Killer Keys – Part 2

An Anatomy of Typewriters Story

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The following morning Nat woke up to the sun peeking through a twisted blind and striking her right on her closed eyes. She opened one eye and looked around. She was definitely still in her apartment which was at least one positive. She couldn’t remember how she got into bed although she still wore the clothes she had on the day before. 

She managed to push herself into a sitting up position in bed and picked up her cellphone to see the time when it started to squeal in her hand. It was the perfect ringtone after all.

Suddenly, she remembered having ignored her boss all day yesterday. It might work for one day but not two days in a row. She had to answer it. Like her old teacher taught her, she put a smile on her face and answered the call.

“Hi Bernice. I’m so sorry I missed your calls yesterday. I was tied up—”

“Spare me the bullshit, Nat. You better have something for me or I swear to God I’m cutting you loose this time,” Bernice said. She could hear her through the phone popping open a medicine bottle. That was her way. She was always a bundle of frazzled nerves. Always taking a pill for this or that ailment. She never let a moment pass her by on the phone when she wasn’t consuming some medication. Nat often wondered if she did this with everyone she spoke to and if so, how she hadn’t overdosed on these medications by now.

“Of course I’ve got something,” Nat said, clearly trying to use some stalling tactics while she went to her laptop in the hopes of unearthing some old gem she could submit till she could get her act together to write something better. When she sat down at her chair she saw the paper in her typewriter had words on it. Several in fact. All the way to the bottom of the page where she read the words “THE END” dead center.

“You better not be fucking with me, Nat. And don’t try sending me something you wrote when you were in high school. You tried that before and quite frankly, your early work sucks.” Bernice moved the phone away from her mouth while she popped a pill and chugged water to swallow it.

Nat looked beside the typewriter and found pages turned face down beside it. She picked up the stack and found five fully typed out pages with a title at the top, also dead center, that read “THE SHADOW KILLER.”

How was this even possible she thought to herself.

“HELLO? Are you still with us, Nat?”

“Uh, yes. I mean, no. Nothing from high school. I’ll bring it in today. This morning,” Nat said, fumbling her words as the memory of the alcohol she drank the day before returned. Her friends always teased her for being such a light weight. But to have had so much she forgot having written an entire short story?

“Bring it in? Just email it to me,” Bernice said.

“I can’t. I…It’s typed on a typewriter,” Nat said, realizing how silly that will probably sound to Bernice. No one uses a typewriter anymore.

“A typewriter? My, aren’t we fancy. Fine,” she said, moving the phone away from her mouth again, this time to cough so violently Nat thought she surely hacked up a hair ball. “I’ll be in the office till one this afternoon. You better bring me something, Nat or I swear to God—”

“Yes, Bernice. Or you’ll make me wish I stayed in the obits department,” Nat said, rolling her eyes.

“Careful, Nat or the next obit we write will be yours,” Bernice said before hanging up. She always had to have the last word.

“Bitch.”

Nat grabbed the pages and pulled the last page from the typewriter. She eyed it strangely, a memory of tapping came to her mind but she couldn’t quite place it. 

Bernice is the managing editor of a fairly prestigious magazine. It was more like an institution now that the world was turning digital but Bernice was determined to keep things as they always have been. 

“If it was good enough in the 1900’s then it’s damn well good enough now. Our readers will see to that,” she always said at just about every team meeting.

The magazine was meant to be part fiction with flowery obituaries thrown in from the past and the present. It was the fiction that made the magazine a staple in the community. To this day many known writers got their start where Nat is right now and she knew it. The last thing she wanted to do was blow this once in a lifetime opportunity. A stepping stone to a real career in the arts. A way to let her family know her writing and daydreaming wasn’t for nothing.

She handed the pages to Bernice who prided herself in being a speed reader. She leaned back in her chair, surrounded by stacks upon stacks of paper. Each one a manuscript some poor sod had sent in to the magazine in the hopes of discovery. Bernice hated them all but she refused to throw them out. It made her feel more important than she really was. Sure, she got to pick the winners and losers but she was getting on in age and would need to retire eventually. Give up the power to someone else younger and with their own vision for the place. 

Whenever Nat and Bernice didn’t see eye-to-eye, Nat wished the piles of paper would just fall over onto her and crush her when no one was around. She didn’t wish that today as she sat in the chair on the other side of Bernice’s desk and waited.

Nat let her eyes wander the room while she waited. Photos that could’ve been photoshopped of Bernice shaking hands with politicians and celebrities. Many of them were dead or Nat didn’t think were so popular today but they had pride of place on the walls and on bookshelves. 

Bernice slammed the pages down on the desk so hard it made Nat jump in her seat. She pulled off her reading glasses and let them fall, resting on her cleavage from their tether. She stared at Nat who suddenly felt like she was being inspected under a microscope and it made her palms sweaty.

“This… is… brilliant!” She shouted. “Chris! Chris, get your butt in here now!” She continued to shout, this time over Nat’s head and through the shut door. 

Her office was behind floor to ceiling glass so she could see everyone in the office. Nat turned in her chair to see Chris stand up from her chair, a pencil keeping her hair up and her brown rimmed glasses dangling on the edge of her nose. She wore platform shoes that added about six inches to her height but were so heavy she hunched over when she walked in them for fear she’d fall over.

“Yes, boss,” Chris said, opening the office door and sticking her head in.

Everyone knew Chris was going to be Bernice’s replacement. Bernice wouldn’t say it but she knew it would be Chris as well. It’s why, for the last year, whenever she made any important decisions involving the magazine she made sure Chris was in the room when it happened.

“Read this and tell me what you think?” The ultimate test. Chris was being asked for her opinion. She had no idea if Bernice’s enthusiasm was one of excitement at having read something brilliant or satisfaction at having read the worst crap ever to cross her desk. Nat wasn’t sure either and now had to sit patiently while someone else read the story she didn’t even remember writing.

Chris planted herself in the seat beside Nat and just said, “wow.”

“Is that good?” Nat asked, unable to remain silent any longer.

“Is that good?” Bernice repeated mockingly. “Is that good?” Her voice louder. She looked at Chris to finish her thought.

“It’s probably the best piece of writing I’ve read in the last decade,” Chris said, cautiously. She looked at Bernice and hoped she would say the same.

Bernice nodded. “Two, possibly even three decades I’d say. Easily.” Nat breathed a sigh of relief. Her job was saved at least for now. “Make sure this gets in the next issue.”

“You mean the one going to press tomorrow? But we already sent the files last night,” Chris said, a note of panic in her voice.

“Well, unsend them. Get on the phone right now and tell them we have a last minute edition. Bump whatever you have to, but get this one in. Our readers will love it!” Bernice said, waving for both of them to leave her office. She chuckled to herself and the last thing Nat heard as she left Bernice’s office was, “shadow killer. Brilliant.”

Nat hadn’t expected her story to go so well, especially as she doesn’t remember writing it, let alone what it’s about. The whole way home on the bus she tried to remember the events of last night. Tried to picture herself sitting at the typewriter writing a story, this story, the one she left in the capable hands of Bernice and Chris. She wished she had asked for a copy before she left but figured she’d just read it when it hit the newsstands tomorrow.

The next morning, Nat made her breakfast like she always does; toast and coffee. She sipped and dipped while listening to classical music. The time had come for her to check her emails and organize her plans for the day when she saw the typewriter. It had a page in it. She remembered distinctly not putting paper in it the night before. And yet here it was.

Not only did it have a paper in it but she watched as it typed out letters on to the page all on its own. One letter at a time was pressed and with the strike of each onto the page she walked closer to it to see what it was typing.

Nat slowly sat down in her chair in disbelief. She did just see her typewriter act on its own and type without the aid of anyone and yet it couldn’t be. Surely there was some trick to it? Her great uncle must’ve sent it as some sort of gag gift.

Her phone rang and for the first time in a long time she answered it without first screening the caller ID or listening to the ringtone to alert her.

“You will be careful, won’t you?” It was Nat’s mother on the phone and as usual she seemed to be starting their conversation in the middle without any context.

“What?” Nat asked, an air of frustration in her voice. The last thing she needed right now was to play a game of twenty questions with her overbearing mother.

“Have you not seen the news? It seems the police have kept an investigation from the public that they now feel we ought to know. Typical of them to do that, isn’t it? Wait till the fifth body drops and all of a sudden they think ‘okay, we better tell people now.’ I mean, that could’ve been me.”

“Mom, I really wish you’d just say whatever it is you’re trying to say instead of talking at me like I’ve just been in the room with you for the last sixty years of your life! Jesus H.—”

“Do not speak the Lord’s name in vain, please. I raised you better. I’m glad to hear you’re so concerned for your mother. Especially, as now she’s living in the same town as a serial killer.”

Nat got very quiet. Her mother was prone to over exaggeration and if that’s what this was she was in no mood to play.

“Mom, what are you on about?”

“The Shadow Killer, dear. It’s been on the news all morning. Everyone is talking about him. Stalks his victims in the night. Usually woman who all look like me, quite frankly. Or maybe like me when I was your age…” she said, her voice trailing off. “Come to think of it, these women do look a bit like you.”

“Sorry, did you just say ‘Shadow Killer’?” I asked. “Are you sure you’re not just reading my story? Though how you got your hands on it already…”

“This isn’t one of your fantasy stories, dear. This is real life. Do yourself a favor and listen to talk radio in the mornings instead of all that classical music, you might learn something valuable. You know, maybe you can write about this serial killer and be a real journalist.”

“Uh, mom, my boss is on the other line. Sorry, gotta go. Bye.” Nat quickly hung up before her mother could say another word. It was her own fault for answering the phone. She would’ve guessed how it was going to go. The same way every conversation with her mother always goes. Inevitably she brings up the lack of a real job and Nat finds a reason to hang up.

But why did she mention the Shadow Killer? Wasn’t that the name of her story? She had to be sure so she got dressed to head down to the newsstand on the corner. They always got in her magazine specially, ever since the owner found out she would be featured in it. His very own celebrity. It made her cringe to see the picture he insisted taking of her that one time holding up her own article in front of his newsstand but because of it she was able to get whatever she wanted there for free.

Fresh out the shower and dressed, Nat hoped the newsstand would be crowded with people. It meant there would be no time for small talk. As she exited her building and made a left she looked up to the sky and gave thanks for small miracles.