Except they're the crazy ones. See, they can read thoughts, too. Only they do it better than me. And the world calls them "leading lights" and "visionaries," the critics rave about how they "stare unflinchingly into the darkness." The editors fight over them, make fools of themselves in their rush to outbid each other. Agents snap like sharks in a bloody sea, hoping to get a piece.
Sorry. I'm getting angry, and my last doctor told me that getting angry is not the path to healing. And I want to be cured. I really do. I want to get outside again. They won't let me have any pencils or pens or other sharp objects, and it's really hard to write novels with crayons. Plus editors won't look at handwritten manuscripts.
Tell about how it started? Again? How many years did you go to school to earn a piece of paper that empowers you to judge me? Ten years of college, just like I thought. Seems like you'd need a good memory to get through all those classes.
But I'll do it. Because I'm a storyteller, and you're the audience. Even if I can read your thoughts and know that you don't believe a word of what I say. At least you're honest, and by that, I mean you don't lie to my face. Not like them.
It started way back then, with my story about the girl with psychokinesis. You don't believe in psychokinesis. But that's okay. It's not what you believe that matters. It's what I believe, and what I know.
I wrote that story in the early 1970's. Well, actually, I didn't get to write it. But I thought about it almost every day for two years. This girl is in high school, see, and all her classmates pick on her because she's so weird. Her mom's a religious zealot, and the girl doesn't have anybody to turn to when her mental powers start developing. PK always comes on with adolescence, see?
I never figured out how it was going to end, but I really was going to start writing. I bought a Royal typewriter and a bunch of paper. You can look it up, it's all in that civil suit I brought against that creep who stole my story. I can't mention his name, because of legal reasons, but one day the truth will come out.
So anyway, imagine my anger when that story came out as a bestseller in paperback, movie rights sold, and that low-down dirty thief quit his day job and became an overnight success. Sure, his agent put this spin on later, about how the guy wrote six hours a day for fifteen years, about how he'd been submitting stories since he was twelve or so, and that he'd been publishing short stories in naughty magazines. But you know the lengths they go to when they have to cover their tracks. And everybody knows they got the millions. Millions that should be mine.
Ah, you just crossed out the question mark, didn't you? "Episodic paranoia." No doubt about it, in your mind. You're smug, Doctor. As smug as they are. Everybody's right, and I'm wrong.
Go on? Sure, I'll go on. See, I'm controlling my temper. Just like the last doctor told me to do. And you're thinking that if you let me talk, I'll calm down and you can be done with me in time for your five o'clock martini. See me smile.
Back before I was a writer, when I was just a kid, I had this other idea. About a woman who has the Devil's baby. When the book came out about that one, I just figured it was a coincidence. But then when that guy stole my idea about the little girl who gets possessed by Satan and a Catholic priest tries to save her, I decided I'd better become a writer, too. I figured that if my ideas were so good that other people wanted to steal them, I'd better write them myself. That's when I came up with the psychokinesis idea.
Have I ever written anything? Sure, I have. I get a good sentence or two down, and then I stare at the paper. It's called "writer's block," and only creative people get it. That's why you breeze right through those papers you submit to the trade journals. That's the reason all these other writers are so prolific. It's easy when somebody else is doing your thinking for you.
Well, I decided I'd hurry through my next couple of books before somebody could steal my ideas. Except that one guy types faster than I do. So he beat me to the one about the virus that wipes out most of the world so God and the Devil can fight over the survivors, and he beat me to the one about the haunted hotel. And get this…
Whenever I got writer's block, do you know what I used to type? "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." And you-know-who steals it and everybody thinks it's the most clever thing to ever grace a page. And they call me crazy.
His best trick was when he "released" all these books that he'd supposedly written before he got famous. I had all of those ideas in one night, right after the PK book came out. You know, the walking race where only the winner survives, the same idea again except this time it's set in the future and the competitors are paid to run for their lives, one where a man blows up stuff because he doesn't like progress, and one where a kid shoots up his high school. That last one was so dumb I didn't think anybody would steal it. But you-know-who types a lot faster than he thinks, so he'd probably mailed it to his publisher before he realized what it was about.
And he was clever, because he knew I was on to him. He even came up with a pen name for those books so that I would have to sue him twice. I guess he figured I couldn't afford lawyers' fees. I was just a poor writer, see? Never mind that I'd never actually published anything.
It was bad enough when only a few people were picking my brain. Once in a while, I could feel them, up there in my skull, tiptoeing around and fighting each other for the best ideas. But then people across the ocean got into the act. People in England and some people who couldn't even speak English. That's what I call power, when your ideas are so universal that they cross lingual and cultural barriers. But my head was getting crowded.
Ah, you just crossed out a word. Now it's just "paranoia." And you're about to write "delusions of grandeur." Why do they let you have a pencil and not me?
We both know why, don't we? Because then I would write down my ideas before they could steal them. The hospital's in on it, too. Yes, you can smile about it, like you've got a secret. But we both know better.
Let's see, where were we? Because you are my audience and I don't want to lose you.
Oh, yes. My idea about a bunch of old men who had fallen in love with a ghost a long time ago. A different writer got that one. But instead of getting mad, I became more determined than ever. I quit my job and did nothing but think all the time, getting wonderful ideas one after another. Psychic vampires, sympathetic vampires who are more romantic than scary, a killer clown that's really a UFO buried under the ground, a puzzle box that opens another dimension, giant rats that live in the sewer system, paranormal investigators who discover a haunted town, a child that's really the Antichrist, so many ideas I could hardly keep track.
Everyone was stealing from me. Even writers who could barely make out a shopping list. Only the critics called it the "horror boom," and you couldn't pass the paperback rack in the supermarket without an army of foil-covered monsters grinning out at you. My monsters. Some I wasn't too proud of, but they're like children. You still have to love them, even the dumb and ugly ones.
I just kept getting ideas, and they kept stealing them. They got richer while I got madder. And I mean "mad" in the real way, not in the crazy way. But the maddest I ever got was when that British writer pulled a satire on me.
See, he wrote this story you may have read. Called it "Next Time You'll Know Me. " I know the story, and I've never even read it. Because I met him at a convention, and as I was shaking his hand, I was thinking that I hoped he didn't steal any of my ideas, because then I'd have to get him, and he seemed like such a nice man.
Of course, I'd never get him in real life, because only crazy people do things like that. But he looked at me, and he had a twinkle in his eye, and he started writing the story right there in his head. My story! About how a psycho thinks writers are stealing his ideas. I was going to say something, to claim copyright infringement, but the next woman in line pushed me away so she could shake the famous writer's hand.