One.
Jay Ellis was losing track of time. He knew it passed in this place, because he possessed memories of exploring the building to which he’d somehow been transported after…
The event eluded him. Funny, that. He could recall with painful clarity the wording of every rejection slip he’d received during his less-than-stellar career as a writer, and every moment since opening his eyes to suddenly find himself standing fully clothed in the corridor outside the door to Marge’s apartment. About the time in between, however, the moment of transition from past to present, there to here, Jay’s mind was a blank.
It was like being anaesthetized for an operation. One second you’re on your back, staring up into the huge round lens of an overhead light. Then you blink, and presto! The light’s gone, the ceiling’s changed colour, and your throat feels lined with sandpaper.
Hmm… not a bad analogy. He would have liked to add it to one of his stories. However, one had to be part of the real world to edit a manuscript, and Jay had good reason to suspect that he no longer was. This afterlife—if it was an afterlife—the jury was still out on that—was apparently cobbled together from the unpublished contents of his writing portfolio and confined entirely to the interior of a structure that looked like an apartment building but more resembled a prison.
For one thing, there was no escape from it into an outside world. No main entrance, no parking entrance, and no fire exit. Jay was trapped inside with his stories: one per apartment door, six doors per floor, six floors on the keypad in the solitary elevator car. And a penthouse that had so far refused him entry.
Whether he was in heaven or hell… well, that was also up for grabs. Jay had once heard that for a writer, heaven and hell were identical, except that in heaven they got published. If that were true, then he could probably say he’d been in hell all along.
Right now, he was in Marge’s kitchen. Marge was the secret agent posing as a housewife in “Alphabet Soup”, and the kitchen was pretty much all there was of her house. He wasn’t sure why this should be, except perhaps because her story was one of his earliest attempts at fiction, and this was the only room in which she appeared.
She spent a good part of that story staring through the curtainless kitchen window. Now, so did Jay, since there was precious little to see indoors at Marge’s place. A cheaply made dinette set, a double stainless steel sink, and a column of drawers and row of cupboards with doors that couldn’t be opened. A fridge that did open but held just three items, none of them edible. No stove. No dishwasher. An analog wall clock with its hands stuck perpetually on ten o’clock. And a white laminated counter top, empty except for a baby-blue touch-tone telephone.
Her view of the street wasn’t much to look at either. The image was drab and lifeless, so static it might as well have been a realtor’s black-and-white photograph from seventy years ago. Jay stood at the sink, gazing out at a slice of 1950s suburbia, with its ready-for-inspection front yards and perfectly paved driveways. The only car in sight was Marge’s silver grey BMW waiting at the curb to take her on her next mission… and the only person visible was the little girl who’d been dogging his steps ever since he’d arrived in this ridiculous place. He couldn’t remember putting her into any of his stories, but he had the disturbing feeling that he ought to know her from somewhere.
“She’s back,” he muttered.
“Who is, hon?” said Marge, stepping up beside him.
Marge was never without her gun. Right now it was an improbable bulge under the bib of her freshly laundered green and yellow flowered apron. That and the string of pearls around her neck were a couple of domestic details he’d evidently thrown in on impulse during the final edit. June Cleaver packing heat. In retrospect, this might not have been the brightest of ideas, but there was nothing he could do about it now.
Jay pointed with an index finger. “That little girl standing at the foot of your driveway. She’s wearing a red coat.”
Marge shook her head. “I don’t see her. Well, I wouldn’t worry, hon. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
He remained at the sink, unable to stop watching the forlorn little figure at the bottom of the driveway. She had such huge, mournful eyes, it sent a shiver down his back. And she’d been popping up nearly everywhere he went.
She appeared inside the casino in Vegas whenever he walked through the door of “In the Money”. Its main character was a crooked stockbroker who remained nameless but was a hell of a card player.
She turned up at the precinct house from “A Christmas Surprise” each time Jay stopped by to make a donation to the annual toy drive (the wrapped parcel appeared in his hands the second he crossed the threshold), and Officer Levinson and Sergeant Doherty weren’t able to see her either.
Neither was Vince, the clown-cum-pizza maker from “Plenty of Dough”, when Jay stepped into his shop to pick up a slice with pepperoni and marshmallows on it. Nor Cathy, the librarian with anger management issues from “Quiet, Please!” when he borrowed or returned the book with the love letter tucked inside it.
It was Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad—the only volume that allowed itself to be removed from the library shelves. Its pages, he’d discovered, were blank, and when everything became too much for him, he’d been stealing Cathy’s ballpoint pen and filling them with words. As his emotions spilled darkly onto the paper, he often gave serious thought to cutting short this depressing chapter of his existence by hiring Jimmy, the hit man in “Surprise Me”, to skip him straight to The End.
None of the characters he’d asked had seemed especially concerned that Jay might be losing his mind. However, Marge had mentioned that he might want to share his feelings with a trained professional. As it happened, Jay knew where he could find one, but getting in to see him had been easier said than done. Twice now, that penthouse door had resisted his efforts to open it. Perhaps the third time would be the charm.
He took the elevator to the topmost floor of the building, where Doctor Broadhurst had put out his shingle. Broadhurst was the psychotherapist whose hidden secrets had underlain the main plot of Past Sins, Jay’s one and only published novel. This time, the door was unlocked.
“Why are you here, Jay?” Broadhurst asked pleasantly as they settled down on facing brown leather armchairs in front of the floor-to-ceiling picture window. The city it overlooked was a bustling but silent metropolis, full of tall buildings and busy people, restless and colourful in the bright daylight.
“I’m seeing something that nobody else can see, and I’m afraid I’m going insane.”
“No, I mean, out of all the people in this building, why did you come to me?”
He thought for a moment. “Because I feel that I know you, that I can talk to you and you’ll actually listen,” he replied, parroting Marge’s earlier suggestion. “And because you did such a good job in the novel of helping Annie and Jeff put their lives back together.” And because I may be dead and trapped here for eternity and you were my only option, he nearly added, then changed his mind.
Gazing benignly at him, Broadhurst said, “All right. Tell me about this thing that you’re seeing.”
“It’s a little girl maybe five or six years old, with blonde braids. She’s wearing a red woollen coat and matching tam, and black patent leather Mary Jane shoes.”
“Do you see her now?”
Jay had been doing his best to ignore the small figure standing in front of the mahogany bookcase. Now he exhaled heavily and replied, “Yes. She’s behind you.”
Broadhurst glanced over his shoulder, then turned his attention back to his patient.
“And what is she doing?”
“Nothing. She just stands there, staring at me with sad, pleading eyes.”
“Could she be a minor character from one of your stories, wanting you to spin her off?”
“No. I would remember her. At least, I think I would. Maybe. But even if she were, I can’t imagine what her narrative might be.”
Jay shivered. He couldn’t imagine? Hearing these words come out of his own mouth had sent a chill straight to his core.
“Do you recall the first time you noticed her?”
“Yes. She was at the other end of the corridor when I—Is she a ghost, Doctor? Do you think I’m being haunted?”
“I think that trope has been done to death, Jay,” he replied, leaning forward in his chair, “and you need to stop thinking in clichés and dig a little deeper to find the answer.”
“You can borrow my gun if you’d like,” Marge offered. “It may not chase her away, but I guarantee it’ll make you feel better. Knocking off bad guys always works wonders for me.”
Jay turned from the kitchen window and saw the pistol resting in her hand. A Glock 238. It was no wonder “Alphabet Soup” had never gone anywhere—Glock didn’t make a 238, although at the time he must have been convinced they did. Maybe he should have spent more effort on serious research while revising this story and less of it watching streamed cop shows.
“No, thanks. I don’t think that was what Dr. Broadhurst had in mind when he said I should try interacting with her.”
She shrugged one shoulder. “Suit yourself, hon. I have to go take down the cartel. Don’t wait dinner for me.”
It wouldn’t be a problem. There was no dinner to make. Marge never ate. Lately, neither did he, except for the occasional pizza slice from Vince’s, or, less frequently, a piece of fruit cake from the precinct house, where it was always Christmas Eve.
It had been different earlier on. While exploring the various “apartments”, Jay had discovered and sampled a variety of foods.
He’d ordered the linguine Alfredo, a specialty of Giuseppe’s Trattoria in “Murder à la Carte” on the fourth floor. From the butcher shop in “Killing Time” on the second floor, Jay had purchased rib eye steaks for himself and Marge. He’d grilled the meat medium-rare on one of the barbecues on display in the hardware store in “Nuts and Bolts”, on the first floor. The fish market on the floor just below the penthouse—“Name That Tuna”—everything about that story was a bad joke—had provided salmon steaks, which he’d also had to cook on the grill since Marge had no stove and Giuseppe insisted on smothering everything in Alfredo sauce.
(Jay hadn’t been asked to pay for any of these items. Apparently, he had limitless credit everywhere in the building and whatever he bought was automatically put on his tab. It was very strange, he thought, but also quite convenient.)
Now, the novelty had worn off. Jay ate no more than a bite or two at a time and only to be sociable, because the food in this place—wherever the hell it was—had become uniformly and spectacularly unsatisfying. It was almost tasteless and had the texture of wet cardboard. And each morsel of it that he swallowed made it harder for him to remember the taste and smell of real food, and the way it felt in his mouth.
Marge released the loaded magazine from the butt of the Glock into her free hand, then slapped the mag back into place and holstered her weapon. Blowing Jay a kiss over her shoulder, she swaggered toward the front door. He blinked, and she was outside, sitting behind the wheel of the BMW. As it took off, its tires squealing, the little girl on the driveway remained motionless.
Not true, Jay realized. Her lips were moving.
Huh! This was a new development.
With growing excitement, he leaned over the sink, squinting to bring her mouth into clearer focus. He wasn’t just imagining it. She was speaking. She was standing out there, talking to him. And here he was, stuck in Marge’s kitchen, unable to hear the words.
Damn!
Jay was beginning to understand why Marge shot people to relax. And why the crooked stockbroker gambled. And why Vince put stuff like marshmallows and baked beans on his pizzas. Trapped in poorly written narratives, they were desperately trying to amuse themselves and stay sane. And there wasn’t a thing he could do to help them, not anymore.
If only the little girl would come inside. He knew she was able to. She’d entered the precinct house and the library, and she’d been practically within arm’s reach at Dr. Broadhurst’s office. Why didn’t she appear in Marge’s kitchen? Then it hit him: there was no handle on the door leading to the street. No one ever went through that door in “Alphabet Soup”, including Marge. She just appeared in the kitchen, got a phone call, then peeled off in her Beemer to fight the faceless cartel.
Well, if this small person couldn’t come to him, perhaps he could find a way to go to her.
As though cued by his thought, the phone on the counter shrilled, the sudden noise nearly launching Jay at the ceiling. With shaking hands he fumbled the receiver to his ear.
“Hello!”
Dead air.
He thought furiously. Leave the house the same way Marge did? Why not? He’d never written the telephone dialogue between her and her handler, but there was a catch-phrase she uttered just before she hung up.
“Consider it done,” Jay said, sounding more confident than he felt.
Mentally crossing his fingers, he recradled the receiver and took a step in the direction of the door.
One eye-blink later, he was sitting behind the wheel of a silver BMW. Its doors didn’t have handles either, although the interior looked strangely familiar. And the little girl was no longer at the foot of the driveway. In fact, she was nowhere to be seen.
Well, this was a wasted effort.
As he was wondering how to retrace his path back to the kitchen, the engine roared to life and the Beemer took off down the street, carrying Jay along with it.
Frantically, he stomped on the brakes, twisted the key in the ignition, even tried to steer the car into an immobilizing crash. Nothing worked.
Then it dawned on him what was happening. By speaking Marge’s line, he’d started the narrative, inserting himself into the story in her place. Trapping himself there while it played out.
His mouth went dry. Ready or not, Jay Ellis was on his way to fight the cartel.
Ah, but he wouldn’t be alone. Marge had left on that selfsame mission shortly before he did. That had to mean she was already on the scene. With luck, the battle would be in progress when he arrived and he could simply hide somewhere and—
Wait a minute. With Jay’s luck? Uh-huh. And brown cows gave chocolate milk.
Struggling to keep his thoughts in order, he reviewed the plot of Marge’s story. She’d been betrayed and was going into an ambush. But Marge could take care of herself. She was a crack shot and had black belts in three different martial arts. She killed every one of her attackers. The end. Or not. There was still a huge plot hole to resolve, and a narrative thread that needed tying up, neither of which he was in a position to fix right now.
Well, look at the bright side, he told himself. If the cartel got him, he wouldn’t have to hire that hit man to take him out. Distractedly, Jay wondered whether he could simply put Jimmy’s fee on his tab as well.
The BMW lurched to a halt at a stop sign. On the other side of the intersection lurked the setting where the ambush would take place: the loading dock at the rear of an abandoned warehouse. It couldn’t be later than half past ten in the morning, but even early in the day this place gave off vibes that made his skin crawl. It was filled with shadows that seemed to move when he wasn’t looking directly at them.
He’d gotten that part of the story right, at least, describing a part of town where bad things happened and innocents like himself had no business going. Too bad the Beemer was on automatic pilot and didn’t understand that.
Jay half-expected the car to roll through the intersection and up to the loading dock. Instead, it remained idling in the sunlight of suburbia, as though waiting for something.
Of course. The BMW wasn’t mentioned in that final scene, so it couldn’t enter the new setting. If he delayed long enough before getting out of the car—
Jay blinked and found himself standing alone on the loading dock, beside the entrance to the warehouse, with Marge’s gun an unwelcome weight in his right hand and his midsection rapidly turning to soup.
Shit!
Well, Marge kept winning the day. Perhaps the words that had been put on the page would permit anyone playing her part to walk away unscathed as well.
He could only hope.
Cautiously, Jay opened the door and stepped inside, holding the weapon stiffly out in front of him as he’d seen the cops do on all those streamed shows. He imitated their movements as well, gliding silently between rows of tall, metal shelving units loaded with unmarked boxes and canisters. Then he reached the cleared space in the middle of the warehouse and saw who was waiting for him, lined up like targets at a shooting gallery, and his jaw dropped.
The faceless cartel was literally faceless. Each bad guy had a single identifying characteristic—one had a moustache, another a bald head, still another a scar on his cheek—but that was all. No steely-eyed stares or lips curling with disdain. No facial features at all, in fact.
He had to have purposely written them that way, expecting the reader to fill in the remaining details from their own imagination. However, Jay wasn’t reading about this scene now—he was living it, and so were the cartel’s foot-soldiers. And they were all… “Placeholders” was the first word that came to his mind. The second word was “blind”.
Disconcerted, he lowered his gun, just as the man with the moustache lifted his and pointed it directly at Jay’s chest.
He had pretty good aim for someone with no eyes.
Bang! A shot rang out, and a heartbeat later the thug was lying motionless on the ground.
So Marge was here after all!
Relief flash-flooding through him, he looked around, searching the area for her, in vain.
Then came another shot, and a third, a fourth, and a fifth, in rapid succession. In a matter of seconds, all five villains had collapsed into a tidy pile of corpses right in front of him.
“Great shooting, Marge!” Jay called out.
Silence.
He didn’t understand. He remembered every word of this story and knew what came next. When the fight was over, she stepped forward to make sure they were dead. Why wasn’t she doing that?
“Marge?”
Still no reply. Jay hadn’t fired the Glock even once, and Marge was apparently not here. So who had killed the cartel?
Stunned, he finally realized: the narrator had. He described their deaths in the story, but said not a word about Marge actually pulling the trigger of her weapon.
The end.
Jay blinked, and he was standing once more in Marge’s kitchen, watching her clean her gun at the dinette table.
She glanced up at him. “Well, that was fun,” she remarked. (Was that a note of sarcasm in her voice?) “Can’t wait to do it again.”
“You took down the cartel?” he blurted.
“Sure did, hon. Killed five of their foot-soldiers, anyway. It was like picking off—”
“—targets in a shooting gallery,” he cut in. “I was there.”
“No, you weren’t. I work alone.”
“But you didn’t check the corpses—”
“Yes, I did. It’s standard procedure.”
Jay paused, struggling to make sense of things. Eventually, his brain wrapped itself around the truth: his narrative and Marge’s had both taken place, separately and simultaneously. They couldn’t share the same telling of her story because of the way he’d entered it—in her place as main character.
If he wanted to interact with his protagonists one on one, Jay had only to open an apartment door. Observing from within as their written stories unfolded, however, apparently required a different point of entry, and he had no idea what that might be.
This afterlife was turning out to be much more complicated than he’d thought.
It had rules.
© 2026 Arlene F. Marks
Purchase
