Read Online The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant by Jeffrey Ford - Free Book Online Page A

powerful.”
    â€œToo powerful?” I said.
    â€œPlease,” said Glandar, and his voice shifted through an odd transformation into Ashmolean’s. “Do you see it?” asked my fantasy writer.
    I looked to my left and there he sat, fingers poised above the keyboard, ready to start hammering. I turned back to my right and saw Glandar and the Malfeasance in their battle positions by the edge of the cliff.
    I could feel the power that Glandar had mentioned welling up inside of me. “Okay,” I said, “get ready.” My words came forth with an energy of their own, flowing straight up from my solar plexus, colored with vivid description, crackling with metaphor and simile. I spoke without hesitation the battle of Glandar and the Malfeasance, monster born of the hero’s own ill thoughts.
    The Eliminator flashed in the sunlight, and there was rolling and running and gasping for air. Wounds blossomed, blood ran, bones shattered. Great chunks of the monster’s amoebic body flew on the ocean wind. And the invective was brilliant: “May you burn in Mank’s essential furnace until the scimitar moon sews your soul to eternity.” Acid breath and biting steel, the two fought on and on—now one getting the upper hand, now the other.
    To my left, Ashmolean was white hot, typing faster than the computer could announce the words that jumped from me to his fingers. “Death to the unbeliever,” he murmured under his labored breath.
    In the end, Glandar, so brutally wounded that he was beyond recovery, gave one final suicide charge forward, burying himself in the viscous flesh of the monster, forcing both of them over the edge of the cliff.
    Ashmolean cried out, “It can’t be!” as I described them falling, yet his fingers continued typing.
    â€œNo,” he moaned as they hit the rocks hundreds of feet below, but the action on the keyboard never slowed.
    He wept as the ocean waves washed over them. After he typed the final period, he turned away from me to cover his face again with his hands. With that last dot, Kreegenvale went out like a light in my own mind. I pushed back the lawn chair and stood up. Ashmolean’s body was heaving, but all of his grief was silent now. Saying nothing, I left the room, left the house, and never went back.
    As devastating as the death of Glandar might have been for Ashmolean, it left me with a sense of determination about my own life that even the sword wielder had never exhibited. When thinking what to do next, I remembered Leonard Finch putting his finger on my forehead and saying, “See it here.” In rapid succession, I took the job at Burgerama and registered for classes at the local college. I often thought about what I had done to my fantasy writer, but reconciled it by telling myself it was the best for everyone.
    Still, memories of Kreegenvale would sometimes blow through my mind, especially when I sat in the literature lectures and the profs would fall into theoretical obscurity. Then I prayed Glandar would kick in the door and start wielding. For the most part, though, I loved learning again. I took a lot of English courses, but I knew I didn’t want to teach. As for the job, it was greasy and hot for little pay, and when I’d slide those horse-fat sandwiches across the counter to the eager customers, I’d whisper, “Death to the unbeliever.” For all the Gwaten Tarn horrors of Burgerama, I enjoyed getting to know the other workers that were my age.
    Things were going very well, and my parents were pleased with my progress, but for me, something was missing. I realized one night that what I wanted was to be a writer. Even to be back in Ashmolean’s study, where words breathed life into the impossible, would have sufficed. I bought a notebook and began trying to tell a story, but from some lack of courage or an overabundance of self-criticism, I never got further than the first few lines.