Chapter 15: Part 15: Writer’s Den

I pulled into the parking lot and surveyed the wreckage.

A series of run-down apartments doubtless run by one of the slumlords that plague this city, home to winos, junkies, prostitutes, and word fiends.

The exact sort of run-down, low-rent, no-hope hellhole romanticised by a certain type of writer. The kind that's low on talent and big on integrity, i.e. the broke kind.

I got out of the car and made sure it was locked. I might not have tyres by the time I got back, but there was nothing I could do about that.

I walked towards a flight of steel steps, where a group of men, worn down by years of booze and inactivity, had congregated to share hits from two paper bags.

On no doubt containers the finest liquor a lack of money can buy, the second, most likely some smut of some kind. Maybe Miller, or one of The Beats, but it could also have been some good old-fashioned filth where the words are cruder than pictures could ever be.

I stepped past them and they didn't even glance at me. The steel steps squeaked and I wasn't entirely sure they would stay in one piece. If the materials were in good shape, of which I had my doubts, then the workmanship was shoddy. I figured it was probably both.

Still, I made it to the top and walked down the outdoor corridor. From here, I got a view of the whole place and figured if I had to look at this every day, I'd need to be constantly half-cut too.

In one room I heard the unmistakable sounds of a professional servicing one of her clients. The over-the-top, theatrically pleasurable moans, as if she were having the time of her life, rather than running down the clock.

A couple doors down, the TV was turned up loud, but not loud enough that I couldn't hear some drunk knocking her old lady about. I thought about intervening, but hell, it wasn't any of my business. And the last thing you want to do in a place like this is get involved in someone else's business.

Then I was there, apartment 124. The door was painted blue, but not recent. The paint was flaking, and underneath, the red of the previous coat peeked through. But more interestingly, it was open. Not a lot, but enough to see I wouldn't need a key to get in, which was just as well, cause I didn't have one.

I pushed the door further ajar with my foot and stood in the doorway, listening. There was no sound. I cast one final look across the lot, but no one was watching.

I stepped in and closed the door, quietly.

The place reeked of cigarettes and malt liquor. Chain-smoking and booze on those nightly writing binges, no doubt. Likely helped along with a few benzos, if I knew the type.

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The place was a state. Empty bottles and typed pages covered every surface, including the floor. On the desk next to an old typewriter, sat an overflowing ashtray.

I was pretty sure the place had been tossed, though how much was the result of the mess I'd be hard-pressed to say. The papers could just have easily been the result of a breeze through an open window, and whoever else was here sure didn't bring their empty bottle collection.

I picked up some of the pages. Best I could tell they were all from different versions of the same story. An idealistic young man leaves the army after seeing the horrors of war, rejecting the social conventions that romanticised the killing of innocents in the name of love of country.

In one he becomes an aimless drifter, hitching across the country in search of freedom and meaning.

In another, he is fighting in a second civil war against an authoritarian government that wants to enslave its people in order to wage perpetual war on its enemies.

In another, he becomes a werewolf, fighting off his bloodthirsty urges and trying to regain his lost humanity.

All the same characters, all the same themes of oppression and alienation, or at least it seemed to me. I was no writer, and I sure as hell wasn't a critic.

I dropped the papers and walked over to the desk. In the typewriter, there was a piece of paper loaded, ready to go. The only thing on it was,

The bells of freedom chime for three, for the truth will set you free.

It didn't mean a damn thing to me, and though my job was the truth, most of the time at least, I can't recall the last time I felt free.

I opened the top drawer, crowbar marks telling me I wouldn't find anything, which I didn't. There was nothing in any of the other drawers, either.

Whether or not they found what they were looking for, I had no idea. My guess was they just found however many dozens of drafts this guy had made, each worth less than the last.

I didn't think there was likely anything to be found here, but then I heard the clink of bottles from the other room and realised I wasn't alone.

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