He didn't know how he had gotten back to Dermitt's Towers apartment.
It seemed that he had been there all along. He was sitting in the same
chair, as though he'd merely dozed there for a time. He shook his head
to clear it. Then he remembered.
He turned and saw Dermitt slumped over his typewriter, his hands
clutched to his abdomen. Fleetwood frowned. So that was the way of it;
the writer had managed to project himself into two separate dimensions
simultaneously, a dangerous undertaking even for a sane man. Fleetwood
shoved himself out of the chair and hurried to the alcove.
As he approached, Dermitt stirred weakly and opened his eyes and
twisted them in his direction. There was no blood, no wound--no
visible, physical wound--but still Dermitt was dying.
"Hurry!" he whispered. "I ... I blacked out. I guess I went a little
crazy for a while. Please save me."
Fleetwood took him under the arms, and, ignoring his moans of pain,
half-dragged, half-carried him to the nearest chair. He eased him into
the chair and turned back. Then he stopped and looked around at the
little man again. He sucked in his breath with a start of surprise.
Dermitt was losing substance! He was actually fading away into a shadow
of himself. The dying fictional projection was carrying away the
physical one. The wound was too vital, too real to the writer for him
to draw resistance from the fact of its fictional source. There wasn't
much time.
"Hurry, Cassidy!" Dermitt mouthed soundlessly. "Hurry!"
Fleetwood pulled himself away from the spectacle of the fading
bug-eyed little author who had forced him through volumes of abuse and
harassment, who had actually attempted to murder Kitty and himself. He
ran to the typewriter.
He sat down and poised his hands over the keys. Then, with one last
intense glance in Dermitt's direction, he began to type....
* * * * *
The drug store sparkled from its cleaning of the night before. Morning
sunshine, showing through the plate-glass windows, conspired with the
indirect lighting to make the displays, the jars, the bottles, the
paper clips and snake bite kits gleam like a rajah's ransom. Fleetwood
perched himself on the stool at the end of the counter and leaned
forward in an attitude of expectation. Presently he was rewarded.
"Fleetwood!" Kitty called, catching sight of him. She came swiftly to
dock at the napkin holder in front of him. "I was hoping you'd show up
today. I had the goofiest dream about you last night."
"I'll bet," Fleetwood said with a sigh of happy relief. Explanations
weren't going to be necessary after all.
"I'd tell you about it," Kitty went on, "but every time I try to get
it straight in my head everything just gets all mixed up. I was mad at
you, I remember, but at the same time I didn't really want to be."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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