The source of the accusation was a student who claimed the man had stolen her ideas for his last, most successful novel, stole them right out of her computer, hacking in, she said, even after she bought a new computer, carefully protected it, did not connect it to the internet, changed her name. Still he bore in and stole, wiping her words, leaving others in their place, violent images, coded threats only she could understand. Stole ideas she hadn’t even written yet.
Clearly, my friend said, this person is very ill.
And yet! Eyebrows, hands, up.
I had two cocktails and a plate of fries. After, we talked about books, which I preferred. Books don’t cause me to drink, alone, after I get home, to such excess that I lie on the couch all night thinking I’ll fall asleep and being wrong about that until I shower sickly in the morning and go to work delirious.
~
Fiona Foster has published stories in NOON Annual, The New Quarterly, and Matrix Magazine. She is a graduate of Concordia University’s creative writing program in Montréal, Quebec and is at work on her first novel.