Echo Ledger

Liam Barr hadn’t written a sentence in six months. Not a real one, anyway.

Instead, the cursor blinked on an empty page. A silent accusation that counted every second of his failure. A daily torture he put himself through for eight hours each day.

His laptop was full of notepad files, single paragraphs that had failed to flourish under his hands, and outlines for stories that had died in his mind.

Coffee stains and crumbs, the only real evidence he sat at his desk at all.

The flat smelt, not that Liam noticed, not anymore.

But it was a funk that also clung to him and his clothes, a pervasive smell that wasn’t hidden by aftershave or deodorants. He would need to leave his flat to remove it, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d left his home, his fortress, except to put the bins out.

Even his groceries were delivered to his door; the idea of going shopping had left him staring at the wall in defeat.

Layers of dust coated everything that wasn’t his desk, even the cobwebs, but if spiders didn’t clean their own webs, why should he? It all came back in the end.

He flicked the screens off, but in his head, when he closed his eyes, the slow blinking cursor continued, ever watching.

He nuked his latest frozen meal, upended it on a plate and plonked himself on the one spare space on his sofa, feet kicking off the detritus from his coffee table, which had lately become a footrest.

The frozen curry was bland, but warm. He threw the plate to one side and turned on the television.

“Can I still call myself a writer if I can’t fucking write?”

The flat didn’t answer. It never did, just sitting in silent judgement.

He heard the notification sound from his phone, as he rummaged through the junk on the couch, he swore that tomorrow, he’d clean up.

A promise he broke daily.

Papers, discarded cans, empty wrappers went flying to the floor in his attempts to find his phone, and when he did, he wished he hadn’t bothered.

Jessica, his ex, posting about her happy holiday with her newest beau.

The phone dropped onto the coffee table. “Bitch,” he spat out. Stalking into his kitchen, opening every cabinet he could, searching for alcohol.

He was down to vodka. Neat.

He would need to put in a food order, but it would do for now. It wasn’t like he had guests. They stopped visiting when Jessica had left.

He stared at it for a while before taking a large swig straight from the bottle.

If it wasn’t for her, he would not be in this situation, he knew that.

‘Trust social media,’ Jessica had said. ‘It’s the place to do business these days.’

He slammed the kitchen cupboard shut. “Yeah, right, that worked out well.”

He had concerns about the small print on the contract. Too much fancy wording about ownership and royalties, wrapped up in legalese. It hadn’t felt right. It was too wordy, too many herein’s and thereto’s rendering it incomprehensible to the layperson.

But she, Jessica, his beloved, had persuaded him not to get a lawyer involved. Wasted money… more for them when the book was a bestseller.

And the book had sold over a million copies, becoming the hit they promised it would.

Except his name was not on the cover. He’d unknowingly signed his rights away for a fee. What he’d believed to be an advance had ended up as a single payment of £5000.

Not long after Jessica realised he wasn’t about to be inundated with spare cash, the rising star she expected. She’d left.

Packed her bags and stolen away when he was at a lawyer’s office, leaving him with an empty flat and a lease he could barely afford.

She had found Matt days later. Fucking days later. Four years of life together, and it had taken just days for her to move on.

The friends had fallen away after two months. Their messages had become less frequent, their sympathy, less sincere.

“Your drinking is becoming an issue,” Chris, his best friend, had said. “Maybe clean up a little.”

Liam wasn’t sure if he meant personally or his flat. But the killer was the last message Chris sent.

‘Get over it, man. She’s gone, your book’s gone; you can’t live in the past. Get a job, get laid, and call me when you have.’ And then, radio silence.

He wanted to smash something. The bottle, his fist against the wall, but he couldn’t risk the visit from the landlord. Being kicked out would just be the final cherry on his otherwise disastrous life.

Taking the bottle to his spot on the sofa, he turned up the tv, and tried to distract himself.

Stacks of his research lined the walls and floor. Interviews with retired detectives, transcripts from prison visits, annotated files of the different methods killers had used, and his original manuscript.

The Anatomy of a Killer: A James Blakely detective novel

When he had complained, threatened to sue, to go public, they’d laughed and pointed him toward their non-disclosure agreement with the parting words of. ‘You’re lucky we didn’t sue.’

He wasn’t lucky. He was invisible. Forgotten.

Worse, he couldn’t even write his follow-up book. The contract banned him from using any of the characters from that book. The ones he’d so lovingly crafted, back stories and all.

Drumming his fingers against the vodka bottle, he could start again. Hell, he had a short story somewhere. It wasn’t great, but he’d post it, find a free site. Start from scratch and build his own small following.

He stood.

It was a start; maybe that would encourage him to write again, to write for his readers. Once he got some, of course.

Opening up the laptop, he watched the damned cursor for a while before rooting through his drafts, as untidy as the flat, before finally finding and uploading the story.

It sat there in draft, challenging him to publish it.

Liam took a long draft of the vodka, staring at the site page, before he hit publish.

He stared at the screen as his heart kicked up a beat. A red notification icon had appeared. His joy was short-lived. Nothing more than an automatic approval notification.

Slumping forward, his hand grabbed the bottle in front of him before taking another drink.

What had he expected? Instant responses? He was still just Liam Barr, alone, in his filthy flat, just with an old story dusted off and the same old regrets.

Maybe tomorrow would be a better day… but he didn’t hold out much hope.