Mort sits.

He slouches lazily on his old couch and casts an eye over the coffee table, which is buried in stacks of old manuscripts that he never sent to his editor. He probably never will, he decides. The writing is disjointed, sloppy, nonlinear. Nowhere near his best work; bad writing, all of it. He glances over each stack, eyes lingering on each tentative title, and reaches over to pick up the one closest to him.

He looks over the sheaf he's selected. It's relatively thin compared to some of the other piles on the table. He uses the sleeve of his bathrobe to wipe off the dust on the front page, a thick layer accumulated from what was likely several years. Some of it stubbornly clings to the paper, hiding beneath the staple in a fuzzy mass. He tries to blow it away, but only succeeds in creating a miniature storm of dust that gets up his nose and settles in his hair--

just like the memory of your lovely dead wife, isn't it? a clinging living thing you can't get rid of, that seeps into your pores until you can't take anymore

Mort shoots a glare at nothing in particular. The voice hadn't bothered him all day, but apparently a cloud of dust could inspire a cynical metaphor. Just what he needed--

well? listen to me. what will you do when you can't take anymore? when the strain of holding yourself together becomes too much? answer me this

By now he's gotten used to the voice and its irritating tendency to speak when he wants silence, but he'll never get used to what it says. Part of his mind helpfully supplies the visual metaphor of a man in a wide-brimmed black hat (well, hello, mr ray-nee) hitting him over the head with a shovel. The voice might as well be doing the same thing with his guilt.

He turns his attention back to the manuscript in his hand. He'd never finished this particular one, he remembers, because he'd started it out too morbid and had had nowhere to go but down. The main character was something of an alter ego for him, a foil he used to let out his anger and betrayal after he'd discovered Amy (doublecrossing unfaithful bitch, wasn't she?) in Ted's motel room over half a year ago.

He flips through the pages, seeing the events unfold in his mind as he goes along. He sees the terrified expression on Aileen's beautiful face as her wrathful husband, Marty, discovers the shirt that doesn't belong to him. He feels a sympathetic echo of rage when Aileen's collar slips down and reveals a dark bruise that wasn't there the night before. Most of all, he feels the tumult of furious betrayal rushing through him as if he were walking through that motel door all over again--

you weren't good enough for her so she left you, but oh, you taught her a lesson, didn't you? a lesson she won't ever, ever forget because you killed her you sick demented crazy man and you enjoyed it

"Maybe you did," snaps Mort, and immediately regrets it. It's the first time in weeks he's responded to the voice's taunts. Would it go away if he didn't talk to it? he wonders, and tries to remember a time when the voice simply hadn't been there.

He turns his attention back to the manuscript and searches for salvageable material, thinking that maybe he could fish out a good metaphor or description from this sea of cloudy writing. His eyes dart past bitterness and regret, past realization and betrayal, and finally--

she backed against the wall, begging for mercy when there was none to be had; her husband advancing towards her with all his wiry strength coiled to strike, his arms outstretched as if to embrace her lovingly, his curled fingers giving away his true intention to snatch, throttle, seize her around the throat and pin her against the wall and scream with all his betrayal and hurt her the way he felt he had been hurt, and asked one simple word: "why?"

Mort doesn't remember why.