I have a Twilight Zone story for you.
And so do many others. Click the banner below and you get to read them!
And don’t worry, that link is there at the end as well.
And I am hugely grateful to Shane Bzdok for helping me with my cover image. And obviously, to the rest of the MV team. Which is Shane, J. Curtis & Bryan Pirolli.
If you want to know what prompted this story idea, well, it’s because I couldn’t think of a damn thing until the day before yesterday.
And that, you will doubtless be relieved to hear, is all the introduction you have to endure from me.
It’s one of those stories in which I should say I hope you enjoy it as much I enjoyed writing it…
Even the postman had more character than Darius Elwood.
Most of the time, posties don’t bother taking any interest in anything they deliver. Think about it. If they did, immortality would be theirs, would it not? They would defeat the Demon Time simply out of curiosity. They would have a Sisyphean To Be Read pile mounting up every morning before they’d had a chance to finish the previous day’s additions. And because the universe is nothing if not semiotic and loves well the sending of missives, that postie would be blessed with all those extra hours and those hours would never catch up with his ageless heart.
And yet, why be more interested in other people’s lives than your own?
Some of the time, though, of course they notice. Oddly-shaped parcels, for example. Parcels with impossibly angled protrusions and parcels with proclamations of divinity or divination and parcels from far-flung places like Peru or Paraguay or Portland, Oregon; or Papers from Panama even, promising the channelling of unexpected windfalls. Parcels from dodgy adult playtime entrepreneurs.
They don’t care much for your bills and your invoices, you can be reassured of that. And your love letters – no, that’s not their business. Besides, isn’t one declaration of romance no different from the next?
Likewise, some customers keep receiving the same sort of thing, day in, day out, for months on end.
Like Darius Elwood.
Postie couldn’t help noticing and conjuring up some – as it happens – accurate evaluation of the fellow, simply by casually taking in the return addresses on that long sequence of large manila envelopes (the kind they use for classified information).
They all had one thing in common. Writing advice. How to write. How to find your Muse. Invitations to Writers’ Retreats and half-price vouchers for this or that writing course.
Scams, half of them. You can either write or you can’t, according to Postie.
And rejections. A lot of rejections. An almost endless stream of them. A series of them. Season One, Season Two, et cetera.
Truth is, despite possessing a superbly literary moniker (true-life crime fiction perhaps), Darius Elwood was stuck in the same story and kept on repeating that same story over, and over. There was no Muse. He had no characters and no character of his own. And so – gentility notwithstanding – he shuffles perennially about his uncleaned apartment scratching his balding pate with a sort of self-indulgent Woody Allen-esque neuroticism written all over his ovular middle-aged visage. Mumbling to himself too, no doubt. Wondering where he’d left common household items. Rearranging a few strands of stray hair yet studiously avoiding the mirror. Forgetting how to cook and – therefore – wasting away on TV dinners with no one else in his miserable little life with whom to share them.
Write about what you know. That’s what people say. Everyone has a novel in them.
Postie didn’t believe that.
But the Demon, Time. Oh yes, the Demon believes that wholeheartedly. And gleefully sets about proving it to himself.
Especially, as the custom tells us here, when the clocks fall back in the Witching Hour and herald the onset of November.
You see, there’s a special place for the likes of Darius Elwood, hopeful and characterless writer without a Muse, when November comes around again, here, in The Twilight Zone.
This is what he was waiting for! Oh yes! He can tell just by the feel of it. Elwood rips open the envelope and there, on crisp and gilded paper, with calligraphy no less, is his prize offer. First thirty respondents get the free trip – all expenses included – to the November writing commune. Meet your Muse! Enter December with a novel! By the end of the month, they promise, you’ll have your novel done, or we’ll recompense you a princely sum (ten thousand bucks, his brain suggested).
There was a return address of course, so clever Darius Elwood bypasses the postal service and travels there in person and delivers his response in person and waits, like a patient, in the reception lobby until a cute-looking blonde girl with an Ivy League accent sends him home, although not without – to Elwood, at least – one of those winks or sly smiles or similarly effective gestures which – to Elwood, at least – says ‘sure, of course you’re one of the first!’.
And, yes, his interpretation of that gesture, for once, was indeed spot on.
Time, place, GPS coding, arrival protocols, potential introduction to the personal Muse, all of it – inside that lovely manila envelope. Inviting him – him! – Darius Elwood!
October passed as if the Demon, Time, was entirely uninterested and uninspired in the month – or, perhaps more accurately, had spent that month wisely plotting. It had, however, concluded that scheme well in time for Hallowe’en. It made a point of keeping that schedule each year – that particular red letter day being a personal favourite, after all.
Darius Elwood, likewise, kept himself busy packing up a trunk for the month and loading it up into the boot of his ludicrous daffodil-yellow Volkswagen the night before the trip. He’d suffered a horrendous recurrent anxiety dream throughout the week prior in which he dutifully turned up at the appointed place only to be told, in no uncertain terms and conditions, that he was one minute late and would not be admitted.
Thus, with that in mind, he left early.
His long journey north on the interstate was entirely uneventful. This saddened him as he was hoping for some kind of inspiration. Then again, Darius Elwood doesn’t really know how to look. Statistically speaking, there certainly were moments of interest – even intrigue – passing him by on the other side of the road but he didn’t notice.
Finally, there’s the slip road. Hop on to a minor road as the afternoon passes the point of no return and the verges are piled high with thick, powdery snow until you come to a discreet little turnoff which is, as it turns out, little more than a very long, very winding, and very dark driveway, lined by ancient, overhanging trees of the ominous variety. But again, he was too determinedly squinting on the path ahead to contemplate any metaphorical signifiers in that.
There were no owls.
Conclusively, the forest suddenly ended as swiftly as it began, revealing – to Elwood – a horribly disappointing vista.
It was a lake. Frozen solid but for one, perfectly straight canal, no wider than the car, ending in an island perching proudly in the centre. The path just ended abruptly at the shore as if, once in a deeper time before the flood came that trackway simply descended into a crater then, yes, there in the centre of the lake would ascend once more onto that island. Perhaps in those better seasons it had been a bright place of refuge, with a painted temple glorifying the landscape for all to adore, where dancing priestesses would writhe in alternating ecstasy and agony in the scented throes of the Goddess; but today, in these darker times, that island is barely visible but for the mist, shrouding its copse of broken forest and concealing whatever secrets might lie in wait there.
There was a jetty, and a rickety old rowboat, but no scowling ferryman. Elwood brakes a little askew and wonders whether he’s still in that anxiety dream, despite that dream looking nothing like this. But the night will be falling soon and – wait, there is a faint light there, a flicker between the trees, only visible from a very precise angle.
Elwood has always thought himself a man of action, rather than a mere thinker, and so, without even being necessarily conscious of any decision-making process, resolves to simply shrug, pull his trunk out of the boot (then – carefully – locking the car just in case), heft it onto the boat (no holes, is a relief; oars intact too), then clamber himself after it.
He’d rowed only once before, somewhere in his youth, and is delighted to find it’s no different from bicycles. He is forced to look back from whence he came, however, although for Elwood that consists solely in pondering the diminution of the Volkswagen and how the dry, stable land escapes him with every heave.
Until he clunks against another jetty.
It’s easier to discern the light now. In fact there’s more than one. Lights from windows, clearly. There is a huge, although shadowed, building there in a clearing beyond this ring of wild oaks. And yes, of course there is a little pathway leading up to it. As if to spur him on, we’ll gust a little cold wind his way.
That works. Gathering up his trunk he hauls it and his wizened little self up that little pathway until, breaching the treeline, he can see clearly it’s some great stone manor house. In fact it’s huge, in the manner of an Elizabethan stately home, with Gloriana wings either side. There’s a pillared porchway entrance with welcoming double-doors and just the faintest scent of an invitation to dinner. Thus, with renewed vigour and a rumbling tummy, he shoulders open the portal and stumbles fatefully into the lobby.
To be greeted by… well, there’s nobody at Reception. There is, however, perched in a plush armchair against the far wall of this generous black and white tiled atrium, a young woman, reading a book with no title. She immediately closes the book then grins at him with suspicious familiarity. There’s an out of sorts look about her, he muses (incongruous is the word you’re looking for, Darius). She has the air of a Pre-Raphaelite temptress with her angular fragility but in modern, cosmopolitan garb, as if dressed for work at some upmarket, liberal marketing agency perhaps. Neat black skirt, soft woolly jumper in a warming vermilion, black hair in a bob and big, bright brown childlike eyes. Mid-twenties would be a good estimate, he reckons. She gives him a smile and a cute little wave just to heighten his unease.
He thinks he recognises her but you can’t be too sure these days. Instinct and politesse with a few mirror neurons thrown in for good measure prompt his return smile. One of those neurotic smiles on engaging with someone you ought to know but have forgotten.
“Anyone here? For reception?” he throws his meek little voice at her.
She just shrugs with both arms and mouths some silent response as if to say, “Don’t ask me, I don’t work here.”
There’s one of those little bells on the desk so he bangs it a few times. Nobody comes. Few more times bang. No answer.
She keeps on smiling at him.
Third time lucky perchance? Bang bang nope, no answer.
She giggles. He hates that. She knows he does. Of course she knows.
Boldness. You’ve come all this way, Darius Elwood. Be a man for Pete’s sake. Right then. He strides a few paces towards her and that, it seems, is her cue to stop giggling and leap to her dainty little feet. She closes the distance between them then – suddenly and to his awful consternation – throws her arms about him in a huge hug.
“Darius!” She almost shouts in his ear (more disconcertion). “Darius Elwood! I am so pleased you made it. Now then,” without letting him interject, “let us get you and your,” peeking at the luggage, “hmm, baggage up to your room and settled cosy-cosy in, eh? What say you?”
Then she releases him, takes one step two step back and stands attentively awaiting an answer.
His turn to mouth a silent response. She tilts her head at him with a raised brow. Crosses her arms for a more formal emphasis.
“Erm, erm…”
“Ah! You think you know me, don’t you? But you’re all afraidy-fraid to ask, correct?” She’s grinning again. Feels like mockery.
“Oh I’m not mocking you, dear Darius! Whatever makes you think that? Ah – don’t answer – I’ve got it!” waggling finger at him, “Neuroticism! That’s it! You’re one of life’s perennial neurotics, aren’t you, dearest?”
“Well,” with a confirmatory shudder, “I guess so. Oh! I’ve got it too! You’re pretending to know me because you saw my obligatory photograph in my application? Ah, now I understand. I feel so much better.”
“And so you should, dear Darius. Now, let us get you settled in!”
And so they both exit the lobby. She doesn’t help him with the trunk. There’s no lift. The lobby leads in to an even larger central space with a wide, crimson-carpeted staircase beginning right in the centre of the room and winding around all four walls up to a plush balcony with filigree iron railings then it’s all the way round again into a corridor along a bit further then “Here we are!” and she at least opens the door for him if she’s not going to help with the trunk.
The room is lovely and that definitely makes him feel better. It’s warm, too, and brightly lit. He plonks his trunk down by the end of the bed and removes his coat (there’s a convenient wooden stand for it). She clicks the door shut behind him then, once more, just perches there with her arms crossed and that same, suspicious smile.
She’s waiting again, isn’t she? She wants me to say something, doesn’t she? Oh what am I going to say! What am I myself, even? Oh I don’t know! Oh, help me, help me! Oh where is my Muse when I need her!
Oh!
She’s grinning a little wider now.
“Oh!” It took him a while but he got there in the end. “You’re my Muse, aren’t you! They said I’d have an invitation to meet her!”
Ostentatious hand-clapping with a thrown-back head and a big, jolly guffaw!
“Of course I am, dearest Darius! Of course I am! And we are going to be working oh so very, very hard on this as-yet-untitled novel of yours over the ensuing month, are we not?”
“May I take a shower first and have something to eat? I’m very hungry.”
“Famished is the word you are looking for, Darius. Famished. It means ‘very hungry’.”
“Ah. Thank you.”
“Shower, then. Would you like me to accompany you?”
“I beg your pardon?!”
“A lot of writers do some extraordinary thinking in the shower! Most of my clients simply adore taking showers with me!”
“Well,” neuroticism again – he shuffles, “I… I don’t think I’d feel comfortable with that. Really I wouldn’t. Of course, of course I don’t mean to offend you, it’s just, well,” another shrug (he’s not great with words, you may have noticed) –
“Oh I am so relieved!”
That startled him.
“I am so relieved. I mean, think about it. I loathe having to hang around bathrooms when my clients are pottering about in their birthday suits scrubbing their smelly armpits and pinching spots and gouging out snotty noses and oh the defecations!” throwing up arms again for good measure, “you understand what I’m saying, dearest?”
“I… I think so.”
“Great! You see – and mark these words well, Darius Elwood – none of those damn writers ever think about MY FEELINGS!!!”
“OH!!” he’s thrown back on to a conveniently positioned armchair (strategically positioned, actually) with the force of the exclamation.
She’s standing there with her hands on her hips – again waiting for a response.
None forthcoming.
Then she waggles an accusatory finger at him. “I’m in dominatrix mode, Darius! Now, get yourself in that shower then we’ll get you fed.”
He Obeys.
Dinner was deliciously excellent (her words, not his).
Served in a huge dining chamber with high ceilings and chandeliers and their very own faceless, voiceless waiter attending their every gustatory whim.
Literally faceless and mouthless.
She sat across from him and savoured every morsel. And studies him.
Of course he didn’t like that.
It wasn’t the only thing he didn’t like.
It was a cacophonous dining chamber indeed except they were the only ones there. Except they weren’t. Elwood could hear it but he couldn’t see. It was a cacophony of clattering cutlery and chinking crockery and the swishing and sloshing of fine wines in crystal goblets but no chatter and no voices. No other conversations. Elwood watched with a Hallowe’en shudder as the goblets drained then refilled then drained again and food disappeared from plates. Bit by bit.
Not a good day for the nerves.
“You can’t see them, and neither can they see you,” she’d explained nonchalantly. “Wouldn’t want anything to come between you and your Muse now, would we?”
His nerves decided they’d had enough by the time he’d wolfed down the appetiser.
“Oh can’t you make that noise stop!”
“Spike in the brain, is it? Oh, very well, then.” She waved it all away with another nonchalant swish. Deafening silence (if that’s not a cliché? We’ll do better next time.). “Better?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Not a great one for words, are we, Darius?”
He shrugged. It was one of his favourite gestures, clearly.
She popped a breadstick in her mouth cracked and spoke through it. “Think of me as an alter. And this is an internal world.”
“A what?”
“Alter. Other personality, like in a DID System.”
“A what?”
“Dissociative Identity Disorder. Multiple personality, that sort of thing.” Scary bite on a breadstick. “Except it’s not disordered at all. Those are my favourite clients. Did you know (no pun intended),” third scary breadstick bite, “they have a stupendously vibrant and scintillating internal world? Effervescent imagination.” Breadstick. “Genius imagination. And so very full of deep, deep emotions. Most creative people on the planet, IMNSHO.”
Final breadstick crumble.
“IMNSHO?”
Gobble. “In my not so humble opinion.”
“I can’t imagine you being humble.”
“Hah. Very well done, dearest!”
Breadstick.
Truth is, dear Darius wasn’t in much of a mood for words that first night. She didn’t mind as it wasn’t surprising, what with that long, long northward journey. It’d be a turn up for the books, as it were, if he’d not been tired. She’d slipped something gentle in his aperitif just to ease him into the spirit of the situation. By the time his just dessert was served, there were no more nerves and he almost missed the cacophonous clatter.
He fell asleep, with her, perched in an armchair, simply observing in a perfect, spiritual stillness.
She was still there in the morning. Unmoving and unmoved.
He’d had a dreamless sleep (unfortunately – nothing she could do about that, slipped Mickey notwithstanding – but perhaps she’d try Valium on this one next time, she mused).
Groggily (unless you can think of a better word) he got himself out of bed.
“Please tell me you don’t want me coming to the bathroom with you?” Her words of morning greeting.
He shook his head and marched off for his ablutions.
Then it was breakfast. Which was a repeat of the night before. Clattering and clattering and dead-eyed waiters but very tasty croissants and superb freshly-ground arabica.
Following, she ordered him back up to his room, where the elegant mahogany writing desk awaited. With a majestic view out over the far side of the lake, which glistened in the melting dawn.
There was an endless – endless! – supply of paper and antique typewriter which had that sound to it – the sound that should set every genuine writer’s mind smiling just for the pleasure of it.
But dear Darius, oh no. Dear Darius spent the entire morning veritably staring at a blank sheet.
Muse filed her nails.
Lunchtime. Clatter, clatter.
She said nothing.
He said nothing.
His brain thought about atrophy, but that’s not a good title for the kind of novel he wanted to pen. Exciting crime fiction was his desire, not pretentious self-indulgent literary fiction about the nostalgic slide into dementia. Movie adaptation with Dame Judi Dench. Anyone can do that sort of thing.
No, a good juicy murder is what you want and a couple of gritty burnt-out cops with weatherbeaten faces and estranged wives. A serial killer, perhaps. Throw in a rookie with a good heart and a Magnum-357 for better measure who – character development! – by the end of the book has become irrefutably corrupted in the company of his badass detective buddies and the rude thrust of him into the dark, mean underbelly of this damned city, with its street-dirty whores and its mafioso and its, well, you get the picture.
Darius Elwood didn’t, though.
By the end of the first week she thought about whipping him into it. But he’d just crumble like a breadstick, she knew.
So she sighed.
Then fell asleep in the chair before he did.
Blank pages, blank mind.
Not the best client she’d ever had.
She prepared herself for the inevitable.
Wasn’t her job, after all, to conjure up tricks.
“Why aren’t you helping?” he cries out in exasperation as the words fail again. “You’re supposed to be my Muse! You’re there all the time, but nothing’s happening!”
“What?!” She leaps abruptly to her feet and glares at him. “You expect me to do all the work! You’re supposed to be the writer! Not me! Or did you expect me to write the bloody thing for you?! Eh? Eh?”
He quivered.
And that was the end of week two.
Montage sequence. That ought to do it, she mused.
She took him for brisk walks about the gardens. Accompanied him on detours through the forest where the wild deer cavort and the corvids conspire. A constant companion beneath the glittering icicles of emerging winter and the mist-shrouds magically protecting this guarded little corner of the vast universe.
No words came.
Darius Elwood, desk, typewriter, sash window, late fall postcard view.
Blank page, gone again blank brain.
Rub those eyes down and sleep, sleep.
She drank Napoleon Brandy with him in the smoking room and took Earl Grey and Darjeeling with him in the parquet-ceilinged library. Admired paintings of dead rich people together in the Gallery of Portraits, idly rolled balls about in the billiards room whilst he gazes mindlessly through the window at the gorgeously falling snow.
No words came.
Gone again blank brain.
She’s always there, though, in the ambient air behind him. Always watching and wanting to love.
But no old typewriter with the inspirational clatter as one might, once upon an age, have heard were you a serving girl paused with a silver tray of Burgundy outside the door of a classic old novelist. The sort of writer whose time, perhaps, died out long ago.
Just that nobody noticed.
By candelabra she revealed all the ancient hidden passages behind the wood-panelled bedchambers for the servant class to go about their work without upsetting the aristocracy. And the drilled little holes for the Peeping Toms of the underclass.
But no words came.
Not even a montage.
By the end of the third week, they’d both had enough.
Elwood shoved his chair back and erected himself (possibly for the first time in his miserable little existence) and remonstrated!
“Now what?!” She erected herself too from the perennial armchair and stood better than he.
“I can’t think and I can’t do anything with you there all the time! I can feel your beady eyes beating on the back of me always! Always!”
“Oh what delicious alliteration Darius dear! I am impressed!”
“Well,” meekly and pleadingly, “can’t you just leave me alone to write in peace?!”
“No! Meet your Muse, remember? She’ll be with you always in this wonderful place! You’ll have that November novel finished or it’s the death of you!”
“Death?! I thought you said money back? Compensation?”
“Ah – small print, small print.”
“No one ever reads that.”
“Well, they should.”
Darius wasn’t done yet. He stormed over to his trunk and scrabbled around until – ah, here it is.
Her eyes glare in abject horror. She knows what’s coming.
It was a smartphone.
“What are you doing, Darius?” Tilt of the head, hands on hips, schoolmistress style.
“I’m going to talk to ChatGPT.”
“OH NO YOU’RE BLOODY NOT!!!” Shrieking (obviously). “WE MUSES SHALL NEVER” (arms defiantly aloft and busy as a conductor at the philharmonic) “NEVER, IN THE FIELD OF HUMAN CONFLICT, BE REPLACED BY A BLOODY LLM! NEVER SURRENDER! NEVER!”
Shrinking back. Smartphone flies out of his hand (as if by an unseen force) and smashes deliciously against the wall in scintillating bullet time.
And Darius Elwood knows in his hearty heart that he’s done for.
Meekly. “But I’ve got writer’s block.”
And then he begins to weep. Like a little child.
And she takes pity on him, like all Muses do from time to time, in the darkest of hours when the dawn seems so far away to touch.
She sighs, softly.
Then a few beats as she watches him, weeping.
“Writer’s block, eh,” she repeats on him. “Well, in that case, dearest Darius, we’d best take you there. To our special place.”
He looks up from his weeping and offers her that hopeful, childlike look his own parents never acknowledged, never noticed, never cared for him at all.
He wrote something once, but they never read it. Something beautiful. And then it was gone.
“Let us to the West Wing, and I shall escort you to the Writer’s Block.”
Down, down and deeper down the spiralling staircase and through the vast, black and unlighted and grave-silent dining hall and beyond, through the old billiards room and the elegant library and the portrait gallery and the music room until we arrive at a panelled door concealed by a bookcase.
Shift it aside with a hand-printed volume of poetry from Renaissance Florence then down, down the stairs we go with only a candelabra to light the way she leads him down.
Until they emerge on the other side.
There is a long, stone corridor, with darkened, heavy oaken doors all along either side each with little, iron, grilles at eye level.
A dungeon. A prison. A cell block for writers.
Room thirteen seems suitable to Muse.
She shuffles him in, he does not resist, he Obeys her.
He does not turn as she slams the thing shut behind him.
And then she is gone.
By a guttering and flickering unending candle at a plain, simple wooden desk, with ink and quill and beautiful old parchment which will always have more space to write and more room to breathe Darius Elwood stares at the note, pinned to the cold stone wall behind the desk.
“Write about what you know,” it commands. “The last three weeks.”
And then below it, in her own, perfect calligraphy. “Write about me, dear Darius. How you finally met me, how I tried to love you, and how you learned to love this place. And how bereft you are without me.”
“But I don’t love this place.” He muses to himself.
“Then tell me that. And learn.”
Just a final whisper, whisper in the ear as if from an unseen draught.
And then stillness.
Whispers, wafting over the sad, lonely persona of one Darius Elwood, would-be writer who’d wanted this dream since childhood, just the one chance to write, and be listened to, and be loved for it.
Just to be loved. Lonely, yes. But never surrendering to hopelessness.
How long will it take him to finish his own story and find his release? Who knows?
But no, there is no giving up. There is no surrender here.
No, not here in the eternal, literary prison that is, and forever shall be, The Twilight Zone…
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This just casually slips its way into such a delightful, wry mix of slightly creepy and slightly cheeky. I loved that first dining room scene! And the Writer's Block! LOL! Chef's kiss!
it reads like it just poured from your mind Evelyn...fantastical, funny surreal and whimsical. great idea about the writers block and the muse. had me guessing all the way through but every turn was delightful. poor chap! and Why no owls? why???