by Karen Polinsky (1728 words)

Each of the piggies pursued its own fate, one hog heroically honing its teeth on a rope, while the other contemplated a savory repast of stewed writer. 

Meanwhile, Margaux was studying a small white rectangular paper, turning it over and over again in her lady-like palm and her cunning mind. As if she needed a nametag to know him! Meanwhile, stupid song lyrics played in her head: 

Tell me what’s wrong with you now, 
tell me why I never seem to make you happy, 
though heaven knows I try –

“Seize him!” she cried out. Brandishing a knife with the green froth of a Boy Scout cake with the theme of hill & dale, she turned to her two writing protegees. “You’re right, Mavis. This fellow is called Giani Ficinelli. He’s here under false pretenses. He’s not a writer, but a psychological researcher. Sicard is sick, but he’s sicker.”

“That’s ironic,” remarked Mavis, who had manacled herself to the imposter’s right arm while Ed forced him down into a straight-backed chair. “That’s a literary term, though I wouldn’t expect you to understand it. You’re not an author, you’re a liar.”

“Me? Look in the mirror. You write fiction. At least that’s what you claim ––”

Margaux interjected, “Enough, both of you. Six of the eight so-called participants in this workshop are missing. As well as the inebriated sex-addicted talent that brought us all together. One or more of them could injured, or killed. Or bored. I need to get to the bottom of this. Tell me the truth. What have you done with Sicard?”

“What have I done with him? What haven’t I?” Gianni scoffed. “I created him. I turned him into the cutting critic that emerging writers like Mavis love to both hate and adore. I am Sicard and Sicard is me. I tell folks that he’s the brother I never had, but really, he’s my on-line presence. My alter ego, if you will.”

“Why would anyone do such a thing?” Margaux pressed the frosted blade against the researcher’s Adam’s apple, daubing the collar his expensive shirt with crystallized sugar and Crisco. “Also, why are you here? I have an idea, but I need to hear you say it. Be quick about it. I’ve never been the type to let my cakes cool before I layer on the frosting. I hope you’re fond of fondant!”

Mavis laughed. She enjoyed homey insider wordplay from the kitchen.

Gianni cringed. “You think I’m here for revenge, because you stole my research and turned it into a bestseller. Not so. I have a new theory, more far-reaching than anything before it. To prove it, I needed to simulate certain high-pressure conditions with an assortment of loony-tunes subjects. This workshop was it.”

Meanwhile Mavis was peeling off the remnants of the smeary nametag from the grass-green blade of Margaux’s knife. She peered at it closely. “I knew I’d seen this handwriting before. Gianni, it was you who penned that entry in my journal. Fate? Ha! How about: F-A-K-E.”

“Yes and no. That entry may have been a cheap trick, but I did believe in the words as I wrote them. In fact, it’s the first step in my theory, one I’m sure will shed light on these dark and stormy times ––“

“Yes, yes, yes. Your theory and all that! But why did you pretend to be me?“

Gianni, called Nonny by his friends in the world of academia, confessed, “I realized you were the only one here who could expose me, possibly before I could complete my research. I did it to discredit you, to make the other think that you were crazy. Which you are. Because, according to my new theory, in every lie there is a 

truth––“

Ed cuffed him. He commanded Margaux, “Stop him from salivating his spittle-soaked theory. This is all expository. I want to know how to write a story.”

“He’s right.” Mavis gave Ed a warm look. “It’s definitely not the food or the digs that we’re paying for. We’re committed writer’s looking for serious insight. So what about it? Hey, how about the one about Chekhov’s pistol? You know, the one that always goes off, though usually offstage in the wings ––“

“Point taken.” She showed the researcher the tip of her blade. “Get it?” Her arm was tired from holding up the knife. She needed somewhere to put it. She unbuttoned Gianni’s tailored shirt, and parted the rippling chest hair that covered his heart like a shield––

“Hold up!” injected the fair-minded Ed. He was holding up Mavis’ journal, opened up to facing pages covered with an unexamined scrawl. “There may be something to this theory. It might unknot the mystery behind this mad and violent sojourn. Gianni, in one complete sentence – this time with no m-dashes – tell us what you have discovered.”

“I’d rather kill him.” Mavis advised. “You know, for the story.”

Margaux turned thoughtful. She set her weapon down on a tablecloth, one that seemed to turn more crimson with age, and fell down into high backed chair crawling with serpents and squirrels. She turned her hard gaze on Gianni. “Okay, but this is your last chance. Your elevator pitch, in twenty words or less. One syllable more and your devoted friends can whisper goodbye to their Nonny, and say hello to buttercream rosettes, shell shapes, and swirls.”

Nonny’s mouth filled with a thick fear, mucus-like and tasting of cinnamon and vanilla. He swallowed hard. “Every character in the story represents their most discernible traits, but also their exact opposites. As with this one.”

Mavis, squinching her eyes, had both hands up and was wriggling her fingers. “Nineteen!” She flashed open her lids and glared at Gianni. “Damn it, you win!”

Ed brandished the journal. “Hmm. There might be something to it. Look!” The scrawled page featured a kind of table, a catalogue of oppositional character traits. Ed, in a trembling voice, with a heraldic tone, read aloud: 

Jasper St. John: a writer/but not a writer.
Jane & Peter: tied up in a love/hate marriage
Mavis Kelly: a truth seeker/in disguise
Charles Kowalski: a cop/and a criminal.
Bunny Beecham: A sex abuser/and victim
A pair of pigs: one hero/the other munching on a severed arm –

For one moment, the parlor with its purple shadows intoned with a reverberating silence, like the dim echo of a long-lost dinner bell. Nonny added, “It’s our fate, to be pulled in both directions. Which side will win, that’s what the reader wants to know. That’s what keeps them turning the pages.”

Nonny, as if he alone in the shower or behind the wheel of his doppelganger’s Citroen, began to sing quietly to himself:

Break up to make up, that’s all we do.
First you love me, then you hate me,
That’s a game for fools.

At last, Margaux understood why the silly tune had been warbling inside her head, like the song of a braindead finch crushed against a windowpane. Earlier, as Nonny-then-Sicard had been marking up the manuscripts, he had been quietly humming it. A subtle form of psychological intimation, or terror? Absolutely. But to what end? 

“Don’t listen to him, Margaux.” Mavis advised. “He’s a cheater. Just now he more than doubled his word count.” 

“Who’s in charge here, anyway?” Curious despite herself, Margaux pressed Gianni, “You didn’t finish the critique. What about the other participants? What about me?”

“I ran out of time. Lucy is the most pure, but even she is divided. Note her lusty moonlight frolic. But, of all the conflicted personalities, your story is the most warped, and compelling.”

“Oh?”

“Uh uh. No way. I’m not telling. I’ve exceeded my word count. Though the rules might seem random, you have to Ice me.”

 She sighed, and inched up her chair closer, so that her naked kneecaps brushed the inner thighs of his trousers. Slowly and thoughtfully, she kissed his brow and then began plucking the buttons on his vest one by one. She opened up his shirt and began twisting the chest hairs. He winced, but did not shout out. Margaux laughed. “Tell me now, Nonny, or –“

“Well, isn’t it obvious? Your hatred of your mother–– and your desire to be loved by the one person who never could–– has turned you into her. You claim to be your brother’s protector, but in truth you are his oppressor. Which is why he drinks and abuses his own precious body with cruel sex. Are you even human? Can you claim one snortful, one bristling fiber, one fat-stripping incisor, of porcine compassion? Won’t you ever let him be free?”

“Whoa, that’s a lot,” mused Ed. “But, when you think about it, it kind of makes sense.”

Mavis added, “It definitely advances the story,”

True or not, Margaux reasoned, the researcher’s critique of her – and everything she cared about and had struggled for since she was a girl – was certainly loaded, like Chekhov’s pistol. But did the same rule of no non-essentials in a cohesive drama also pertain to that moment when it is psychologically triggered? Margaux thought it did. And wasn’t she the expert? After all, she herself had penned two of Jasper’s most critically acclaimed books. 

And now her head felt it was emitting red sparks in every direction, like a Pacific Northwest flume. She was practically sitting in Nonny’s lap. She had no need of the knife’s dull and sticky blade. Her sadness, her guilt, her rage – and her teeth and her claws – were her truest weapons. Just because he was the author, it didn’t mean that Gianni was exempt; he too had oppositional character traits. There was only one thing that could stop her from tearing him in two. 

A secret, far worse than anything she had been accused of so far. A secret that involved Lucy’s husband, Paul. A secret that, if outed would alter the outcome of this dramatic moment, the reader’s view of her, and everything––

Meanwhile, up on the farm, Lucy rubbed her chafed wrist. She gave the pig another pat. On the opposite side of the shed door, for one instant she fancied she sensed a familiar footfall, the stumbling gait of her trusted soulmate, the one who had both honored and fatally betrayed her by gifting her with a serene and secluded writer’s retreat at the Pine Tree Lodge –