The Typewriter

“Every man is a book; if we’re opened... we’re red.”

Leonard Russell is a young man with a burning ambition to be a novelist. He recently left home and moved to a cheap apartment in the big city where he was sure he’d find inspiration to write. It might be a romantic notion, but it seems to have worked, because people who’ve read his stories agree that he’s improved remarkably in a surprisingly short time. It surely can’t be long before a publisher accepts a manuscript and Leonard earns the recognition he’s hungry for.

Image by Artflow.ai

However, recently Leonard’s health began to suffer. He became pale and shaky, and occasionally drifted off into a daze without warning.

People started to worry, and with good reason: just a couple of days ago he collapsed while walking down to the corner store. Fortunately, a concerned onlooker was able to drive him to the emergency room where doctors made a startling discovery -- there was so little blood in Leonard’s veins it was a surprise he’d been able to walk at all. Odder still, his fingers and palms were dotted with dozens of tiny scabs, some of them still bleeding.

Possibilities

1 Leonard picked up a bit of spare cash a few months ago translating an old French play, “Le Roi en Jaune” (The King in Yellow).

During the translation he was struck by an idea which at the time seemed so simple it made him gasp -- with just a few minor modifications he could rebuild his typewriter into an engine for cranking out brilliant prose. It worked, and Leonard now owns a typewriter which can make those words that sound so good in your head look equally good on paper.

Anyone could use this typewriter to pen a bestselling novel. But there’s a price to be paid -- each key has a tiny needle embedded in it which draws a drop of blood every time it’s pressed down, and transfers it to the ribbon. Leonard’s brilliant manuscript is quite literally written in blood, and producing it has taken its toll on him.

Leonard is now completely mad, and unless someone intervenes, he discharges himself from hospital and eagerly returns to his desk to die in the process of finishing what will be acknowledged as the decade’s greatest novel. His typewriter passes to a relative...

2 Leonard likes his fiction to be as realistic as possible and borrowed a few phrases in an obscure language for his characters to repeat at intervals in the novel’s progression. The speech came from an old book of occult lore he browsed through in a second-hand bookshop. Unfortunately, Leonard has a habit of muttering the words under his breath as he types them out on paper, and has been unknowingly summoning a star vampire every time he sits down to write.

The summoning spell includes a binding component, so the vampire hasn’t been able to kill him -- it just takes its payment in blood each time it’s summoned and waits patiently for orders from its master before finally returning to where it came from when the spell wears off. Mind focused on his work, Leonard hasn’t even noticed the slow, repeated drainings, but now he’s lost too much blood to ignore.

If Leonard returns to writing his novel, the vampire finally takes enough blood to kill him. The binding spell fails, and the vampire is free to do as it likes on Earth. Worse yet, the novel is published, putting a dangerous magical spell in the hands of the unsuspecting public.

3 Leonard has been spending time with recent immigrants to research his novel. During that time he picked up a new and undiagnosed disease which the foreigners have a resistance to, but which locals do not have antibodies for. The disease is spreading through his blood and soon other parts of his body will also show the tiny sores. It spreads by touch, so bloodstains in Leonard’s apartment and especially on the keys of his typewriter have become a vector for its continued dispersal. The disease isn’t fatal to young and strong people, so his life isn’t in danger, but infants and the elderly are at risk.

If the authorities don’t realise the situation in time to isolate Leonard and destroy his belongings, the city is gripped by an epidemic worse than a new strain of influenza in less than a month.

© Chris Kerr

The Missing Body

It’s been a big topic of conversation for three days now. Renowned anthropologist Marvin Reardon was found dead in his home with a knife in his chest. At the morgue, his body disappeared without a trace. However the investigators get involved, a few things come out. Reardon’s lover Cordelia Loomis was the last person to see him. Her story is she had an argument with him but left him alive. Loomis is a rich girl, and there are many rumors about her past and source of money, including criminal activities. She often vacations at seaside resorts.

The coroner Jackson Walters has been acting nervous since the body went missing. He took a week off and has rarely left his house. Friends are mystified at his odd behavior.

Possibilities

1 An alien worshipper of the Outer Gods is hiding in Jackson Walters’ attic. Walters has been feeding it dead animals, but it has demanding more so Walters stole a body from the morgue. As the thing tells him about the mythos Walters loses more of his sanity. It won’t be long before he steals another body or worse.

2 Cordelia Loomis is a deep one cultist. When Reardon was drunk she took him to a cult ceremony where he drank the blood of a deep one while the cultists chanted. The blood and the ritual turned him into a deep one hybrid. When Reardon found out he didn’t take it well and threatened to stop the cult forcing her to kill him. Later the body was stolen to keep the secret. Jackson Walters found evidence of Reardon’s transformation and was shaken up.

3 Loomis was mad at Reardon and summoned a star vampire to kill him. When it was done she stuck a knife in him to make it look less suspicious. Jackson Walters found him drained of blood and received a threatening note in the mail to get rid of the body or be killed. He did what it said and this is the reason for his nervousness.

© Randi Drysdale