Title: A Titular Tale
Summary: What you have here is a fic like no other. This story is a false memoir of a pretend life. In the story I have used all 86 Castle episode titles (seasons 1-4 plus the currently released titles of the first five episode of season 5). See if you can find them all as you enjoy the farcical account of a fictional autobiography.
Disclaimer: I don't own most of the characters I write about. If you recognize a name, odds are it isn't mine. But seeing as this is a fanfic website, you probably knew that already.
Thanks again to Sunshiny-Kate, the best beta a writer could ask for!
Have you ever thought about preselecting the flowers for your grave? I have. I've been thinking about it since I was a small child. That might seem odd, but I can thank Nanny McDead for such thoughts. She used to look after me. I think she was Irish. That doesn't matter. Anyway, she asked me long ago what my favorite flowers were, what kind I would choose to watch over me as I slept my eternal slumber. Now that I think about it, she was kind of weird. I mean, who asks a child about death?
How about we move on to something less morbid. Middle school. Okay, maybe it's not much less morbid, just a different kind of morbidity. There was this group of popular rich kids. Everyone called them the Hedge Fund Homeboys. There were some girls in the group though, so I don't know why we called just them homeboys. I guess the girls didn't care that they were technically left out. They would have made a fuss about it if they'd cared. I mean, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, right?
Lets see. What else happened in middle school? Oh yeah, there was the time that a blizzard hit our city. This one girl got so excited, she went outside and got lost. The cops found her in time but thanks to moderate hypothermia, to this day still, every time someone mentions the word snow, she says she feels like a chill goes through her veins.
Oh, I just remembered another lesson my nanny taught me. She used to tell me, over and over, to always buy retail. Just like with the grave flowers, I really don't know why she felt this to be an appropriate conversational topic for a child. There was one great piece of advice she gave me though. 'Home is where the heart stops hurting' she'd say. It didn't make sense to me then, but now I understand the profoundness of her words. And I did enjoy the times she would tell me stories about ghosts. Even if they did scare me a little. All in all, she was a great nanny.
But I digress. Where was I? Oh yeah. The little girl lost. If the cops hadn't found her there would have been a death in the family. I think we can move on from that though. I don't want this story to get too deep in death. I suppose now would be a good time to move on to high school.
My high school was downtown, on Downing Street. Because of this, all the students, and even some of the teachers, called the school The Double Down. High school was an interesting time, a sort of time of inventing the girl that I would eventually become. I dated this guy, I thought he was all that and a bag of potato chips. But he cheated on me. I forgave him. Then he did it again. Fool me once...shame on him, but I didn't give in the second time. I went through a poetry phase after I broke up with him. One actually was published in the school paper. It was called When the Bough Breaks. I thought I was clever calling my heart a bough. Although my prose days are thankfully behind me, it actually helped lay the foundation for my later writings.
Senior prom was another part of the puzzle of me becoming me. For some logistical reason that I don't remember, we had to have it in October, but to make up for the odd timing, they let us have it for an entire weekend. It was weird, but we made the best of it and had a vampire weekend. It was...memorable. Let's just leave it at that.
We can go ahead and skip to graduation. The valedictorian, Bobbi O'Slade gave what became known as the famous last words speech. She later became a popular motivational speaker, even writing self help books. Her first one was called Kill the Messenger. I never read it. Honestly, it doesn't sound all that helpful, unless you want to murder a mailman or something. She tried writing murder mysteries, but after Love Me Dead failed horribly, she went back to her self help writings. One Man's Treasure is set to be released next month. I won't be reading it either, but at least it sounds like it could maybe be helpful about something. At least, more so than her first. Actually, no, it doesn't sound helpful at all. She certainly isn't helping herself in the good title department.
Anyway, enough about her. Halfway through my sophomore year of college, my mom called me to tell me that my old nanny had died. I traveled home on the fifth bullet train I'd ever ridden and once everyone left after the funeral service, I laid a rose for everafter on her grave. Though I hadn't seen her in years, her death felt like a sucker punch to the gut.
Well, I went all morbid again, didn't I? Sorry, it's a side effect of my work. Let's move ahead a couple more years. Just after college graduation. I'll tell you a little about Hank. He was the third man I'd ever dated long term, and the only one since high school. He played baseball, and although he couldn't throw worth a darn, no one in the world was better than him at the suicide squeeze. He was a lightning fast runner, and didn't get out a single time he made a break for it. He was a nice guy, but I broke things off after he took me to a movie called The Mistress Always Spanks Twice. I quickly realized that while we did have a lot in common, the few interests we didn't share were far too different for us to ever work out.
Oh, quick sidebar. I have this really annoying, yet cool, alarm clock. It starts with a loud tick, tick, tick...etc., and if I hit the snooze button, it lets out a loud boom! One morning, I hit the snooze button several times, because I was so sick with the flu that I felt like I was wrapped up in death and I couldn't think logically enough to just turn it off. The neighbors thought something was exploding in my house, so they called the cops. I rarely hit the snooze button any more.
Sorry for the rabbit trail. I do that sometimes. Let's continue.
So, right out of college, I got a job at a grocery store. My manager at the time was a horrible speller. I worked at night, and the top of my schedule alway said the late shaft. I quit working there when I realized it was practically a den of thieves, because most of the other employees stole merchandise frequently. I went to work at Food to Die For, a hip new restaurant, but the amount of pepper they used in every dish was overkill. They didn't stay open long, because no one liked playing a deadly game with their taste buds. So once again, I needed a new job.
I went to work for a newspaper, not the big one that everyone in my city reads, but it was a good job. I was lucky enough to get my own weekly article, called A Deadly Affair. I wrote about sex scandals that broke up public marriages. It was basically just a gossip column on steroids, but people loved it. My most popular article was He's Dead, She's Dead, from the time I wrote about a murder/suicide that a senator's secret lover committed when he tried to end their affair. It took me a while to get that article just right, to cram all the juicy bits into my thousand word limit, and although I was under the gun to get it ready, I managed to turn it in on time. My editor punked me the next day though, telling me it hadn't been ran, that my perfect perusal of death and dismay wouldn't be seen by the public's eyes.
But he was joking, and the popularity of it that article led me to the opportunity to write my first book, Anatomy of a Murder. It explored the inner workings of the so-called 3XK killer, who liked to murder people whose names started with K, three at a time. It was vastly well received, and I became almost famous, nearly making it onto the national best sellers list.
My second book, Murder Most Fowl, chronicled the story of a man who killed his victims by shoving chicken feathers down their throats. The media called him Featherdead, though, by my own admission, I thought it was a dumb moniker. The book was popular, but still not a best seller. So, I tried my hand at fiction.
My third book, which was my first made-up murder story, was called Close Encounters of the Murderous Kind. And as soon as I left reality behind and fashioned my own world, commited my own (albeit legal since they were on a page) murders, I hit best seller pay-dirt. I had figured out the secret, finally realizing that people didn't want to read what they'd seen on the news reports. They wanted something that was tangible, yet safe, real but not. Fictional murder was the way to go.
I started doing talk show appearances and book signings. I loved the excitement of meeting all sorts of people, each one giving me fodder for new characters. But there was one book signing I'll never forget. It was the most important book signing of my life. The line had dwindled down to nothing and I asked the store manager to make a last call for people who wanted an autograph. A young man walked up, similar to me in age, and handed me a copy of my book, asking if I would make it out to his sister, Nikki Heat. He said something about how she liked magic, so if I didn't mind, could I incorporate that. Poof, you're dead was all I could think of to write. His beauty had struck me incapable of creative thoughts, like a knockdown blow to my ability to craft words. His emerald eyes felt as if they could pierce my soul, and his gentle face was spilt with a lopsided grin. As I wrote, I found myself wondering if this lucky stiff was single.
I finished my signature with a flourish, took a deep breath, looked up at the gorgeous man, and said 'Come here often?'. I immediately regretted it, feeling like an utter idiot. With that horribly awful note I'd written for his sister and that stupid cliched line, I was sure that I'd just put the final nail in my chance at getting to know him better. He glanced around at my setup, and I found myself doing a silent countdown as I awaited his rejection. After what felt like an eternity, he chuckled and gave his answer. I remember the conversation word for word.
"Yeah, actually, I do. When will you be done?"
"Um, now?" I shrugged as I handed his book back, again amazed at how wordless I still was.
"What to go get some dinner?"
"Just you and me?" I asked.
"Yeah." He laughed, a sweet sound I already loved. "I figured it's a long shot to ask you, but I've only got one life to lose, so why not?"
"Yes." I said quickly, too quickly, warmth rushing to my cheeks.
"Good. I'm David, by the way. David Heat."
"I'm Paige Terner." I answered.
"Isn't that just your pen name?" Confusion skewed his face.
"No, it's my real name." I laughed. "I was just born to write I guess."
That beautiful smile spread wide again and I busied myself with taking care of wrapping up the signing.
Dinner was fantastic. Turns out, he was a prosecutor for the city, so we spent the evening discussing law and murder. We ate pizza, which along with the topic of conversation, inspired me to name my next book Slice of Death.
After dinner, we went for a walk, happening upon a fountain that wasn't currently on. We stared at the dead pool of water in silence for an unknown amount of time. Suddenly, I felt his hand wrap around mine. We still remained quiet, soaking up the moonlight and wonder of the stars.
Ten minutes later, he kissed me. I fell for him the moment his lips touched mine.
The next few years flew by. David became a partner at his firm, I was working on my third novel, To Love and Die in L.A. Our love grew stronger each day, although I don't know how so much emotion could fit into my heart.
It was nearly four years after we met when we were walking through the park where we'd visited that first night. It was pretty dead, not crowded at all, which was odd for a sunny spring afternoon. I was absentmindedly watching the handful of other park goers when I felt David tug on my hand. I looked at him, and saw him kneeling down. My heart jumped like it had been hit by a knockout punch of overwhelming joy. He asked, I said yes, he slid the ring on my finger, and I watched him rise up to kiss me.
The wedding went off without a hitch, and the next year and a half went by with our lives not changing much. Then the test was positive and nine months later our dynamic duo became a family of five. Per David's request (although I wanted it a lot more than I let him know) we celebrated the boy's first birthday with a heroes and villains themed party. The craziness of triplets made me feel like a head case sometimes, but I loved every minute of it. Time flew by like the wind of a hurricane.
I was working on my seventh novel, Kick the Ballistics, the one about the murdering soccer player, when Thomas, our middle son, brought home a scraggly, muddy, mutt that he convinced us to let him keep with the help of his brothers. I thought he was an ugly creature, but beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder, and Thomas had seen the dog for what he could be, not what he was. Pringles looked much better after a bath, and he became a beloved family pet, even by me.
A few years later, my three loveable demons were playing cops and robbers, running through the house, and they ran into each other, all at once. All three broke an arm. It was a long couple of months waiting for them to heal. Mainly for them. But they never ran in the house again.
There was the time in highschool that all three boys became obsessed with the movies Heartbreak Hotel and Kill Shot. Then they went through a phase where they cuffed all their clothes, a fad that you may remember that involved cutting the cuffs off of shirt sleeves, gloves, and trouser legs. David actually wanted to cut his clothes up too, but I told him that I may have promised to love him till death do us part, but I wouldn't go out on date night with him if his clothes weren't fully intact. He left the scissors in the drawer.
My sixteenth novel, Dial M For Mayor, had just hit the shelves when it came time for my twentieth high school reunion. The night ended up being an embarrassment of bitches for the cheerleaders who'd mocked me in my teenage years. They now found themselves jealous of my success between the covers (hardback and paperback, all at a bookstore near you) and my super hot husband. I even won the Blue Butterfly, the homecoming queenesque award of the night.
On the way home that night, it was like Pandora was trying to open her box again, all on David and I. As he drove us home, the car lost control. It turns out that the brake lines had been cut, which was the linchpin of the accident. David's past had come back to haunt us. Once upon a crime, so to say, David had successfully prosecuted a powerful man, who now wanted him dead. The wreck was bad, sort of a dance with death. In fact, the paramedics said I died for a full 47 seconds. David broke several bones and had gobs of stitches, but he never lost consciousness. We both had to go to physical therapy for a while after that. Our therapist was British, so we called him the Limey. Well, really everyone at the gym did.
Once I was back in tiptop shape, I celebrated by having a new back-of-the-book picture taken at Headhunters, the photographers of the stars.
After my brush with death, everyone I knew on the writing circuit started calling me the Undead Again author. Really, I don't think it was the best choice of nicknames, but hey, writers are kind of weird. One thing I do know, odd names aside, I will always write. I don't plan to ever stop. I may stop publishing at some point, but the words will continue finding their way from my brain to the page.
As I look forward to the future, I see great things for my family. Right now we are planning three weddings, since our boys still seem to do things at the same time, and after the storm of nuptial preparing is over, I will be eagerly awaiting the arrival of many grandchildren to spoil. Really, David will spoil them far more than I will, but that secret's safe with me. Or, it was. Until you read that last sentence.
Well, outside it is cloudy, with a chance of murder looming in my mind. The overcastness of days like this gets my inner killer going. Therefore, it is time to end this and return to my world of fictional death and due diligence.
For my swan song to this somewhat patchworked memoir, I'd like to share a note David left me one morning, early in our marriage. The night before, we'd had our first big fight as husband and wife, and that next morning he arose before I did to leave for work. The following is what he left for me to read. Murder, he wrote, is what drives you to write, Paige. And it is, unfortunately, what keeps me employed. So as I leave you at home to serve justice to the fictional wicked, I go to prosecute the real life evils. We both spend our days fighting the good fight, so let's not fight each other anymore.
I still read that note almost every day, so that I am reminded to fight the good fight. So go forth yourself, dear readers, and fight your own good fights, whatever they may be.