.

In the late hours of the dark night, Eris’s mind turned towards an alternative. A way where she can save the reputation of Seshat Publishing, and possibly further her own goals. Something she wouldn’t normally do, but the situation seems odd enough to warrant an odd approach.

Finally, Theodore enters his office, only forty minutes late this morning. Eris springs up, nervous energy radiating through her. She walks into his office with his coffee, and balances the two files in her other hand. He grunts his thanks as she sets it down, then looks up as if surprised to still see her there.

“Was there something else?” He asks.

Eris takes a deep breath, “Yes, yes there is actually.”

Theodore sits there, and gestures for her to begin, impatience stirring the air.

Eris thumps the first file onto his desk, Raven’s proof. “Do you remember the letter I showed you? The one claiming Zelos plagiarized his novel?”

“Sure.”

“Well, it’s true. I decided to follow up on it. I went to the return address on the envelope, and it was Raven Garcia, do you remember her? That whole scandal a year ago? She sent in the note. She gave me this file that shows, honestly, way too much proof that Zelos copied basically her entire novel that she’d been working on for a year.”

Theodore slowly opens the file and starts going through it as Eris talks.

“I didn’t really believe it at first, because why would Zelos risk that? Yeah he’s a douchebag, but he’s not a total idiot. But I looked through it and it’s all there, every piece of evidence you could ever imagine to prove it, everything is there.”

Theodore is silent. The quiet stretches into minutes as he meticulously goes through the file, which only causes Eris’s anxiety to hum incessantly beneath her skin.

Once he finishes, he slowly places everything back in, and closes it. He rubs his face with his hands and lets out a small groan.

“We can’t let this get out,” he finally says, letting his hands fall to the desk. “It will destroy this company if this ever sees the light of day.”

Eris stands up straighter. “Good thing I have a solution.”

“Oh, you do, huh? What other solution is there except burning this entire file?”

Eris smiles, “I have a better idea.”

She slowly grabs the file on his desk and replaces it with a different one. Her book, her baby.

“My idea is that, well, I won’t release this to the press if you take a look at the novel I’ve been working on,” Eris takes a deep breath, preparing. “And publish it.”

The silence becomes suffocating in the small office, Eris’s words becoming stale and thick in the air. Theodore stares at Eris like she grew a pair of wings.

Then he starts laughing, and Eris’s heart deflates. He cackles and he throws his head back and the bastard even pretends to wipe a tear away from the corner of his eye. His laughter echoes and bounces off the walls.

When he eventually stops, he says, giggling, “Yeah, okay. Sure. I’ll take that file now.”

Eris holds on tight, and says with as much threat in her voice as possible. “I’m not joking, Theodore. I made copies. I have a USB stick with everything on here. I will go right to the press without even talking to Zelos and destroy the integrity of you, this company, and all of the authors books you’ve published.”

Theodore’s smile slowly fades, realizing Eris’s true intentions.

“This isn’t a game. You will publish this book, or else your career will be destroyed, and this company with it. Nobody comes back from a plagiarism accusation and you know that.”

The room is thick with tension. Theodore knows this isn’t like Eris, but he also knows he can’t risk it. Eventually, his true nature of not giving a single shit wins. He’ll do anything to do as little work as possible while also saving his ass.

“Fine. You have a deal. I don’t want to see any of this shit online at all, I trust you can handle that?”

Eris holds in her breath of relief. She nods curtly, and takes Raven’s file, leaving her own. She goes back to her desk and collapses into the chair, closing her eyes, taking deep breaths to calm her racing heart.

Then, as quick as the deal happens, it’s executed. Eris gets a contract the next day, she makes notes and gives it back. Then she does that three more times.

If the contract editing wasn’t enough, she also begins the tedious process of editing, while also dealing with the even more frustrating editor who’s been assigned to her.

Every night Eris goes to sleep, she questions whether she made the right decision, but by morning, she’s realized it’s the best thing she could’ve done for herself. She has nightmares about being chained to her desk, her book on fire in front of her.

If she never made this deal, as wrong as it is, then her book would never be seen by the world, cursed to haunt the bottom desk drawer until the pages rotted through, and Eris rotted with it.

The days fly by, then the weeks, then the months, then all of a sudden, she’s standing in front of a podium at a local book store, on her release day. Her book, her book, lays open in front of her. A crowd of excited looking readers

“I want to thank all of you for coming here today. I can’t express how much this book means to me, and I am so excited to share it with you. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it!” This gains a round of applause, and Eris soaks it in greedily.

“I also want to thank Theodore, my former boss, because I wouldn’t be here without him today.” Eris gestures to Theodore behind her, his face unreadable.

She smiles knowingly before turning back to her fans.

“I can take some questions now.”

The next few weeks are packed through with book signings, book fairs, book readings, anything with the word “book”.

Eris flourishes in it. In the attention, the love, the adoration, the praise. At night she falls asleep reading reviews of her book, all commending her debut novel, wondering when her next one will be announced.

But Eris hasn’t written anything. Hasn’t even tried. Doesn’t seem to care. Isn’t this enough? Isn’t this fame what she’s been looking for her whole life?

Months later, Eris sits at a book signing, her fame only growing.

The next person in line hands her the book, and says, “what are your thoughts on those tweets about your book being plagiarized?”

Eris’s whole world stops. Her heart falters, then continues to beat furiously inside her chest.

Eris clears her throat, “I’m sorry, what do you mean?”

“They’re saying you plagiarized your book, or at least parts of it. Copied someone else’s work.”

Eris stands up abruptly, her thoughts racing.

Plagiarized? Who would say that? This book was years and years of Eris’s life, how dare someone accuse her of this?

She doesn’t remember how she got there, but Eris barges through Theodore’s office.

“Did you know?”

He looks up lazily from his phone. “Know what?”

“Don’t bullshit me Theodore, did you know?”

He takes a moment to reply, clearly savouring Eris’s turmoil.

He eventually says, “Yes. Yes, I knew.”

Eris grunts in frustration, running her hands through her hair and pulling at her scalp.

“It’s not true,” she laughs, feeling a little crazy. “I worked for years on that book, that’s my original work!”

Theodore shrugs, annoyingly calm. “Doesn’t matter if it’s true. You never come back from a plagiarism accusation, right Eris?”

His eyes bore into her, Eris’ heavy breaths the only sound in the room.

She stomps out of the room, smacking the door in a fit of rage and grunting her frustration.

In a daze, Eris somehow manages to find her way home. The second her door closes, she collapses against it, slowly sliding down. She brings her knees up to her chest and lies her forehead against them. She doesn’t know how long she stays there for.

Minutes, an hour?

When she finally has the decency to rise, it’s only to go and lay in her bed.

Eris’s night consists of dozing off for an hour, waking up from her incessant nightmares, then scrolling through her social media to find an influx of hate comments all over her profiles. People are even sending her death threats over private messaging.

How did it come to this? How quickly she rose, only to fall twice as fast. An inkling of familiarity worms its way into Eris’s mind, her situation giving her a sense of deja-vu. Eris brushes it off and continues down the social media hole she’s fallen into.

As the sun creeps its way up through her curtains, Eris begins to accept the fact that this is the end of her short-lived career. There’s no coming back from this, her readers would never forgive her.

As Eris sinks deeper into her bed, she can’t help but think of that small white letter she received, and what would’ve happened if she never opened it.