Prologue: Voices in Her Head

 

So noisy… What on Earth is going on?

It would look so-o fantastic with her name on the cover, one female voice said.

Wait! It was way too early for this. She is supposed to summon her powers and glamour to make the best of this day, another one objected. Or rather calculating the probability to have a meeting with indescribably fulfilling outcome. Because it is always Math that makes the world spins round.

In such a way that it all ends up with her name on a book cover, the first voice insisted.

With my creature now fully awake, I recognised it was Ambition talking to any thought as it emerged.

What if she screws up the interview? – that was Doubt speaking. I should have wakened up earlier. She needs me more than ever.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you keep quiet? You are not helpful. We are in the middle of the preparation of the plan for do’s and don’ts for the meeting in the publishing house.

Booz and donuts, I like that – Humour said from the side-line.

I entered as if I own the place, which is not far from the truth. Only looked at them and they all kept quiet. Looked persistently at Ambition and she moved briskly away from the decision-making board. I sat behind it and looked at the day through Elena’s eyes. The plan was absolute nonsense. She didn’t need these dos and don’ts.

It is an appointment of paramount importance for your future, I spoke. At the sound of my voice, Humour went off, singing “if your species will continue, clap your hands” and clapping. Doubt and Ambition started chattering in the corner. I darted a look at them and they continued in sparse whisper.

The telephone screen in Elena’s hand showed quarter to nine.

I bet she will be late, I heard. Looked at Doubt and Ambition and knew immediately it was none of them. It was a meek voice, as if coming with the wind and passing through you, leaving its message in a sly way. Making you think it was your own idea all along. But I knew better. It was the voice of Fear.

Humour? I called.

I am going back to bed, she said.

Please, don’t do it yet. Would you be sweet to find Fear and tickle him for a while.

It’s funnier if I tell him Chuck Norris jokes.

Whatever you wish, just keep him busy.

Got it.

You have gone a long way to come here and you are almost ready, I said to Elena You know your good habits. First sport. We have lost some time already, but it is still possible to squeeze in a 4-minute Tabata training.

Shower, I continued after the four minutes of interval training, that refreshed every single one of us. I love high intensity workouts, because they train me as much as the body. I put every effort to make the shower quick as lightning, as I preferred not to put up with Imagination on such a busy day. And she always wakes up with long showers or baths.  

It is today, right? Speaking of the devil, here came Imagination with her hoarse morning voice.

You need a glamour spell, Elena. With butterfly dust and pink morning clouds. I will be back in a minute to guide you to it.

I facepalmed.

Before Imagination spread her wings and began fluttering around, I took charge and sang a lullaby to her. She yawned and closed her eyes. Danger diverted successfully. I was time for a protein rich breakfast during which we, together with Memory and Ambition had to structure the information and expectation for the upcoming meeting. Teamwork is key.

I straightened Elena’s back when she sat on the sofa. Made her chew slowly as always. She is a wonderful being. It is an honour for me to be responsible for her decisions and take care of her happiness. My name is Self Control.

​

Chapter 1: SFDS

An hour later Elena was walking towards the office of Book Now – the biggest publishing house for fiction, she knew. She looked at her reflection on the polished glass of a by-pass shop and smiled. When she arrived at her destination – an old, 6-storey building, where Book Now was occupying the fourth and fifth floor – her smile faded. Nervousness settled in.

With crazy heartbeat, trembling fingers, and a thin voice, she announced herself at the reception.

Immediately after, she took a few well measured deep breaths. Sat. Mutely rehearsed her ready lines. Jumped off her place when she heard the receptionist phone ringing. Forced herself to sit back cool, calm and collected.

“Fifth floor, first door to the right,” the receptionist announced.

She climbed up the stairs with artificially slowed down steps in unnatural pace, as if Self Control was pulling strings attached to her legs.

​

***

​

Editor in Chief, Christopher Sunstone, involuntarily squeezed his hands in tight fists and held them in his lap, when the girloid entered his office. He has not been looking forward to this meeting. It was miles outside his comfort zone, but he had a boss with strong opinion, whose wish was nothing less than Christopher’s command in the given circumstances.

Without any chitty-chat, excessive courtesy or beating around the bush, he started talking about her book. He spoke like a radio, like a person with no free will, like reciting a boring verse during a school party. It took twenty minutes, then he handed over to Elena a bunch of papers.

“That’s it,” he said with releif. “And I will send you the contract draft when it is ready, tomorrow the latest.”

The monotone of the speech had made it hard for her to keep focused, and he noticed her glance wandering off to some book on his bookshelves every few minutes. Bookshelves were heavily overdosed in his office, with all four walls fully covered, except for the door and windows of course.

In such cases he looked where she was looking at, trying to guess the book that had attracted her attention.

While she was taking over from him the red-penciled printouts of her book, she recognised “50 Shades of Grey” right behind him, holding the window wide open in the pleasant sunny day. She smirked. He, again, turned over to trace down the book in question. Smirked, too.

“Have you read it?” he asked and cursed himself for asking. When she answered, “Yes, it took me exactly 25 minutes” he undid the cursing.

“How is that possible?”

“I read stuff, I didn’t buy it, I skipped over, didn’t buy it still, skipped over with inertia and so forth until the end.”

“Meaning that you didn’t read it.”

“Have you read it differently?”, she inquired, lifting her eyebrows in disbelief.

“I might have checked out a couple of scenes and shaken my head sadly, before assigning it the function it has now.”

“What’s interesting is why you took it?”

“What kind of question is this?” he asked with a goofy smile, recollecting his fists like a protective wall in his lap.

Elena rolled her eyes. “It is an open-ended question” she said, stressing on each word.

He chuckled. “Obviously.”

“I mean,” she said loud and confident, “what was your purpose when you first held the book? Did you want to find out whether it was a good read for you, or you wanted to confirm your gut feeling that it wasn’t?”

“I see where you are heading. The hell with it, I was not expecting a good book. And I was right.”

“There. No need to get too emotional. You were not expecting a good book, confirmed your expectations and didn’t read it. I was hoping for a good read, ploughed through the first few not-too-impressive pages, skipped over the next few, read a dialogue, that made me laugh my guts out, recalibrated my skipping filter in search of a similar, flipped the pages, found nothing more that kept my interest, but saw the plot development tread and I claim that I have read it. And I cherish the experience.” She noticed him turning his chair to the side, read it like a sign for wanting to interrupt her tirade, and bid her know-all-tongue. “Sorry, that was off-topic. I will go through the comments and… Yeah, looking forward to receiving the draft.”

“It’s ok. I think it was me who started it.”

Christopher stood carefully up and she observed that the only way for him to do it was turning his chair to the side, since the bookshelf behind him prevented any other movement.

“Goodbye then” she said rising to her feet and heading towards the door.

“Elena?”

Her long transparent vest in colourful butterfly patterns hovered around, when she turned. He was sneaking carefully from behind his desk. Needless to mention, the desk itself was also piled up with books and printouts.

Christopher tapped his desk with foreign to the history of music melody, as if for support. Approached her so slowly that nearly stopped a couple of times. His look creeped up from her slender ankles in generously cut-out summer boots, along the long legs sticking out of the stylish shorts, sliding up her simple top, trying to jump quickly over her abundant chest (better safe than sorry). Looking at her face, motionless like frozen in a questioning expression, he realized that it was too late to say “no, nothing”.

“Have you managed to spot a book in here, you have read entirely?”

“Quite a few.”

“For example?” He looked around for nominees, trying to guess which could be the lucky winner in this deadly race to keep the attention of this noble, but extremely spoiled reader.

“Kite Runner, for example, is in my top three for books having ‘kite’ in the title.”

Cristopher gulped and stopped a few feet in front of her. Browsed frantically through his vast reading record and failed to find other book with ‘kite’ in the title. Asked her about all three in her chart. And before getting an answer asked also if she had other similar charts about books.

Elena chuckled and gave him a wordy explanation. He smiled and scratched his neck. They changed the topic and not long after shifted to another and the closer she got to the door the less he wanted their conversation to end.

“What are you going to do now?”, he asked harmlessly when they were finished discussing the share of books he let to market in his huge collection.

“I consider treating myself with a nice scoop of ice cream in the pastry-shop across the street.”

“May I come along?” he asked to his own utter surprise, making a few small steps towards her, cutting the in-between space to less than an arm’s distance.

Elena’s sceptic gaze measured him from top to toe – was he joking? She didn’t have time to answer neither his question nor her own, because of her unreserved surprise at noticing him looking down at her. With her 1.80cm own height added to the 5cm heel of the boots, it was uncommon for her to be looked down at.

“I am not sure,” she said unhurriedly. “You will have to skip work and it would most likely entail some whining, complaints and regrets, which I would, by no means, tolerate.” She replied jokingly, observing his reactions, while her glance doodled fluffy clouds around the contour of his face.

“I sign under that.”

Christopher moved towards the door. Elena was still struggling with the astonishment of what just happened, he stopped suddenly noticing the surprise written all over her face. Her face was lovely – soft oval shape, strong serpent-like eye-brows, substantial lips, enhanced with the pink lipstick and eyes black and fluid as the water in a well dug besides the roots of a cypress tree. Elena held his gaze with obvious curiosity. He dived all the way down, forgetting for a second to fear that he might hit the rock bottom of those wells.

“That’s quite some non-verbal communication for a book worm,” she said blunt as a hammer and when his pupils quivered as a reaction to that, she hurried to get the conversation back on a playful, unserious key, “I need to be careful; you are most likely a womanizer in disguise.”

"I am not a womaniser," his mind reacted without undue delay. A memory fast as a lightning flashed through him. There was this inspirational speech he had listened to numerous times. “I am not a womanizer… I don’t record audiobooks. Then imagine you are someone who records audiobooks and do what he would do. Don’t pretend you are doing it; imagine you are someone who can do it and do it…”

He stroked the side of her arm from the end of the vest sleeve just below her shoulder to her elbow gently, almost like precious stone polishing. Her body asked permission from her mind to trace his wiry arms all the way up and hang on his neck and very close to receiving it, since Self Control was off-duty, reading the book "Self-Control: Its Kingship and Majesty".

In this moment the door slammed open and his ultimate highness, Harry Dawson – the publisher who created this empire from scratch and stardust, stepped in the room big time absorbed the situation in one blink, narrowed a mocking eye and asked, “Are you guys flirting?”

Christopher’s first reaction was chewing on his inner cheek to dissolve the nervousness and calm the heartbeat after being too honest, reckless, and, last but not least, caught in the act.

At the same time, Elena, like a triggered mechanical toy, straighten her posture, looked at Harry’s wax face, took a brave breath in, rose a hand, lifted her chin with dignity and pronounced loud and emotionless, “I started!”

Christopher chuckled. It was a bleached unnoticeable background to Harry Almighty’s loud, belly laughter, that filled the room up to the pores in the paper.

Christopher looked at Elena. Her face was deadpan, while Harry’s laughter was fading, and once it was silent enough to speak, she said, “Time for me to go.”

She tried to pass behind Harry’s back, but he resolutely stood in her way.

“Not so fast,” Harry spoke, his face cold as a tomb-stone. As if he had pressed the quick discharge button for the laughter and it was washed away and forgotten forever.  “May I ask you why are you flirting with my employee, young lady?”

Christopher invisibly moved behind her back, led by the instinct to support her, in case she got scared by Harry’s intrusive behaviour. He was sure Harry was still joking,  after having known him for eight years already. Any new-comer could easily get confused. Harry granted him a fast look and gave an intense bad-cop look to Elena, sure that a good cop was at his full disposal when needed.

“It all started when I was 12, Mr Dawson, Sir,”  she said, after a few seconds silence and  a deep breath to retrieve the colour on her face. “Back then I was continuously prioritizing mathematical equations and sparse matrices over boys, that were habitually wetting their sheets at night, thinking of the circumference of my perfectly developed for that age breasts. Due to this clear anomaly, I developed with time a bad case of the Severe Flirt Deficiency Syndrome. SFDS for short.”

Both men burst into laughter already at the sheet-wetting bit and were nearly under the table when they heard the disease name. Harry stepped back, granting her a look of gratitude for the good laughter and waved a hand, “Alright, go”. Elena nodded goodbye, almost like in a Korean dorama and dashed out to the stairs. Christopher dashed after her, putting a clumsy I-tell-you-later expression to answer Harry’s inquiring look. Harry laughed a bit more with the odds and ends of this explanation and went back to his office in remarkably good mood.

The staircase met Elena with coolness, typical for untouched by the sun premises in old buildings like this one. She puffed and ran briskly down the stairs, making her long, decorative vest sway behind her.

The staircase met Christopher with a fragrant cloud, produced by her flying vest and waving hair. Elena heard his steps and marked his presence with an “Aw!” when they started walking abreast.

“I thought you were staying,” she added.

“Why would I?”

“It could be that when you come back Harry Dawson will look at you with all his seriousness, and it is an awful lot, and tearing off his expensive striped shirt a black T-shirt will show beneath with large white letters that read ‘I hate work skipping editors’ or something similar”.

“You surely are a story-teller, El,”  he said suppressed an urge to pat her hair.

“You surely are a womanizer.” That thought popped like a mushroom in her head. Nobody ever called her El. ‘Cara mia, that’s French. Muac, muac, muac’ in the memorable words of Gomez Addams. ‘Hush, hush’ said the Self Control voice in her head in dissatisfied tone, threatening to pack up his stuff, leave and never come back, if such thoughts didn't cease immediately.

“It was only a series of a cartoon. I don’t deserve any credit there,” Elena explained, dutifully obeying Self Control.