Chapter 23

The ghostwriter at Isaac’s typewriter had their back to him. Isaac’s clues were a blocky head, a stocky build, and a barcode tattoo on the back of the neck to match Jessica Alba’s character from Dark Angel. It was Seth. But what was Seth doing at the Twin Towers? And what was he doing in Isaac’s room? Unless...

“Fuck this fucking shit,” Seth grunted, “this fucking sucks!” He ripped a page out of the typewriter, crumpled it up in frustration, and threw it over his shoulder like spilled salt, but not before taking one last look at it to make sure that it truly fucking sucked. It did. The paper ball flew across the room, hitting Isaac square in the face. Neither of them acknowledged the perfect strike or each other.

While Seth locked and loaded another page into the typewriter, Isaac picked up the discarded page and read. It was a screenplay. And what Seth wrote was wilder than anything Isaac could have imagined. The prose was as if Jack Torrance dedicated his time at the Overlook Hotel to writing spicy fan fiction instead of poetry. There were descriptions of sexual acts in the script so lewd and so crude that Isaac could not begin to decipher them, not without knowing the definition of such vulgarities as an “Alabama hot pocket” or a “Cleveland steamer,” having no idea why it was so crucial for the involved parties to consume a big bowl of Wendy's chili prior to the proceedings.

In this instance, the parties involved were Zee and Seth. When Isaac finished the reading, he had to admit that Seth’s assessment was correct. This script fucking sucked.

“This work is, uh, very interesting,” Isaac said to break the ice before launching into the critical questions of the day:

* “When did you get here?”

* “Did they get you at the Ktown apartment, too?

* “Did you kill the girl from the Amber Alert?”

“Interesting? Interesting!” Seth spun around in his chair, wild-eyed. “Don’t pull that patronizing bullshit on me, Isaac,” Seth raged, shaking with so much anger that it threatened to dislodge his Slytherin badge. “I taught you that word. ‘Interesting.’ Do you know what’s interesting? Your face!”

“...” The lameness of Seth’s retort left Isaac off-balanced. He did not recognize this man. He was unmoored.

“I write and I write and I write,” Seth took a breath. “And no matter how much I write, I’m no closer to finding her.” He pointed to a trash can overflowing with shitty first drafts. Positioned above the trashcan was a tiny basketball hoop to shoot paper balls into, like the one Doug Funny had in his bedroom. You know the one. They showed it in the opening title sequence. We’re talking Doug Funny, the main character from the 90’s Nickelodeon hit children’s comedy Doug. Like Isaac, Doug also imagined himself as a superhero, the indomitable Quailman, who sometimes wore his underwear outside his pants, also like Isaac.

“You’re looking for Zee?” Isaac’s stomach turned.

“Well, who do you think I’m looking for, Isaac?” Seth mocked. “Your mom?” Seth rose from his chair and flipped it over just because. The sound of crashing metal echoed around the cinderblocks of the empty room. Isaac held his head in pain. It was too loud but not loud enough to attract the attention of an orderly, unfortunately.

“I thought you could have meant Maria Rodriguez,” Isaac suggested, cowering a little as Seth approached him.

“Who the hell is Maria Rodriguez?”

“The… the Amber alert girl who was found shot to death with my gun at that apartment you drove us to,” Isaac stuttered.

Seth cracked a smile that slid off his face as he spoke, “Oh, that Maria Rodriguez.”

Was Seth having a stroke? Was Isaac? Those were his first two guesses as to what was happening here, unable to process that Seth, the self-proclaimed lead investigator in the Amber alert case, didn’t know the victim’s name. Unless… unless Seth was some sort of poser.

“Who are you?” Isaac demanded.

“I’m Seth!”

“Who are you!”

“We’ve been over this a thousand times. I’m your mentor.”

“My muse,” Isaac countered, Dr. Rousseau’s words echoing in his ear.

“I’m your muse,” Seth agreed. “You sound disappointed. Who were you expecting instead? Margot Robbie?”

“No,” Isaac said, doing his best to avoid eye contact with Seth because Isaac had been expecting his muse to be Margot Robbie, and why not? He deserved it. He was saving the world.

Suddenly, dread flooded Isaac’s veins, choking and clogging his circulatory system like old motor oil. He couldn’t breathe. If Seth was Isaac’s muse, then what sacrifices would he demand of Isaac for appeasement?

With Seth, anything was on the table. But then Isaac took stock of his current shitty circumstances and wondered if perhaps he had already made the requisite sacrifices. What more could he sacrifice? There was nothing left to lose. Maybe this was when he finally got what was coming to him.

“Now it’s time for you to do your thing,” Seth instructed. “You’re going to write a script, and you’re going to find Zee.” He picked up the chair he threw, dusted it off, and plunked it in front of the typewriter as an open invitation. “C’mon.” Seth sounded desperate, his typical above-it-all coolness evaporating.

The tone alarmed Isaac. He felt threatened by Seth. Enough so that Isaac wondered if Seth was working with Isaac or if he was actually working for Dr. Rousseau. Perhaps Seth’s act as a helpful muse was only a ruse from the start. Maybe Seth wasn’t the lovable vet Isaac thought he was. He was a snake. He was a Slytherin.

For that reason, Isaac couldn’t tell him Zee’s location. He wouldn’t even try to write it down. He didn’t want to help Dr. Rousseau. These were Isaac’s true feelings.

However, there was another, stronger ulterior motive for why he didn’t want to find Zee. More than anything, Isaac didn’t want to write. The very act of writing was frightening.

The performance anxiety was overwhelming. Everyone had been putting so much pressure on Isaac, telling him that his words could change the world. Thus Isaac was paralyzed into doing nothing. It was the classic paradox of the gifted child turned burnout.

“They told me that if you found Zee, they’d let me go. They’ll let us go,” Seth admitted. Isaac understood his motivation. It had been less than 24 hours for Isaac here, but living at the Twin Towers already sucked ass. And despite Seth’s bravado, you can’t collect many new experiences if trapped here. Push had come to shove, and Seth had bent to Dr. Rousseau’s will.

“We can’t let them have Zee. If they have her, then they’ll finish the movie. And that could mean the end of the world.”

“Not for me, Isaac. Not my world. That’s not what I negotiated for, so start writing.” Seth grabbed Isaac, forcing him into the seat. Isaac wilted. There was no escape, not with Seth’s giant hand weighing heavy on his shoulder.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Isaac’s fingers trembled as he forced them onto the typewriter’s keys. He racked his brain for any words, images, characters, or feelings that came to mind, but all he could draw was a blank to match the page in front of him. How did people write anything? Isaac preferred tangling with the lizardman to dealing with this.

“You gotta start with ‘fade in,’” Seth instructed. “You don’t know that? It’s a screenplay, dummy. We’re talking day one stuff here.”

“Oh yeah,” Isaac said. “Fade in.” Writing was already a herculean task, but adding Seth as a backseat driver made it nigh impossible. So Isaac had to delay, delay, delay. But how?

“Beautiful weather we’re having, huh?” Isaac asked.

“Focus, god damnit.”

“I can’t do it!” Isaac whimpered and whined after another tense moment of not writing a god-damned thing. “You do it, Seth! What you wrote was a great foundation, really. It only needs another round of punch-ups. Maybe you’ll get a burst of creativity next time you sit down. Sometimes that happens. A thunderbolt of inspiration. Have you ever heard of Coleridge and the Kubla Khan?”

“No. No one’s ever fucking heard of Coleridge. Stop fucking saying that!” Seth screamed. “Only you can write it, man.” Seth tried to pump Isaac up. “You were built for this. I can’t do it. I tried, and you saw the result. No muse will do. It’s gotta be you.”

“Why? Why me?”

Seth rolled his eyes. “Because you were bred for this. Literally.”

“Bred?”

“Bred like a fucking golden retriever, but,” Seth looked at the blank page with disappointment, “but you’re more like a puppy mill golden retriever with a shit ton of hip dysplasia.” Seth paused, beaten down by Isaac’s idiocy. “Well, to be fair, you’re worse than that. You’re more of a mutt.”

“I am?” Isaac turned away from the typewriter to face Seth so he could gin up more conversation. Isaac was so delighted at the prospect of avoiding writing for a few more minutes that it dwarfed the horror of finding out he was bred like a dog to produce prophetic screenplays, a talent that his breeders/handlers had clearly failed to cultivate in him properly, so now he was paying for the sins of their poor tutelage. He cursed them. Why didn’t they prepare him better?

“Tell me, Isaac. What do you remember from being a kid?”

“...” Isaac scanned the nooks and crannies within his cranium for memories but found the nooks empty and the crannies smooth. All there was to call upon from his childhood were impressions: sticky fingers from a dripping ice cream cone, the cool rush of the Pacific between his toes, and the warm embrace of the embers from the fires of the Rodney King riots.

Curious.

Previously, Isaac had always explained away his lack of long-term memory due to the copious amount of cannabis he smoked, in addition to all the other drugs, prescription or otherwise, he took, but now he was suspicious. There might be something more to this.

Isaac knew it was a popular trope for therapists to link any and every personality defect in a patient to their childhood trauma. Yet, to Isaac’s recollection, Dr. Rousseau had never once asked Isaac about his. Why would that be? Could it be because Dr. Rousseau had known Isaac since childhood? No. The only explanation was that Seth was right. Isaac had been born and bred to be a sleeper-agent-super-hero-screenwriter.

“You don’t have any memories whatsoever. Am I right?” Seth asked to prod Isaac.

Isaac nodded.

“I know because the same thing happened to me. We’re not so different, you and I.”

“You, too?” Isaac was taken aback. Who was he talking to? A muse? A colleague? Or a brother? “What were you bred for?”

“War,” Seth said.

“War? Super Jesus Christ. I guess I got off easy.”

“Eh,” Seth shrugged, “You get used to it. War’s an acquired taste, like sparkling water, alcohol, or uncut cock.”

“...”

“ Like I probably wouldn’t have lasted five minutes watching all the bullshit they made you sit through. Didn’t they force you to watch Scott Caan’s Hawaii 5-0? ”

“Yeah... they did make me watch that.”

Made Isaac watch?

Made him watch!

The blood drained from Isaac’s head. All those hours and hours he had spent watching TV and movies over the years were no mere coincidence. What he had assumed to be a hobby had actually been forced-osmosis screenwriting training. It was so obvious now that Seth had spoken it aloud.

How had he never noticed it before? No wonder Isaac only viewed and understood the world through the prism of mass entertainment. No wonder Dr. Rousseau directed Isaac to live his life like a movie, to follow the beats from Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat! Which left Isaac to wonder: what beat was he at now? Could it be anything other than All is Lost?

“Enough stalling, buddy boy. It’s time to put up or shut up,” Seth said. He rotated Isaac back toward the typewriter before Isaac knew what was happening. But even with the absolute knowledge that he was born to write, and this talent was in his blood, Isaac spent his creative energies elsewhere, brainstorming other ways to escape his predicament. What lessons had he learned from media? Could he depend on a deus ex machina to save him?

“No,” Isaac said.

“No, what?”

“I won’t write anything. We shouldn’t. I still think it’s the wrong play. We can beat them. We have all the leverage against Dr. Rousseau as long as we don’t tell them where Zee is. It’s genius.” For Isaac would rather be brave than be a writer.

“Hey, genius, do you see where we are? Because we’re locked up in a mental institution owned and operated by space lizards. And not just by any space lizards but those working for the government. It would be one thing if we were staying at Passages, riding bareback through the Malibu mountains, but this is the Twin fucking Towers!”

Seth looked spooked. Haunted. Even Isaac, as dense as he was, could sense the weight of history behind the way Seth said “The Twin Fucking Towers,” like the name was some sort of cruel inside joke.

“If we’re going to survive this ordeal, we’ll have to outwit, outlast, and outplay Dr. Rousseau,” Isaac said, drawing upon more wisdom from the 90s-era popular culture that shaped him.

“What if they find Zee themselves? Do you think you’re the only lead they have? They’re coming at this from a thousand fucking angles you can’t even see. You’re just one card they have to play. This isn’t Survivor!”

“Isn’t it, though? It’s Survivor. It’s Big Brother. It’s Fear Factor. I’ve been training for this all my life. We’re going to use their methods against them.”

“No, we’re not. Enough is enough. Everyone knows writers procrastinate unless you hold a gun to their head, so, as your muse, you’ve left me no other choice as a professional.” Without a hint of joy, Seth whipped out Isaac’s gun and trained it on his head.

“Ah!” Isaac ducked, but there was nowhere to hide. “How did you get a gun in here?”

“Dr. Rousseau let me have it. Now let’s fucking go before I start copy-and-pasting your brain all over this floor.”

Click.

Isaac knew that sound. It was the gun’s safety being disengaged. Isaac gulped down a pile of bile that had sprung up in his mouth. What scared Isaac the most wasn’t the gun but seeing how scared Seth was. What could be so bad to break him like this?

Could Nazi space lizards bent on ending the world truly be this intimidating? Or was there an even bigger bad on the horizon for Seth and Isaac to encounter? Was it God herself?

Click!

This time the sound came from the typewriter. Isaac winced after striking the key, bracing himself as if he had just cut the wrong wire during a bomb defusal. Would it go off? It didn’t.

Isaac had typed a letter, and he hadn’t exploded. He exhaled.

He had written his first letter, “F,” and the keyboard didn’t catch fire either. He tried another letter. “A.” Okay, he thought. He was getting the hang of this. If he typed two more letters, he’d have one word. That wasn’t so bad.

Soon, the only clicking sounds in the room were made by Isaac as he typed away. The gun was silent. The longer Isaac typed, the more of a groove he found. He was born to do this.

At one point, Isaac reached 85 WPM. After that, his mind grew quieter and quieter until Isaac entered into a state of complete zen. He was in the zone. The feeling was sublime, better than any drug. He was going hard. He was getting hard!

So why had he put off writing for so long? Everyone should be a writer! What a thrill! Pure megalomania! Good God! he thought. He felt invincible. This was what Aquaman must feel like when diving into the sea. Or when Michael Jordan played basketball. Or when the BTK Killer bound, tortured, and killed. This was his superpower.

Isaac smiled despite himself. He would find Zee in no time. Piece of cake.

Now that he was a big-time screenwriter, he tried to resist trite sentiments and cliches, but sometimes the facts were the facts. He didn’t care if it was cloying. It was true. His “all is lost moment” had given him a newfound lease on life.