future projects.
Whatever it was that he sought and wherever he did it, he was met with the same negative responses and treated as if he were carrying a communicable disease with no cure. He was the proverbial pickled herring in the punch bowl, and it felt terrible. His only bright spot was that Rachel had not left him.
He had briefly been certain of the possibility that she would do as every other girlfriend had, discard him in favor of being with the new flavor of the month named Jacob Stone.
Just the thought of Jacob made him sick to his stomach, but not as bad as the people whom his former assistant had now associated himself with. Heinrich and Mendel had been very thorough in their dismantling of Jeffrey’s reputation and career options. There was even a story floating around in some circles that implied Jeffrey had a secret double life as a transvestite-reformed rabbi named Esther Jacobovits. The more Jeffrey protested, the more people believed the lie.
While Jacob was busy appearing on talk show after talk show, Jeffrey struggled to get his accountant on the phone to find out where and how his money had been vanishing. He had never been one to spend a lot of his earnings, as he lived a very simple life considering his fame, but not having his money where it was supposed to be was driving him to the bottle, and that was not like him.
Guest appearances and signings of the novelizations of his plays were cancelled; the press wanted nothing to do with him other than the sordid stories being manufactured about him regarding late night visits from Chinese delivery boys and long hours behind closed doors from visiting Jehovah’s Witnesses who left looking the worse for the wear.
He began staying up later than he usually did and was becoming an addict to the late night infomercials that transfixed his attention and left him selling off shares of various stocks so that he could supplement his bank account in order to purchase items that he did not need or use. His ability to set the timer on his chicken and forget it did not help him fight his way out of his depression or get him back to the writing that had made him so happy for the better part of his life.
He watched Jacob appear on late night talk shows and imagined dragging his half-naked body through a pool of elephant excrement and covering him with half-starved dung beetles. He always smiled when he had thoughts like that and wondered if that was wrong or if he was just being childish, and that is when it hit him; he was going about things all wrong.
He was spending too much time trying to maintain the higher moral code and not dropping to the depths of cruelty and vindictiveness that he was now victim to; he was attempting to be the better man, the bigger man, but what he truly needed to do was feed on that little something inside of him that was craving the cruel and unusual. The person he had always believed he was, perhaps, was not the man he should be. What was needed was to feed the beast, nurture the demon, and find out what the hell was planned for him next so that he could prevent it.
He continued to think about ways to accomplish this and determined that if it was evil and cruelty that his enemies wanted, then that was exactly what they were going to get. Jeffrey was nothing if not cunning, and he was more than capable of tapping his own inner necromancer to eliminate his foes and bring them to their knees.
He spent the large part of his free time watching old Hitchcock films, reading Stephen King, and scouring the Internet for ideas of ways to get back at his foes and to elevate his career at the same time, when it occurred to him that he would once again get back to his writing. It made all the sense in the world. It was his best weapon and one that he had honed since childhood. He could wield it with the depth skill of a neurosurgeon, he could fire it with pinpoint accuracy, and when he hit his target, none could withstand the damage that
Whatever it was that he sought and wherever he did it, he was met with the same negative responses and treated as if he were carrying a communicable disease with no cure. He was the proverbial pickled herring in the punch bowl, and it felt terrible. His only bright spot was that Rachel had not left him.
He had briefly been certain of the possibility that she would do as every other girlfriend had, discard him in favor of being with the new flavor of the month named Jacob Stone.
Just the thought of Jacob made him sick to his stomach, but not as bad as the people whom his former assistant had now associated himself with. Heinrich and Mendel had been very thorough in their dismantling of Jeffrey’s reputation and career options. There was even a story floating around in some circles that implied Jeffrey had a secret double life as a transvestite-reformed rabbi named Esther Jacobovits. The more Jeffrey protested, the more people believed the lie.
While Jacob was busy appearing on talk show after talk show, Jeffrey struggled to get his accountant on the phone to find out where and how his money had been vanishing. He had never been one to spend a lot of his earnings, as he lived a very simple life considering his fame, but not having his money where it was supposed to be was driving him to the bottle, and that was not like him.
Guest appearances and signings of the novelizations of his plays were cancelled; the press wanted nothing to do with him other than the sordid stories being manufactured about him regarding late night visits from Chinese delivery boys and long hours behind closed doors from visiting Jehovah’s Witnesses who left looking the worse for the wear.
He began staying up later than he usually did and was becoming an addict to the late night infomercials that transfixed his attention and left him selling off shares of various stocks so that he could supplement his bank account in order to purchase items that he did not need or use. His ability to set the timer on his chicken and forget it did not help him fight his way out of his depression or get him back to the writing that had made him so happy for the better part of his life.
He watched Jacob appear on late night talk shows and imagined dragging his half-naked body through a pool of elephant excrement and covering him with half-starved dung beetles. He always smiled when he had thoughts like that and wondered if that was wrong or if he was just being childish, and that is when it hit him; he was going about things all wrong.
He was spending too much time trying to maintain the higher moral code and not dropping to the depths of cruelty and vindictiveness that he was now victim to; he was attempting to be the better man, the bigger man, but what he truly needed to do was feed on that little something inside of him that was craving the cruel and unusual. The person he had always believed he was, perhaps, was not the man he should be. What was needed was to feed the beast, nurture the demon, and find out what the hell was planned for him next so that he could prevent it.
He continued to think about ways to accomplish this and determined that if it was evil and cruelty that his enemies wanted, then that was exactly what they were going to get. Jeffrey was nothing if not cunning, and he was more than capable of tapping his own inner necromancer to eliminate his foes and bring them to their knees.
He spent the large part of his free time watching old Hitchcock films, reading Stephen King, and scouring the Internet for ideas of ways to get back at his foes and to elevate his career at the same time, when it occurred to him that he would once again get back to his writing. It made all the sense in the world. It was his best weapon and one that he had honed since childhood. He could wield it with the depth skill of a neurosurgeon, he could fire it with pinpoint accuracy, and when he hit his target, none could withstand the damage that
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