Dark Heart
A Writer's Obsession
Author’s Note:
I keep a notebook for writing ‘prompts’. They can be one word or a fully-formed idea, a suggestion made by someone else, or a piece of artwork with a story hidden just beyond the artist’s brushstrokes.
This short story started life as a piece called ‘Seven Deadly Sins’. The central character was to be driven by revenge and display each of the deadly sins as his madness unfolded. Maybe that story will emerge. In the meantime, this less cluttered idea came to mind.
The same central character, the same ‘dark heart’.
“Before we announce the shortlist for this year’s ‘Dark Heart Award for Crime Fiction’, a cautionary tale.”
The Chairman smirked, arching an eyebrow, a pantomime villain for an expectant audience. The gossip had started in the weeks before entries had closed. There were whispered hints that he would enter.
“The standard this year has challenged the judges more than ever before. The shortlist is the finest collection of short-form crime fiction we have had the pleasure of reading. Not since the days when Mycroft Watson - god rest his tortured soul - swept all before him have the entries soared so high.”
The applause thundered, the theatre audience acknowledging the work of the authors now shifting in their seats, hopeful eyes unable to resist a glance towards the elegantly mounted stiletto. Only one mantlepiece would welcome the trophy, but shortlisting guaranteed prodigious sales. They would all be winners.
“We are here to celebrate writing that chills a reader to the bone, fearful worlds where dark hearts fester and brutal crimes shatter lives. These are tales that left the judges gasping for breath, shivers down their spines.
Thank goodness, dear readers, for lighter moments in the darkness.”
The audience laughed nervously, unsure where the Chairman was heading with his introduction.
“Occasionally, we receive one entry, above all others, that shows us that crime writing is not for everyone. This year, that dubious honour goes to this piece of painful prose”.
The door squeaked like a startled rodent. The hairs on the back of his scrawny neck stood on end, alert to the warning signs. “Who is there?”, the detective asked. Nothing. Just silence. The silence of the dead. Was it the ghosts of his past come to haunt him? Tortured souls, victims of unsolved crimes begging him for some release. He turned back to the desk, the old oak chair creaking like a squeaking door in an attic room. He was edgy. The phonecall had not helped. There was no-one there. Silence. The silence of the dead. Ghostly silence as he mouthed the words into the mouthpiece of the relic from the 1950s. Hello, hello, is it me you are looking for? Who are you? The rasping breath down the crackling connection. A disconnected connection. Silence echoing inside his thoughts, bouncing around the dusty attic. The silence was louder than the squeak of the door and the creak of the chair. And then he heard it. But what did he hear? Rustling, like paper on a desk. He woke then, his head disturbing the case notes in front of him. That explains the rustling, Detective.
“There is more if you want it”. The Chairman shook his head theatrically, his face a picture of faux sadness as a wave of laughter washed against the stage. “And this utter drivel is offered to us by no less than Shylock Watson, the son of our only 3-time winner of the Dark Heart Award for Crime Fiction … which just goes to prove, this writer’s life is not for everyone”.
Shylock used to only grind his teeth when he was asleep. A sub-conscious childhood habit born of suppressed anger. These days his anger was everpresent, seething, simmering with the constant flush of humiliation. It had been that way since he had been exposed; since they exposed him. They who had once lauded him as the rightful heir to the father who chose words over his own flesh and blood. It is ironic that Mycroft Watson won three ‘Dark Hearts’ with page-turning tales of flesh and blood.
He was grinding his teeth now, setting his own nerves on edge. The Chairman. Sebastian-bloody-Fry, the stuck-up, obnoxious, supercilious fucker. He just couldn’t let it be, could he? He used his platform to heap ridicule on a young writer whose only ambition had been to live up to his father’s standards. It had been futile, but for a brief moment, he had believed in himself. He had believed.
Was it really three years since they both attended their first Dark Heart Award Ceremony? He remembered the outfit she wore that day, how she shimmered in the green sheath dress she had chosen to match her eyes. It was the day she first looked at him as someone more than the weird kid in the library, the one with the famous dad. He was shortlisted and heavily favoured to win. She had smiled at him, a knowing smile. Well, when your own father is Chairman of the judging panel, you hear things, don’t you?
He still remembered the sustained applause. They could never take that away from him. He had basked in it, a new-found confidence giving him the courage to ask her to dinner. Even as she agreed, there had been murmurings. That damned journalist. A super-fan of his father’s work. Poking, prying, and matching words and phrases. Nosing around, asking awkward questions that raised doubts. It hadn’t taken long for the front-page splash. Within the hour, the Chairman's acid tongue dripped poisonously down the phone, unceremoniously snatching back the Award he had so craved.
‘A Dark Heart of Plagiarism’.
No writer survives that sort of headline. He knew in his own dark heart that what he had done was wrong. The manuscript had been among his father’s possessions when he cleared the study in the days following the funeral. She’d been there, with her father. As she leaned in to embrace him, lips brushing his tear-stained cheek, the scent of ‘Obsession’ lingered on his heavy wool coat. Despite the November chill, warmth spread through his body. Days later, as he had sat at his father’s desk changing a word here and there, adding phrases from previous works, that warmth sustained him, fuelling daydreams and sleepless nights.
Even as he sealed the envelope, timing ‘his’ Dark Heart entry perfectly, his thoughts were on the Chairman’s daughter. Intentions as dark as the tale his father had penned fuelled his obsession with her.
After the Chairman’s call, he had ignored the incessant ringing of the vintage Bakelite phone, not wanting to hear her disdain, shielding himself from the words he imagined she would hiss, withdrawing before he could be pushed away.
In the years that followed, her star rose as dramatically as he had waned.
Shortlisted last year, she had been the standout name on this year’s long list.
He had no idea why he had chosen to submit again. Locked away in his father’s Victorian terrace house in an unfashionable part of London, he had clattered away at the typewriter. Occasionally words flowed. More often, he tore up the shitty first, second and third drafts. He showed them to no one, lacing them with hints of Mycroft Watson, hoping the phrasing elevated his work. Eventually, he had a manuscript he liked. He imagined his submission nestled against hers.
He had tuned in specially.
As the Chairman reached her name on the shortlist, scanning the audience to try to catch her eye, laughing as he announced that “they hadn’t required his casting vote for this particular submission”, Shylock Watson felt a flush of pride in her achievement.
The camera panned around the black ties and ballgowns. The empty seat stared back at an expectant television audience. The Chairman, ever the consummate professional, laughed it off. “She’ll be in the bar with a bottle of champagne already”.
He had loved that shimmering green dress but her choice this year was a knockout. Blue suited her pale skin. Off the shoulder was so last year, so before she had shaken off the effects of the sedative, he had turned it into a cheeky little ‘off the breast’ number. His body liked the way her body moved as she struggled against the heavy-duty duct tape securing her to the solid oak carver chair. He smiled at her, dark intentions lightening his mood. He had a little humiliation of his own to hand out; he had been planning this celebration party for quite some time. His next entry would be much improved by some tales of real-life darkness.
If you enjoy the darker side, you may enjoy these:
Hooked
I wrote a 500-word piece inspired by a photograph by Tadej Turk. ‘Chain of Events’ is a tale of revenge, fomented over a decade, planned with specific timings in mind. Kind readers found it “chilling” and “brilliantly orchestrated”. But what of the victim? 'Hooked' tells the same tale from their perspective.
Homecoming
The stranger arrives at the remote station before the village stirs. He waits patiently. The man he has an appointment with is a creature of habit.
Dark and twisty. Hmmm 🤔 is there a second part? Love your idea of a notebook of prompts!
I'm having to come and find your work these days, as it no longer shows up in my feed. Quite possibly the same thing is happening to my posts! So little engagement! 🤷🏼♀️
Well now I’m even more intrigued!