I wandered into the library and proceeded to sit in my reading chair, then lay over both arms, and finally to just sit upside down in the chair with my skirt tucked between my legs. Maybe, just maybe I could make myself sane again if I gave myself a bloodrush. I was finding something, but it wasn't my sanity.

"Now what are you doing?"

"Giving myself a headache," I said, squeezing my eyes shut and holding my forehead.

"Why?"

"Because I'm am idiot and I felt like it." I turned myself so I was laying over both arms again. The blood started rushing. "Whoah God!" I said, holding my entire face now. I pointed vaguely at Erik. "Don't ever do that. It hurts like hell."

"How do you know what hell feels like?"

I rolled off the chair and onto the floor. "It's just an expression." Using the chair for support, I managed to drag myself to my feet. "I need to find a less painful way to distract myself."

"From?"

"My stories. God, I need to find something to do before I drive myself completely insane." I kind of drifted off again, wandering the house, glancing at Erik's door whenever I could steal a look. Finally I sat down in a chair in the sitting room. "Oooooh! This is sooooo much worse than any summer vacation back home," I moaned, dropping my head on the arm of the chair. "At least then I had a chance to write."

"You certainly are interesting to watch." Erik had been watching me wander aimlessly around the house, and now he was back to being annoying, stating the obvious.

"Go away," I said, not lifting my head. "Don't you have some stalking to do or something?"

"Stalking?!" Offended, he walked closer to where I had collapsed of boredom. "What do you mean stalking?!"

"What else do you call a fifty-year-old who follows around a sixteen-year-old, obsessed with her? Now go away. My stories have declared war on my sanity, and my sanity's losing." I vaguely waved him away.

"You make no sense sometimes."

"I make perfect sense. To me. You just don't think on the same wavelength. If you did, you would currently be going crazy too from not writing anything in two weeks."

"All right. I'll bite. What do you write?"

"Fantasy and Science fiction mostly, along with the occasional poem." I looked up and saw that Erik had his arms crossed and had a disbelieving demeanor to the way he was standing. I put my hand to the side of my mouth and whispered loudly, as if imparting secret information to him. "My psychiatrist tells me that it's a good outlet for my emotions and helps keep me sane." I nodded sagely, but wide-eyed. "But I haven't been able to write anything in two weeks, and what little sanity I had is starting to leave."

"And writing would solve this?" I nodded, still staring at him. He turned around and walked away. Was that an eye-roll I detected behind that mask?

I only saw him in passing the rest of the day. Mostly I just hung out around the house--not like I had anything to do anyways.

The next afternoon, Erik came into the sitting room where I was staring off into space. He set a large-ish bundle wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine down on a small table, and he sat down in an armchair. I watched Erik carefully. Being in my evil assassin mindset, I was sure that Erik was trying to kill me. The brown package was just part of the plot. After he sat down, he folded his hands, his hands in his lap and his elbows on the arms of the chair, and stared at me. I stared at Erik, then at the package, then at Erik, and back to the package.

"Go on," he said finally, "open it. It's yours."

Glancing suspiciously at him, I slowly got up and walked over. I stopped a few feet away and assessed the situation. It didn't look dangerous, but a little bit of nitroglycerin goes a long ways to a good explosion. I walked up to the edge of the table.

"It's booby trapped, isn't it." I stared suspiciously at the package. "It's full of highly volatile explosives. Covered in acid that'll eat away my flesh. Contains a poison that you're immune to, but would kill me slowly, writhing in pain..." He didn't say a word, only looked at me expectantly with--could that be a grin on his lips beneath that mask? I proceeded to reach out and touch the brown paper with one finger, jerking it backwards instantly. Erik chuckled when nothing happened. I reached out again and carefully untied it, sliding the paper away.

I started to shake when I saw what he had bought me. I couldn't believe it. My mouth hung open as I struggled to draw ragged breathes. Erik had bought me paper. But not just paper--a ream of paper. An entire ream of blank paper. And there were pens and ink as well. I swallowed as I gently touched the cool smoothness of the paper.

"Is it to your liking?" I let out a shriek as I dove for the seated Erik.

"Thank you, Erik! Thank you, thank you, thank you!" I planted a kiss on the cheek of his mask and hurried back to the table, scooping up my newest treasures in my arms. My smile and excited eyes told Erik everything he needed to know as I raced down the hall like a five-year-old who had gotten the one and only thing on her Christmas list.

I closed myself in my room and cleaned off the small table, pulling up a chair. I was really, really excited. This was the first chance I had to write in almost two weeks. My fingers were itching to write. The nails and tips of my fingers were constantly dancing across that hand's thumb, jittery, yearning to write. Ideas raced through my head and I spun my pen in my hand, trying to grasp one of the ideas. One of the thoughts. The blank ream of papers in front of me was like putting a feast, a banquet, in front of a starving beggar. I didn't know where to begin. Which story to write. Whose story to write. Finally, I licked my lips, repressed the shiver that coursed through my body, and touched the pen-tip to the paper. Adair's journal. Adair's story.

I composed it in my mind first. It had to be right. Once it was written, it was the truth. It was what happened. There is no changing it. As soon as it was clear in my head, my pen flew across the paper, writing almost an entire paragraph before I really looked at what I was writing. When I did, all joy and excitement drained from my body, replaced with horror and dread. Everything I had written was in French. No. That couldn't be right. I didn't know French. I had never spoken French in my life--never written it, never studied or learned French. Hell, I barely remembered my three years of Spanish.

Okay. Maybe this wasn't so bad. I could work with this. So I knew French. I don't know how, but, hey, it was a necessity to communicate here. Logically, I'm in France. They speak French. I need to know French. I took a deep breath. No big deal. I could still read it. Hell, the Hunchback was in French, and I read that, and that was only last week. No big deal.

It looked a little strange, though. I mean, I've spent twenty-two years writing in English. Okay. All I had to do was concentrate, get the English flowing again, and I'd be fine. My brain was probably just locked in French. Hell, I'd probably been speaking it since I got here, not even realizing it. Deep breath. Okay. Spell it out in my head before writing it down. 'Not' is n-o-t. 'Gonna' is g-o-n-n-a. 'Write' w-r-i-t-e. 'French' f-r-e-n-c-h. I looked at what I had written. In French. I glared at it. This was going to take longer than I thought.

I tried for ten minutes, trying various speeds and concentrations. Writing nothing but French. I finally gave up and let out a frustrated scream, shoving everything off of the table and wrapping my arms around my head, trying to stay calm. No way was this happening. No way.