Trust No One by Paul Cleave Page B

just counted silently as the guy knelt in front of him shaking. Then there was the gunshot. The echo. There was little blood. How does Jerry know this? Is that who he killed?
    “Is this about Suzan?” Eric asks.
    Suzan. She was the first. “How do you know about Suzan?”
    “We’ve had this conversation before, do you remember?”
    Jerry shakes his head. If he remembered, he wouldn’t be here.
    “It never happened,” Eric says, and he leans forward and puts his hand on Jerry’s arm. “These people you think you killed, it just didn’t happen. Nobody in your street was murdered. You never snuck into anybody’s house and killed them. There is no Suzan with a z. ”
    “How can you be so sure?”
    “Because we checked. Where you grew up, nobody was murdered. Not in your neighborhood, hell, not even in your suburb.”
    Jerry knows the words are true, they feel true, and his body floods with relief. The fear inside him settles. The same way learning he was a crime writer fit like a glove, so does learning he’s not a killer. There is no Suzan. There was no drug deal where he watched some guy get shot in the back of the head after the shooter counted to twenty-nine. They were in his books. He may not remember the details, but he knows he created these people.
    Then it hits him. If he’s been a good guy all these years, then why the disease? If he didn’t kill anybody, then how can he repent? His future is as bleak as ever. “Then why am I being punished?”
    “There is no why, ” Eric says. “It’s just bad luck.”
    “So I never killed anybody?”
    “The thing is, Jerry, it’s all in the way you created these worlds—they all seem so real. People would read your books and they would become the main characters, they would see the world through their eyes, they would feel their thoughts. It’s no wonder it all seems real to you—it sure seems real to those who read you. It sure seemed real to me. Your books are amazing,” he says. “I’ve been a huge fan since book one.”
    “It can’t just be bad luck,” Jerry says. “The Universe is balancing the scales for something.”
    “Jerry—”
    “I need to think about it,” he says. He stands up. “I think I’ll go rest a while.”
    Eric stands up too. They start walking back towards Jerry’s room.
    “Do you remember me telling you that I wanted to be a writer?” Eric asks.
    Jerry shakes his head.
    “I asked you for one piece of advice, and you said write what you know. I said that wasn’t always possible. Do you remember what you said?”
    “No.”
    “You said fake it. You said, did I really think Gene Roddenberry had been to Mars? Did I really think that Stephen King had been spooked by a vampire when he was a kid? Did I really think Bill and Ted knew how to travel in time? You said write what you know and fake the rest. You said throw some research in there too.”
    “And how’s that working out for you?” Jerry asks.
    “I’m still working here, aren’t I?” Eric says, then laughs. “The thing about Suzan is exactly that. You didn’t kill her, you just faked it, but she feels as real to you as she does to your readers. Now, you’re not going to try and sneak out again today, are you?”
    “No.”
    When Jerry gets into his room he sits down by the window. If he isn’t being punished, then what is it? A memory comes to him then, one so strong it could have happened yesterday. He’s sixteen years old, he’s at school and it’s career day and they’re all trying to figure what they want to do with their lives, as if a sixteen-year-old can possibly know. Only he did know. He’s having a conversation with a teacher, telling her he wants to be a writer. The teacher is telling him he needs to plan for a real future first, and to consider writing as a hobby. Jerry says he will do whatever it takes to make it happen. Is that what this is? The Universe taking his remaining years because it gave him the ones he wanted? Did he sell his