Jacob
He covered his ears with the palms of his hands and rose from his chair tired after writing for hours.
Looking at the pile of papers on his desk, he threw his pen aside, massaged his aching fingers and
staggered toward his bed in the corner. The roaring wind rattled the window panes. An excruciating pain
radiated through his spine and while he was whizzing, he wondered why autumn was not his favorite season.
As he reached his bed, a muffled voice eerily echoed in his little room. He moved his face close to the window
and peered into the darkness and saw nothing but his own hazy reflection on the glass.
“Is anyone there?” he whispered.
The squeaky noise of tree branches scratching the window pane and the sharp whistling of the wind were
all he heard.
The voice haunted him once more as he collapsed on the bed, “I’m here.”
“Where?” he desperately pleaded, “I don’t see anyone.”
“You wrote me, therefore I am. I sound like a philosopher, don’t I?”
The puzzled man squinted at the clock on the wall. It was three hours past midnight. He fanned his fingers
through his mussed hair, “I must get more sleep.”
“You’ve not lost your sanity, I am Jacob.”
“Who?”
“You know who. You know me better than I know myself. Don’t ignore someone who’s done so much for
you. How much of the innocent blood on my hands can prove my friendship to you?”
“I better see a shrink.” The man chuckled.
“You write the evil plot and I carry it out flawlessly. We’re related, we’re blood buddies.” The voice pierced
his head.
“Only a lunatic argues with the character of his own book in the middle of the night, let alone, with the most
demented one of all.” He whispered.
“Get rid of me forever, I’m worried.” Jacob said.
“Your destiny will be as it was in previous works. You’ll vanish without a trace. You’ll live in the hearts and
minds of my readers, in the darkest labyrinth of their Psyche.” He said.
“I used to do it with no fear or remorse. It was not personal. I did it just for the pleasure of doing it.” Jacob
said.
“And you will not change.” The writer replied.
“Do you remember the old couple I wacked for less than a hundred bucks? Money, I didn’t need? My only
motive was to see them suffer, to see them beg for their lives. I’m not that person anymore. Something’s
changed. Now my hands shake. If I get caught, I won’t have any excuse.”
“You won’t. If you kill for a reason, you’ll leave a trace and eventually get caught. The idea is not to have a
reason. That’s how you survive. Don’t you see? You’re as innocent as your victims. You meant to be this
way. No one understands you, yet everyone relates to you. That’s who you are.
“I have emotions, I feel.”
“Because you are real. Don’t you ever doubt that. Down deep, you suffer from a pain, a disease more or
less everyone has but constantly denies. That's why readers relate to you. You are their uncontrollable
urge. If you were normal, police would have captured you by now. There must be no pattern in your work, no
logic. All of your cases are still open because you are unique. But that’s not the end of it yet. You will live
forever. You’ll reborn every time you kill, your victims revive you.”
“But I’m losing my touch, I get emotional. Last time I was terrified seeing the damn blood on my hands. I’m
becoming fucking normal. I am scared.” Jacob said.
“I have to go to sleep now. You don’t worry, as long as you are who you are, you’ll do fine.”
“I’ m too real to be in your fantasies. Don’t you see? What you write comes true.” Jacob said.
“You’re as real as life. I gave you meaning and you’re giving me headache. I wish I’d given you a little
more common sense. Leave me alone.” His head was on the pillow and his eyes shut.
Jacob said, “Remember Julia? The girl who was found dead in the woods three years ago, the innocent
looking waitress who worked in the Red Castle restaurant?”
“What about her?” He asked.
“Do you remember the day I ordered a hamburger and told her that her innocence would get her in trouble
one day? Guess how many cuts she had on her face when they found her body?”
“I don’t remember what I wrote now.” The writer sniped.
“Everything that happened to her was exactly as you wrote it. Police had no trace of the killer and no clue
of his motive, but you and I know.”
“It was a pretty slick plot, wasn’t it?” The writer bragged.
“Didn’t you hear what I just said damn it? What you wrote happened.” Jacob said.
“Two months later you wrote about Carlos. The FBI is still baffled why the boxing champion did not defend
himself. His hands were free at the time of murder. No marks of any kind were found on his wrists. It looked
like he cooperated with the killer!”
“You’re right, that was one my best works,” he said.
“The shocking news of his mysterious murder was in the papers for months all across the country. His
horrific murder haunted everyone in New York. No one felt safe anymore. Finally, a couple of years later, it
was announced that the cops had captured the suspect and as he attempted to escape, he was shot dead,”
Jacob said.
“That was the best cover up story they came up with to put people’s mind at rest. What a load of crap. I
aced it once again. This is art of writing.” He smiled.
“A few weeks later, news of the disappearance of a little girl named Amanda Cane was out. Just one week
after that, police picked up an illegal immigrant in a neighborhood where he was allegedly trying to lure a little
boy in his car. This poor bastard had a long criminal record too. The investigators claimed they’d found
victim’s hair in his car. And that was that. Who better than an alien with criminal record could pay for a crime
he didn’t commit? His entire case in the court didn’t last more than a couple of weeks. The jury found him
guilty. Case closed,” Jacob said.
The man leaped out of his bed and hastily examined the newspaper archives on the Internet and verified
Jacob’s claims.
“You’re literally writing true crime stories,” Jacob’s voice was rattling.
All the murder plots he’d written were carried out precisely as he depicted them. The details from police
and reporters’ investigations exactly matched what he had written in his unpublished stories. The times and
places of the crimes were mentioned in his fiction. Even the names and addresses of the victims were
identical. The only discrepancies between his murder cases and the official accounts of the perpetrated
crimes were the speculations and theories of the FBI regarding the killer’s motives and whereabouts. And
those were exactly what he had not written. Two innocent men were executed for crimes they had not
committed as Jacob said.
The dazed writer frantically rushed to the small wooden bookshelf where he kept his unpublished
manuscripts and found them all stacked up neatly and intact. He rubbed his temples with index fingers and
paced his room back and forth. He then paused and lit a cigarette and deeply inhaled the smoke. While
staring at his hands, he said to Jacob, “Your hands must not shake! This is the secret of your success and
the only way you survive.”