Stubbornness Squared
“Oh, no, I am not doing this again!” Loegan glared at the office door across the hall, but it remained tightly closed.
“Yeah, well, is anyone going to explain to me what this is—or where this is?”
Loegan spun around to find a young man in a wheelchair eyeing him suspiciously, and his eyes narrowed further.
“Who are you?”
“Shouldn’t I be asking you that question?” Dash crossed his arms tighter. “You seem to be the one with at least some inkling of what’s going on here.”
“So you’re saying she—what? Just left you here without any explanation?”
“If I knew who she was, maybe I could tell you. You’re the first person I’ve seen since I got here.”
Loegan strode across the hall and rattled the handle of the office door, but it didn’t budge. He groaned and buried his fingers in his hair as he turned back to Dash with a frustrated huff.
“All I can tell you is the last time I was here, there was a woman who called herself our author—‘our’ being me and my sister and this random woman we’d never heard of. We apparently all live in her head, and she’s decided to make us give her announcements and who knows what else, for some reason I can’t even begin to understand.”
“What—are you talking about?” Dash spun his wheelchair back a pace, his eyes going just a little wider.
“Don’t ask me to explain further because I don’t understand it any deeper than that. Other than to say—certain aspects of my life make some kind of twisted sense now, but that doesn’t give me any more confidence in whatever ultimate result she might dream up—or the path we might have to take to get there.”
Dash’s head began to shake slowly, and Loegan huffed.
“Isn’t there anything in your world that’s just a bit over-dramatic, or a little too perfectly timed, or the kind of thing you’d never believe if you weren’t living it?”
“Oh, you have no idea!” Dash let out a sound between a laugh and a scoff and almost choked on it. “So you’re saying I’m…living…in a…book. Because of course I am. And I’ll bet you fifty bucks I know who the hero is. Does your world have a ridiculously naive and hopelessly idealistic and absurdly conscientious new addition whose talent is seriously outmatched by his fan appeal?”
“Uhh…” Loegan blinked, looking a little lost, and Dash shook his head with a snort.
“Never mind. You might not even know it if you saw it, and it’s not like it matters. For all I know, you could be half those things in your own story. So what am I doing here?”
“How am I supposed to know? I’d have thought she’d give both of us some kind of instruction, but apparently not. I wonder which of us she’s more scared of.”
“If she’s the one responsible for everything that’s gone on in my life, she’d better be scared.” Dash scowled darkly at the office door, and Loegan bent over to pick up a paper that lay halfway beneath it.
“Well, here’s the answer. Or part of it—it still doesn’t tell us where she is, but it answers what she wants of us.”
“And that is?” Dash raised an eyebrow, and Loegan sighed.
“Well, if you’re the ‘Dash’ who’s listed here, then your story has a new book out that you’re supposed to announce.”
“You planning to make me?”
“I’m not doing her dirty work.” Loegan rolled his eyes. “Car Alarm is now available on her store, and it’s up for preorder on all the rest of them. And the upcoming one, Savior Complex, is going to start releasing online in February, whatever that means. I guess she’ll give you the ability to do that.”
“All right, I’m done.” Loegan dropped the paper into Dash’s lap and returned to the door he’d entered through. “Either you read the rest of it, or it can just stay there until I figure out how to get out of here. I’ve done my part.”
Dash watched him run his hands meticulously over the doorframe for a few moments before offering something between a sigh and a huff.
“You really think whoever it is just left you a way out of here?”
“You know what? If she can be stubborn, then so can I. And she’s already tricked me into saying a lot more than I meant to today.” Loegan switched his focus to tapping various places on the door, and Dash growled.
“You’re going to make me finish this, aren’t you?”
“Not making you do anything. I’ll stay here as long as it takes to prove she doesn’t have complete control. Up to you whether you want to get out of here any sooner.”
“This is ridiculous.” Dash scowled at his back for a moment before turning his attention back to the paper in his lap and studying it through narrowed eyes. “So to get out of here the other way, we have to what? Read everything on this?”
“Probably.”
“You’re some help.”
“Look, you’ve got the same information I do. The only thing I have that you don’t is being here before, and it was nothing like this. But she did let us go home after we finished saying what she wanted.”
“Wonder how long she would leave us stuck in here,” Dash muttered rebelliously, but after a minute of renewed silence, he sighed. “Fine. There’s a free book listed here that probably has something to do with him—” This with a jerk of his head toward Loegan. “—because I guess whoever’s in charge here fell down on the job and didn’t get the news out about it when she was supposed to. Oh, that gives me so much confidence. Anyway, it’s free this weekend, so if you’re interested in a set of short stories set after A Threat and a Promise—whatever that is—you can find it wherever I assume she’s going to put it, because that’s absolutely not on me.”
The door Loegan had been working at popped open, and the door next to it did the same. Loegan took a step inside, then hesitated and glanced back over his shoulder.
“Can you, uh…get back on your own?”
“I’m fine!” Dash snapped, propelling himself halfway to the second door before he paused. “I guess, thanks for…explaining, or whatever.”
“Not like she left me much choice.” Loegan shrugged. “Which was probably on purpose. You…going to be all right in there?”
“Yeah, sure.” Dash snorted. “Honestly, whether they can keep things together without me is a better question.”
Loegan shot him a smirk and disappeared through the door, and after one last glance around the hallway, Dash wheeled himself back through his own. After a few seconds, the office door cracked open, and the author poked her head into the hallway and picked up the paper that had fallen to the floor. She glanced back at the screen, then lifted her remote, and the picture went black.
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