Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Horror could tell her about human nature somehow. Lenore choked on sobs as she realized, as she thought of the things she would have to work out, the things she would have to channel if she wanted to scare people. Scare herself first. It made her remember and understand Sturgeon's law. Why artists failed. And it became a fright of its own. To cut the bullshit.

She kept reading, deliriously, desperately. She faced her new woman, she faced her molting, she cried. Cried at everything that came to her. She angered at her reflections, her biases, her cruelty. Horror didn't say the enemy was them, it said the enemy was us. Science-fiction didn't say it could happen, it said it was too late. Haunted house stories were not about bad plumbing, they were about child abuse. Lenore exploded. She had no reason, she had no right to interpret it that way.

So now what was romance about? And what were fantasy novels about? What was tripe about? What if she was wrong?

The night fell, the lights were turned on. There were texts on her phone she didn't look at, tweets on her feed she didn't check. She tried to fight falling asleep, which can only accelerate the process. Her eyes followed the lines. Her hands held the papers lower. Drool pearled from the corner of her lips. Her thoughts became her only surroundings while paradoxically branching off to their own fractal-like tracks. Her eyes closed once. Twice. And without realizing it, everything stopped.

*****

Tuesday (seven days)

She awoke in her bed just before dawn, still fully dressed, lights switched off, and the nightmare began.

Ghosts is usually one person. Not for her. There were at least thirty of them standing in her bedroom, shapes in the dark staring down at her. She felt their silent eyes while she shrieked and turned the bedside lamp on.

Nobody. Empty room. Empty space cleaned back to normal by the electrical light.

Lenore sat up in afterscare, pressed her back against the headboard.

THERE'S SOMEONE BEHIND YOU

Her bed was littered with crumpled papers.

She started on a long breathy laugh.

The box was waiting next to her pillow. Calling her already.

ELIZA called her too. She picked up the phone; at the same time picked her first suggestion of the day.

WE LIVE YOU SLEEP

Her manager strongly advised she showed up at work ten minutes early to explain her escapade of yesterday.

Lenore grabbed a handful of notes and threw it like confetti, then another, then three others. Then opened the bedroom door and filled her living-room with flying sheets.

Still infinite. All real. She was not dreaming. She thought this platitude in euphoria instead of wondering why Eliza was already at work so early in the morning.

*****

Lenore showed up ten minutes late because she had wanted to see Portia first and tell her the short story would be made and would be awesome.

But the office was empty--completely empty.

She asked a secretary, Sybil Rossi, an Eliza clone. Same smile, same bowl of rancid cookies on her desk. The resemblance ended there but that was enough.

"I'm sorry, who?"

"Portia Keller. I wondered if you could give me her number or even an e-mail."

As if she had overheard, another Eliza-clone showed up. "We can't share her information with you. Portia Keller quit, she works for Stuxnet now. I find it suspicious that you want to see her. What's your name again?"

"Lenore Llamarada. Of Accounting."

"And why do you want to talk with the competition, Lenore of Accounting?"

"She was a friend."

"Then why don't you have her number?"

Lenore ended the conversation with the sharpest sting of the human language:

"I see..."

And left.

What would have been a day of euphoria lost its pleasant hues on her way from HR to Management.

It had started so well, tough, with first the shedding of her clothes, dirty from the anguish of the previous day.

She had no reason to put her jammies on and went back to the reading, the exploration. She lay on the bed in this pose, the one so unnatural and back-destroying but which Brian liked so much: on her stomach with her feet crossed up in the air. It prepared her, as if she knew, for the story of a male co-worker who had a boyfriend who liked to ejaculate on his feet. Just an ordinary fetish. The scary part was learning about the hygiene of pedicure salons. The even more scary part was when one day his boyfriend got a prostate infection and they saw blood in his semen as it spread on his toes.

She didn't care for those two parts but she enjoyed the fabricated image of these two beautiful men loving each other so well. She loved that two men could both share both their cum. Couples that had something so intimate in common.

Brian never let her kiss him after she sucked him. She never had a problem with him kissing her after he went down on her. After he went down on her butthole, she added and smiled.

Without much fuss, the dildo ended up between her legs, resting along her parted lips, vibration set to 1, with the secret goal of letting the batteries die out.

The sun rose up on her shivering body. She didn't find any more erotica. And when her back hurt too much she kept on lying prone but put down her feet and stretched out her legs.

They stayed spread.

The dildo fell.

In this position, the only way to keep contact with her toy was to let the base rest on the bed and have the tip lean between her buttocks.

This too made her smile.

She lubed it with her own wetness and placed the kinky vibration on her anus.

She could read with one hand. The other reached underneath and went for her clitoris.

They could fire her all they wanted. She soon would be Stephen King. Stephen Queen.

She giggled. And moaned.

It felt so fucking good.

The dildo fell again. The cool breeze licked her buttcrack.

Lenore thought about a dildo shaped like a penis. It would be more suited for anal masturbation. Even if she didn't consider it at all. Not in a million years. She thought about what it would feel like when the head would pierce through the tight sphincter. That moment when you have pushed hard enough and the glans pops in, the rim swallowed in by her asshole, like a first step, an introduction.

She giggled again, biting her upper lip.

The dildo was vibrating between her thighs, batteries holding up.

She wedged it again between the bed and her anus. Set to 5.

Her fingers were not going casual anymore. She could not keep on reading.

She rested her head on the sheets unfolded there, closed her eyes and let herself drift down and toward an orgasm.

Becky and Jill were looking at her. At the peak of her mind-numbing, when her moans were really pitching up because the pleasure was so full, when thoughts got nonsensical and unleashable, she thought it could be the last time she ever masturbated. She could have a threesome every Saturday with the two girls and make it her new masturbation. She could bring the dildo and share it with them. She could teach them how to squirt and they would revere her as their Goddess. It could be her new life. Her only lived life, with all the other boring parts edited out.

She started to cum. Her buttocks clenched around the toy as many times as waves of heat washed out her clit. It pressed the tip against her anus with a luscious insistence.

As soon as her dwindling cries allowed it, she thought, I bet Brian would have loved the idea. That perv, and she giggled. And panted and sprawled about, rubbed the sweat off her chest, shaking, dismissing the preposterous fantasy as just hornyspeak. Her life was writing, old or new woman, especially new. It was her calling. Being naked to the reader--figuring out how to--was her only fate.

My doom.

"Oh that's awesome!" Eliza said. She was expressing unexpected enthusiasm in the validation Lenore had originally sought from Portia.

The manager didn't care that she had left work after lunchbreak. As long as it never happened again. "I'm your ally, you know?" did she say.

It was an unnerving discussion to say the least, in this office where things repeated.

"As I told you the other day," Eliza went on, "If you fail to deliver your manuscript in time, it will be considered a breach of contract."

Lenore waited. She was waiting for the I'm joking. She was thinking about these forms she signed without looking.

"I'm joking, we don't need a contract, the press team being pissed off would be enough!" and Eliza laughed and winked. "I saw you don't take the elevator anymore?"

"No. It's... just... exercise..."

"Yeah well, an elevator is an investment made for the comfort of the employees, it's a shame not to use it, and you could sprain your ankle in those stairs, that would be even more money spent in sick leave."

Lenore remembered the gun, last time she was sitting in this chair. She answered, "I learned Portia quit."

"Who?"

"Mrs. Keller."

"Yeah, I don't know the details."

"It's nine o'clock, I should go, lots to catch up."

"Take all the time you need, you know, in Korea they have bedrooms for their employees, maybe you could put a sleeping bag underneath your desk."

Lenore merely nodded as she got up.

Bitterness followed her to her desk and sat with her all morning. She worked, sure, but most of her mental capacity was dedicated to imagining an outline for her short story.

On some blessed days, in Lenore's life, work and house chores felt like chores while writing felt like an adventure. Today, writing felt like revenge. She would show Eliza.

Although as always on the first days, the brainstorming remained fruitless. She had been writing since she was 9 and she knew creativity was 85% staring at the wall.

Characters and actions came and went, discarded with embarrassment like Freudian slips. She called PR to greenlight a proofread article she wrote for the company Facebook page. She called Kate to have lunch with her. She doodled a lot.

I should have been an accountant, like dad told me.

Oh, wait.

The joke still made her smile.

*****

Kate had chosen her very temporary job to be a Papa John's (Daddy Issues, as she liked to call it) ten minutes away from Deep Green. She would find better soon, as the world would always need bookkeeping--but she would always need to pay her rent. In the meantime, they were sharing her free pizza at a table, with her clothes over her uniform. Forty minutes.

Lenore had so many things to tell her and couldn't.

She could only show her her excitement, not her terror of living in a paranormal world.

Even sex, Kate's favorite subject, was limited by...

Doubt?

The new woman would have sounded like a crazy person. Particularly opposite her friend's attitude today. Kate wasn't hyper, she sounded calm, mature. Sad almost.

She hadn't slept with any girl last Saturday, she had spent the night at a friend's. Lenore felt guilty that she never bothered to picture the 20-something lesbian life as something other than carelessness and hook-ups with Taylor Swift lookalikes. She was a writer--the secret spies of human psychology--she should know better.

"And the two thots?" Kate asked? "You went on an adventure with them?"

Lenore prayed her voice didn't falter. "They were already pretty lit when you left. I went home before they'd pass out in my arms. But I think my co-workers definitely want to send me on an adventure. I found this in the box."

She drew the key for the girl who lost everything from her purse.

"Are you serious?" Kate said and got up. She walked to the counter and went back with the restaurant's suggestion box. She drew from it a second 'P29' key. Brass. Square head.

"Get outta here. Did it have a note with it?" Lenore asked, thinking, Lock. Padlock.

"Nope."

"Can I have it?"

"Nope."

"Just for today, pleeeease."

"Aight..."

Lenore took the new key and did a little victory shimmy on her seat, chanting, "A-R-G! A-R-G!"

"You know what they open?"

"I think so."

"Doesn't it mean I'm part of your scavenger hunt?"

Lenore calmed down on the spot and sat up. "Well, I'm pretty sure the door is in Deep Green, so..."

"Ok... Well, urbex is a cool way to get killed, I guess. So anyway, can I read what you've done so far? I feel like crushing some dreams all of a sudden."

"No. I hate it," she lied. She tried to find some analogy: "It'd be like exposing myself."

Kate blew out air through her nose. "I see." Her flushing would have been more obvious had she not looked down at her leftover crust.

And Lenore was looking for her phone anyway. She took a selfie of them both while chugging down the rest of her bottle of San Pellegrino, trying not to laugh doing it. Then she suppressed a belch they both would have otherwise enjoyed.

Kate burped freely and didn't even look at the few heads that turned, instead she delivered a soft, "I don't give a fuuug," with a funny voice, upwards to the ceiling.

"Come to my place tonight," Lenore said, "you can take the key back and put your story idea in mah box." She had decided that she would write this afternoon, so tonight could be leisure time.

"Lemme think... How 'bout Thursday night?"

"Ok. I promise we won't eat pizza. And I was thinking... you're gonna have to teach me about some things."

"Such as?"

"The lesbian experience."

"Oh... Well... Neurosis... Nicotine... Um... Anyways, how do you feel having your co-workers read your stuff?"

"I won't go very personal if that's what you're asking. I'll stick to plot. Plot is always formulaic, you know?" Lenore winced for having said those two words. She swiped Eliza off her mind.

"Crafty. But really, how do you feel?"

"I... I-I dunno..."

Lenore was stumped, less by the fact that she did not really know than by such a question being asked. It wasn't some question about the narcissism of Lenore Llamarada, or an American question about measurable worth, it was a question about meaning.

"I'll have the answer on Thursday."

"I'm sure you will."

Tell her. Come on, tell her. Be casual about it, just fucking tell her. Please. Go. Tell her. Tellhertellhertellher. And because Lenore was trained to quickly find the right embellishment to tell her, she told her:

"I love you, Kate." That was the hard part. Telling a friend how she felt. Almost got stuck in her throat. Now, for the comic relief: "You are a cunning linguist. And you are a good friend."

"Lesbians don't like Star Wars."

"Oh for fuck's sake!"

*****

The pangs of work pressure hit Lenore as she stepped into the shadow of the Deep Green building.

This afternoon, they didn't come from the vision of arrays of filled-up Excel sheets but from the exhilarating anguish of the blank Word page, of absolute freedom, the apprehension of turning a What into the much more concrete How. Which would vanish as soon as she would start writing.

But her walk of stress came to a sudden halt in front of a deserted P29 door.

It was a windowless, sturdy, dirty, generic door. Chained. It was the scariest thing she had ever seen.

Though she turned and hesitated for long minutes, she saw no smokers to stop her.

She tried out a key, which went in easily, turned easily. The padlock snapped open just as Lenore heard steps closing in.

Shit. She pulled out the key and cleared off, not wanting to be seen trespassing or something.

She went straight for the lobby to warn security about this inexplicable breach. Not as if she knew if it made sense at all but last year when a fire alarm went off at the Störme-Sterne, they had to evacuate the whole block. They lost a day of work.

"The mystery door?" the security guard asked.

"That one."

"It's no big deal, the door itself is barred. I'll go have a look." He reached for his walkie-talkie on the counter. "Who got the keys of um...P29?"

*I'm on my break,* a voice crackled back.

So they don't really say over, Lenore noted.

"What's behind this door anyway?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing. I mean yeah it's..." They turned toward an emergency exit map on the wall and he fingered the layout of a corridor shortly ending in no more lines at all. "It's a dead end. They made a mistake when they made the building. And they left it. Heh, it's just a hole."

"And they didn't bother drawing it on the map."

Other lines from other walls were drawn dangerously close to the blank space.

She asked, "Do you think someone broke in?" trying to sound casual.

"There's nothing to steal in there, I don't even think there's a surveillance camera, I don't see the point."

And there Lenore bit the inside of her cheeks to keep herself from laughing. Because she was picturing the big buttplug the suggestion box pranksters had left for her at the end of that dark corridor.

*****

In the staircase, she noticed the banister she had her hand on was marked S01. She knew every object had an ID number. Every hallway. Every trashcan. Every inlet box. Every elevator. To know exactly which one to repair, or replace.

Her desk was probably D666.

Her desk chair was DC69. She sat down and sighed, started up Word. No avoiding around anymore.

She got windows of Excel ready in case someone sneaked up.

Let's write. Something. Anything.

Maybe a last ritual beforehand.

She went for a cup of water by the dolphin poster and listened to the impossible room.

A woman was still droning out names. Another one over the phone was repeating them with the same flat tone.

Nick. Brava. Laurel. Dante. Freya.

The world had become magical. It was one of the things Lenore couldn't tell Kate about earlier. It was endlessly disturbing but the great terror of accepting it--or letting it be--also brought solace. Finally art had a meaning in the grand scheme of things. Ghosts would listen.

The ghosts say go sit your creative ass down DC69 and do your magic.

So she did. Nervous that now every word would count.

She typed:

There is a coven of witches at Deep Green Alliance.

That was it.

"What are you doing?"

It was a manager. Not Eliza. Melissa Something.

Lenore smashed Alt-Tab. "I'm working on the Morris joint contract."

"No, I don't think you are."

"No, look."

Melissa squinted at the screen full of cells and graphs. "You're wasting our time with that. Call Henry ASAP."

"She's been staring at the wall all morning," said a female voice from a cubicle.

Lenore chocked on a, "Annie, what the f--"

"Call Henry," the manager repeated. "Don't make me repeat it. Even if that's what I'm paid for..." she added as leaving, self-satisfied of her quip.

Lenore exhaled slowly, and then turned back to work.

Not much in the end. The main character was female, of course. A little like her, of course. We see her having a normal day, so that we meet the character. Characters > Plot. That's what she believed.

Her co-workers roamed around all afternoon, sighed, mumbled. One of them asked her why she didn't put the suggestion box in the breakroom today and called her a selfish bitch under her breath.

Lenore wished she did take the box with her. She wanted to read its miracle; she needed the feeling of excitement, like you automatically drive a little faster, a little cooler when there's a good song on the radio.

500 meager words. Half of them would be later edited out. Cringed out.

She saved the file on a USB key; knew she would feel uneasy for as long as it would be saved on only one device; called Henry; did some accounting till 7pm and then left.