The Abyss Writes Back
Autumn 24
Marshall Briggs sat hunched over his desk, the blank screen of his laptop pulsing with a kind of reproach. Once a celebrated thriller author, now 65, he feared his well of dark imaginings had finally run dry. He riffled through stacks of old fan letters, searching for a spark, a glimmer of the dark edge that had once defined his work. His gaze snagged on a photograph of himself in his prime, at a signing for his breakout novel, Shadowplay. The young Marshall grinned rakishly, exuding the confidence of a literary wunderkind. Back then, he’d felt alive, electrified by the thrill of exploring the darker side of human nature—poking the beast and retreating unscathed. But two divorces, a battle with the bottle, and a string of increasingly anodyne novels had drained him. His once-prolific output had slowed to a trickle, his book launches echoing the hollow hopes of faded triumphs. His younger self, in that photograph, stared back as if mocking him. Grunting, he snapped the laptop shut and reached for his usual remedy: a glass of scotch. What am I even looking for? he wondered. But as he sipped, a notion began to worm its way into his mind, twisted and tantalising. What if he wrote something unfiltered, something unleashed? A story that revelled in darkness rather than merely flirting with it. He’d ditch his usual flawed but redeemable heroes, opting instead for a vigilante who enjoyed dispensing a brutal, Old Testament-style justice. A character who didn’t just glimpse the abyss but embraced it fully. Perhaps it was time to let his own darkness breathe. He imagined his agent, Sarah, rolling her eyes. She’d say he was flirting with disaster, risking his brand. “This isn’t the Marshall Briggs your readers know,” she’d say. “It’s too dark, too… disturbing.” Maybe that was exactly what he needed—to throw his comfortable thriller-writing persona into the shredder and release something truly dangerous. His pulse quickened at the thought. Before he could lose his nerve, Marshall set down his glass, reopened the laptop, and began to type. The words came haltingly, then in a torrent, as he plunged into the fractured psyche of his protagonist, Nathaniel Cross. Cross wouldn’t just hunt monsters; he would become one. As Marshall described Cross’s blood-soaked mission to purge the wicked, he felt an electric thrill—a perverse liberation. He had never written like this before. Each night, he descended further into Cross’s mind, the words flooding out of him until the blackest hours of the morning. For weeks, he typed obsessively, the hours bleeding into each other. Shadows darkened under his eyes, his face took on a gaunt, haunted look, and his hands moved across the keyboard as if possessed. He ignored the growing whispers of doubt, shutting out the voice in his mind that warned him Eye for an Eye was going too far. When he typed the last sentence, he sat back, both exhausted and exhilarated. The manuscript throbbed with a primal force his recent work had sorely lacked. As he attached the draft to an email for his long-suffering editor, Philip, he hesitated. This wasn’t just a new novel—it was a confession, an invitation into his own abyss. Would Philip see that? Would anyone? Marshall took a deep gulp of whisky and hit send. The die had been cast. The trilling of his phone woke him from a whisky-soaked sleep. Fumbling through last night’s creative detritus—empty glasses, crumpled pages of half-formed ideas, overflowing ashtrays—he answered. “Marshall? It’s Philip. I finished the manuscript,” his editor said, his voice thick with exhaustion and disbelief. Marshall swallowed, his throat dry. “And?” “It’s… intense. I had to take breaks, even poured myself a double.” “Too much?” Dread twisted in Marshall’s stomach. “No,” Philip replied, after a long pause. “No, it’s… hypnotic. Disturbing, yes, but brilliant.” Marshall exhaled slowly. “You really think so?” “Marshall, this book is going to cause a firestorm. It’ll be the most controversial thing you’ve ever written. People won’t know what hit them.” Philip’s words were prophetic. When Eye for an Eye hit shelves, it exploded onto the literary scene. Critics were polarised, their reviews swinging between revulsion and awe. “A descent into a near-pornographic theatre of cruelty,” sneered one. “An unflinching excavation of human darkness,” raved another. Sarah’s voicemails seesawed between giddy disbelief and cautious warnings. “The book’s selling like wildfire… but, Marshall, the emails I’m getting! Protests, death threats. I hope you know what you’re doing.” Marshall watched Eye for an Eye climb the bestseller lists, but his sense of victory felt hollow, almost sinister. The darkness between the pages seemed to seep into his world. It began with fan letters. Amid the heaps of praise, outrage, and admiration, certain missives stood out, scrawled in shaky handwriting on crumpled bits of paper or torn napkins. They spoke of bloodlust, of Cross’s work as a divine mission, as if he was a prophet. “I saw you today, Marshall. Saw you leaving that pub on Frith Street, oblivious to the filth everywhere. You’ll understand soon. The red work has only just begun…” Marshall stopped his nightly walks, locking his doors and checking his windows. But the letters continued, each more invasive than the last. They began to appear in his coat pockets, tucked between the pages of his own novels on his bookshelf. Then came the pint glasses. Boxes with no return address, inside which sat pint glasses smeared with a dark, rusty stain that smelled faintly of blood. He called the police, hired private security, installed cameras around his home, but none of it eased the dread that gnawed at his insides. His therapist prescribed sedatives and suggested a break, perhaps a holiday, a retreat away from the noise. But he knew it wasn’t that simple. He’d crossed an irrevocable line, and now he was haunted by the darkness he’d unleashed. One night, he jerked awake, drenched in sweat, the laptop screen blinking accusingly in the dim light. He’d been trying to write something more tempered, more palatable, but the words wouldn’t come. Eye for an Eye had become an infection, an unrelenting tap of horrors he couldn’t turn off. A noise echoed from downstairs—a thump, a creak. His body went rigid. Forcing himself to his feet, he held his breath, his shallow exhales echoing off the silence. It’s probably nothing. Just the house settling. The study door burst open. A figure loomed in the doorway, tall and gaunt, cloaked in black, a mask obscuring his face—a doll-like visage, splattered with dark, ruddy stains. “Marshall Briggs,” the figure rasped, his voice a phlegm-thickened hiss. “The master, at last.” Marshall’s fingers fumbled for something, anything. His hand closed around a heavy silver pen stand. “I… I don’t know what you want.”
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