Mr. Murder

story from the beginning, He stares at the screen. It is terrifyingly blank.
        Infinitely blanker than it was before, not just three letters blanker with the deletion of "man."
        The choices to follow that simple article, "the," are limitless, which makes the selection of the second word a great deal more daunting than he would have supposed before he sat in the black leather chair and switched on the machine.
        He deletes
        "The."
        The screen is clear.
        Ready.
        He finishes the bottle of Corona. It is cold and refreshing, but it does not lubricate his thoughts.
        He goes to the bookshelves and pulls off eight of the novels bearing his name, Martin Stillwater. He carries them to the desk, and for a while he sits and reads first pages, second pages, trying to kick-start his brain.
        His destiny is to be Martin Stillwater. That much is perfectly clear.
        He will be a good father to Charlotte and Emily.
        He will be a good husband and lover to the beautiful Paige.
        And he will write novels. Mystery novels.
        Evidently, he has written them before, at least a dozen, so he can write them again. He simply has to re-acquire the feeling for how it is done, relearn the habit.
        The screen is blank.
        He puts his fingers on the keys, ready to type.
        The screen is so blank. Blank, blank, blank. Mocking him.
        Suspecting that he is merely inhibited by the soft persistent hum of the monitor fan and the demanding electronic-blue field of document one, page one, he switches off the computer. The resultant silence is a blessing, but the flat gray glass of the monitor is even more mocking than the blue screen, turning the machine off seems like an admission of defeat.
        He needs to be Martin Stillwater, which means he needs to write.
        The man. The man was. The man was tall with blue eyes and blond hair, wearing a blue suit and white shirt and red tie, about thirty-years old, and he didn't know what he was doing in the room that he entered.
        Damn. No good. The man. The man. The man…
        He needs to write, but every attempt to do so leads quickly to frustration. Frustration soon spawns anger. The familiar pattern.
        Anger generates a specific hatred for the computer, a loathing of it, and also a less focused hatred of his unsatisfactory position in the world, of the world itself and every one of its inhabitants. He needs so little, so pathetically little, just to belong, to be like other people, to have a home and a family, to have a purpose that he understands.
        Is that so much? Is it? He does not want to rub elbows with the high and mighty, dine with socialites. He is not asking for fame.
        After much struggle, confusion, and loneliness, he now has a home and wife and two children, a sense of direction, a destiny, but he feels it slipping away from him, through his fingers. He needs to be Martin Stillwater, but in order to be Martin Stillwater, he needs to be able to write, and he can't write, can't write, damn it all, can't write.
        He knows the street layout of Kansas City, other cities, and he knows all about weaponry, about picking locks, because they seeded that knowledge in him-whoever "they" are-but they haven't seen fit also to implant the knowledge of how to write mystery novels, which he needs, oh so desperately needs, if he is ever to be Martin Stillwater, if he is to keep his lovely wife, Paige, and his daughters and his new destiny, which is slipping, slipping, slipping through his fingers, his one chance at happiness swiftly evaporating, because they are against him, all of them, the whole world, set against him, determined to keep him alone and confused. And why? Why? He hates them and their schemes and their faceless power, despises them and their machines with such bitter intensity that- -with a shriek of rage, he slams his fist through the dark screen of the computer, striking out at his own fierce reflection almost as much as at the machine and all that it represents.
        The sound of shattering glass is loud in the silent house, and the vacuum inside the monitor pops simultaneously with a brief hiss of invading air.
        He withdraws his hand from the ruins even as fragments of glass are still clinking onto the keyboard, and he stares at his bright blood.
        Sharp slivers bristle from the webs between his fingers and from