The Worst Story
by Lincoln Trudeau
It was a dark and stormy night...okay, maybe just a dark and rainy night...how 'bout a bright and moderately humid summer evening...ah, shit, who'm I tryin' to fool?Gursh Nelson looked angrily at the sheet of paper he'd been writing on, then tore it in half.Yeah, just rip it in half, like that guy at the diner said -- think his name was Fred. Fred Dalner. Yeah.Then he put the two halves together and ripped those in half.That guy said ripping paper in half calms the nerves.Then he ripped the remaining pieces in half again, and again, until the pieces were too small to rip in half and he became furious.That guy at the diner was fulla shit. Hate him.Nelson sprang from his desk and started to pace around his bedroom, trying to think of a good idea for a story. As always, he was taking a break when he hadn't even written anything important on paper yet.I wish I couldn't write at all. I wish I didn't even know how. But wishes are for kids and stupid adults.And as always, he ran out of his bedroom to the kitchen for a smoke and a coffee -- the cigarette was intended to relax him and the coffee was intended to un-relax him. Having a cigarette and a coffee made no logical sense to Nelson, but neither did anything else in his life.Good planning, Gursh. GREAT planning. Nelson finished his cigarette, then dropped it in an ashtray with shaking hands. You get paid two grand to write a story by tomorrow and you start writing it the night before. Well done.Nelson drank his coffee, then tossed his pack of cigarettes on the kitchen counter as if it had bitten him. He smashed it hard with his fist several times, making it impossible for him to have another one. It's not like every writer gets paid in advance either -- they must think you're somethin' special. Guess you fooled them, huh?Nelson slowly made his way back to his bedroom as though he was facing not a blank page but a firing squad. When he sat down at his desk, he reached for his box full of pens...then he pushed it aside and looked over at the computer on the right side of the desk instead.The computer was almost alien to Nelson, but he knew enough to get by. The dealer who'd sold him the cursed machine had babbled something about it being "A 486 DX2, runs at 66 Megahertz with a math co-processor and 150 Meg. hard drive with eight Megs of RAM...", but after a while, Nelson had just smiled and nodded, unable to make sense of what the little man was saying.Stupid, shouldn't have let some fast-talking techno-weenie sell me this hunka crap. Nelson flipped a few switches, pressed a button and seconds later, the computer was ready to use. He loaded up WordPerfect 6.0 -- the word processor that had come with the machine -- and assigned to his brain the task of coming up with a good title.Okay...title...dammit, need at least a...got it! Um..."Revenge of the eight-track"...oh, Christ. Just broke one of the cardinal rules of creative writing -- considering a title that sounds like a corny '50s sci-fi movie with no budget. He stared at the blank screen and it seemed to stare right back at him.Frustrated, Nelson opened his top desk drawer and pulled out two things: a small bottle of Tylenol caplets and a thermos filled with scotch. Hey, if I can't think straight, why fight it? Lots of those music types in the '60s came up with their best ideas when they were in Happyland, so maybe booze'll do the same thing for me...but most of those '60s guys are dead too...ah, hell, we all gotta die someday...Twenty minutes later, Nelson leaned back in his chair and tossed the empty thermos behind him. He wasn't sure how many Tylenol he'd taken, but he guessed four or five. Oopsie. That's no good. What if I die of Tylenol overdose...or alcohol poisning...that'd be a bitch. Satisfied that his thoughts were as jumbled as they were going to get, Nelson began to write a story.For what seemed like forever, he sat in his chair, hammering away at the keyboard, but when he finished writing and made a printout of his work, he realized he had no idea what he had just written.Well...let's see here...title -- "Backstabber"...okay, a little hokey, but not too bad. Nelson started to scan through the story for spelling and grammatical errors, but surprisingly enough, there were very few. Jeez. I should write when I'm smashed more often.And then he tried reading the story for content. What the hell is this? "As hard as a rock"? "Nerves of steel"? "Faster than greased lightning"? This is crap. There's a cliché on every second line. What the hell..."non-human companion"? "Personhole cover"? Oh no, it's even politically correct...what about the ending...let's see...oh God...On the last line of the page, Nelson read with dismay the words "And then I woke up"."It's over!" Nelson yelled outside the window of his apartment building. "My career in writing, my sanity, my life, it's all over! Over!"Several floors down came a screeching reply from a woman in a green housecoat. Nelson couldn't hear what she said, but her lips formed only two short angry words -- words Nelson knew well -- and they weren't "Nice shirt."If I don't get this story done, my reputation'll be over...can't pay back the two thousand bucks either -- they'll take my apartment and I'll be in the streets with no job and...hell, I gotta go out. Leave everything now. Just hang myself with my own tie or...no, can't do that, it's been DONE, need something more creative...hey, why go alone when I can bring a friend? Well, not a friend...hmm, who do I really hate?Having concluded his life was no longer worth living, Nelson decided he would have no further use for his apartment, so he set it on fire. Whee. I like fire. And roasting hot dogs...and marshmallows too. Especially the teeny colourful ones. Yummy.Feeling less than normal to say the least, Nelson went into one of the two elevators in the building, pushed all the buttons, then walked out and started to march down the stairs.When he arrived at the lobby, he stepped up to the concierge -- a snotty little man with neither hair nor sense of humour -- and told him he was moving out. And then he punched the concierge in the face, knocking him unconscious. Oh, I LOVE this, it's amazing what you can get away with when you just don't care anymore...Moments later, Nelson stood outside the lobby of his apartment building. With a frighteningly large grin on his face, he walked up to a limousine nearby and smashed the window on the driver's side with his elbow. Instantly, the car's alarm began to wail high-pitched noises in all directions.Oh, Christ...that damn thing's givin' me one bitch of a headache. How do you turn that goddamn thing off..."Hey!" yelled a voice. Nelson turned to see an enormous man dressed in a black suit. "What the hell are you doing to my car?"Nelson began to laugh, but he wasn't sure why. "What the hell does it look like I'm doing, jackass? I'm stealing it! Now give me the keys so I don't have to hot-wire it."The man in the suit pointed a finger at Nelson. "Do you have a gun or something?""No, moron, but I got teeth. Now toss me the keys or I'll eat your eyeballs."The man in the suit was deeply disturbed by the threat, as he threw the keys to Nelson and backed away, mumbling something about taking the rest of the week off. Nelson started the car and heard the tires screech as he pulled away from the apartment.Whee! Now THIS is drivin', man! Now I can go out in real class...okay, where's that goddamn diner...that stupid bastard in there told me rippin' up paper calms ya down and he LIED to me, he's gotta pay...Fred Dalner was wiping off the counter at Merv's Diner when a limousine crashed through the front doors. The noise almost struck him deaf. Though he thought he was mistaken, he could almost swear the man behind the wheel was the writer that had come in once a week for the Friday Special.The limo pushed through a few tables effortlessly, then stopped when it hit the counter. Nelson, having deliberately left his seatbelt off, found himself flung into several inches of windshield glass. The car companies referred to it as "safety glass", but Nelson no longer considered that term appropriate -- the force of the impact killed him almost instantly.Fred was confused. Nobody had ever driven a limousine through his diner and then died, so he wasn't sure how he was supposed to react."Mr. Nelson?" he asked idiotically, scratching his head. In life, Nelson's hand had been clenched into a fist, but now the hand opened and inside it was a neatly folded piece of paper. Fred unfolded it carefully.Written in scribbly, child-like writing were the words "I never liked you." The reverse side read "Write me a story."
