Chapter 2
This Book May Kill You
Evan Hartley didn’t remember writing it.
He stared at the blinking cursor. Then at the pages. Twelve printed sheets. Still warm.
The timestamp on the file said 4:13 a.m. The printer log said 4:15 a.m.
He was asleep at 4:15. He was sure of it.
He rubbed his face. He’d sat down last night around ten. Chamomile tea. The plan was a cozy mystery. Cats. Something safe.
Then a gap. Hours of it. Now it was 7:30 a.m. He was sitting here with twelve pages he had no memory of creating.
The font was wrong. The margins were wrong. The tone was wrong. But it was his laptop. His printer. His file saved in his documents folder. NOVEL_v1.docx.
He picked up the first page.
CHAPTER 1
Listen. Put this down.
A jolt went through him. He hadn’t written in second person since grad school. A professor told him it was a “gimmick for cowards.” This was worse. Rambling. Self-aware. That name. Darryl Ackerman. The Excel jokes. The missing apartments. The fully formed voice of a man who sounded real. And screwed.
Evan skimmed faster. Each paragraph made his scalp prickle.
I don’t know if I was real before this. I have memories but I can’t tell which ones are mine and which ones were given to me.
“Okay.” Evan set the pages down. “Okay. Wow. Therapy. Yes.”
He hadn’t been trying to write horror. He wanted good intentions. Something that did not scream at him. He flipped through the pages again. This wasn’t a cozy mystery. This was his impostor syndrome with a death wish.
He read aloud. Trying to hear his own cadence. “No one stages their own mugs.”
“That’s not me,” he said to the room. “I don’t write sentences like that.”
But he must have. There was no one else here. No break-in. No intruder leaving unsolicited fiction. Just his quiet apartment. His cold tea. His laptop with a file he’d created during a blackout.
He reread Darryl’s final lines. The pressure built in his chest.
Please.
Close the book.
Hide it. Burn it. I don’t care.
Just don’t let them—
Evan exhaled. Long and shaky. “Well. Shit.”
He should delete it. Obviously. This wasn’t his project. It wasn’t his style. It was a cry for help dressed as fiction. He didn’t have the bandwidth for this. His editor was asking for the cat detective. His therapist was asking why he described himself as “placeholder-shaped.” His mother was asking if he’d eaten vegetables.
He highlighted the text. Hovered over DELETE.
Didn’t press it.
What if it was good? What if this was the most honest thing he’d ever written? Maybe honesty required unconsciousness.
“Jesus,” he muttered. “Listen to yourself.”
He shut the laptop. Checked his phone. No unusual activity. No texts to himself. No reminders. Just the normal anxiety of lost time.
He went to the printer. Checked the paper tray. Checked the recycling bin. No extra pages. No other drafts. Just these twelve sheets. And a file he was afraid to delete and afraid to keep.
“I should call Dana.”
Then he remembered. He had an appointment this afternoon anyway. He could bring the pages. Show her. Get a professional opinion. Dissociative episode or writer brain. Dana would know.
Dana always knew.
He picked up the pages again. Read them one more time. Felt that same tightness in his chest when he got to Darryl’s desperate pleading.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered to the paper. “I don’t know what you want me to do.”
The paper didn’t answer. It was paper. Darryl wasn’t real. Evan was losing his mind in the most literary way possible.
He tucked the pages into his bag. He’d show Dana. She’d fix it.
