A/N: I began this as a very short humorous piece of nonsense; what would the heroes write about themselves, but then I got struck with this Writer's Disease, and things escalated quickly. The use of the 2016 challenge story premise used with the permission of Book 'Em Again. Another episode in the character awareness-verse.
Corporal Peter Newkirk hid behind a tree next to the road, watching the struggle to hold the underground agent he was supposed to meet, codename Rapunzel. Somehow their meeting had been compromised.
"Get your filthy hands off me," she cried, struggling with all she had.
"You are coming with us to headquarters," the kraut Major said. "We will find out who your contact is."
He had no time to think, only to act. He knocked both men out with his bare hands, took Rapunzel's hand, and ran.
They put some distance between them and the road. Things were going along without a hitch, until Rapunzel tripped.
"I don't think I can run anymore," she gasped, holding her leg.
"Never fear my love," Newkirk said, sweeping the girl into his arms. She was as light and soft as a feather. "We haven't got far to go now"
Her long blond hair fell around her face, framing deep green almond eyes. "You saved my life," she said. Warm arms wrapped around Newkirk's neck. Her smile just about melted him, but he had a job to do.
"We'll have time for that later," he said, and took off running through the forest.
Lifting Rapunzel gently into the airplane, Newkirk took special care not to hurt her leg further. "Right, we'll just get you settled and get this plane in the air and Bob's your uncle, we'll be in London before you know it."
"How can I ever thank you?" Rapunzel asked, tears of gratitude in her eyes.
Newkirk pulled her close, lost in her heavenly gaze. "If I might suggest," he said, and kissed her. Time stopped in the moment of pure…
Kinch put the paper down. "Are you serious?" he asked Newkirk, who looked rather pleased with himself and his work. "This makes no sense. You completely lost the plot halfway through!"
Colonel Hogan's face suggested that someone had put turpentine in his coffee. "Did it even have a plot?"
Newkirk snatched his writing back from Kinch, regretting having let anyone read his story. "Ruddy critics," he grumbled.
So this is what Newkirk had hidden under his mattress for the last week. Since they sent that Short Story Contest out to London to post on the Fanfiction website, in fact.
"If we can post the challenge, why shouldn't we write for the challenge?" Newkirk asked.
"After all," Carter added, "it is for a good cause."
"And if we write stories that we like –"
"- and don't die in -" said Lebeau.
"– what's the harm?" finished Newkirk.
Hogan saw the harm. He would never quite be able to forget the atrocities issued against the literary world in Newkirk's so-called 'story'. "Do us a favor, Newkirk. Leave the writing to the authors."
"And let them keep torturing us?" Lebeau cried. "Never!"
"I think it's a great idea," Carter jumped in with enthusiasm. "I mean, if that's how we're going to get stories we all like."
Broughton and Addison jumped off their back bunks and stepped up to the table. "We're writing stories, too," Broughton said.
"Yeah, we're tired of being ignored!" Addison's declaration unleashed a hailstorm of shouts from the extras.
"Hold it, HOLD IT!" Hogan shouted, waving his arms to get some order. "There's no reason we can't send in our own stories," he held up a hand to stop the outbreak of victorious fist-pumping. His gut screamed at him to shut up and put a stop to this right now. But then, a few lighthearted stories to vent the growing tension, just for fun after all; how bad could it be? "Just…" he couldn't think of a way to completely avoid the impending disaster. "..don't get too carried away." He shook his head. Oh, this was going to end badly.
The deadline to send in their work approached far too quickly. Even with express courier the package to London would take a few days, then they would need to be typed up, leaving precious little time to waste before the package had to be sent.
The barracks became as quiet as a library, and just as stuffy. No one had time for fresh air.
"Carter!" Lebeau had his turn of disbelief, holding a handful of papers at arms' length. "You're supposed to write about girls, not about the authors!"
"Most of them are girls!" Carter pointed out. "Maybe if we were nice to them, like we are with the girls we get around here, maybe they'll be nice to us. You know the Golden Rule, Do Unto Others…"
"After how many years of what they've done? You really have lost the plot, Carter." Newkirk crumpled the sheet of paper and tossed it in the stove.
"Hey!" Carter pushed Newkirk back and pulled the paper out, only slightly singed. Thank goodness for the lack of fuel that meant the fire rarely burned above a smolder. "I still say we should give them more slack," he said. "This writing stuff is hard work!" Carter ducked from the barrage of crumpled drafts aimed at his head.
"Here, look mine over," Lebeau traded his story for Newkirk's.
"Ses yeux bleues, ses cheveaux brunes…Lebeau! This is all in French!" Newkirk cried.
"Of course it's in French," Lebeau scoffed at Newkirk's ignorance. "French is the language of love, after all."
"How am I supposed to look this over when I can't even read it?" Newkirk scowled at Lebeau. "Wait, is that….?" One word amongst the jumble of superfluous letters and accents looked dreadfully familiar to him; a name. "Not her," he groaned.
Hogan knew which "her" Newkirk meant, the one "her" none but Lebeau wanted to see again. "Mayra."
Visions of rapture played on Lebeau's expression. "She is my muse, the epitome of all that is worthy of art."
Kinch tried hard not to laugh at Lebeau's poetics. "You want some wine with that cheese?"
Hogan didn't find it funny. "That kind of talk could have you court marshaled, Lebeau," He tried not to think what horrors Lebeau could unleash on them with Mayra.
"We may be prisoners but we still have the freedom of speech," Lebeau retorted.
Everyone gasped. Hogan raised a challenging eyebrow. Lebeau seemed to falter, but revived himself and stood his ground.
"Alright," Hogan said, "alright. Freedom of speech. You go ahead and write whatever you want. It's your right." He walked back to his quarters, turning back just before closing the door. "But don't say I didn't warn you." With that ominous statement, he left his men to their own devices.
Three messages from London lay forgotten in the tunnels. Two radio messages still hadn't been answered, and half a dozen men had forgotten to eat two days running. Pens and paper had more tradable value than cigarettes and chocolate put together.
Klink, bemused but quite relieved that his prisoners weren't running about like wild animals, busied himself with penning a few lines in secret. "After all, what's the harm?" he hummed happily to himself.
Back in the barracks, Carter popped up to Newkirk's bunk.
"Hey, Newk…augh!" he caught sight of the untamed hair and the three day's worth of five-o-clock shadow. His feet slipped and he fell off the edge of his bunk.
"If you don't like it, stick to your own bunk," Newkirk said testily, stuck on a plot hole.
"Can you help me with something?" Carter climbed back up to bring his head to Newkirk's level. He swung his papers onto the bed. "I'm having trouble with this part."
Newkirk grumbled, but grabbed the proffered story. His lips moved along with the words until, " " ' 'ello guv, care fo' a spota tea, jus' give us a mo' t'git it so'ted an' wie'll be roight as raein' - what is this? Is this what you think I sound like?"
"Well," Carter wasn't sure how to answer that, seeing as how a truthful answer would send Newkirk throught the roof.
Across the room Garlotti looked intently at his notebook, trying to simultaneously avoid looking at Newkirk and avoid looking guilty. So did half a dozen other men, not going unnoticed by Newkirk. "Are you jokin' me? You all think I sound like that?"
The guilty parties - all Americans, Newkirk noticed – buried themselves with erasing several lines of dialogue. "Unbelievable," he went back to his own story, disgusted at the stereotyping. "What?"he snapped at Carter, who still stared at him expectantly.
"That's not what I needed help on," Carter said.
Nerves sizzled in Newkirk's tired brain. After a couple nights' interrupted sleep, he began to hate the newfound voices that kept demanding attention with ideas. The temper of fatigue unleashed itself on Carter. "If you don't need help with writin' a proper accent, I don't want to see what you really need help on," he practically shouted, turning away from the nuisance.
"Geez, see if I ask you for help with anything again," Carter said to Newkirk's back, deeply miffed.
Two days before the deadline, things escalated even further.
"Colonel Hogan! Colonel Hogan!" Carter crashed through the doorway just as Hogan opened it. He was pale as a sheet and looked like he might be sick. "It's Lebeau," he gasped, pointing out towards the common room.
Dread flooded Hogan's stomach. He had a feeling he knew what he would find. Pushing past Carter, Hogan crossed the room in long strides.
Lebeau lay on his bed unconscious, a telltale patch of red staining the blanket. The sight of the blood likely caused his faint. Hogan pulled away the damp fabric. A bullet wound. Damn it. Another story gone awry. "Give it a minute," he said. Even as he said it, the skin started to close and stop the flow of blood.
The wound passed, and Lebeau sat up, surprisingly well and himself again, if not a little shaken.
"What happened? Who did this to you?" Hogan asked, ready to pummel the responsible party.
"I did it to myself," Lebeau said miserably, clutching at the phantom injury. "The story…it just…it had to happen."
The responsible story shook in his hand, stained with blood. Lebeau handed it to Hogan, who took it gingerly as if it might spontaneously combust.
"I had the perfect idea Colonel," he said, watching Hogan scan his writing. "About a girl and a trip to Paris and…" he gulped down the rising panic, "and then the bosche came in – I had to, we're in the middle of a war! And the story, it had to happen or else the story just didn't feel right."He didn't dare mention the voices in his head that told him how the story was going to go.
So it was worse than Hogan thought. How his men had suddenly come to write their own demises, he didn't know, only that his men seemed to be coming down with the disease of the writers. The only cure for it was to let it run its course and get the words out onto paper, whatever that may look like in the end.
By that afternoon, not one man escaped the effects of Writer's Disease. Colonel Hogan looked around the room, surveying the damages of injuries and waiting for his men to speak up and explain themselves. The barbed wire cuts and subsequent infection from some bonehead's story still itched.
"It's not like we wrote anything with the purpose of hurting each other," Baker tried again to explain, "it just,"
"Had to happen," Hogan finished. He never wanted to hear that phrase again.
"Yeah, I mean, we are in the middle of a war, people are gonna get hurt!" Kinch tried to pull a bit of reason into the madness.
"You don't have to write about it!"
"We tried to, Colonel, but sometimes the stories just take on a life of their own." Baker cringed slightly at Hogan's acid glare.
"Whoever heard of stories writing themselves?" he scoffed.
"It's true," Carter exclaimed. "Try it for yourself, you'll see!" He spoke of writing as if it were an addictive drug.
Fine then, Hogan thought. He would write a story – a realistic story that didn't break the suspension of disbelief barrier – and no one would get hurt.
Kinch breathed a sigh of relief when the door closed behind the officer. Trying to make Hogan understand felt like an interrogation of its own. The deadline that would end this madness couldn't come soon enough.
No one saw or heard anything from the Colonel for the next several hours. He neither came out nor let anyone in, not that many tried with their guilty consciences.
In the late watches of the night, all hell broke loose.
Cries of pain rent the night. Those lucky few who were asleep and not hiding under blankets still writing snapped back to consciousness. No fewer than eight men bore cuts and burns of varying degrees.
The door to the officer's quarters burst open, the light from within silhouetting Hogan standing there in the frame. Lurching forward to turn the lights on, he ran into Schultz who had come running at the commotion. Both scrambled for the light switch.
In the few short moments it took to find the light, the yells subsided to low moans.
"What th'ruddy blazes happened?" Newkirk gingerly touched his jaw, where deep red burns faded slowly.
"Someone wrote again," Kinch said, sitting forward on his bed to keep his raw back and neck off the rough sheets.
Accusations exploded through the room.
"Addison, if you do that one more time…"
"I never wrote that! You're the one who wrote that story about the dogs!"
"I thought we were through with that, O'Brien!"
"Next guy who thinks it's funny to put on a red shirt and go on a recon mission can go jump off a cliff!"
"If you hadn't started it, Newkirk…"
"Don't you go blamin' me for what you wrote!"
"Haaaalt!" Schultz bellowed, flipping the light switch on an off several times before the room quieted. "What is going on here!" He demanded. Something had set the generally congenial roommates against each other, and whatever that could be, it must be bad. For once he felt the air of authority over this group, a father refereeing unruly children who couldn't control themselves.
"It's all Newkirk's fault," Lebeau started. "He started writing for that short story contest. Now whatever we write happens to us!"
"It's certainly not my fault, you jumped on the idea so fast I thought I was seein' double!" Newkirk cried.
"Then why don't you stop writing?" Schultz asked. The boys should have thought of that obvious solution.
Sliding off his bed and stretching the newly healed skin, Kinch faced the sergeant. "We tried. But then another idea came and another idea, and once we started we couldn't stop. They wouldn't let us go."
"They?" Schultz lost the thread of what Kinch was trying to explain. What they was he personifying?
"They. The ideas," Kinch clarified, waving his hand vaguely at the intangible strands of plot still floating about.
"The muses," Lebeau said. "We had to do what they said. They seemed like good ideas at the time. They are still good ideas," he added vehemently. He bit the words back, but they had already escaped.
"Except the one where you got yourself shot," said Newkirk.
"And the one about the munitions factory," added Baker
"And that last one, whoever did that." Lebeau said.
"I did."
Everyone recognized the voice, but didn't believe that the speaker would ever fall prey to the writer's curse.
"I wrote that last one," Colonel Hogan admitted again. "I wanted to prove to you all that dramatic stories didn't have to be painful."
"And?"
"And I was wrong! Somehow things got away from me. The story just about wrote itself!" The words left Hogan's mouth before he'd had a chance to think about what he was saying. This must be what going crazy feels like, he thought. He noted the nods of understanding from all the prisoners. Someone call the funny farm; they were all going crazy.
Schultz considered the odd evidence then asked, "well why don't you write only happy stories?"
"Some of us," Carter glared pointedly at Baker, with whom he'd argued earlier that day, "don't do "happy"."
"I can't help it," Baker said, glaring back. "Everything I write comes out as drama. What was I supposed to do?"
"That's it," Colonel Hogan decided it was past time to take the reins back. "No more stories." The protests started rumbling, but he cut them off. "Take what you've got and pack them up. They're going to London tomorrow. Tonight if we can. This nonsense has got to stop."
The aftereffects of the Writer's Disease took several days to repair. The backup of missions, the personal hygiene, the residual arguments, all finally settled back into the groove.
"I'll never write another thing as long as I live," Lebeau swore once things seemed to be coming to a close.
Newkirk and Carter sat comfortably at the table playing cards. Carter picked up a card and discarded it. "Boy I'll say. If I ever have to hear a story writing itself in my head again, I'll go crazy!"
How'd you be able to tell?" Newkirk picked up the discarded card and added it to his hand.
"If that's what's going on inside our author's minds…" Hogan started to say he felt sorry for them, but couldn't actually go that far. "Well, I'm glad I'm not them," he said instead.
"Amen to that," Baker looked up from his book.
The tunnel entrance rumbled, the bed lifting and the ladder dropping. Kinch appeared from below. "Message from London, Colonel," he said.
Wordlessly Hogan crossed the room and followed Kinch to the radio.
Newkirk shuffled his cards noncommittally. Carter picked up and discarded the same card twice. Lebeau looked to Baker who looked to the open tunnel.
As if of one mind, all four jumped up and clambered for the ladder.
Garlotti led the charge of the extras, gathering around the top of the bunk and hanging over the bed frame.
Addison pushed Broughton out of the way to lean further over the open tunnel, straining to hear the radio conversation.
"WHAT?" Colonel Hogan's unmistakable yell of aggravation ricocheted out of the tunnel.
Five men crowded around Hogan trying to catch Mama Bear's repeated reply.
"We're terribly sorry, Papa Bear. Must have lost the package in transit." Mama Bear twirled a strand of hair around her finger. Beside her sat an empty envelope from Stalag 13. Several painful hours had passed in the reading of those stories and the general consensus was that Papa Bear and his crew should stick to what they do best. The stories went into the deepest archive of the deepest secret warehouse. Some things, London decided, should not be allowed to see the light of day.