On the 2nd floor of the Manhattan City Apartment, Dolores McKinsey frantically typed on her notebook, the epilogue of her new crime novel. She had been working on this book for the past two years, often going sleepless for days as tile by tile she painted a beautiful mosaic of what she thought to be, her masterpiece. This novel was the third and the final part of her trilogy. The first two had been bestsellers worldwide – The Question and The Answer, making her one of the most controversial and read authors of recent times. Her works had created quite a furore among the publishing community since she faced charges of libel, forcing them not to publish her works. But that didn’t deter her from writing the truth. Her perceptive insights into the abuse of power by both individuals and institutions were designed to reach a wider readership, than she could ever have imagined. Fans across the globe had sent her numerous mails asking her as to how she would end her story, but in her heart, only she knew her Masterstroke.
Dolores had ruby red hair and soft brown eyes; she looks as though a lost child in some ways. She never did care how the weather was, or whether she missed a man sometimes or how her parents were doing back in California. When it came to writing, all she cared was her characters and the flow of the story. She totally submerged herself, being critical of every line she typed, into creating her new novel – The Unexplained. Each day in her apartment, she would act out the scenes all by herself. Sometimes, she played the coy blonde, Anne, who did the tables at the “Santiago” restaurant or the roadside blind beggar, who wasn’t actually blind but an informer in disguise while at other times she became both the killer and the killed. She conceived the actors, gave them properties and attributes, played with their strengths and weaknesses and concocted a multilayered drink which she drank every night to quench her famined soul. She did the scenes, wrote them down, thought of something better, and redid them again. It was like she was living multiple characters, each having their own thought processes, within a span of time. She was in two parallel worlds at the same time, and this caused identity crisis and acute memory loss subsequently. She rarely went out, but when she did it was only to buy clothes and makeup for her characters or to visit the apothecary. It really was a strange life she lived. In due course of time the characters became her friends, gave her company, spoke to her for hours over the phone, dined with her, waltzed with her and became a part of her daily life.
Many a men had tried to date her, but she never needed a companion. She was happy with herself and her world. Journalists had to wait for days and sometimes months for an interview, and often described the experience as weird and paranormal, as if she took off completely into a different world. Often in the night, she would stare at the ceiling fan looking at her life gone by. Her past stared brazenly down on her grey silhouette reminding her of that horrific night.The options life gave her, had left her no choice. She had no assistants, no managers to keep her work sorted; she never did it for the money. To her, the imaginative world was far more fascinating than the world in which normal people lived in. It was as if there existed a unknown territory, an abyss of sorts, to which only she had the key.
She had been quite fond of the character of Beth, the protagonist of her story in the first two editions, a mother of two and the wife of the victim. Looking out through the window into the maddening streets of Manhattan, she would often yearn of having children, play with them and raise them up. She could relate to Beth in more ways than one, and that gave her solace. She kept two dolls on the sofa and named them after Beth’s children. Sometimes hours into the night, cuddling the children dolls in her bed, she would talk to Beth of her problems and empathized with her pain. For a long time now though, the pain was getting unbearable. Dolores was sad, sometimes she would have multiple mannerisms, attitudes and beliefs which are not common to each other. She would often have unexplained headaches and other body pains. The sadness engulfed her to such an extent that she kept forgetting things. It started with her parents’ phone numbers, to daily baths, to even her own name, but only one thing kept her going and that was her plot. It was like her soul was waiting for the book to finish before it could leave her body. She had to finish her book, and so actively started acting out scenes.
Dolores sat on the grandfathers’ chair as she typed the last few lines of her novel. Marlboro-lights stood perched between her index and middle finger,billowed over a long, thin streak of smoke that dissipated and engulfed the room. A lot of ash had collected assiduously at the edge of the cigarette and demanded to be stubbed out before it burnt the possessors’ fingers.
“Beth, it’s finally time to make the coffee”, she whispered to herself and made her way to the kitchen.
For the past few days, she was surviving on cigarettes only. She hated cooking, and only got out of her study to make coffee. Her face had turned pale blue giving it a sick look, as if something had been bothering her to death. Her hair had become rough and uncared without bath. The whole thing was rather strange. With each letter she typed, she looked at the screen with a sense of euphoria.She was calm,steady and seemed prepared in contrast to the boiling coffee that broke out into a frenzy effervescence spilling out to put out the flame.
In her novel, Beth was writing her last letter to the FBI, explaining to them the dramatic turn of events and what she intended to do in the next few minutes. She had killed her two children, lest they bequeath her ill fate. She wanted to take them along with her, and so she decided to kill them. One by one, she injected them and put them to sleep. Not a single drop was shed from those soft brown eyes.
The epilogue of the letter….
To the Federal Bureau of Investigation,
I, Beth Mc Kinsey, do hereby state, in the best of my physical and mental condition, and under to obligation or pressure of any sort, that I have killed Henry Jackson, my ex-employer and the chairman of the ABC News on the 28th of July 2010.I did this, because I could no longer bear the indelible shame he had brought to my existence. He and his friends had raped me 10 years ago, when I was 26, and since then I had nearly made up my mind to eradicate this menace of a thing from the earth. His words ring in my ears even now as I type – “You bitch can make no good in this world”. I would also like to mention here that his friends are also gone along with him to someplace more rotten than hell. Today, I have killed my two children – John and Betty and now intend to take my life. It’s as if I have completed the cycle and my soul is content.
Sincerely,
Dolores Beth McKinsey
….she clicked on the save button, attached this to an e-mail, sent it to her publishers,took out a cigarette and clicked the lighter.
