The Perfect Story

I must write a good story. No. I must write the perfect story. My words have to – they will – mean something, and I will do anything to make sure that my voice matters. Even if –

“I find the lack of consequences appalling,” a malevolent whisper stings me. My fingers twitch bitterly against the cold bottle of whiskey tottering in the grasp of my right hand. My eyes rummage through the crowd of critics swarming in my living room. If not for my agent Gabbie’s incessant demands to host this book launch, I’d have these malevolent creatures wrapped up in a plastic bag and thrown in the middle of the ocean. Look how disdainfully they sink everything in my living room, from the vivid red leather carpets to the shining chandelier, in the filthy scent of their skepticism.

“Your last two bestsellers have been heavily bombarded by critics, and to satisfy your obsession with writing a universally, critically acclaimed bestseller, you need to actually win over the critics,” Gabbie had said.

My eyes finally settle on Peter McShoe snobbishly gesticulating to his companion, Robert Reilley, on my couch. In the green sweatpants that droop on his rangy body, the red trackpants squirming around his legs, and the monocle perched on top of his dragon-like nose, Peter has the aura of a disgruntled garden gnome. He drops my book on the coffee table in front of him and then has the audacity to place a glass of wine on top of my book, staining the blurb. It’s hard to tell whether he is laughing or choking, and as I hide my whiskey behind the curtains, I desperately hope it’s the latter. Hastily perfecting my hair with a tinge of saliva rubbed in my palm, I take deep breaths and plod towards Peter with a feigned smile.

“Put on a show. Make them love you,” Gabbie’s advice haunts me. Peter stiffens as I tower over him, scrubbing my beard voraciously. If there are any bugs in my beard, I hope they drop all over Peter and the unfinished wine he dares to place on top of my book.

“Do you like the book?” I ask.

Peter’s face breaks apart into fissures that wiggle around his squinting eyes. His lips purse into a thin wisp that eventually extends to a grotesque smirk, suppressing a harsh chuckle. “Well, I do have a complaint with the book,” Peter says, exchanging furtive glances with Robert. “I find the title slightly misleading.”

“Why?” I ask, rubbing my eyebrows.  

“The Consequences,” Peter grumbles, smacking his filthy hands on my couch. I wish I could cut them off. “What consequences does the title allude to? The main character walks away free by the end of the novel despite all the atrocities he commits.”

“What atrocities?”

“For starters, he murders a bunch of people,” Peter says, adjusting his monocle and intensifying his glare.

“It’s an action novel,” I say. Peter is getting on my nerves now. “The consequences were meant for those who wronged the main character.”

“How was the main character wronged?”

“His opponents stood in his way.” I shrug.

“His opponents were cops. Your main character was a convicted felon.”

“What the hell do you want, Peter? It’s a fictional action novel! Not every story has to be about a goody-two-shoes piece of shit!” I scream, losing my temper and storming off upstairs to shut myself off in the closet.

“Get a critically-acclaimed novel, or we drop you,” Gabbie’s voice returns. I punch the wall inside my closet as a puff of dust basks away from the dent I make. Sure! If the agency wants a critically acclaimed bestseller, and if that rat Peter wants my main character to deal with consequences, I will give him that. And I have my watch to help me do that. I rewind the hour hand on my clock. Then, I press the red button to change the year and smash a green vial on top of the watch. The world melts away.

I land back 3 years ago, when I first conceived my novel. I’m ready to make changes. After all, I must write the perfect story.

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What is a perfect story?

Writers are not much different from poets. Like poets, who use their rhythm to craft tantalizing worlds brimming with vivid imagery, a writer uses words to paint a transcending tale dancing with metaphors in a labyrinth of emotions, where each paragraph is a portal. A memory suddenly uncorks itself in my mind, spilling over its contents like bitter wine. My mind flashes back to three years ago.

I was sitting placidly on my desk, sharpening my pencil and blowing the shavings out of my open window. Stretching the blank piece of paper in front of me, I cracked the paper creases away. My coffee had run out, so I decided to head towards the kitchen, hewing my way through the armory of crumpled paper scattered all over my floor. Just as I opened my bedroom door, a sharp blue light flashed in my closet, and echoes of a hound-like wail froze my senses. Cautiously, I turned around and grabbed the umbrella resting by my bed. I skulked towards the closet with the air of a medieval knight who had an umbrella for a sword. The door creaked open from the other side, and out strolled my doppelganger, except his hair was bound in a ragged ponytail, and he looked like he’d spent the night sleeping in the burning furnace of a funeral home. Somehow, all the fear I had dissolved when I looked at him for even if I could not really explain it, I knew that I was looking at none other than myself.

“I am you,” he explained, quickly glancing at his rather remarkable watch. “Listen, I only have a minute, so not a lot of time to explain. I come from the future and know you are working on a novel. I need you to change the title of your story and make sure that your main character dies in the end. Oh, and make sure your language has nuance and is polished. We both know how critical those assholes have been of our simplistic” – he gesticulated wildly – “have been of our work, right? Alright, I think that’s it. Take this watch. Set the hour hand to the time you want to go back to, adjust the year on the red dial, and break this green vial. Got it?” He gave me his watch, and with that, he vanished.

Why had this memory evaded me for so long? And why had I not realized that everything this future I emphasized I should do, I had actually done? My novel is now titled Dance of Glory and Death, as opposed to The Consequences, which I initially planned. My main character dies in the end. And I’ve actively ensured that my writing become more sophisticated over the last three years. In fact, I’ve polished not only my writing but myself too. Were all my changes because of this suppressed memory? Is my work even mine anymore? Whose perfect story is this?

“I find the language appalling,” a malevolent whisper stings me. My eyes sharply turn towards Robert Reilley causing a ruckus at the dinner table. I hate Robert – my strongest critic, former lover, and a suspected vampire. Although I do not have explicit proof for my last claim, I am pretty sure this man’s attire and sleeping habits scream of his hidden nature. I storm in his direction with fury. No one gets to discard my work, especially not Robert.

“What about the language seems so impudent to you?” I challenge Robert.  He drops my book on the dinner table in front of him and then has the audacity to place his tea on top of my book, staining the blurb.

“Ah, so you overheard moi, non?” Robert laughs. “Well, your writing screams pretentious. Vrai?” He turns to others at the table, who all nervously nod their heads. “You use the wrong words in the wrong places, drafting sentences so long that they are simply mundane. You write paragraphs about lizards in the middle of an action scene. Your main character speaks like he’s from 1800 during a shootout. Nothing in your novel makes sense, although I must say the title is apt. The novel dances in glory for five minutes before it dies a monotonous death.” Robert guffaws loudly, forcing me to suppress the desire to claw his eyes out like an angry cat. My heart is shattered, and melancholia is overhauling my mind.

“Get a critically-acclaimed novel, or we drop you,” Gabbie, my agent, had said earlier in order to persuade me into hosting this critic’s party, but if this is the reception at my paid critic’s party, I cannot imagine a world where this novel becomes critically acclaimed. The watch, I remember, realizing that there is a world where my novel becomes critically acclaimed. Sure! If the agency wants a critically-acclaimed bestseller, and if that beast Robert wants more simplistic and direct language, I will give him that. In fact, I know exactly what change I must make to my story.

Maniacally, I pick up the glass of wine Robert put on top of my book and stab him in the gut with it, to the horror of the other guests. “Fuck all of you!” I yell at them before pulling out the watch from my coat’s pocket, rewinding the hour hand, buttoning the year into the red dial, and smashing the green vial on top of the watch.  The world melts away.

I land back 3 years ago, when I first conceived my novel. I’m ready to make changes. After all, I must write the perfect story.

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“This is the worst poetry I have ever had the displeasure of reading,” Peter hisses at me as I grab him by the collar and pull him out of his chair at the dinner table. I pin him to the ground and drop my body on top of his. I realize then that the art of fighting in media is greatly misrepresented, for with a lot of fighting also comes a lot of sulking and brooding. For starters, you always have to consider where the first punch will hurt your opponent the most. So, as I pause for a moment, considering whether to punch Peter in the gut or smother him by the neck, I watch an awkward circle of critics flanking us like hollow golems, clapping in awe.

“What a great staged performance,” I hear one of these dumbwits mistakenly remark. “Look at all the blood. So real!” 

“Better than the poetry, at least,” another one says.

“Get off me!” Peter slaps my face.

“I hate you!” I screech back at Peter, finally deciding that smothering him by the neck seems most reasonable and time-efficient. Suddenly, my head feels heavy, and I realize that someone has hit me from behind. . Before I have a chance to turn, I realize that someone is now dragging me away from Peter.

“It was real!” the critics remark as they rush to Peter’s aid. “That brings down my review from two stars to a half!”

Like a raucous child wanting to go back to his favorite candy store, I kick my legs furtively in hopes of breaking free and going back to smothering Peter. My captor’s heavy voice grunts, “Stop behaving like a drunken prick.” My captor drags me away into my writing room, away from the party, and throws me inside like a sack of wheat.

I hear the door lock. As I pull my hair back, I see my tall, pale captor with short green hair standing like porcupine needles on top of his head. From the waist below, he’s wearing baggy, knee-length white pants with suspenders of the same color crawling across his robust shoulders. As I move up the waist, the tall man’s scrawny goat-like figure covered in a woolen brown t-shirt becomes eerily distracting. For a long time, while my captor noisily drags an unevenly balanced chair from my table to sit next to me, I wonder whether this man is an Oompa-Loompa. I am afraid that he is going to break into a dance or, even worse – a song.

He smirks at me. “To imagine a pitiful man like you causing so much havoc disturbs me.” He pulls out a notebook. You are the third variant of yourself. Tsk, tsk. Anyhow, do you remember yet?"

“Remember what?” I say, trying to spit at him, but my salivian projectile fails in the act of comradery. It launches with the mighty spirit of a true warrior, and then halfway through, it pales to my captor’s stature and drops right back on my legs. I realize that I’ve instead spit at myself. Perhaps, it is because I am drunk, but I imagine that blotch on my leg, turning towards me apologetically. I return my attention to the man. I try to punch him by surprise, but he swats my hand away and jabs me in the jaw. That is when I remember.

“What did you do to me?” I panic like a wild deer.

“What did you see?” the man sighs.

“I saw myself…from the future…and a watch. What’s happening?” I say. Too much vodka. But this juvenile captor has failed to tie my hands, and when I rub my right wrist, I know that the watch I wear is the one I just saw in my memory.

“Listen to me, John. You are hurting time-”

“-No, I was hurting Peter!”

“This is your last warning. You need to stop using that watch! How even did you get it?”

“Someone gave it to me,” I shrugged, and then, thanks to the memory, it dawned upon me. “I gave it to me…I should write a poem about that.”

“Who gave the watch to the version of you that gave you the watch?” the man says.

“You’re a nut,” I leer. “You are new to this intimidating thing, right? I always knew Oompa-Loompas couldn’t really be that reliable, you know!”

“I am better at my job than you,” he argues.

“Well, if you are here for the watch, you should have confiscated it earlier.” The man looks at me quizzically before he realizes what I’m about to do. “I think I’ll start with punching Peter in the gut this time.”

“Fu-” he starts, but I don’t hear the rest of it, because I’ve already smashed the green vial on my watch.

I go back in time to three years ago.

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I can’t see much from under the dusty hood covering my face. I can hardly breathe. Or think. Or remember. Come on, I prompt myself, what’s the last thing I remember? Hazy memories float back. I’m at the critic’s party, and I remember having a good time as the critics finally showered appraise on something I wrote. “A children’s book about time-traveling penguins!” Peter – one of the critics at the party – had said, clapping my back. “Spectacular to intermingle the narrative with poetry too!” Robert – another critic – had chimed in with his heavy French accent. Suddenly, there was a gunshot. Panic ensued. And then a trio of men in weird attires demonically descended upon the party, flinging this hood over my head and dragging me away to this room. Was it my success that baffled the funnily dressed men? Was that why they dragged me away?

“Take off their hoods,” a voice commands. Blinding white light pierces my eyes as I flutter them open and look around. They’ve brought me to a hollow, white dome. Without my glasses, everything is still a blur, so I squint as hard as I can to glare at the three men standing in front of me, their hands rigidly clasped behind their backs. That’s when I notice something funny about them…they are all the same people. A triplet? 

“John Slattery,” the man in the middle sniggers. “The man ruining time. The man who stole our watch and used it for such a pitiful purpose. You could have used it to save lives and change the world, but instead, you used it to write a novel.”

“A children’s novel,” the man on the right chortled.

“A children’s novel!” the man in the middle raucously howled. “Never mind that changing the past is against our law, but you used the watch to write a bloody children’s novel! We might have even forgiven you had done a better deed, but here we are. Again. Alright, John, do you remember what you have done?” A flash of memory hits me like a brick wall. It’s a memory from three years ago, hazy and uneven but with an unshakeable feeling of fear. I see myself, and I see a watch.

“What did you do to me?” I ask, panicking.

“We did nothing to you. You did this to yourself. From what we gather, you have been using the watch to go back and revise your novel.”

“How many times have I done that?”

“Fifteen, as far as we can tell. And fifteen times, you have altered the flow of time. You see – we protect time from fools like you. You think you change time, but instead, you create alternate timelines. Alternate Universe. So, there is a version of you out there that went back in time, came back, and saw that nothing had changed. Time does not have consequences on your own Universe. Do you understand?”

“No,” I sighed.

“Well, you don’t have to. All we want you to do is go back and kill the alternate version of you that gave you the idea to write your children’s novel. It will start a domino effect, resulting in all other versions of you perishing. It’s better that you do it. Legally, we are not allowed to have any consequence on any Universe at any time.”

“So, will I be me? Or will I be an alternate me?”

“We’ve decided to move forward with this Universe. So, you get to be you. Consider this…our gift to you. Now off you go. You have only a minute to stay back in time,” the man in the middle zaps a watch in his hand and flings it at me. I just have enough time to catch it before I go back in time to three years ago.

I land with a heavy thud inside a closet. My closet. There’s a watch in my right hand and a pistol in my left. I don’t even remember grabbing the pistol. Only a minute. I hurry up on my feet and see two versions of me. There’s a version of me sitting on the chair. And there is a version of me by the door. They both watch the pistol in my shivering hand. I need to do it now before they have time to react, so I pick up the gun and shoot the version of me with a grip on the door handle. I shoot. As I watch blood spatter from my alternate version’s chest, I feel dizzier than ever. There are still forty seconds left on the watch, but my hands have already started disappearing. And that’s when the full memory of this event returns to me. I realize that the one grabbing the door handle was the original me.

Fuck. I’ve killed the wrong version of me.  

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The sky is grey, and a casket rests in the middle of the ground. A flurry of people surrounds the casket, dropping a rose flower into the ground and placing a hand on their chest. “We did not know John long enough, but The Consequences will hold testimony to his great writing abilities,” Peter McShoe prays.

“Was his novel that good?” someone in the crowd asks.

A faint yet audible whisper is heard. “No. It is a perfect story.”