WRITERS BLOCK
Renata weighed her options carefully. Cora had sent her down to find them and kill them. That hadn't gone to plan, but Renata wasn't as upset by it as she expected. It was time.
She knew that the two people towering over her would not be moved by her tears. She wouldn't have been in their place, but the weariness of the years, and all that she'd done had finally caught up with her. She knew this was the end, and that warm and fuzzy thought had squeezed the reluctant tears from her eyes.
"Stop your blubbing and start talking." As expected, House was NOT moved.
"It all started..."
"Not your life story." House plopped down on the bed, and motioned Cuddy to sit beside him. Surprisingly she did. "Just get to the bit where you tell us where Wilson is and how we can save him."
Renata sighed. "He's in the attic, and you can't."
House had a sudden urge to hit her with the curtain rod again, but Cuddy grabbed his hand before he even made a move. He stared over at her, and she stared back. Her eyes were telling him what he already knew. Violence would not help Wilson.
"Fine...it all started..." House whined, not looking forward to a long story, but realizing Renata needed to tell it.
"When I first hired Cora." Renata twisted her body a bit, to a more comfortable position, as if that were possible. "She was from New Orleans, and her family, so she told me, were practitioners of voodoo. Naturally I was intrigued, and I hired her straight away."
House rolled his eyes, and felt Cuddy grab his hand again. "I wasn't going to hit her," House lied.
"Just give me the rod." Cuddy pried it out of his hand, and placed it on the bed behind her, out of his reach.
Renata ignored them. She felt she needed to say what she had to say before she died. "I had just written my first book. It had taken off in a way I was not expecting, and my publisher was pressuring me for another."
"Midnight in Hell," House informed Cuddy, who really could have cared less what Renata Rollins' first book was.
"Yes. You've read it?" Renata, like many writers, loved to discover new fans.
"It was quite good." House nodded. He felt his ribs impacted by Cuddy's elbow. "But that's irrelevant. Go on. And you'd better be getting to the part where you tell us what's happening to Wilson."
"I am getting there," Renata snotted, forgetting for a moment that she was facing impending death. "I had writers block, for months, I couldn't write a damned thing."
"My heart bleeds," House groaned sarcastically. "Now what about WILSON?"
Renata's eyes met his with furious distain. "Go ahead and shoot me," she challenged. "Put me out of my misery." Cuddy stared at her with wide eyes, she'd called their bluff. "I've lived far too long." Renata stared defiantly into House's eyes. Neither of them willing to back down.
"I don't have to kill you. I can just make you wish you were dead." House's words sent a chill down Cuddy's spine. She knew that he had done some unethical things in his life, and that his judgment was sometimes questionable, but she had never heard such vehement anger in his voice. She'd never seen him be so vicious. Then again, she'd never seen him trying to save his friends life.
"I already wish I were dead." Renata answered with a dead calm. Then she went back into her story. "If I'd have known what was about to happen, I might have offed myself that cold winter night, when Cora came to me with a solution to my problem."
"Oh, for Christ's sake," House bellowed. "I'm just going to shoot her. We can find Wilson on our own." House cocked the gun, but Cuddy grabbed his hand, making aiming an impossibility. "She's not going to tell us anything Cuddy," he struggled to shake the small but strong woman off.
"You can't just kill her House!"
"Why not? What do you think she had this gun for Cuddy? Killing flies?"
Cuddy hadn't really thought about it actually. She looked down at Renata and saw the truth in her eyes. She closed her own tightly, then gulped, fighting the urge for revenge. "Don't do it House. We can leave her here. Find Wilson ourselves..."
"And what?" Renata laughed a cold, hollow laugh.
"And get the hell out of here!" House boomed.
"She won't let you go." Renata said. "She won't let him go. Not until she's taken what she wants from him."
"And what is it she wants?" House demanded, the gun pointed right at Renata's head, despite Cuddy's still holding on to it.
"His soul." Renata said.
"That's it!" House cocked the gun.
Renata looked up at him, her eyes pleading for mercy, begging him to pull the trigger and put her out of her misery. She waited, but no bullet came.
"The day after I agreed to Cora's help, our typist went missing. Nice girl, not terribly bright, but all..."
"I don't care about your bloody typist!" House waved the gun around. His finger was aching from the desire to press down slowly on the hard little trigger.
"You should. Because your friend is going through the same thing she went through."
House looked at Cuddy. "She's..."
"Shhhh. I know." Cuddy tried to calm him, putting her hand on his back, and rubbing it slowly, carefully. She did not want to upset him any more than he was.
"I never saw the young woman again, only the product of her death." Renata could feel House's cold, hard glare. "The Secret Dungeon."
House furrowed his brow. "You're second novel?"
"Yes." Renata waited a moment, to see if it sunk in.
House's mind was racing, trying to put all the pieces together.
"You're killing people, to sell books?" Cuddy, too was struggling with the truth.
"That's the simple answer, yes."I wish I could tell you how she does it, but I don't know."
"Right," House snapped doubtfully.
"I don't. All I know is that your friend..." She looked at them, waiting. She needed to hear his name. She needed know it, and remember it.
"Wilson," Cuddy said quietly.
"Your friend Wilson is trapped inside his worst nightmare, and she won't let him go until the book is finished."
House's face just said 'huh?'
"And when he's finished, he'll end up like her." Renata nudged her head toward the dead woman on the bed. "She was Cora's last victim..."
"YOUR last victim!" House refused to let her justify away her guilt. "YOU have been living off the fame and fortune for decades. How many people have you killed, huh? You have what...almost fifty books now."
"Wilson's will be the fiftieth," Renata said quietly.
"Right! So you've killed fifty people now?"
"Forty nine," Cuddy corrected him. "Remember, she wrote the first book herself."
"Oh, that's different then. Only 49? Hell, let's just let her go then. She's as pure as the shit covered snow."
"When I realized what was really happening...what could I do? Who would have believed me?"
"What you can do right now is tell us how to save Wilson!" House snapped.
"I don't know how." Renata cried out. "Look, he's in the attic, asleep. Cora will be with him, watching him, taking notes or whatever it is she does. Her room is downstairs, across from the kitchen. I don't know if you'll find anything there, but that's your only hope."
"You forget," House said cockily, "I have a gun."
Renata laughed wearily again. "You think she doesn't? She'll have locked the door. She'll hear you coming and be waiting to pick you off before you even see her. No. It won't work."
"And what are we supposed to find in her room that will change any of that scenario?" House snapped.
Cuddy took his arm. "Come on House, we're not going to get anything more out of her, and we're wasting time."
House glared at Renata, then put the gun in his pocket and followed Cuddy out the door, making sure to 'accidentally' smack the woman one more time with his curtain rod cane.
