Pendel cannot control his emotions, not anymore. He whimpers and begins to sob uncontrollably while Moyer does nothing to console him.

  Rather, he encourages sorrow. “There you go. Feel it all. Makes for a better story.”

  Moyer reveals the knife, which he must know will only trigger Pendel even further. He takes great care washing it clean with a chemical. After the blade is bloodless and shiny, he sharpens it methodically, one elongated scrape after the other, before returning the weapon to its sheath. The rest of his tools are returned to the bag for safekeeping.

  “What attracted you to the industry?”

  It’s a question so open-ended yet personal, a probe for Moyer to peer into a part of Pendel that remains unfathomable without hearing it in his own words.

  So grief-stricken over the events to which he is the primary witness and accomplice, Pendel has little left to hold back. In fact, the question becomes a bastion, a temporary salve that pulls him away from all the pain to make way for nostalgia.

  “I… liked to read,” Pendel says.

  “Yeah? Tell me more.”

  “I always liked a good story,” Pendel exhales. “I liked how a story could transport a person into new worlds.” He’s suddenly bashful, self-aware, “I know, kind of hokey. But it’s true. I loved escaping into books, especially when I was young. There wasn’t a lot to do, and I was always sort of a loner. I had friends but I didn’t get to hang out often, my mom being so strict, so I’d check out all kinds of books from the library. Didn’t matter if it was too graphic or violent. I remember reading American Psycho when I was in, I think, sixth grade.”

  Moyer gets a kick out of this, offering a round of applause, “I love it.”

  “Yeah, I devoured books because they were the only way I could experience things. I swear it got to be so that my closest friends, the people I really knew best, were the characters in the books I kept going back to. I’d have some that I’d always reread, over and over.”

  “I love every part of this,” says Moyer.

  “Maybe it was because stories were what I confided in most, but I basically followed how books came to be. When I was in high school, I temped as a reader for a local independent publishing house. I would read and learn by doing, offering feedback that probably wasn’t very useful, at least not at first, but I got better at it. I got better at it and started finding my way closer to an understanding of the publishing industry. I always knew a good story. I thrived on a good story, but then I started learning about the business of things, and it just…”

  “Publishing became part of your own story.”

  “Yeah,” Pendel nods. “Right.”

  “Right,” Moyer grins. “Then you pursued a logical path, getting into a publishing program, and it’s like they always say…”

  “The rest is history,” Pendel says.

  “Look who’s reading whose mind,” says Moyer.

  “What about you?” Pendel’s turn to direct the spotlight. “What got you into… writing?”

  “Me?” Moyer rests his hand on Pendel’s wound, causing him to wince, “Oh, let’s just say we’re more alike than you think.”

  Chapter 11

  Poor guy. Not that I feel sorry for him. It’s like so many have said and will continue to say long after the story ends. He did this to himself. Pendel made a lot of money, forged a tremendous career, and climbed the ranks of Cooper Willis Endeavor until he became undeniably the most valuable and most influential literary agent in the business. Henry Richmond Pendel was a name of repute. Yet underneath all the big wins, he dealt in a perennial loss, this unquenchable need for validation that can only be equaled by being vilified.

  And that’s where I come in. He’s an agent of the story, and I will ensure that he stands against the final scene as a villain nobody will ever forget.

  When I see how he reacts to the remains of her body, it confirms that there still is a person beneath the jackal, the ogre, the creature to be called by many as “Pendel the Pestilence.”

  “Take your time,” I tell him as I lead him by the hand back into the kitchen. He has expressed interest in seeing her, Mal, one last time. I told him that she’s finished, her half of the story edited out. Time to move on, yet he still demanded this. Just this once.

  I’ll give it to him because I like the sound of that. It implies that he understands that there’s still a long road ahead, an entirely new act. I’m going to need him receptive and willing, so yeah, I let him have his moment with the body.

  Letting go of his hand, I take my seat at the head of the table.

  Pendel can walk, though his body is certainly taxed by injury.

  “Careful,” I say, but he’s not hearing me.

  The guy kneels next to the body, the blood coagulating around the legs of the chair. Never mind the way this works wonders on the human senses. There’s an odor, yes, but it’s more than that, as if the body itself releases pheromones into the air, causing some sort of frenzy in some, and reverie in others. It jostles the memories from the dark corners of the mind, and because Pendel has a heavy heart, a lifetime of bad decisions, being at ground zero, where the story goes next, it must be tantamount to being judged by a god or a devil.

  He kneels, a lifeless stare. Where are all the emotions, the grief?

  The way this looks, Pendel isn’t seeing the scene as-is; he looks at her so plainly dismembered and defaced, he sees not her, Mal, the person she was, but rather Mal, the author he betrayed.

  Speak. He’ll speak. It’ll be a sort of therapy, an act of hopefully letting go, when really what I’m allowing is a moment for him to feel what it’s like to take control of one’s life, take control of one’s emotions, and most of all, take control of all the impossible; or rather, that which you cannot control. Skim through the history of philosophy, or dive into the social sciences, and you’ll see documentation about control, about chance, about all the various terminologies that get at the part of existence that continues with or without you.

  “This was more about me than it was about you,” he says. “I’ve already apologized, and I hope…” He sighs, “I hope in your dying moments you heard my apology. I guess it doesn’t matter if you accepted it or not—I don’t get that kind of redemption, I know—but really, I just needed to say it and believe it as truth.”

  I watch how he presses his palms into the blood, feeling the texture of drying blood and the way it leaves trails, brown and coppery, on the hardwood floor. Pendel brings his bloodied palm to his mouth and gives it a taste.

  Good.

  Keep going. Let go so that you may take control…

  “My apology, to myself, has nothing to do with you.” He wipes his hand against his pant leg and then rests his head on the lap of the mangled corpse, the soft yet stubbled cheek resting against the exposed femur. “Really, it’s the idea of you. My author. You were my author, and it drove me crazy that I couldn’t get you the best deal possible. I couldn’t steer you toward the more commercial sale, the better book… I couldn’t even guide you to the better idea. I couldn’t even maintain a professional relationship. It was the thought that I wasn’t doing my job, and by not doing my job, it was the worry that I would be found out as an imposter.”

  At some point, it becomes clear to me that he isn’t talking to her, not to Mal. No, can’t be. He addresses all his authors. He addresses everything as though he once believed that he could manifest the world for anyone who decided to take his side.

  “Manifest, they say, what you want, not what you worry you’ll become… That’s why I did what I did to you. That’s why I continue to pounce when I see a potential payday. And that’s why I often can’t help myself; I see a fire and I want to stoke the flames. Sometimes it involves a bit of jealousy; mostly, and I know why now, it’s because I’d rather have control over you than no control at all.”

  Breakthrough, we have ourselves another valiant step forward!

  Poor guy. Pendel looked for control in the wrong places. Now he’s lost more, even less of a firm grip on his life and career. He won’t be able to hold on much longer, but that’s okay: He’s found his next biggest client, and he’s going to change everything.

  This is how leaders of cults and countries find themselves at the helm of impossible power, and it’s also how those very same beings lose sight of themselves to give into oblivion.

  But not Pendel.

  At least, not until I’m done with him.

  How’d that song go again? I can’t remember the rhythm…

  Poor guy. He probably thinks this story’s about him.

  Chapter 12

  Truly awake for possibly the first time in years, Pendel can think clearly. The weight and pressure were so commonplace that he had grown used to it, fully adapted to high stress and high anxiety. Now there’s nothing left, not really, save for the final, mandatory acceptance.

  This is what Moyer offers. This is what Pendel hears. A transactional event to establish the end of one act and the beginning of another.

  Pendel takes his seat at the other end of the table.

  He and Moyer gaze at each other, both waiting for the other to speak. Moyer reaches into the same bag full of murderous instruments and produces a bound manuscript. He sets it carefully onto the table and slides it over to Pendel.

  Printed in CAPS is the title FRIENDS SELLING FRIENDS, the same book that Pendel had rejected weeks, maybe months, before. Yet it isn’t the title or the novel itself that is of any use or urgency, evidence of such being in how the title has been crossed out multiple times.

  “Read the pages,” Moyer says.

  It’s a request.

  “Please.”

  Not at all a demand.

  “Just the first few.”

  This is a meeting of two parties, a most pivotal event because in theory, an author being read is a vulnerable act.

  Of course, Pendel is compelled to at least see what awaits; what must a story written using vitriol, a story written with a knife and a need for vengeance look like on the page? He starts reading. From sentence one, he experiences a young talent, a glimpse of Alexander Moyer before he had his breakthrough. Turning the page, he sees new edits done in red ink. In places, the pen must have begun leaking because red speckle dashes the margins, bleeds across the end of paragraphs. Chapter one ends with the entire last graph crossed out, the edit in the margins reads: Are you willing to do anything?

  This is Moyer’s confession, as much as he is willing to reveal. The vulnerable act, he offers the massacre of his novel, the work he put everything into, sacrificing friendships and career opportunities to align his path with the romanticized notion of the author. Dead-end jobs, meager living situations, packaging all amounts of time as exclusive to sitting alone in a room with nothing more than his thoughts, research, laptop, blinking cursor, and the latest novel demand. Friends Selling Friends represents what was lost. The body next to him represents his breakthrough, the latest in a most unique body of work.

  Yes, Moyer is willing to do anything.

  Pendel reads another chapter, noting more speckle and splatter, writing in the margins that has little to do with the novel itself. They speak to the agent, ask open-ended questions about the industry: Offering representation, what does that even imply? Why is it called a submission, like it’s inherently an act of weakness and subservience? Why P&Ls when everyone knows that no two books are alike? Authors marketing themselves… what happened to publishers supporting their authors?

  He looks up from the page, catching sight of a sly look on Moyer’s face.

  “What do you think?”

  A wince, the painkillers starting to wear off, “It’s off to a good start.”

  “That’s not what an author really wants to hear, you know?”

  “You’re an author,” Pendel says. No question about it, yet saying it aloud jostles free an additional association that Pendel had not viewed as valid. Moyer the stalker. Moyer the serial killer. Moyer the psychopath. Moyer the worst thing that’s happened to him. But never: Moyer the emerging author. Yet there it is now, and to further let it sink in, Moyer slides a laminated sheet of paper, which just barely makes it to Pendel’s end of the table. He gazes down at it and understands immediately what he’s seeing.

  A one-sheet, typically designed to accompany a prepress review copy of a book, yet here, Moyer has generated one for himself. The written copy mentions nothing about his book.

  “I laminated it, just in case you tried to tear it up before reading it fully,” says Moyer.

  Instead, it explains Pendel’s worst nightmare. Ego death, destruction of reputation. It’s everything he doesn’t want to believe, yet it’s everything that can surely come to pass. In two paragraphs, Moyer tells a little story involving Pendel’s dissolution of his client list by way of a mass author exodus. Every author fires him, and many editors refuse to speak to, much less work with Pendel. There’s a sentence discussing how he sues for defamation, but it backfires, leading to more negative press. The copy so plainly explains his demise that it doesn’t even feel like anything; the one sheet washes over Pendel like any other of its type. It’s theoretical, offering a possibility, nothing more. After the copy there’s the sole market log line, identical to the question posed in the margins of Moyer’s dead manuscript: “Are you willing to do anything?”

  The blurbs are a venerable cluster of recognizable names:

  “You don’t have to do this.”

  —J.D. Church

  “I just wanted to connect.”

  —Brendon Kawada

  “*cries for help*”

  —Chelsea Boll

  “There’s no going back once you start.”

  —Mallory McAllister

  And Pendel quickly recognizes what they all have in common. There, at the bottom, Alexander Moyer, a writer and emerging author of… a three-sentence bio, succinct, offering some solid bylines like the London Review.

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” Moyer says. “Now that I got your attention, you’ll see that there is still something. I mean, you’re fucked. Don’t get me wrong. But there’s still something beyond the public trials and tribulations that will come barreling toward you. There’s something you can control, and it may be the very thing that saves you from everything.”

  “What… are you talking about?” He thinks about it and then asks, “What is it?”

  “Me,” he says, matter-of-factly.

  Everything’s right there on the table. Pendel flips through the manuscript, gives the one-sheet a second look, and then nods, “Okay.”

  “Great!” Moyer says, walking over to him, retrieving both the manuscript and the one-sheet. He takes the documents to the kitchen sink and starts a fire, feeding it with the dead manuscript and the dead truth.

  “What do we do with…” It’s how Pendel says “we” and so quickly takes his place at Moyer’s side, the subservient one, his turn to exist in the shadows of an entirely different jackal and ogre.

  “Oh, Mal,” he shrugs. “They’ll find her, eventually.”

  After the documents are turned to ash and flushed down the drain with water, Moyer moves on with the next steps. “Come, help me,” he says. “Help me, and you help yourself. Either your story ends with a ruined reputation and jail time, or the establishment of infamy and a reputation as a serial killer.” Moyer hands him a scrubber and some bleach, “You’ve made your choice, so come, be a good killer and help me rid the scene of all fingerprints.”

  Chapter 13

  On the ride back into Manhattan, I’m telling him about my process. Pendel’s already proving to be a good accomplice, asking me all kinds of questions, making me feel like he cares about my work. I’m finding this undivided attention addicting, something you never realize you enjoy so much until you experience it firsthand. Confiding in someone backed into a corner is a unique opportunity. We stick to a low whisper, starting from the top.

  “You went for Jerry first,” he says. “How did you make the decision?”

  “Taking a life isn’t easy, I’ll give you that, and worse when it’s someone that’s so recognizable. He’s always got extra eyes on him.” I think about the question, shocked that I hadn’t given it much thought. “I didn’t choose Jerry; he chose me. He’s on social media and he’s always posting where he is. I was able to follow his every stop on the tour, every visit. When he arrived in New York City, I was waiting for him at the JetBlue terminal at JFK.”

  “He didn’t even tell me when he was arriving,” says Pendel.

  “I’m good at what I do,” I say.

  He leans in close, “Had you taken a life prior to Jerry?”

  Just have to know everything, huh?

  I shake my head, “Nope. My first.”

  “Wow.”

  “It all started coming to me after so much rejection. You sit in this horrible feeling that it’s never going to work out for you, and it starts to blind you from who you are as a person. The feeling you can’t ever shake.” I look at him and can tell he doesn’t understand. “Look, imagine if you couldn’t get your business into the black, unable to make any money, despite having that eye for talent? No matter what you did, you couldn’t find the right clients, they all sign with other agents, and you couldn’t make enough to keep the lights on.”

  Then again, he’s going to find out what it’s like very soon…

  “Horrible,” he says. “Just horrible.”

  “I felt this way for a long time. After you passed, things kind of fell apart. I went a little mad. Nothing mattered. Then one day I found myself reading about the trade publishing industry. Countless interviews and testimony in various court cases, publishing horror stories and even Poets & Writers advice columns. I became a scholar of the industry.”