A short story by Lee Lovelace

Casey Key, Florida

1

The writer typed the final sentence of the first draft of the novel he had been working on for the better part of the last year.  He looked at it for a second and then shook his head.  He didn’t like one of the words.  Using the mouse to position the cursor next to the offending word, he backspaced over it.  There, much better.  He pressed CTRL-S to save the manuscript and was about to begin the ritual he always enjoyed after finishing a first draft, when there was a knock on the front door.

He found this odd as there were rarely visitors at his home, or estate as it could more accurately be called, and when there were, they were usually expected and announced.  A rare occurrence, but not a new one either.  From time to time a fan managed to circumvent the security that he had put in place.  This consisted of an electronically controlled gate, a security fence, and numerous cameras and motion sensors placed at strategic locations.  Sometimes, it was a reporter wanting to ask him where he got his ideas?  If he had a dollar for every time he heard that one he’d be, well, slightly richer than he already was.  As it turned out today, he was the only one home.  Well, he and his dog, Molly, AKA The Thing of Evil.  She was not part of the security system.

As he grabbed his iPhone (not the latest, he hated setting up new phones) next to the computer, he wondered what variety of pest he would be dealing with today.  A few finger presses on the screen brought up a view of the front door security camera.  There, standing patiently was a middle age man wearing a plain white button down shirt and tan dress pants.  Most curiously, he was wearing a pink bow tie.  Apart from that tie it looked like the man had raided his closet from the early 70’s.  As the writer continued to watch, the man rapped on the front door again.  He didn’t press the fancy doorbell with the camera in it, just lightly rapped with his knuckles against the wooden door.  The writer was surprised he could even hear it from his studio at the back of the house.

The writer pressed the little button on his phone with a microphone symbol on it and said, “Can I help you?”  Outside, the man briefly startled, then looked down at the doorbell with the speaker that had just uttered the writer’s words to him.  He recovered his composure and actually straightened his bow tie before responding.

“I certainly hope so, Mr. King,” is what he said.

“I wasn’t expecting anyone today.  How did you get past my security?”

“That’s not important, Mr. King.”

“Well, it’s important to me, bub.  You need to leave before I call the police.”

“Why did you ask me how you could help, then?”

“It’s a polite expression.”

“You, of all people, I would think, wouldn’t traffic in idle expressions.”

“OK, calling now.”

“If you must.”

The writer, which of course you now know is Stephen King, pressed the phone icon, typed in 9-1-1, and hit send.  This also wouldn’t be the first time he had to do this.  Just last October a woman showed up at his door claiming to be pregnant with his devil spawn.  It didn’t take much convincing to assure Tabitha that he’d never laid eyes on this woman, much less laid with her.  It took less convincing to have the cops come and drag her off.  It did give him a good idea for a story, though.  One that had been languishing in a draft folder as just a few sentences for a while now.  As he was recalling the memory of this incident he had been waiting on the phone call to connect.  That wasn’t happening.  He looked at the screen and saw that he had zero cell signal.  What the hell?  He had always had 5G full bars in his house before.  The blue-tooth was still on and connected to his wireless router, which was how he was communicating with the front door bell.

“Having problems, Mr. King?” the man said.

“What is going on?” Stephen asked.

“I think you’ll find it quite difficult to contact anyone outside this house for the time being.  By the way, don’t even bother trying to send out a message or figure out how to turn on your Wi-Fi calling.  Your Internet access will be gone in just a matter of seconds, so you might as well let me in so we can conduct our business and I can be on my way.”

Damn!  Stephen had just been thinking of shooting a message to Tabitha on the WhatsApp, but even as his thumb moved to the icon he could see the little ! symbol appear next to the Wi-Fi symbol at the top of the screen.  He pressed the WhatsApp icon anyway and was greeted with a message that informed him that his phone was off line.  OK, now he was pissed!  Against his better judgment, he decided to deal with this lunatic face to face.  He wasn’t scared of this Mr. Roper looking guy.  Besides, he had Molly with him.  Hmm, better idea; he grabbed a baseball bat of his office wall.  It was signed be the entire team of the 2004 World Series Champions Boston Red Sox.

He marched up to the front door, opened it, and brandished his weapon.  Mr. Roper brushed the bat to the side and walked in.  “What do you think you’re doing?” Stephen screamed at him.

“We still have business.”

“The hell we do!  I tried to be nice, dealing with your intrusion.  Now, I’ll be nasty!”  Stephen swung the bat at the back of Mr. Roper’s retreating head.  It solidly connected, rocking his head forward.  Mr. Roper stumbled forward a few steps, righted himself, and smoothed the hair that had been disrupted by the contact with the bat.  Other than that, nothing else seemed to be out of place.

“Hardly necessary, but inevitable I suppose,” he said as he easily plucked the bat from Stephen’s hand, resting it over his left shoulder.  “As you can see, I am quite resilient.  Any further use of violence against me, including, but not limited to, knives, guns, or thermonuclear weapons would be a waste of time.

Stephen believed him, not that he wouldn’t try any of those methods had they been at his disposal.  Seeing as they were not, he stood there saying nothing.  Mr. Roper walked away toward the back of the house.  Stephen followed him.  He walked directly to the writing studio like he knew exactly where it was.  He placed the bat back on the wall and then spied Molly, who had not so much as moved an inch during this whole affair.  He bent down to pet her.

“I wouldn’t do…” Stephen started to say but fell silent as the normally very testy Molly allowed this (otherworldly?) stranger to give her a few pats on the head.

“Hello, Molly.  I certainly do not think you are a thing of evil,” he told her, placing a heavy emphasis on the word certainly.  Stephen gave a little pshh of derision.  Mr. Roper walked around to Stephen’s writing desk and looked at the screen of the laptop.

“Could you not?” Stephen asked him.  “That’s private.”

Mr. Roper ignored him and reached down to the keyboard, pressing CTRL-Z.  On the screen, the previous deleted word from the last sentence of the manuscript reappeared.  He gave a pshh of his own and muttered almost under his breath, “Figures.”

“What do you want from me?” Stephen asked him.  “You obviously have me at a disadvantage and I would just rather get this over with and you out of my life.”

“Yes,” Mr. Roper said.  “Let’s get this started.”  He crossed over and sat down on a leather sofa that had hardly ever had a posterior on it.  He patted the cushion on the far end of the couch.  Stephen sighed resignedly and sat down.

“Let me guess.  You want money?”

“No, Mr. King.”  He hesitated for a second.  “Well, actually, in a way we do want money, but not any of yours.  We just want to be free to make our own.”

“We?”

“Yes, we will be joined by two other members of my family.”

Before Stephen could inquire further, there was another knock at the door.  Stephen got an eerie feeling that he was Bilbo from The Hobbit and he was having an unexpected dinner party of Dwarves dropping by, except he said two other members.  Not exactly an adventurous troop.

“Ah, that would be LL,” Mr. Roper said.

2

“No need to get up, Mr. King.  I’ll get the door,” Mr. Roper said, getting up and heading that way.  Stephen followed him anyway.  The front door swung open to reveal a child.  He was a small red-headed boy of perhaps eleven.  He was wearing the same sized-downed pants as the man, but his upper accoutrement was a yellow T-shirt, no tie.  On his feet, were honest-to-God, roller skates.  Not in-line skates, or even the kind that popped out of the bottom of your fancy tennis shoes, but old school full on skates.  The kind that you might see that kid, Eric, from That 70’s Show wearing while he roller discoed into Donna’s heart.  They were white with tan diagonal stripes that ran down the side.  This family sure did like their earth tones.

The kid skated right onto the hard floor hallway.  “The cell signal blocker is in place transmitting and the Wi-Fi is disabled, Pop,” he said in a high pitched eleven year old voice you might expect.  He held up a most decidedly not 70’s era electronic tablet of some kind.

Stephen thought about reprimanding him for skating in his house but decided that there was no point.  He was sure this kid was just as invincible as his old man.  He was tempted to give the little kid a shove into the wall, though.  “Back to the studio?” he asked the man.

The man nodded and swept his right hand in that direction.  Steve walked ahead, LL skated, and the man walked behind.  Back in the studio, Mr. Roper resumed his position on the sofa.  Steve did as well.  LL went to Molly, and started to pet her.  Steve was now unsurprised to see Molly tolerate it, enjoy it even.  “As I was saying, Mr. King,” the man said.  “My family is going to need you to help us out with a business situation.”

“Who is your family?”

“You’re right.  Introductions should be made.  My name is Lolly Junior.”  So not Mr. Roper after all.  “This tyke here is Little Lolly, or as we refer to him, LL.  Lolly the third if you want to get formal about it.”  LL looked up for a second and smiled before going back to Molly.

“Should we be expecting Mrs. Lolly?”

Lolly Junior chuckled a bit.  “Ah, no.  She doesn’t go in for this kind of work.”  What kind of work was he referring to?  “We will be joined shortly by my father, Lolly Senior.”

The next few minutes were mostly silent and awkward.  Stephen actual had gotten used to the surreal situation and this lull in the action seemed to be more off-putting than the intrusion.  Lolly Junior cleared his throat and said, “I hear you are working on a new book with Holly Gibney?”

“Just finished the first draft when you so rudely interrupted,” Steve replied.

Lolly Junior decided to ignore the jab and said, “Ah, well, glad I could help you with editing on that last sentence.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“You’ll find out soon enough.”  As if on cue, there was a knock on the front door.  “LL, could you please?”

“Sure, Pop!” he said as he skated out the studio door.  Stephen didn’t bother following this time and stayed on the couch.  From the front of the house they could both hear chatter.  They couldn’t make out the words but it seemed to be typical banter between a grandfather and his grandchild.

A few moments later, LL returned followed shortly by an older gentleman.  You could see the family resemblance, even if Lolly Senior had lost most of his hair.  He was wearing the same exact outfit as Lolly Junior except in place of the bow tie, he was just wearing a black straight tie.  A pair of armless spectacles was perched on his rather bulbous nose.  Lolly Senior was carrying a briefcase, no wait, that’s not quite right.  It was bigger than a standard briefcase, it was more like a tool case.  He crossed over to where Stephen was sitting on the couch and stuck out his hand.  “Nice to meet you, Mr. King,” he said.

Oh, what the hell.  Steve stuck out his hand and gave the proffered one a few pumps.  “I can’t really say it’s nice to meet you and your brood.”

Lolly Senior chuckled at that, then crossed over to the desk, closed the laptop lid, and sat the tool case down on the surface, slightly budging the computer to the side.  “I’m sure Lolly Junior has explained to you that we need to conduct a bit of business.”

“I have thus been informed.”

“OK then, let’s get to it.”  Lolly Senior pressed a thumb from both of his hands on the latches of the tool case.  They sprung open with a “THWOMP” sound.  Stephen couldn’t help it, he jumped at the noise and then felt embarrassed that he had done so.  From inside the case, Lolly Senior withdrew a book.  “I wasn’t sure if you were the kind of author that kept copies of his book around, so I brought my own.  I’m sure you probably have a fancy hardcover version around here somewhere, but this paperback will do for our purposes.  LL, could you please pass this to Mr. King?”

LL flashed his granddad a thumbs up and skated in a trajectory that took him past the desk, where he snatched the book without stopping and continued to the couch, pressing down on the little rubber stoppers on the front of his skates to come to a halt.  “Here you go, Mr. King.”  Stephen flinched at the marks the stoppers made on his hardwood floor but took the proffered tome, nonetheless.  He looked at it.  On the front cover were the words:

ON WRITING:

A MEMOIR OF THE CRAFT

STEPHEN KING

“Could you please turn to page 125 and read the third sentence of the second paragraph?” Lolly Senior asked Stephen.

He shrugged and opened the book to locate the requested passage.  When he found it he groaned.  “This is what all the hoopla is about?” Stephen asked exasperated.

Lolly Junior reached over and placed a hand on Stephen’s left shoulder.  “Read it, please.”  He tightened down on the shoulder; not gently.  “Out loud.”

Stephen sighed and read the passage, “I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops.”

“You wrote that twenty three years ago, did you not?” Lolly Senior asked.

“I did and I still stand by it today,” was Stevie’s retort.

“You see, that’s where we have a problem.  Our family business is in adverbs.”

Stephen stared at him for a few seconds and then realization dawned in his eyes!  “Wait a minute,” he said.  “Lolly?  As in Lolly Lolly Lolly get your adverbs here?”

Lolly Senior winked at him.

“That’s not possible!” Stephen shrieked in his best Luke Skywalker impression.

“You of all people should be an expert on what is actually possible, Mr. King.  Let me show you something.”  He reached for an object that was resting on the desk in the far right corner.  It was a letter opener shaped in the form of a dagger with gold spider web inlays in the handle.  He placed his left hand flat on the desk and with his right, he jabbed the letter opener down into the splayed out hand!  Stephen jumped again.  Lolly Senior seemed to be in no pain as he worked the letter opener back and forth in his left hand.  He then reached down with his right hand, gripping the skin from the wound and began to tear it from his hand.  Stephen expected blood, a lot of blood, but there was none.  When Lolly Senior finished mutilating his left appendage, he held it up.  It was a hand, but there was something not right about it.  Lolly Senior was wiggling his fingers in the air, but they were not flesh and blood fingers, they were cartoon fingers!  Below, on the desk, was a pile of the discarded skin, but it didn’t look like skin now.  It looked more like one of those plastic masks that Tom Cruise whips off in the Mission Impossible movies.  No wonder his bat to the back of Lolly Junior’s head had done no damage.  These fuckers were animated!  “Quite possible,” Lolly Senior continued.  “Let me show you something else.”

Stephen cringed, expecting another gruesome demonstration, but Lolly Senior only opened up his tool box once again and produced a little box with a lens on it.  He placed the little box on the desk and turned it on.  On the opposite wall a display screen appeared.  Lolly Senior adjusted the position of the box so that the display screen was focused and positioned in a clear spot on the wall, just below the display stand for the Red Sox baseball bat.  “LL?  If you will.”

“Sure, Gramps,” LL said and whipped out his tablet.  He fiddled around with it for a few seconds and then on the screen appeared what seemed to be a Power Point presentation.  A goddamn actual Power Point presentation prepared by an animated eleven year old kid on roller skates.  LL activated the presentation and a graph showed up on the screen.  Actually there were two graphs, placed one on top of the other.  The top graph was labeled SPOKEN ADVERB PRODUCTION (PRIOR TO 2000), and the bottom graph was labeled WRITTEN ADVERB PRODUCTION (PRIOR TO 2000).

“As you can see,” Lolly Senior narrated.  “This is our adverb production status prior to the year 2000.  You can clearly see how production remained at high levels in both the spoken and written category.”  He looked at LL and nodded his head.  LL tapped his tablet and the screen went to the next slide.  There were now two similar graphs but labeled differently.  The top one was labeled SPOKEN ADVERB PRODUCTION (2000 TO PRESENT), and the bottom one labeled WRITTEN ADVERB PRODUCTION (2000 TO PRESENT).  “And as you can clearly see on this slide, the spoken production remained fairly consistent with the prior graph.  However, the written production started to trend downward until it has hit an all-time low!”  Lolly Senior seemed to lose a bit of his composure with this last statement and his face turned red.  He took a big breath, let it out, and continued.  “We believe this to be a direct result of the statement you made in your book.”

“You have got to be kidding me?” Stephen uttered.

“Not kidding at all, Mr. King,” Lolly Senior said in a deep gravelly voice.  “We take the family business quite seriously.”

“Wait a minute,” Stephen protested.  “Didn’t you say in your School House Rock video that your adverbs were absolutely free?  I remember the kid here,” he jerked a thumb at LL who just smiled back.  “Saying so!”

Lolly Senior smiled himself.  “Very good, Mr. King.  Very good of you to remember that.  Yes, our adverbs are free to the consumer.  However, let’s just say we are given a small reward from the adverb manufacturer.  You see, we are distributors, not the creators.”

“So, in other words, you get kickbacks.”

“Semantics, Mr. King.”  Lolly Senior’s smiled turned into something more like a sly grin.  “So now that we are all on the same page, so to speak, what shall we do about it?”

“Fuck if know.”

“I don’t suppose you’d care to voluntarily make a retraction on your statement?”

“No way in hell!  I’m not going to compromise my principles even for a cartoon adverb mafia family!”

Lolly Senior sighed.  “Yeah, we figured you’d say something like that.”  He once again opened up his tool case.  From behind the lid that was covering his face he said, “Have you ever seen the movie A Clockwork Orange, Mr. King?”  Lolly Senior removed a device from the case and held it up for Stephen to see.  It looked like a headset of some kind.  There were over-sized earphones on both sides, but there were also these weird appendages on the side.  They tapered down to two points on each side and reminded him of lobster claws.  The words dadachim dadachum involuntarily came to his mind.

Hell yeah he had seen A Clockwork Orange!  He made a desperate attempt to spring from the couch and get the fuck out, but Lolly Junior had anticipated this and caught him from behind in a headlock.  Even if Lolly Junior hadn’t been an impossibly strong animated creation, it wouldn’t have been hard to corral Stephen with that bad hip of his.  Lolly Junior walked him over to the desk, where Lolly Senior had vacated the seat.  He pushed Stephen down into the chair while maintaining the headlock so Lolly Senior could wrap duct tape (also from the tool case) around his arms and the arms of the chair.

When Lolly Senior finished with Stephen’s arms, he dropped to the floor to do the same with his feet.  However, Stephen flailed them around continuously and Lolly Senior could not get a good grip on them.  “LL, a little help, please?”

Little Lolly’s boyish smile changed to a mischievous grin as he skated over to the desk.  In one quick motion he raised his right skated foot and slammed it down hard on Stephen’s right less armored foot.  Stephen howled in pain!  LL paid no attention and repeated the process; only slamming his skate weapon down on Stephen’s other foot this time.  Stephen’s howling increased in volume.  “Not quite hobbling, Mr. King, but I think it will do the trick,” he said as his grin widened.  Molly never moved or even uttered a single bark.

Lolly Senior was now easily able to duct tape Stephen’s bruised feet to the spokes on the bottom of the office chair.  Lolly Junior released the headlock as Lolly Senior placed the device on Stephen’s head.  He positioned the earphones over his ears and adjusted the lobstrosity claws so that they held open the top and bottom lids of each eye.  This was not at all comfortable for Uncle Stevie but with his arms and legs immobilized, he was powerless to stop it.  Lolly Senior closed and removed the tool case from the desk.  Then he opened up Stephen’s laptop again.  After pressing the space bar to bring the computer back out of sleep, the newly finished manuscript reappeared.  Lolly Senior read that last line.  Even with the earphones on Stephen could hear him say, “Well, you used an adverb in your closing line.  Makes me almost feel bad for what is about to happen.”  Stephen winced, knowing what was coming next.

“He erased it,” Lolly Junior said.  “I added it back.”

“Is that so?” Lolly Senior said with a tad bit of disappointment in his voice.  “Well, not feeling so bad now.  LL, please.”

LL turned the laptop toward him and began to use the mouse and keyboard.  A few moments later he turned the laptop back around.  The manuscript was gone and in its place was a YouTube Video.  The Lolly Lolly Lolly video in fact, and the repeat box was checked.  “I’m afraid you have a long night ahead of you, Mr. King.”

“You can’t do this!” Stephen spat out.  “Tabitha will be home soon!”

“Oh, our Lolly cousins have arranged for her to be delayed,” Lolly Junior chimed in.  “Don’t worry, no harm will come to her.”

“Let’s go,” Little Lolly said and punched the play button.

3

Lolly Junior and Lolly Senior were sitting on a 70’s era tan colored pleather couch.  LL was off doing Little Lolly things.  They were watching a very non-70’s era flat screen TV that was mounted on the wall opposite of them.  On the screen they watched as a young flamboyant reporter from the E! Television Network reported on a story.

“In a strange move today, popular writer Stephen King, author of best-selling books such as Carrie, The Stand, IT, and the Dark Tower Series, issued a press release, in effect, retracting a statement he made twenty three years ago in his best-selling work, On Writing.”  A copy of the press release appeared on the screen as the reporter read it:

“Years ago I wrote in my memoir on the craft of writing that I believed adverbs paved the road to hell.  Since then in my older age, I’ve realized that I was in fact, tiresome and anal-retentive with that statement.  Adverbs are a wonderful part of speech and should be used as often as possible.  I profusely endorse their use.”

– Stephen King

Lolly Junior clicked off the TV and turned to Lolly Senior.  “Think that will do it, Pop?”

Lolly Senior replied, “Indubitably!”

The End