84. Out Cold
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"Damn it!" He screamed his blue eyes were hard and aggravated. "Damn it all to hell!"
"What's wrong?" She asked quietly watching him throw papers about the room. She watched as one of the books hit the wall harshly, breaking the bondage so that the loose papers inside spilled out. "Please calm down." She urged as she gingerly bent down to collect the book tenderly.
"Leave it." He demanded harshly she pulled back. "Its shit anyway, just leave it there." He coughed hoarsely he'd been sick for months and was never getting better.
She pulled a piece of long brown hair behind her ear that had escaped from the tight bun atop her head. "But...but you worked so hard."
"It's all meaningless, all of it, meaningless. I'm a hack, a pure waste of human potential." He growled through his clenched teeth as he grasped the edge of the desk tightly. "I hate this, like all things. Absolute garbage, dispose of it."
She held the papers close to her chest. "No...no it's beautiful work. You know they say the hardest critic is often yourself. I think-"
"Who cares what you think?" He spat turning and glaring at her.
The hurt look in her eye made him tighten his scarf around his neck as though the room had grown colder. If that was even possible the weather was frightful and the fire in his wood stove had died down. The wind howled and scraped at the window viciously.
She let out a spiteful sigh and glared at him, her father had warned her of him. He may have had beautiful words to write but his soul was not half so gorgeous. In fact the years she'd spent at his side trying to remedy his disturbed mind and love him as much as she could had all been in vain.
He'd not returned an ounce of love her way nor ever made the time to make pretty little poems about her. He was always depressed; he never said anything to ease her fears or sufferings. All he ever did was take from her and drink reality away.
"F-fine..." She quivered with rage and sadness. "If-if that's the way you're going to be...well then fine be that way. You're nothing but a no good scum vagabond. I don't love you Victor!" She cried tears falling from her cheeks but her glare never lifted.
She ran for the door and slammed it leaving the cold man alone to himself. "Mary." He sneered and reached into his desk and pulled out a large bottle and began drinking. It wasn't long till he'd already downed the entire bottled and was staring at it haplessly swaying slightly.
He got up in only the in the thin clothes he wore and walked outside into the cold snowy night. He walked through the empty sleeping town screaming for Mary until his throat was raw and tired. He passed a bookstore and saw one of the best sellers propped up all fancy and in the window for all to see. He coughed harshly as he gazed inside.
It was his book, his thoughts, his views but it didn't have his name on it. The book had someone else's name on it, someone else was enjoying the glory of his genius. He knew what he was doing when he agreed to ghostwrite but it felt wrong. No one knew he'd worked so hard on it, even loved it, but Victor had never had the confidence to publish his works under his name.
He hated his name, he hated himself. Anything as pretty as he wrote didn't deserve to be tied to his name. He let his glove slide down the cold glass window. The man who's name was on the book, now there was someone. He wasn't some drunk lamenting and self-loathing out drunk in the cold.
He stumbled over himself and landed hard into the snow. He didn't get up, too tired, too sick. He didn't want to live anymore anyway. "Mary..." He whimpered seeing only a ghost of her, knowing well she wasn't there to hold him up anymore.
"Mary you stupid twit..." He shivered as he tried to prop himself up, looking for her desperately in the empty snow blind street.
But no one heard him, no one saw him, and no one would care to know what had become of him. That's how it'd always been; he'd always been a ghost of a person hiding behind someone else's name. And that someone else always took his glory because he let them.
"Mary...I wrote it all for you." He whispered and dropped his head onto the cold street.
She wouldn't hear nor know his fate and she'd never know all those pretty little poems she'd adored were in her name, from her spouted his inspiration. But he hated so much he let it affect him and dissolve any empathy and love he could ever hope to have.
Drunk, sick, and dying. A shadow in the dark upon the white. Hardly a man, who was never needed or never even heard. A ghost of a person, sad and empty, never knowing what it was to truly live. It'd finally happened; he'd drunken his life away and wasted all of his talent and potential. He'd made himself nameless and now no one, not even himself, would ever recall Victor Aldridge.
I like ghostwriter, although I imagine his existance was pathetic and depressing. I don't know if they gave him a name on the show so pfft, not gonna look it up. Beware, I need to catch up to Chaosdragon who is done now, so expect an explosion of crazy drabbles.