And then I felt it coming. That hot wave of anger and contempt. A burning red planet, coming from some far-off outer space version of hell. A planet circled in faint, watery rings of despair and bright, dancing rings of evil laughter. A planet hurtling out of its usual orbit, flying straight at me.
Barnaby McGhee, you’re an idiot and the biggest suck-up I’ve ever met. You deserve to die. I imagined his guppy head exploding gorily, accompanied by a pathetic little pop sound effect.
I looked around to see if anyone had read my mind, but they all seemed oblivious to my evil. They were still talking, nodding, smiling.
I looked down, ashamed of myself. Whatever conversation Tom, Barnaby, and Priscilla were having might as well have been happening in a foreign language. It sounded like muffled noise to me.
Snuff. It. Down. Snuff it down, I told myself.
This had been different from the other times.
For instance, the part about Barnaby deserving to die and the deliciously satisfying image of his head exploding.
That was a little extreme, I told myself.
I tried to even my breathing. Mercifully, it seemed that I had become completely inconsequential to this evening’s social hour. The other three seemed perfectly capable of carrying on without me.
Muffinseed, who’d been cuddled up next to me, knew the truth though. She’d hopped off the couch a moment earlier, right when the evilness had hit, smart enough to get away from me.
I bit my lip. These thoughts that came out of nowhere were getting worse and worse, and they were starting to happen all the time.
“So,” Barnaby continued, no longer sounding muffled to me, “how does the story reveal itself to you? Or do you methodically plot it out?”
“Yes, Tom. Tell us how the process works,” said Priscilla, leaning in.
“Well,” Tom said, clearing his throat, “I’ve mapped it all out… I guess outlined it, you know, or whatever, in the form of an outline, and I’ve also come up with, uh, some character developments, I guess you could call it, where I’ve figuratively sketched out my characters, as in, umm, how their appearance looks and how they talk, and come up with an idea about their habits and behaviors, you know.”
So articulate! Look at these losers hanging on your every word. Tell us more, said the demon in my head. It sounded like me, only far crazier and more vicious. I took a sip of water to keep my mouth from talking.
Barnaby and Priscilla nodded emphatically. Along with grocers and groomers, every small town needed its own author.
“Do you write drunk and edit sober?” asked Barnaby, smiling a goofy, excited smile.
“Excuse me?” asked Tom. He set down his beer, looking practically sheepish.
“Like Hemingway. It was Hemingway who said that, right? Never mind,” said Barnaby, sensing that his comment had missed its mark. Or perhaps hit it a little too dead-on.
“Please ignore Deuce, Tom. Tell us more of your writerly secrets,” said Priscilla, bending forward, I swear, just so my husband could see down her shirt. She reached out and squeezed Tom’s knee.
He coughed and turned red again. “Anyway, so I’ve sketched out my characters, and now I’m starting to write it all down. Starting to, uh, get it all down. Putting pen to paper. From here it should be smooth sailing. Of course, there could be many drafts. A first draft, which could be like a, um, really like a glorified outline, you know? I think all the greats had up to a dozen drafts just for one book. Hemingway, for instance?” He nodded at Barnaby, as if to say You know Hemingway. You just mentioned him. “Nabokov. Tolstoy. James Joyce. It’s a long process.”
I exhaled a derisive little snort, but no one seemed to notice.
“Pen to paper? You write it? I mean, you don’t type it?” asked Priscilla.
“Oh, well, no. I type it. I guess that’s just an expression.”
“Okay,” said Barnaby, “so you come up with an outline. Do you mean like a timeline of what will happen? Is that what you mean?”
“Yes. Exactly,” Tom said.
“And then what happens after the outline?” Barnaby asked, stroking his chin-neck.
I noticed then that his tiny head looked bigger than usual. It was practically normal-sized tonight. His eyes were buggier than ever. His goatee resembled a small, shaggy toilet seat for a miniature raccoon. His pockmarks were stretching like inky dots on a balloon. And then I suddenly understood that his head was reinflating so it could explode again.
“Does anyone need anything?” I asked, jumping up, hoping to make the insanity and evilness drain away from me.
“No, we’re fine,” Priscilla said, gesturing for me to sit back down. Her eyes and Barnaby’s about-to-explode bug eyes never came unglued from Tom.