Arnold Bessemer had two great loves in life: Latin and writing.  Ever since he had been consigned to Latin for a few years in high school, he had loved the language, not for anything inherent in Latin itself, but because of the aura of Latin as something ancient, sacred, something almost sinister and on the verge of extinction, and as a speaker of the language, he viewed himself as the keeper of some special flame.  It also made him feel smarter than everyone else.  He never learned more than the basics of grammar and a few dozen idioms in the textbooks, but he never tired of inserting them into his speech and writing whenever they were pertinent, and oftentimes when they were not.

Which brings us to the other thing that he loved, writing.  Arnold was not good at many things, but he was the most not good at writing, and not for lack of trying.  For years the poor young man had struggled, unsuccessfully, to finish a worthy piece of creative writing and make a name for himself in the literary world.  He had been told by professors that his style was too didactic, too dry, that he needed to try to be a little more brief, and most of all, would it kill him to use fewer Latin phrases?  As a result of this criticism, offered in front of a class of college sophomores, Arnold earned himself the nickname Wheelock, and it stuck.  But because he loved Latin so much, he didn’t think of this as a derogatory name, but as a badge of honor, and he took it up as his nom de plume–which is French, by the way.

To try and diversify his audience and hopefully find someone who would actually like his stories, Arnold frequently took them to writer’s club meetings at local bookstores and libraries.  But here, alas, he met his match, and he soon came to realize that even these amateurs were much better writers than he was.  Not willing to give up his dream, Arnold’s twisted mind devised a scheme by which he could become a famous writer, a sort of quid pro quo—this, literally, for that.

His methods we’ll get to in a moment, but suffice it to say that within three years, Arnold had three critically-hailed books published under his penname, Arnold Wheelock, and had a substantial amount of money in his bank account, almost without lifting a finger.  His modus operandi meant that he had to remain more or less anonymous, refusing to do press or have his picture on the dust-jacket, but he was fine with this, so long as his name graced the cover, and people all across America were reading his books, and wondering at how remarkable it was that a single writer could compose books so varied in style and substance.

When he had been dormant for a while, Arnold decided that it was time to produce a new book, and he went down to the Tuesday-night writer’s meeting held in one of the secluded corners of his local book emporium.  He was unknown here, for his way of working meant that he had to move around a lot.  He brought with him a short story that he had written a few years ago, one that he knew, from trial and error, to be good, and with which he could ingratiate himself to his next victim.

That victim turned out to be a young man named Marc.  This thin, effete writer sat in the corner of the corner, isolating himself from everyone else.  When it came time for him to read his story aloud to the group, he stood, in the center of the circle, and recited his piece from memory.  His artfulness and skill were apparent from the first word he spoke, and his long, labyrinthine sentences wended through the air until it seemed as if everyone in the circle was hypnotized.  The trance was broken when an announcement came over the store’s overhead speakers, saying closing-time was approaching.

The old-timers in the writer’s group gathered their stuff and didn’t even bother to tell Marc how stunning his prose was.  Arnold could tell from the way they turned their backs that they were envious of his skill, of him, who at twenty had surpassed them all in their sixties.  Arnold was not only enraptured as a listener, but as a man with a devious plan, he was thrilled at the opportunity Marc offered him.

Only Arnold and the madam of the group, as it were, an old white-haired woman named Ethel, stayed around the congratulate Marc.  Arnold waited until Ethel’s white head bobbed away before approaching.

“Hi,” Arnold said.  “I wanted you to know I really liked your short story.”

            “I don’t like the term ‘short story,’” Marc said.  “I prefer micro-masterpiece.’”  He waited for Arnold to laugh, but found that he had to add, “Just kidding.  Thanks, though.  It doesn’t seem like anyone else did.”

            “They’re just jealous.  All these geezers, they don’t like new people coming into their group and showing them up.  It’s sad really, but it’s the same everywhere.  I’ve been to a bunch of different groups.”

            “Too bad.  Your story was pretty good, too.  The one about frogs, right?”

            “Yeah,” Arnold said.  It embarrassed him a little to have the story he was so proud of boiled down to being just “about frogs.”  “What was your name again?”

            “Marc T. Sisseroux,” he said.

            “That sounds familiar,” Arnold said.

            “That’s because it’s a penname.  It’s a play on words.  It’s supposed to be like Marcus Tulius Circeo.”

            “Oh, you like Cicero?” Arnold said.

            “I love him, and all the Latin authors: Virgil, Horace, Plutarch.”

            “Caesar,” Arnold added.

            “Caesar!” Marc confirmed, nearly swooning.

            Arnold’s interest piqued.  “Hey, me too,” he beamed.  “So have you had anything published?”

            “No, not yet.  But I’m working at it.  You know what Cicero says: Assiduus usus uni rei deditus et ingenium et artem saepe vincit.”  He saw Arnold struggling slowly to translate or try to comprehend.  “It means: Constant practice devoted to one subject often outdoes both intelligence and skill.”

            “Oh, yes, of course.  My Latin is somewhat rusty.  I’ve always adored Cicero, though.  What is that other thing he says?  Oh, yes: Simia quam similis, turpissimus bestia, nobis.”  Arnold was flustered, and he threw out the only Cicero quote that came to mind, some idiom he had learned in school as pronunciation practice, the meaning of which he didn’t even remember.

            Marc screwed up his face.  “‘How like us is that very ugly beast the monkey?’”

            “Well, you know,” Arnold said, but could think of no suitable explanation to continue with.

            “Cuiusvis hominis est errare, nullius nisi insipientis in errore perseverare,” Marc said, and began to walk away.

            Arnold stood there blushing, for this was another quote from Cicero that he actually recognized.  “Anyone can err but only the fool persists in his faults.”

            The next week Arnold brushed up on his idiomatic Latin and went to the next writer’s club meeting prepared to take Marc to task.  After the meeting, Arnold walked alongside him as they left.  Before he could begin, Marc said, “I’m sorry.”

            “For what?”

            “Last week I was a little rude.”

            “Te absolvo,” Arnold said—I forgive you.

            “Well, you were asking about getting published, and I didn’t even ask you.  Have you ever been published?”

            “Yes, actually.”

            “Oh yeah?  Where at?”

            They were just passing the bookstore’s literature section, and Arnold pulled him aside.  He went to the W’s and found his three books, all of theme faced-out prominently.

            “Yeah, right.  This is you?” Marc said mockingly.

            “That’s my penname.  Arnold Wheelock.”

            “Like Wheelock’s Latin?”

            “Exactly,” Arnold said, smiling.  “Have you read any of my work?”

            “I read Tired All of the Time.  It was superb.”  Arnold demurred modestly.  “If this is you, then why are you wasting your time coming to these small-time writer’s club meetings?”

            “Who said anything about wasting time?”  He tapped his temple with his index finger.  “These meetings give me ideas.  They get my juices flowing.  In fact, I just started a new book last week.”

            “What about?” Marc asked.

            “I’d rather not say.”

            “Hm,” Marc said.  He looked thoroughly intrigued.  Now it was Arnold’s time to walk away, but before he had gone more than a few steps, Marc called after him, “Hold up.  I thought maybe we could go get a coffee or something and talk about writing.”

            Arnold envisioned himself in his mind’s eye, jerking up a fishing pole as the fish below the water latched onto the bait.  “Absolutely,” he said.  “You know, you really should be in print.  I might be able to help.”

 

            A month later, they were living together in Arnold’s up-scale, second-story apartment.  Together they had converted the living room and kitchen into a double writers’ loft and library, and spent their days tapping away at computer keyboards, Arnold acting as experienced mentor, Marc the skillful pupil.  Day after day they awoke and began immediately to write, scarcely stopping to eat, both showing decisive contemptus saeculi—contempt for the secular world, living instead like monks.

            Each day Arnold would look over what the young man had produced, making helpful comments, but generally gushing praise.  Marc’s book was shaping up to be better than anything Arnold had thus far published, and they both felt proud as the work progressed.  Occasionally, Marc would ask to have a look at what Arnold was writing, but the mentor always brushed off these requests.

            “At least tell me how many pages you’ve written,” Marc pleaded.

            “Facta, non verba,” Arnold advised—actions, not words—and he went back to writing.  “You just keep writing.  Besides, one does not measure progress in terms of pages written.”

            “Where did you learn Latin, by the way?” Marc asked over his shoulder, his fingers still tapping away, the screen still filling with words.

            “In high school.  You?”

            “I was raised Catholic, so, you know.”

            “Ah,” Arnold said.  “Not Catholic anymore?”

            “Me?  Are you kidding?”

            “Have you thought of a title for your book yet?” Arnold asked after a while.

            “No.  You?”

            “I was thinking Et in Arcadia Ego.”

            “It’s been done.”

            “You’re right.”  Arnold didn’t say that he had thought of that as a title for Marc’s book, which he just might use against his will.

            This arrangement went on for six months, and then began to break down.  One day, Arnold came back from grocery shopping and caught Marc using his computer.

            “What are you doing?” he called nervously.

            “My laptop was lagging,” Marc explained.

            “Well, just so you know, I keep all my writing files on this thumb drive,” Arnold said, withdrawing a USB stick from his pocket.  “I don’t leave anything on the computer.”

            “I see,” Marc said.  He glanced over his shoulder at Arnold and said, “Excusatio non petita accusatio manifesta.”

            Arnold didn’t know this phrase, but he noted it, and spent the next several days at his old, dog-eared Wheelock’s trying to figure it out.  When he finally translated it, he sat up in nervous revelation.  “An excuse that has not been sought is an obvious accusation.”  He waited for Marc to go to sleep that night, then quietly went over to his own laptop.  He opened up the word processing program and looked under the recently-opened files.  He opened the file that he had been tapping away at for six months while Marc diligently worked on his book on the other side of the room.  Arnold’s file was one hundred and sixty pages of random, incoherent sentences that he typed to appear busy.  He checked the access log and discovered that Marc had opened the file while Arnold was at the store.  Arnold’s explanation about the USB drive had been tantamount to an admission of guilt, but as yet, Marc didn’t know what he was guilty of.

            The next night, Marc asked if Arnold wanted to go to a writers meeting.  Arnold shrugged, and they went to the bookstore.  He didn’t bother to bring anything to share with the group, and sat there absent-mindedly, even as his pupil read a beautiful excerpt from his work in progress.  As the group broke up, Arnold noticed a girl across the circle staring at him.  After a moment, he recognized her, but before he could escape, she was already upon him.

            “Hey, Arnold,” she said enthusiastically.  “Remember me?”

            Arnold looked, squinting his eyes.  “Carrie?” he said.

            “Sarah,” she said, slapping him on the arm in mock anger.  “I guess it was a while ago.  Remember, we both used to go to the Santa Monica writers group?”

            “Oh yeah,” he said.  “Uh, this is Marc,” Arnold said, introducing the young man beside him.

            “Sarah,” she said, shaking his hand.  “We both used to go to this writers club every week for like a year,” she explained to Marc.  “Then you just vanished, huh?  Still coming to writers meetings, I see.”

            “Yeah, still working at it,” Arnold said.  “Any luck publishing?”

            “No,” she groaned.  “Hey, did you hear about Darlene?”

            “Darlene?” Arnold said, looking into nothing as if trying to remember.  He started gathering up his stuff, trying to indicate to Marc that now was the time to go.

            “Yeah, she used to go to our writers club.  I thought you guys were close; I always saw you talking afterwards.”  She examined his face, his eyes searching to remember.  “She was short, had dark hair, wrote a lot about Mayans.”

            “I vaguely remember her,” Arnold said.

            “She got killed,” Sarah told them in a conspiratorial voice.

            “What?” Arnold said in disbelief.

            “Wow,” Marc murmured.  “You guys know someone who got killed?”

            “Yeah, she just disappeared one day, and a few months later they found her body half-buried in the park.

            “Geez,” Arnold said.  “That’s terrible.  Uh, well, we’ve got to go.”

            “Bummer.  So you guys come here now?  So I’ll see you next week.”

            “I don’t know,” Arnold muttered.  “We’ve been working a lot lately.”

            “All right, well maybe some other time.”

            They took their leave.  “That girl’s a psycho,” Arnold said as they walked across the parking lot.

            “She seemed okay to me,” Marc said.

            “I’m telling you, man, looney.”

 

            For the next few days, Arnold did not pretend to write.  He sat on the couch reading or watching TV, but was secretly observing Marc as the young man typed at his laptop, looking for anything that might indicate he was up to no good, or knew something he shouldn’t.

            “Writer’s block?” Marc asked one afternoon.

            “Huh?  Oh, yeah.  You know, I’m just not feeling it.  Do you think you’re almost done?”

            “Getting there.  I’ve got to say, I think this is really good.”

            “It is,” Arnold affirmed.  “I can’t wait to see the whole thing, to get it out there into the world.”

            “You said you would get in touch with your agent for me, right?”

            “Yeah, of course.  You just let me know as soon as you’re done and we’ll turn the manuscript in.  I know it will get published.”

            “I think it will, too.  I was going to wait to tell you, but I sent a query letter and a sample chapter to Putman’s.”

            “You did what?” Arnold yelled, jumping up from the couch.

            “I sent a query letter to Putman’s.  Geez, what’s the big deal?”

            Arnold tried to compose himself.  He needed to think clearly, or this scheme of his might fall apart.  “No big deal, I guess.  Just, uh, personally, I like to wait until I’m finished before contacting publishers.  That’s all.  Did you use your penname?”

            “What other name would I use?” Marc said sarcastically.

            “Just wondering.” 

            “I’ve been reading one of your books,” Marc said.

            “Oh yeah?  Which one?”

            “The Sarcophagus.  It’s really good.  It’s given me a lot of inspiration, actually.”

            “Good.  I’m glad.”

            “It’s funny, how Sarcophagus has Mayans in it, and that girl Sarah was just saying how that other girl wrote about Mayans all the time.”

            “What’s your point?” Arnold said, turning away from the TV to give Marc a confrontational stare.

            “Just weird.  I mean, did you work with that girl at all?”

            “We talked.  Like I told you, I go to those meetings to get ideas.  Maybe she got her Mayan ideas from me.  Anyway, that was like three years ago.”

            “All right,” Marc said.  “No need to get bent out of shape.”

            Arnold went to the bathroom.  This is not going to work, he told himself.  What Arnold had planned was this: When Marc T. Sisseroux finished his manuscript, Arnold was going to kill him.  He was going to dispose of the body, and afterwards, he was going to print out the manuscript and submit it to his agent.  The book written by Marc would then be published under the name of the well-respected and established author Arnold Wheelock.  Arnold would reap the reward, while the now-dead author would get his or her work in print and millions would read it.  This was the quid pro quo.

            He had done it three times now, without a hitch.  Now this pompous, ambitious bastard might have ruined things by submitting the manuscript to a different publisher under his own penname.  That was sure to raise suspicions once the book actually appeared in Arnold’s name.  Add to that the fact that he was starting to get suspicious, thanks to this Sarah bitch showing up at exactly the wrong time.  Arnold would have to advance his plans.

            A state of uneasiness descended on the writers’ house.  They both watched each other warily out of the corners of their eyes.  Marc couldn’t have any idea what was in store for him, but he also knew that something wasn’t right.  Arnold knew that he had to kill his young pupil and soon, but not before he finished the book, or else this whole liaison would be worthless, because he wasn’t confident in his own skills to finish a book that was so skillfully written.

            “I think I’m done,” Marc said suddenly one day.

            “Really?” Arnold asked, getting up from his own computer desk.  He walked over to stand behind Marc, looking over his shoulder at the screen.

            “Well, with the first draft.  I think I’m going to go stay with my mom for a while, to get a change of scenery.”

            “You can’t,” Arnold said.  He felt Marc’s body tense up against the computer chair.  “I mean, it’s not good to mess with success, right?”

            “All the same.”

            “Well, listen, copy your file onto here so I can go through it, give you some notes,” Arnold suggested.  He produced his USB drive and handed it to Marc.

            “Te absolvo,” Marc said.

            “What?” Arnold said, his heart suddenly thudding.  “You forgive me?”  What does he mean?

            “It’s the title.  Of my book.  Now where does this go?” he held up the USB drive.

            “Oh, I think the port is here on the side.”  Arnold leaned down, his face close to the computer.  His mind was racing.  Should he do it now?  He needed to make sure the story was finished first.  But if Marc left, then what?  He found the port and pointed at it.  He resolved right then to do it, to murder the boy here.  If the book wasn’t finished, well, Arnold could finish it.  He had lived with this writer for seven months now, had gotten inside his head, surely he could duplicate the style.  All right, he thought.  Here we go. 

            But as he started to turn away from the computer, Marc lashed out and jammed the thumb drive into his eye.

            Arnold bellowed in pain, but he tried to set it aside and finish the job.  He couldn’t let Marc get away now.  He grasped out in blindness and only grabbed the back of his shirt as he made a dash for the door.  Arnold yanked down on the shirt, pulling him down to the floor.  He scrambled to sit on top of him to strangle him, but Marc kicked out, his feet to his face, shoving him back.  Arnold grabbed him around the ankle and used his adrenaline-fed strength to bodily turn him over.

            He slugged him hard in the backs of the legs and incapacitated him with a well-placed and strong punch to the groin.  Marc now lay motionless on the floor.  Arnold crawled up, straddling his lower back.

            “I’m going to kill you with my bare hands,” he growled.

            During the struggle, neither of them had noticed the repeated knocking on the door.  Now, as Arnold interlaced his fingers round the young author’s throat, feeling his pulse, the resistant sinews of his neck, the fragile hyoid bone just beneath the skin, the door exploded inwards and two men in suits poured in, guns drawn.

            “Freeze!” they roared.

            Arnold could do nothing but raise his hands and feign innocence.

 

            “So how did you find me?” Arnold asked.  He was sitting in a tiny interrogation room with the two detectives who had interrupted his murder, a big wad of gauze over his eye.  A mirror on one wall reflected his stunned expression back at him.

            “He wants to know how we find him,” one detective told the other.

            “Sure, tell him,” the other detective said.

            “All right, and it’s a good one.  Three years ago, Darlene Myers was murdered in Santa Monica—or at least, she disappeared without a trace, until her body was found months later.”

            “And you think I had something to do with that?”

            “Don’t play coy, asshole.  The detectives in Santa Monica had no leads.  A year after that, Dwayne Butler was murdered, his remains found near a river bank in West Virginia.  And a year after that, Tony Harrison was killed in Illinois.”

            “And these are somehow connected?” Arnold said.

            “For someone caught in the act of murder, you sure like to play innocent,” the other detective said.

            The first one went on.  “Well, Arnold, that’s a good question.  It took three years to discover that they were connected.  But we reviewed the notes in all the cases, and discovered that the only thing our three victims had in common was that they all were aspiring writers, and they all went to writers groups.  And then, a few months before each one was killed, they moved in with a strange guy, and then were never seen again.”

            “A strange guy?”

            “Yeah, that’s all that their fellow writers remembered.  Some weird guy who came to the writers group meetings and read bad stories and tried to pick up on the girls.  Oh, yeah, they also remembered that this weirdo was constantly speaking Latin, trying to sound smarter than everybody else, but it really didn’t work.  So we talked to these people some more and found one of them who still had a story written by . . .” he consulted his notes, “an Arnold Wheelock.”

            “What was that story about, again?” the other detective said, scratching his head.

            “I think it was about frogs,” the first one said, and then turned a caustic grin on Arnold.  “Well, as you might know, there’s no such person as Arnold Wheelock.  But there is a famous author by that name, whose three most recent books coincided with the disappearances of our victims.  So we contacted the publisher, and they pointed us to you.  It looks like we were just in time.  What was your next book called, huh, Arnold?”

            “I hope it wasn’t about frogs,” the other detective said.

            The detective shuffled some papers and then sat up straighter.  “Listen, the D.A. is willing to cut a deal.  He won’t seek the death penalty if you’re willing to plead guilty.  Either way, you’re going to spend a long time behind bars.”

“It doesn’t matter to me, gentlemen.  Ars longa vita brevis,” Arnold said.

            “What’s that, Plato?” the other detective asked scornfully.

            Arnold leaned forward.  “Far from it.  Art is long.  Life is short.”

            “Listen, I could care less whether you die in a lethal injection chamber or in a jail cell.  I’ve got just one question: Why did you do it?”

            “Cacoethes scribendi,” Arnold said.

            “Huh?”

            Arnold grinned, gleeful at being able, for once during the interrogation, to confound these detectives.  “I have an insatiable urge to write.”