Screamscapes: Tales of Terror by Evans Light Page B

her carotid, grinding it in a circular motion as deeply as he could before pulling it back out in a spray of blood.
    Sonia’s body went limp, and he released her. Her lifeless body slid off the desk and flopped on to the floor in a heap. He surveyed her awkward position with amusement for a moment, and then shoved her away from the desk with his foot.
    He read the inscription on the pen: “ To the best man who ever wrote his way into the story of my life; make sure it has a happy ending! Love, Sonia ” Blood dripped from the nib; seeing that elicited a chuckle.
    “Let me get back to writing your happy ending, my love,” he whispered to the corpse on the floor.
    As he turned back to his work, he noticed Gerard’s face reflected on the screen. For a fleeting moment, Maazo Maazo felt a new sensation run down his spine; he suspected it was pity.
    He shrugged it off and began to type.
    A few hours later, Gerard’s finger hit the send button on an e-mail, the final draft attached.
    It was finished.

    Gerard awoke later that day. He was in his bed, again not knowing how he had ended up there. This time, though, the linen sheets and comforter were covered in a mess of dried blood.
    He found Sonia’s battered body on the floor of his study, the shattered bits of his cell phone crunching underfoot.
    Something inside him broke when he realized she was dead. He sat down beside her at his desk, in a state of shock.
    He sat motionless - slumped over his computer, eyes staring off into space, blood-encrusted fingers perched above the keyboard - waiting for Maazo Maazo to communicate with him again, to tell him what he should do.
    But his fingers never moved.
    He was still there, gaunt and catatonic in front of the computer, several days later when the police broke through the front door of his home. He didn’t move as they approached him, guns drawn, didn’t even blink as they gingerly worked their way around the festering corpse of his wife to apprehend him.
    Gerard offered no resistance as they hog-tied his hands and feet behind his back. He chanted the words “Maazo Maazo” over and over as they dragged him through the front yard to a waiting police car, while his neighbors watched with puzzled faces.

    The book was perfection, sent to the press just in time for an immediate release. The publishers were so impressed with the commercial possibilities of Serenity’s Termination they doubled the size of the first edition run.
    But a savvy reporter made the connection between the book and the author’s arrest, and the lurid story made headlines everywhere. It was juicy news: the new novel, Serenity’s Termination, foretold how the author killed his wife in gruesome detail.
    Media outlets ran the story for days. Millions of people ran to their nearest bookstore to buy a copy of Serenity’s Termination before it could be pulled from store shelves.
    The relentless publicity helped the first edition sell out in a matter of days. After much debate, the publishers decided to keep the book in print, declaring in a public statement that it would serve as a “fine moral warning to the public” - a decision undoubtedly influenced by the fact that the book was on track to become the biggest seller in publishing history.
    Gerard Faust, despised wife-killer and infamous best-selling author, found himself incarcerated in a maximum security prison. Cut off from the outside world, he had no idea that his book (or as he called it, “Maazo Maazo’s book”) had become an international sensation.
    Gerard only knew that Maazo Maazo was gone, leaving him with nothing but a dead wife, a cold prison cell, useless and ill-gotten fame, and the very real possibility of a death sentence.
    Gerard passed time in his cell watching an endless procession of interchangeable guards shuffle around a desk down the cell block. The shift changed every twelve hours, but one thing stayed constant: the disgust and hatred they communicated in every glance at him.