The ARC Reader

Flash fiction inspired by the prompt: "Your favorite author's new book gives you increasingly bad headaches the more you read it."

It all felt too good to be true, really.

Mordechai had applied on a whim; he was well aware that the publisher should have received thousands of leads for advanced readers. After all, it isn’t every year that Katherine Hobbes publishes a new novel. They used to be more frequent, but, as with anything, time has a way of changing things. After a long career of releasing a new title no more than eighteen months apart, it had been nearly three years since Hobbes’ last book.

Mordechai loved every one of her twenty-seven titles. He had a whole shelf dedicated to his collection, with several of the special editions helping boost the total number in his library to more than forty. He had discovered her late, giving him plenty of opportunity to scour the used book shops for first editions. He read them over and over, annotating and highlighting the passages that struck him. The worlds Hobbes created, the characters that touched his heart, and the themes that ran through her stories all seemed to him a gift he would never be able to repay.

That’s why he applied to read her newest book before it was released. Her silence might be down to a lack of inspiration or a worry that her well had run dry. Mordechai knew that wasn’t likely but somewhere deep inside, he thought he might be able to, somehow, encourage his idol by reviewing her book and providing some words of praise for it.

He never doubted that he would have some.

When he got the email, he pinched himself in disbelief. He was selected from the thousands of others and replied hurriedly with his details for the book to be shipped to him. When the package arrived, Mordechai was in awe. The publisher’s logo embossed across the packing tape, the paper with Katherine Hobbes’ autograph patterned across it, and the soft covered early release of Split in Two.

All through his shift at the call center, Mordechai was dreaming of his long weekend alone with Hobbes and the world that lay between the covers. He floated through the day and hardly remembered anything before he was able to tuck into his reading chair and dive in. Just holding the book felt powerful, he laid the spine on the table and slowly folded the pages open, section by section, so that it would lay comfortably in his hands.

Opening a bottle of wine, he settled in.

At first, he thought it was going to be just like every other Hobbes book, grabbing his attention with a dramatic opening scene that set the stage for intrigue. And so it was for the whole of the first chapter – Mordechai could scarcely believe the speed with which his evening flew by but a growing ache in his head told him it was time for bed. Blaming the wine and a long day staring at screens, he mournfully set the book aside at the conclusion of part one.

Refreshed and fully caffeinated, Mordechai eagerly tucked back into his reading chair excited to continue with the story by late Saturday morning. Turning the leaf to part two, he noticed what looked like a pencil mark. Must be a smudge on the paper, an accident of some sort, he thought.

A throbbing behind his eyes started up as he was finishing the eleventh chapter, an annoyance in his otherwise perfectly relaxing Memorial Day weekend. He popped a couple of aspirin and returned to his reading.

But chapter twelve was like nothing he’d ever seen before.

The words weren’t only typeset, there were pencil marks on several of the lines, crossing out some phrases. Wondering if he’d gotten a far-too-advance copy, Mordechai was briefly ashamed of his hope that he’d been given the ultimate Hobbes collectible: an advanced copy annotated by the author and editor?

The aspirin didn’t seem to be helping.

Mordechai got himself a glass of water, promising himself that this wasn’t a migraine. His years in the call center, under the fluorescent lights, had taught him all of the warning signs. He also knew the exact pressure point between his thumb and forefinger that would help slow its onset. He refused to sacrifice his planned time with his favorite author’s new work for something as silly as a headache.

Chapter thirteen had more pencil marks and then a few words crossed out in red ink. This was beyond an accidental slip of some unproofed copy, this looked like a working manuscript. Mordechai was having trouble keeping track of the story now, the annotations and markings were confusing him. Furthermore, some of the pages made sense but others had the wrong names or the action seemed somehow out of order…or outright missing entirely.

His headache was still aching, but he was too intrigued to stop.

Chapter fourteen was much of the same, though the plot was at least able to be spotted among the notes and editorial marks. Even so, the motivation for the characters’ actions weren’t fleshed out, their scenes of dialogue too brief to expose any subtext or depth. Mordechai couldn’t decide if it was the headache or this very strange reading experience that was making his eyes hurt. Closing them along with the book, he took a few deep breaths.

A walk around the block made a world of difference.

At the beginning of part three, however, the book fell even further apart. Instead of a story, the chapters were outlines, with nothing but notes and questions. It was as if Hobbes hadn’t written the rest of the story, only laid out a plan for where she thought it might go. This wasn’t at all what he was expecting, but he continued reading simply because he knew this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see inside the mind of his favorite author. Had she written an entirely new sort of novel, one where the story was unfinished and that was the point?

These weren’t the kinds of things that made headaches disappear.

By the time he reached chapter twenty-two, Mordechai’s temples were throbbing as the outline and notes seemed to swirl and move around the paper. There was no structure to the story, only a vague idea and the different sequences seemed to shift places when he turned the page. The further he dove into the book, the more illegible Hobbes’ scribblings became. The editorial pen hadn’t touched these sections. These weren’t the ordered notes of a polished manuscript, these were the musings of an author still sorting out the direction of their creation.

Something about the disorder of the book seemed to be making his head hurt all the worse. Usually, Mordechai delighted in sorting through the puzzle of what was going to happen in a story, but watching as it unfolded was taking a toll. He set Split in Two on the table, made himself some pasta, and tucked into bed.

Sunday was often a day for reading, but something about this one suggested to Mordechai that perhaps he should take another walk. Glad to have a clear head, he relished a bit of fresh air and the chance to watch the world go by in its usual, banal order.

Returning to his reading chair, Mordechai looked at the cover of the book with a new feeling: disdain. His idol was confident, sure, and witty. Her work was strong and always enraptured him. Whatever was happening in Split in Two was not like the Katherine Hobbes he had come to know and love.

He had accepted the advanced copy on the condition that he would actually read it.

Steeling himself for more of the same, Mordechai thought if he powered through and didn’t get bogged down with how odd the manuscript seemed, he might be able to finish today and have a whole extra day to enjoy.

Part five, which owing to its position among the pages, had to be the last bit of the story. Or it would have been had the pages not been mostly blank. There were a few scribbled paragraphs, a couple of notes for dialogue, and that was it. Pouring over them for any idea what the author had in mind, he felt the familiar pressure building behind his eyes.

For every unanswered question Hobbes left on the page, the more pressure built in the veins of Mordechai’s brain. Instead of the usual page-turning thrills that accompanied the end of a Katherine Hobbes novel, Split in Two seemed to be tightening the blood vessels in his neck, his nerves on fire. Instead of his heart racing from the excitement, his brain seemed to be vibrating with the pressure of the unfinished work.

Turning the last page, Mordechai could hardly focus on the words written in a broken hand: “I’m sorry. I had to get it out of me.”

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This is a selection from my Fiction newsletter, where I publish flash fiction, chapters from my published books and anything that’s too far from the truth to be considered anecdotal. If you subscribe to the World According to Gillian Fletcher, you’ll receive every one of the post in my Expat Files, but if you’re interested there’s more:

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