The Worst Critic

Blink. Blink. The cursor stared up at Melvin, thin and dark against the clean blankness of an empty computer screen. He gazed at it as if in a trance, watching the impudent cursor winking at him. This unwritten page was like a snowdrift in January, with each pixel a snowflake: fresh, new, and chilling Melvin from the inside out.
His fingers moved tentatively toward the keyboard and then retreated. They quivered above the keys like pale mice. He furrowed his brow, shifted in his chair, and tried to clear his mind. He tried to wait for the tide of words to return to his mind, for the crest of creativity to swell in his brain and fingertips….
Blink. Blink. Nothing.
Melvin sighed and fell back in his chair (ergonomically designed, a gift from his grown son.) He ran a hand through the thin wisps of dark hair that still barely covered his balding pate. As he threw back his head in frustration, his eyes made unfortunate contact with the row of frames on the wall of his study. One was the first newspaper article he had ever written as a wide-eyed freshman at Duke University; another was a press clipping from the first book signing he ever had; a third was a magazine article about the release of his latest project, an anthology of short stories. Normally these shiny, glass-covered trophies gave Melvin encouragement and pride. Now, the sight of them only made him feel sick inside, like running into old friends he had forgotten to stay in touch with.
Melvin felt a swell of emotion suddenly rise in the back of his throat. It tasted of corroded metal. It was frustration, it was envy, it was the desire for self-flagellation…with one last desperate hope, he actually believed these fragmentary emotions might serve as a muse. His tank of creativity was empty, and the man was running on fumes. Wanting to put these emotions onto the page before they could slip through his grasp, Melvin’s fingers lunged towards the keyboard once more.
"Lack of originality."
The words suddenly came unbidden to Melvin’s mind. They lingered there like the remnants of a forgotten nightmare, like traces of smoke after a fire. His fingers hesitated for a moment, and his forehead broke out into a sweat. After a few deep breaths, Melvin finally managed to clear his mind. Then his fingers resumed their Herculean literary task once more.
"Crawford’s latest work is a very amateur endeavor."
Melvin’s fingers stopped. He blinked hard. That goddamn review had infected his mind like a virus and simply would not leave! All he could see, all he could think, all he could eat and breathe was that online review he had received two weeks ago. This wasn’t writer’s block, this was….paralysis.
Melvin stared at the computer screen, and he soon found himself blinking in time to the cursor. His fingers fell into a submissive position once more.
It was hopeless. He would never write again.

“Melvin, go to sleep already!” his wife called from their room, her irritated voice muffled by blankets.
He was standing in front of the bathroom sink, staring helplessly at the mirror. His own image was a shock to him. A wispy, sweaty comb-over, bloodshot eyes, greying stubble, cheeks that dangled like over-ripe fruit…when had he become this?
“I…I can’t sleep. You know I can’t.” Melvin passively watched his mouth move in the mirror as he spoke.
He had been unable to sleep for weeks. There was a splinter in his mind, piercing his thoughts, and the searing pain of it kept him dangling on a thread of consciousness all throughout the long nights. A splinter of self-doubt, of frustration….
“For Christ’s sake, Melvin, it’s just a review! You really need to get over it already. If you can’t handle criticism, you have no business being a writer,” his wife snapped from the bedroom. She rolled over to face the wall, flopping on her side like a beached walrus.
Just a review. She was right, after all. It was just a review. Then what was it about this one that plagued his very consciousness? And then, without bidding, as it had countless times over the past couple weeks, the text reappeared in Melvin’s mind:

"Crawford’s latest work is a very amateur endeavor. He is clearly trying to distance himself from his earlier not-so-successful pieces, but his attempts to inject deeper meaning and universality are transparent and futile. Lack of originality is the key phrase here. This is most evident in his first story, “Self-Doubt.” With his heroine Regina, Crawford tries to construct a seductive Lolita character, but instead the reader is left with a lackluster Nabokov knockoff (with inferior language, to boot.) He is trying to insert himself among the greats, and in my opinion, getting nowhere.
I have thus far only read the first story in Crawford’s anthology. I have yet to decide if I will risk reading the rest. If so, needless to say, I will be sure to post here again."

“It’s not just a review, damn it!” he shouted back at his wife.
“Then explain to me why it bothers you so much.”
Melvin winced as he recalled each and every one of the critic’s points. Every time he replayed it in his mind, he felt like he was being beaten up and left for dead. Why? What was so different about this one?
And then he finally realized it. He realized why this review was the one that tortured him, that kept him up at nights, that robbed him of his will and ability to write. It was everything he would have said about his own writing, if only he had the balls to admit it to himself.
Melvin leaped into the bedroom, desperate to share this new insight with his wife, to see if she would understand. However, the woman had already fallen fast asleep and was snoring slightly.
Melvin sat down on the bed, quiet, alone, and distraught. There would be no sleep for him tonight.

He scrubbed away at the remains of last night’s casserole, staring into the delicate swirls upon the surface of each soapy bubble. Insomnia made his mind wander and drift. Melvin recalled the taste of last night’s meal, warm and fulfilling. It was now reduced to wet, sour crust. Melvin mused upon this as he washed, rinsed, and dried the dishes.
His wife came trundling down the stairs, dressed for work in a white blouse and slacks that made her hips look fat. She buzzed about the kitchen, grabbing a slice of toast, flipping through the mail, and checking her reflection in the mirror on the wall. It was her daily routine, and Melvin felt it grinding against his senses like the slow shuffle of sandpaper on wood.
“I’m running late for work. Make sure you pick up the dry cleaning today. Oh, and we’re out of milk,” his wife said, stuffing some folders into her briefcase.
Melvin nodded in affirmation, his hands covered with soap.
“What the hell?” his wife suddenly exclaimed, holding up a piece of paper and a torn envelope. “This says we’re on our second warning for our electricity bill! Haven’t you been keeping track of the bills?”
Melvin winced. He had forgotten. His mind had been useless lately, like shingles of ice drifting over a pond, unstable and unreliable. “I forgot.”
“Melvin, what the hell is your problem?” his wife snapped. “I go out and work for a living, every day, and all I ask in return is that you take care of some of the household chores and the bills. You’re useless!” she continued to nag.
Here it came: the Talk. Melvin had become accustomed to the Talk.
“When we got married, I thought it was so sweet and so romantic that you wanted to be a writer. I thought that we could make it work. I didn’t think that I would have to become the man in this marriage, working nine to five every day. You don’t even write anymore, so why don’t you just get a real job?”
It was true, he didn’t write anymore. He couldn’t. There was once a time when he would rise early from bed, long before his wife woke, simply because the generous muses of slumber had given him something beautiful to write about. He would slide effortlessly into his chair and remain there for hours, his fingers flying over the keyboard with the fervor of a hungry man devouring a sandwich. His wife would bring him toast with jelly as she slid onto his lap, calling him her Captain.
But now there was nothing. Nothing would come. And his wife knew this, and she dug the knife in deeper.
“You don’t understand! Don’t you think I want to write? Don’t you think I want to be successful?” Melvin flared, his voice cracking like a pre-pubescent. It was his dream, it was his agony and his delight; it was the golden burden he had carried on his back ever since the day he decided as a little boy that he wanted to tell stories.
“Then why don’t you?” his wife retorted.
“It’s just…that review…you read that review…it’s everything I’ve ever doubted about my own writing, and to see that put out there by someone else, by someone I don’t know, for all to see, it’s horrible,” Melvin stammered.
“Oh, Melvin, just stop already. You’ve always been your own worst critic, anyways. Maybe you just don’t have what it takes to be a writer.” Her voice grew more gentle. “Why can’t you see this already? I would give anything to see you go out and apply for a normal job.”
This was the last straw, the last slap in the face. Melvin always knew his wife never believed in him, but to hear it from her mouth…it shattered him inside. He stared deeply into the mound of soap bubbles before him, wishing he could drown his head into their bitterness as tears burned in the corners of his eyes.
“That review is a godsend if it’ll get you to get over this childhood fantasy of yours,” his wife said, and with that, she slammed the door and went to work. To a real job.

It was four o’clock in the morning. Four o’clock, that watery grey hour that only exists for most in the realms of the unconscious. It is not still night, and it is not yet morning. There are only two reasons that one would be awake at four o’clock: the best party of one’s life, or the bitter curse of insomnia.
Melvin staggered into his office. His slippered feet scudded over the surface of the carpet. He winced at the electronic glow emanating from his hibernating computer. He slumped into his ergonomic chair.
"My computer sleeps. Why can’t I?" Melvin thought bitterly to himself. He stared at the screen, the dancing images of the screen saver mesmerizing him and numbing his senses. Insomnia…or was it? He couldn’t even remembered if he had slept that night, or if he had, what had woken him. Melvin’s mind was useless, clumsy…thinking was like trying to pour water through a clogged sieve.
Soon, his eyes became adjusted to the light, and his haggard face took on a new expression: one of desperation. He woke the computer. It was time for his daily ritual.
His fingers moved frenetically over the keyboard. Melvin acted automatically; the tendons of his hands knew where they were guiding him. One, two, three clicks later, and Melvin had arrived at his destination.
NEW REVIEWS: 1.
That “1” singed Melvin’s brain like a hot brand. He had expected the reassuring “0” that had been there every single morning, noon, and night that he checked the website for his anthology. He needed that “0”, needed to dive into it and sink into the round hole of nothingness. Seeing the “1” was an abomination to his senses.
Melvin’s fingers moved toward his mouse. He gulped clumsily, feeling his forehead breaking out in a sweat. Would this be the review that would break him?
Click.

"I couldn’t help but to continue reading more of Crawford’s stories. Because he might be on his way to becoming the greatest American writer since John Steinbeck? No. More because I was gripped with the fascination one experiences when watching a horrific train wreck.
In the second story of his anthology, “While Sleeping,” Crawford employs a mixture of prose and poetry in a gimmicky attempt to create a new genre. Montaigne created a new genre. Shakespeare perfected two of them. But Melvin Crawford?
The problem is that everything he writes reeks of effort, like an assignment for a high school creative writing class. He wants to please his audience so badly, win our love, but like the nerdy girl with braces sucking up to the popular kids, he fails miserably.
I suppose I should comment on the positives of this story. Well, there weren’t any typos."

It was then that Melvin’s mind finally cracked in half.

He slid through his days like a ghostly ship floating at dawn. He drifted with no purpose, no drive, no desire. He felt himself losing the only thing that had given his life meaning and definition. Melvin was slipping away, and there was nothing he could do about it.
He remembered how he once used to sit in his father’s armchair all night, reading until his mother forced him to go to bed. The dust of the decades had accumulated on these memories, and Melvin could only faintly recall the smell of the yellowed pages, the rough feel of the upholstered antique chair. But he remembered the way the stories had made him feel.
Each book was a burst of experience, and it occurred to the young Melvin that a man could live infinite lives by engaging in these stories. They freed him from the constraints of his own body and geography and century, freed him from the bounds of reality that governed his life. And Melvin knew that he had been put on this earth to free the lives of others in this way.
It was the dream that defined him. It was the machine that laid each and every brick on the path of Melvin’s life. Without it, he was left naked and alone.
One day, immured in the depths of desperation, Melvin decided to go to the gym. He bought the membership months ago when his doctor expressed concerns over Melvin’s inceasing blood pressure and flab. And exercise was supposed to help depression, right? He had been so ensconced in his own broken mind that a venture into the physical realm might help to cure him. Some vigorous calisthenics would set him right once more!
But the moment Melvin set foot inside the gym, he knew he had made a mistake. He stood there in the doorway, duffel bag weighing him down, pale knees sticking out beneath his shorts, and he had never felt more lacking in manhood.
The gym reeked of metal and sweat. Young men worked on polished steel contraptions designed to make their muscles ever bigger, muscles Melvin didn’t even know the names of. Young women ran on a row of treadmills in their colorful spandex outfits, like different flavored popsicles Melvin would never be able to taste. These were men he could not be; women he could not be with.
After standing awkwardly in the doorway for several moments, Melvin finally moved into the gym as if being pulled by a tractor beam. He stared helplessly at the glistening machinery. Which machine would make him better, faster, stronger? Which machine would make him feel like a man again?
As if in a trance, Melvin finally sat down on the bench press. The feel of the plastic sticking to the bottom of his thighs brought him back to high school gym class. Gym class, where testosterone reigned on high and dominance was contested daily in battles of strength and speed. Melvin had always come out a loser, but he had managed to comfort himself with thoughts of the future. The muscle-bound apes who teased him in class would be mowing his lawn one day when he lived as a best-selling author in a mansion on a hill.
But what did he have to comfort him now?
A flash of pain danced across his brain like a stone skipping over a pond.
Melvin lay down on the bench press and gripped the metal bar above him tightly. The scent of rust and sweat was bitter in his nostrils. He stared up at the ceiling and all its little grooves and pores. He would funnel all his frustrations, all his hatreds, all his anxieties into the lifting of this bar. He would channel all his years of struggle into raising the bar by the very strength of his will. He would regain control and confidence once more.
Melvin’s muscles tightened fiercely as he began his labor of redemption. His arms quivered and shook as he strained against the bar. It wriggled slightly, settling down into the trenches of his perspiration-covered palms. But it did not budge.
Melvin closed his eyes and gritted his teeth, his face twisting in a grimace of horrible effort. His face flooded with hot crimson blood, and he could feel the tap of his own pulse against his skull. He strained every bone, every muscle, every organ in his body upward towards this bar, but it would not compromise with him, would not help him, would not budge.
"A horrific train wreck."
Melvin let loose a wild groan as the words seared his brain. His arms began to shake and heave, and the bar clattered noisily back and forth on the stands. The other gym-goers nearby began to look over at him, at this pathetic middle-aged man who could not even lift a bar. Melvin felt their stares covering every inch of his body as he continued to groan, to struggle, and finally, to cry. And still the bar did not budge.
His arms collapsed at last: pale, sweaty, and flaccid. Tears ran freely down Melvin’s face now as he lay on the cushioned plastic bench. He wept bitterly, the stench of his failure filling his nose and eyes. Most of the exercisers near him had stopped their thrusting and their lifting and were now watching in silence as Melvin sobbed to himself. They did not know if they should speak to him or ignore him and let him be.
Finally, one young man stepped forward. He gave a glance to the other exercisers to let them know he was handling this. Then he went and sat next to Melvin on the bench press.
“Are you all right, mister?” he asked. He was a handsome man in his thirties, with sweat stains around his neck and armpits.
Melvin, his face wet and red like an infant, turned to face this stranger. And then, in a fit of desperation, of madness, he decided to pour the story of his failures onto this other human being. The man sat and listened patiently as Melvin unbosomed himself. His speech was agitated and emotional, further fueled by his humiliation at expounding his inadequacies to a total stranger. But at the end of it all, at the end of his tale, Melvin was almost beginning to feel a little better.
“Wow, I sure am glad I never decided to be a writer,” the stranger said when Melvin was finally done. He was clearly trying to lighten the atmosphere. “It’s one tough industry to crack.”
An industry. Melvin had never thought of it that way.
“You see, I’m a businessman, so I’m used to people trying to tear me down all the time. I’m constantly being gossiped about, cheated on, and stabbed in the back. But I never let myself take it personally. And you know why?”
Melvin shook his head.
“Because the attacks of these people are less about me and more about them. When a CEO of a rival company starts some slander campaign against me, it’s not about my shortcomings as a CEO, but about his desire to beat me. I always try to consider the source,” the stranger replied thoughtfully.
“I can understand what you’re saying, but I don’t really see how that applies to my situation.” Melvin hated to sound ungrateful, but he needed advice, needed hope, needed something so badly….
“Well have you ever considered the source of these reviews? They sound like they’re pretty personal attacks. Did you ever think they might be coming from someone you know?” the stranger asked.
And glints of sunlight suddenly gleamed through the cracks in Melvin’s mind. Someone he knew. The thought had never occurred to him. Someone he knew. Maybe it was someone trying to get to him. Maybe it wasn’t some random pedantic reviewer out there in Internet-land; maybe it was someone who knew him enough to push the right buttons to destroy him.
“Do you have any enemies? Anyone who’d want to even pull a prank on you?” the man suggested.
Someone he knew. And suddenly, all he wanted to do was to go back home and sit in his office and think…something had sparked in his brain, had set off a fuse, and he needed to follow it to see what dynamite it led to….
“I’m sorry, I gotta go now. Thanks for your help, though!” Melvin exclaimed, and with that, he was off.
The stranger was left sitting on the bench press, a confused look settling upon his blank features.

When Melvin came home from the gym, all the man could do was fall into a deep, deep slumber. He had never been so exhausted in all his life. His muscles ached, his tear ducts burned, and his mind vibrated with the static of a broken TV set. He slept for hours and hours and hours, his dreams filled with gym equipment and weeping children and computer keyboards and sirens wailing in the night. He slept until he was tired of sleeping, and then he finally woke.
It was noon. Automatically, like he did every time he woke up, Melvin staggered into his office to sit at the computer. This time, though, he had a mission. He was going to go back into the reviews, pore over each and every little detail of them, and scour them for any trace of the indentity of the reviewer. A trace of someone he knew.
Because there was someone out there, someone he knew, someone who was destroying him. Someone who knew his hopes and dreams and was perverting them into paralysis and decay. Someone who had driven him to madness, someone who would have to be punished if Melvin was to ever be whole again.
Melvin made his way to the website, and there was a gift waiting for him:
NEW REVIEWS: 1.
A wry smile curled at the edge of his lips like the end of a wire that has snapped. He clicked on the new review.

"So, against my better instincts, I decided to continue my tour of the disaster that is Melvin Crawford’s latest work. The third story in the anthology I read was titled, “Self-Awareness.” Perhaps this is what Crawford needs to get his career back in order.
What I found in this story was the melodramatic tale of a young wife and mother. If I didn’t know better, I would think it had been written by a woman. I don’t think many men could try to cram so much emotion and cheap tear-jerking ploys into so few pages.
While this story at least wasn’t a major cliché like some of the others, I almost wish it had been. Crawford doesn’t have very smuch to say about the mother-daughter experience, so at least he could have borrowed from some of the greats.
You got a lot to learn before you can get back in the game, Captain. Until then, you might want to explore some other career paths."

Captain.
Melvin’s heart began to pound. His head reeled as though he had been socked in the jaw. His hand suddenly moved the arrow up to the address bar at the top of the computer screen. There he would find all the websites that had been visited from that computer.
The review said that it had been posted at 10:32 that morning; 10:32 was the precise minute of his betrayal. Melvin scrolled down, and it was no shock to him to see that someone had indeed visited the website earlier that day. Someone had accessed it from his own computer, had posted the last verbal dynamite to obliterate any tattered remnants of Melvin’s sanity. Someone he knew.
“Melvin? Are you up?” his wife asked, coming in the front door with her arms full of groceries.
Are you up. Melvin laughed at the irony of it. This woman who beleagured him day after day with his inadequacies as a writer, as a husband, as a man….she wanted to know if he was up. This woman who slept in his bed and bore his children, all the while damning him and his dreams, all the while writing this poison on the internet designed to destroy him….
“That review is a godsend if it’ll get you to get over this childhood fantasy of yours....” the words returned to him like a prophecy fulfilled.
Melvin was up then, out of his chair. He moved towards the woman, faster and faster, like a train as it charges out of the station. His blushing, billowing mind was floating above him, disconnected, watching himself as he knocked the groceries from her arms in one fell swoop.
The brown paper bags ripped in half, and the sound was like a match igniting. Their contents burst as they hit the tile floor, creating a bloody, swirling mess of color. Glass bottles shattered and flung their shards into the air like an exploding star. This filth, this mess, this disaster of domesticity filled the front hall with the stench of bruised fruit, artificially flavored juice, and broken ketchup bottles.
“What are you doing?” the woman asked.
And for once, Melvin saw fear in her eyes as she looked up at him, and God did he love it.
His hands, automatons as always, moved to grasp his wife’s neck between his fingers. They wrapped around the neck he had onced kissed as a horny youth, the neck that now sunk under rolls of middle-aged fat. And suddenly this neck ceased to be his wife; rather, it was the bar, and Melvin was back in the gym. Back in the arena to prove himself once more, only this time, he would not fail.
Each pulse of blood through his burning veins brought back memories of the past several weeks…the sleepless nights, the inability to write, the anger, the guilt, the depression, the madness…and his fingers squeezed even tighter.
He had lost the only thing that ever really meant something to him. He had lost his writing, his hopes, his dreams, and now, he had lost his mind.
His wife fell to her knees among the broken glass. Her eyes bulged way out of her head, and her face had become a deep purple. A lovely, lovely shade of purple. And Melvin delighted in it, delighted in killing the woman who had already killed him. This was poetic justice. This was him creating an ending to this story, even if he could not actually write it.
He was the avenging knight, and she was the hideous witch. And he squeezed and squeezed, throttling the last gurgles from her throat, silencing her before she could ever hurt him again. Her eyes gave him one last look of desperation, of confusion, before they glazed over in a sweet finale of death. Melvin’s hands dropped to the floor.
And finally, it was over, it was over, the horror was over…his wife slumped over in heap among the disaster that was their kitchen.
Melvin fell to his knees beside her, his mouth agape with ecstasy, his hands quivering with exertion. He could be free again, he could write again, now that the source of his misery was gone!
But…something still felt off.
It was then that his eyes fell upon a tiny slip of paper next to the body of his wife. The grocery receipt. Through the smears of sauce and grease, Meslvin could make out one thing as he held the receipt in his shaking hands:
10:26 AM.
Melvin’s eyes opened wide in horror. His entire body began to shudder. His wife had paid for the groceries at 10:26 AM, and had only now just walked in the door. That meant she couldn’t have been the one to post the review that morning from his computer. That meant someone else had been posting, had been posting all along…someone he knew.
And Melvin stared down at the corpse of his wife, stared down at his hands that had so often acted without his permission, without his knowledge, and he let out a wild howl.
“Oh, God, what have I done??”
And as he lay there on the floor, next to his dead wife, her words were left ringing in his ears:
“You’ve always been your own worst critic, anyways.”