Mind Writer

For the first time since its inception, my fantastic success was threatening to disappear. I sat atop the film industry adored by the actors, the executives, and the movie-going public, yet I foresaw trouble in the future. I will explain shortly. I hold a mind remarkable above any other. Statistics, formulas, equations are all compiled throughout my brain in massive stocks, an archive of wisdom, though still instantly and precisely recallable to the last finite detail.

My true intelligence lies within my unmatched creativity and artistic thinking. I am a storyteller by nature; I can’t cease envisioning beautiful characters and storylines, and weaving their intricate personalities through intense scenarios. Whatever the situation, it can always be more intense, suspenseful, horrifying, or more heartbreaking. I always possessed a special talent to layer my characters and plots with additional unpredictable obstacles. I knew from my youth I was destined for fame in Hollywood; even before my writing developed into professional caliber, my directorial vision was undeniable. All through my schooling, my grades and standardized test scores stood alone in the highest echelon; however, I elected to forgo secondary education to the dismay of several universities who were desperate for my attendance. I never felt that formal education was meant for the creative and talented, more for those with meaningless undirected intelligence. I had no desire for a structured career; inconsistency was no fear of mine. I predicted that the additional pressure of aborting a fallback degree would propel me into success.

The universities were persistent however, particularly that of a reputable nearby school, Fordman-Meyer University. A dwarfish and pale university advisor aggressively pursued me as if he were in desperate need of a prom date; in fact, I approached several of our meetings expecting him to tell me how pretty I was and how special I made him feel. The man was wretchedly foolish in his arguments as to the benefits of a FMU degree. I always declined his offers and after graduation I never planned on thinking about him again. Years later, I learned that his son, fresh out of the prestigious University of his father, desired employment with the production company I was to work with on my next film. Perhaps he was quite qualified for the position of assistant production manager or junior editing something, but nevertheless I persuaded the company to hire him on as my assistant instead. I cannot recall his name exactly; I always just called him Betsy or other condescending female names. I so enjoyed tormenting the young man, then claiming I was just being rough on him because I saw so much potential in him. I am sure he was in a constant state of misery, yet he would always perform his demeaning tasks with the appearance of joyousness. I remember once I told him he needed to practice the art of acting if he ever wanted to direct it, so I created a terrible little exercise for him. I had him call his mother, pretending to be a police officer, and explain that her son perished in a car accident. I regret however, having the called made over the speakerphone. My hysterical laughter spoiled the game just moments after the shock set into his poor mother. Yes, it was petty revenge for just a slight annoyance from his father years before, but I took great pleasure from it. Soon I grew bored of him however, and had the young man demoted to the custodial department. I doubt that he stuck with the film business for much longer.

You may find me rather boastful and arrogant, but I have yet to make my strongest argument as to my superb cranial capacity. As my mind functions at its incredible level, it has, on occasion, the ability to intercept the active thoughts of other minds. In my opinion it is a matter of frequency, similar to that of radio and television waves. My mind acts as a receiver for other nearby brainwaves of the same frequency. In my lifetime, I have read the minds of only three men, however, the accuracy of the readings were unbelievably clear. In a few instances, I became enthralled so deeply, my own mind was replaced by that of my prey. I have never divulged knowledge of my special gift for I wished not to have my noteworthy reputation blemished by critical skeptics. Besides, I typically only used my ability for personal entertainment.

Post high school, I drove directly into my work; unfortunately, my first few months were rather unproductive. I worked continuously on developing dozens of ideas, yet I never could seem to get beyond a few pages before I found a fatal flaw in the plot and discontinued working. By this time, my initial capital was dwindling and so I took alternative employment to support myself. Soon part-time labor expanded to full-time and I found myself in a career far from what I had envisioned early on.

At age 23, I moved to a slightly more spacious apartment on Wellmont Street around the outskirts of San Diego. I continued to maintain the place for a number of years even in my great wealth. At the corner of Wellmont Street and 5th, about a block from my house, stood a terrific café which I frequented a couple of days per week. The proprietor and I began to become acquainted amongst my meal purchases and begat a semi-friendship. I soon realized my mind caught excellent reception from his mental transmissions. I began learning the most intimate secrets the café owner, Carlisle Ray. Initially, I observed his mind solely for my own enjoyment, but my interest peaked when I discovered his vocational goals were similar to mine. His brain was continually flooded with one particularly detailed scene of murder out of a horror screenplay he was developing.

I decided to pilfer his idea, but before so, I chose to dissociate myself from the café administrator to remove myself from his potential suspicions. Certainly he would never assume me to be in access of his personal thoughts via mind reading; I am not that foolish, but this man surely had notes and outlines and legitimate evidence of his thoughts. Since he lived in an apartment above the shop I could conceivably be considered for entering his premises undetected and reading his preliminary works to recreate them to my own credit. I was quite tactful about redirecting our relationship. Once I had properly recorded his thoughts I began to visit less frequently. I did not want to appear as though I was actively avoiding him. When I did eat, I made a genuine effort to acknowledge Carlisle even if he was not at the register, but I initiated a façade of morose depression to justify a clear reduction in our level of conversation. No one wants to speak with a sad gloomy man for very long.

I presented my script, stimulated by Carlisle, to the instant approval and endorsement of a local agent of great notoriety. He soon led me to a number of producers who expressed profound interest in my work. Around 18 months later, Deadly Shadow triumphed in the theaters with my credits spread all over it. Over the next four years, Carlisle aided me with two other wonderfully successful films. Surely, Carlisle only provided the inspiration to me; the real work and skill was in my own development of the scenarios and characters. Carlisle’s inferior mind based all his plots around one or two violently thrilling scenes and worked out from there. He never could produce a well-rounded plot. I am convinced nearly no one could have created what I have from such underdeveloped thoughts. Though the ideas did not originate in my mind, I am not a thief. I suffered far long enough; my stifled imagination tortured me for years. Inspiration, this act was merely one of borrowed inspiration!

Carlisle did have mighty aspirations for his composition, but the recent destruction of his latest dream, as it was already created and headed for the cinemas, had left him in a horrid state of dejection. He predicted Asburry Woods, my title, not his, to be his exalted triumph; to his dismay, he was too late for the idea. He however, continued to write, up until then. I suppose when he noticed the commercials for a movie in startling similarity to the one he had been conceiving for about the last couple of years he did not take the news healthy. In addition to accelerating the development of his movie concepts without his credit, I enjoyed taunting him with it.

I wished greatly to remove thoughts of coincidence from his mind. Carlisle dated a young woman, Loraine, for nearly two years while I was observing his brain’s output. He frequently wrote poems to her, and often he would carefully plan beautifully worded compliments and emotional expressions for her. In a short time, I was able to compile quite a list of love related dialog, which would then find its way into the movies I wrote. It would have been an amazing delight to watch. Perhaps the disheartened Carlisle would attend the cinema knowing that film was his idea first; but then he hears the actors speaking his own words. What could possibly be going through his mind at that point? Fortunately, I was there to observe a few times. Interestingly he felt no shock or pain; his mind for a surprisingly long time would just go blank, stop functioning. I like to think it caused him to blow a mental fuse. It was truly fascinating to me.

This brings me to the crisis. Night and day Carlisle imagined horrible homicidal visuals. I would have suspected another fiction work, but these images were far different from the past ones. All I could see in him were deep agonizing images of his unnatural death. Though he had given my career the jump-start it needed, I could have easily continued without Mr. Carlisle Ray; however, I am not a parasite. I cannot just suck the life, more so the dreams, of a man and leave him to die. I owed him at least to attempt to console him in some fashion.

I was immediately met with a disheartening omen as I reached the café to which he resided in a moderately sized apartment above. A “For Lease” sign hung in the window of the nearly empty former café, but this only encouraged me further to aid him. It reassured me that I was within my rights, even as a near stranger, to approach this man unannounced at his home, since I saw it as an emergency.

At the summit of the first flight of steps, beginning the corridor to his apartment stooped a revolting looking groundhog of a woman stationed behind a cut out window in the wall. She asked me about my business, as I was not to her knowledge a resident. Unfortunately, when I expressed my desire to visit Mr. Ray she informed me he was vacationing at his parents cabin a few hours north in Cedarbridge. I suggested to her that I quickly slip a note under his door as evidence of my attempt to contact him and she directed me to the final door on the left. “Vacation” sounded to me like the perfect excuse for a man, amidst his own execution in his apartment, to gain some privacy. Assured the woman was not observing me, I knocked on the door somewhat softly and it crept gradually open. Not only was the lock unfastened, but he hadn’t even fully closed the door. I slid into the apartment and was greeted by emptiness. I searched up the hallway and back, in and out of the bedrooms, and bathroom, but he wasn’t there. I had not originally suspected, but I was forced to assume, he was at this alleged cabin. Interestingly there was an abundance of paperwork scattered across the kitchen counter and table. Pages of legal documents from a rather large local firm were stacked up upon the table. Dozens of copies of copyright paperwork and forms were sprinkled through the chaos. Then I saw the star of the clutter of papers, Eternity, the rough title of my own masterpiece. It was in its original form, a full Carlisle Ray 132 page screenplay, copyrighted and registered. I hadn’t time to examine it, seeing that I had already far exceeded a reasonable time to leave a note. I left in haste and disgust and at that time I was starting to worry. Had I not feared being overheard within his apartment I would have loved to overturn that table, smashed the dishes in the sink against the wall, clog the drain and flood the bathtub until it fell straight through the floor, but I calmed myself and refocused. Carlisle Ray, the moronic jerk of 5th Street, may have been well underway with a suicide attempt and considering my own circumstance, with my reputation now at stake, I was certainly willing to load the gun for him or do whatever else would facilitate his death.

Consequence of my urgent behavior, the woman behind the wall offered me the address of Ray’s current whereabouts. Somewhere around four hours later, I arrived at the cabin, following an extended period of uneventful travel. Ray’s mind had seemed to be off the air all day; I had only hoped that I still had a chance to prevent the legal proceedings which were about to be sent into motion.

I entered through the garage stealthily and a terrible scent combination of mold and wet dog struck my nostrils. I examined the building carefully. The kitchen, also the adjacent living room too, actually the entire house was almost an exact replica of the final scene of Eternity. The knife drawer by the refrigerator hung wide open. Dozens of feet of rope lay coiled beneath the kitchen table. His suicide taunted me throughout the house. However, Carlisle was not within the premises dead or living.

His suicide would have seemed out of place given the circumstances. A theoretical copyright lawsuit was about to be underway. The burden of proof would fall heavily upon him, nevertheless, the plot, character, and scene similarities were undeniably there, and he, as far as I saw, had nothing left to lose. I again discredited the work of creative fiction in his thoughts, for a number of reasons it just did not seem plausible. I contemplated even the validity of my own mental gift. My original two readings were in fact hazy; at the time it felt as though an amazing feet of intellectual interception, yet in hind sight it may have been an incredible deception by my own imagination. However, the hard evidence existed in Carlisle’s apartment; we did share a mind process which created these works of cinema. The process of rational and logical reasoning and elimination, at which I have considered, had left me with one final conclusion.

His silhouette appeared before me outside the curtains of the cabin’s rear doorway. I crouched below his line of sight, hidden by the cabinetry of the kitchen. The true power of mind control lay within me, yet still I was the fool. Carlisle knew of my power, perhaps he could feel my spirit inside his mind, feel those thoughts being taken away. The sensations I felt experiencing his thoughts flow through my mind were deep and intense. He must have sensed another mind crawling through his head, devouring his knowledge, leaving his skull empty and useless. He had discarded his original denial and lured me here in my own deplorable idiocy to take the life that should have belonged to him. For weeks, night and day, Carlisle imagined horrible homicidal visuals of executing me. Resistance appeared pointless, I had walked willingly into the chamber of my death and I did not foresee an exit. As the dark shadow of his hand reached for the knob and commenced entrance to my tomb, I began to suffocate in a miasma of my fear. I aborted my evasive position and addressed him. “Carlisle, sir. I confess the deed of psychological burglary; I will give you all of what is mine. Just, please, free me of your gruesome mind!”
The face of Carlisle initially replied in shock; an intruder in his own home, a trespasser, was acting the role of a terrified victim and Carlisle stood motionless and perplexed. He perchance remembered me slightly from the café, yet that did not justify the look he then gave me. He knew me not from the thin customer acquaintance of years before. He looked through my quivering translucent eyes and felt my intrusive brain that had invaded his thoughts far too many times. My earlier suspicions were true; every time I raided his dreams, his mind fought desperately to combat mine. I had been the aggressor, yet he would now emerge victorious. Either by force or by law, Carlisle Ray would be entitled to my success. I chose simply to forfeit it to him that moment.





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