The Very Last Days of Mr Grey (2 page)

Mason looked at the pen, saw a gold crown embossed onto it. It
was
a nice pen, he thought. This made him feel slightly better about this new drug.

“Go ahead and sign that, then I give you this”—he shook the bottle—“the instructions, as well as a prescription for a few more common drugs you can try out.”

“Is it safe to combine them?”

The doctor punched his shoulder. “What’s the worst that could happen? You sleep too long.” He laughed.

Mason smiled. Well yes, he thought, that
was
what he was worried about. Namely, sleeping forever. He began leafing through the stack.

“Oh, don’t worry about reading it. Just go ahead and sign. It’s all standard. I’ll go over the important points afterward.”

“Shouldn’t I read it if I’m going to sign it?”

“No one else does. Do you read those screens that appear when you’re installing new software?”

Mason did. He even knew they were called EULA’s, and even knew what that stood for, but he kept this to himself. “I see your point.” He quickly scanned each page, feeling pressured with the doctor hovering above him. He saw no red flags—at least that he recognized—so went ahead and signed the thing when he reached the last page.

The doctor beamed at him. “Great!” He held out the pill bottle. “Now, this should be about a month’s supply. If you need more, just drop on by with that”—he pointed at the bottle Mason was now holding—“and one of my nurses will get you more.”

“How much is it?”

The doctor barked a laugh. “That’s the best part about clinical trials! It’s free!”

He seemed to Mason unreasonably excited about this whole endeavor. Mason couldn’t decide if this comforted him, or made him feel worse.

“Right,” he made to leave, and stuck his hand out.

Mason slid off the table and shook the doctor’s hand, surprised at the abruptness.

“The receptionist will have everything you need. I’ll give her the prescriptions and you can get them when you pay.

“I’m going to want to see you again in two weeks to a month. A month if the treatments don’t seem to be working, two weeks if they do and,” and here he waved at the air with his free hand, “in between, the in between.”

Mason thought this was backwards, but didn’t express this. “Thanks.”

The doctor opened the door.

Mason realized the doctor had forgotten his promise to go over the important points. “Oh, hey, what about the points?”

“What points?”

“The important ones.”

The doctor frowned.

Mason shook the metal pill bottle. “About this.”

The doctor laughed. “Aw, you know ’em already. Don’t worry.” And with that, the doctor was gone.

Mason looked around the empty examination room, its foreign-to-him equipment, at the metal pill bottle in his hand, then shook his head, exited, and headed to the receptionist.

He took a seat as one of them motioned to him. He sighed, got up, headed toward her, and sat in the chair in front of her desk. He looked up into her ogre-like features and she apparently—ogres were tough to read—scowled down at him. He wondered why his seat was so low to the ground, while hers was so high.

“Mr Grey?” she said in a shockingly high and soft voice.

“Uh, that’s me.”

“Insomnia?”

“Hopefully not for long!”

Her mouth moved.

Mason stopped smiling and took an interest in the desk in front of him.

Minutes passed as she worked away, and Mason wondered why he always had to wait. Couldn’t she have done this while he was being examined? There was hardly anyone else here today.

His thoughts were interrupted by the receptionist: “Everything’s ready. Here’s your prescriptions. When would you like your next appointment?”

“He said it would depend on how the drugs work.”

“Of course. But what day and time. Surely you know that much?”

“How could I know that if I don’t know how the drugs will work?”

“Are you so busy all the time? Your work must have a set schedule.”

He wanted to punch her, but figured he’d just injure his hand. “I don’t, actually. I mean, I have deadlines, but…” He trailed off. But what?

“And what kind of work do you do?”

“I’m a screenwriter— Look, I don’t know when I’ll be available, so why don’t you just call me in two weeks and we’ll go from there.”

Her mouth opened slightly. “Well, there’s no need to be snippy.” She inputted something briefly. “We will give you a call on Saturday the eighth then. Does that work for you?”

“That’s fine. Thank you.”

“Have a nice day,” she said, a downward inflection at the end, and immediately forgot he existed.

Mason stood and left the office.

An hour later, after stopping by the pharmacy at CVS, he was standing in his kitchen, examining the multiple treatments on his counter. He wondered if he had to use all of them.

Despite what the doctor had said, it seemed to Mason that combining them would, instead of reducing their effects, increase them. At least that’s how he’d play it in one of his stories. Maybe it was something about lower doses of many versus high doses of one—but what did he know? He was no doctor. He wrote television shows. And whenever he’d added something remotely scientific, he’d find it conspicuously absent from the next draft. He was never sure if this was because he’d gotten it wrong, or because the producers didn’t think the public could handle that much education in their entertainment.

He opened the metal container of the experimental drug. He frowned at the lid, which had a thin metal rod going into the container, and instead of pills, it went into a black, chalk-like powder. Sighing, disappointed that he couldn’t just take a pill or two (or three), he rummaged through the CVS bag till he found the prescription that he had crumpled and tossed in. He uncrumpled it, and read the instructions written there. He learned the drug was called Mea… Or was that an N? Nae…dayine? No, that was an X. Naedaxine? Was that an R? Naerdaxine? Well never mind, that didn’t matter. He continued scanning the doctor’s terrible writing.

He frowned. Apparently it didn’t last very long, and didn’t take effect right away, because he was supposed to take it every three hours, starting immediately—and here this word was underlined. Twice.

Kinda like magnesium, he thought, which had increased the amount of time he’d spent in the bathroom, but had done nothing for his time in the land of Nod.

The instructions mentioned a scooper, and he realized that was what that thing under the lid was for. He extracted it. On the end was a little scoop. That was good at least, that it wasn’t too big of a scoop.

He sniffed the powder. No smell. He grabbed the bottle of orange juice from the fridge—Simply Orange,
Mango Flavor
—dumped the powder into his mouth, then took a swig.

Some powder remained on his teeth, and he realized it tasted like nothing at all. It was like his teeth had chalky air on them. That was good, too. Maybe that was why it was so black, some kind of flavor neutralizer; charcoal or the like.

He wondered if he should have eaten something, and felt a strange sense of foreboding wash over him. He looked at the instructions again,
TAKE WITH FOOD
was printed neatly at the bottom in all caps.

“Observant,” he muttered as he went to his fridge. In his freezer, there was some frozen fruit (blackberries), some vegetables (peppers and onions, which he couldn’t now remember why he would have bought)—but nothing he wanted to eat.

Other than the bottle of tequila, but Mason wasn’t the kind of guy who considered drinking to be eating, or even be a reliable substitute.

The fridge wasn’t much better.

There was food there, but nothing that didn’t require cooking. As he scanned the contents, he spotted some turkey pepperoni in the door, next to a very old container of cola-flavored barbecue sauce. He shuddered at the memory of trying it.

Avoiding thinking of that experience too much, he quickly snatched the package of pepperoni, tore it open, and grabbed a handful, leaving enough to put on a pizza, in case he decided to get around to making one, from the raw ingredients he had naively bought in a bout of caffeine-induced mania.

This mass of spicy mystery protein shoved in his mouth, he went to get his mail, hoping no one would try to talk to him while he was busy chewing.

“Mason, dear!” Ms Williams shouted at Mason, waving a handkerchief in the air as if signaling the okay for an air strike.

Mason swallowed, then choked as the topping lodged in his throat. He bent over coughing. He felt a hard slap on his back, and he almost lost his balance.

“Get it up! That’s good, let it all out.” She cackled. Well, Mason imagined she did, she probably thought she was chuckling. “Too much to drink?”

Mason shook his head and stood up. “I, choked on—”
She waved her hand at him. “Terrible tragedy. Listen dear, would you be a dear and help me out?”

How can I not be a dear when you called me a dear?
Mason thought bitterly. He smiled. “Sure.”

There was a lot of mail waiting for him, when he was finally able to make it to his mailbox. He tried to remember the last time he’d picked it up. Couldn’t.

As he pulled the mail from the overstuffed box his hands ached from helping Ms Williams. He shook his head and put it out of mind.

He went to the front desk to pick up any packages.

The manager said, “About time,” then said something in Russian. Mason thought it was Russian. Mason didn’t speak Russian though, so he could have been wrong about that.

The sound of the stack slapping against the counter as the manager dropped it theatrically seemed to speak for him, and he crossed his arms and nodded.

Those would be screenplays. Which meant lots of work. Which was good.
Then why is my stomach knotting up?
he thought. He said, “Thanks.”

Mason lugged it all back to his apartment, and tossed it onto the counter.

He sighed looking at the amount of it there was. Too much work for now. He didn’t have any deadlines until Sunday, so any of those wouldn’t be due till after that (probably). What day was it? He checked his phone, and was delighted to find a new episode of the
Screenplay Publishing Podcast
was available. He grabbed his headphones, snuggled them into his ears, plopped down on his couch, hit play, and settled in to be entertained—and possibly educated—as the intro music bored into his ears.

Welcome to the Screenplay Publishing Podcast, where if you want to get rich, you make shit up. And now, here are your hosts, the three most prolific screenwriters in the world, Jackie O. Abs, Sun Perennial, and Damien Wrong.

“Hey everyone, and welcome to…”

An hour and a half and many laughs later, Mason reluctantly got up from the couch and went to the kitchen to get a snack. He was motivated to get some writing done now. Which was, he told himself, the point of listening to the podcast rather than working.

In his fridge, he found nothing to eat. He looked at the package of pepperoni and grimaced. Instead, he finished off the orange juice and decided he’d go out for lunch—a late lunch.
Might as well take another dose first
, he thought, imagining sleeping for ten hours tonight, and falling asleep as soon as he hit the pillow—which had never in his life happened to him.

He glanced at the mail sitting on his kitchen table, the seven unopened packages, a mix of large envelopes and book-shaped boxes, that he knew would contain either more revisions, or scripts from hopefuls who figured Mason was low enough on the totem pole that they could get him to look at their scripts.

And how wrong were they? Well, if they thought he could do anything for them, pretty wrong. If they thought he was low on the totem pole however… They were probably right. Case in point, the fact they’d gotten his home address somehow.

Lily. He shook his head. She had probably given it out to dozens of people by now. He knew he should never have let her convince him to have a party at his place. Not only had he not met anyone who could “Further his career”, now Lily could use his name and address as a nefarious bargaining chip. “Oh,” she’d say, “you need someone to look at your work? I know just the guy. Oh yes, he’s very well known. Just check the credits of so-and-so show, you’ll see his name right there, Writer: Mason Grey.”

He groaned. He should open at least one before he ate. Besides, maybe there’d be a check in there. That had happened once. Only twenty bucks, but still, that had been an awesome day.

Mason tore into the package that looked least like it came from some amateur writer who thought his script was a masterpiece of cinema (instead of the low budget porno it would certainly turn into were it ever shot).

Mason raised an eyebrow. There was a cover letter. Maybe he’d guessed wrong. He sighed and began reading.

Dear Mr Mason

Great, they’d already gotten his name wrong. He continued reading.

I am contacting you in hopes this finds you well, and awake. There are things you might be wondering about. Does Blunderbuss sound familiar? I would think so, by now.

That
did
sound familiar. Was it a singer? A crease formed between Mason’s eyebrows, and it deepened the more he read.

I believe we may be able to help each other. This was the only way I could think of contacting you without… Well, without putting you off, let’s say.

By the by, you really should tell your friend to not give out your home address so easily. There are a lot of creeps in this town.

I hope I have piqued your interest with this mysterious missive. If so, I have tea every day at All AI Coffee. Say around three.

I dream to see you soon.

Sincerely, Sera.

Below this she’d signed her name in ink, barely legible.

That personal touch, he supposed.

She called it All AI Coffee, which meant she probably knew at least a few screenwriters—or read about it on the internet. Mason didn’t frequent it—the coffee house, he was on the internet everyday—but he did go there from time to time, mainly to get free coffee from Emily. She didn’t work till night though, and this “Sera” was going to be there at three.