The office smelled faintly like dust, ink & perfume. He had his sleeves rolled to the elbows and one foot tucked under the opposite knee. His pencil scratched softly across the page.
Outside, someone was yelling at a parking meter.
Across the room, Linda sat at her desk, typing a clean copy of his expenses. she somehow managed to make typing sound like a quiet background rhythm, not a distraction.
"You want this organized by date or name?" she asked, not looking up.
"Date."
"Alright."
James kept writing. He was on page seventy-eight. The script would probably end somewhere in the mid-eighties, maybe ninety if he stretched the final scene. He didn't want to overdo it. It was a horror movie not epic, not deep. Just quick and bloody.
Linda cleared her throat. "You're out of coffee. You've been out since Tuesday. I'm not saying it's my job to get more. I'm saying it's going to start affecting morale."
James smirked slightly without looking up. "Is that a formal complaint?"
"Not yet. But if I start typing slower, you'll know why."
"I'll pick some up later."
"You said that yesterday."
"I was writing yesterday."
"You were writing Monday too."
"I've been writing all week."
Linda gave a soft click with her tongue and went back to typing.
James reached the last scene by noon. He took longer with this one. He could see it clearly the lake, the silence, the slow drift of the boat. He wrote it just as he remembered it. The fake calm. The sudden jump. The cut to black. Then stillness.
He stared at the words BLACK OUT for a while.
Not out of pride. Just… finality. The thing was whole now. No more placeholders. No more gaps.
He slid the page on top of the stack and tapped the edges to align them. Then he took a sheet of typing paper and, with a steady hand, wrote the title in capital letters across the top:
FRIDAY THE 13TH A FILM BY JAMES ROWAN
Linda glanced over. "That it?"
"That's it."
He set the stack gently on the desk and weighed it down with a stapler. There was nothing dramatic in the moment. No music. No inner monologue.
Just a finished stack of paper, a slowly cooling office, and the distant sound of a delivery truck outside the window.
James leaned back in his chair. He didn't feel proud. He didn't feel relieved.
He just felt… ready to move on.
The next morning, he gave her the script.
She didn't ask what it was about. He just slid it across the desk, still in the manila cover, and said, "When you've got time."
Linda didn't look up from the expense sheet she was jotting. "This the final?"
"First draft. Final enough."
She nodded, still writing. "I'll take it home tonight."
That was all. No comments, no promises, no questions. Just another task to be slotted in somewhere between classes and two part-time jobs.
The following morning, she walked in with the script under one arm. She didn't sit down right away. Just stood by the door, unzipped her jacket, and tossed it over the back of her chair.
James waited.
She set the script on his desk.
"This is crap," she said plainly.
He didn't flinch. "Okay."
Linda sat. Crossed one leg over the other. Opened her notepad.
"It's not the worst thing ever. It's fine. The deaths are spaced out okay. I even liked two of the setups. But…" She flipped through a few pages like she was checking receipts. "I couldn't tell the characters apart if you paid me. There's one guy who's horny and loud. Another guy who's horny and slightly quieter. Two girls who get naked and die, and one girl who doesn't and lives."
James exhaled through his nose. "You read the whole thing?"
"I don't like giving notes unless I finish something."
"Appreciated."
She tapped a pen against her knee. "Also, the dialogue? It's all the same. Everyone talks like they're reading off a TV commercial. No slang, no awkward pauses, no one saying something stupid at the wrong moment. It's too clean. Too fake."
He nodded, eyes on the cover page.
"And I get it's horror," she continued. "But there's like…Just thing happens, blood, next scene. You remember the movie because of the lake and the ending. Not because anyone said anything worth remembering."
James stayed quiet. Not because he was offended but because she was right.
He sat with that a moment longer.
Then: "Thanks for reading it."
Linda shrugged. "You asked."
He reached across the desk, pulled the script back into his side of the room, and slid it into the drawer without a word.
She stood, walked over to the file cabinet, and started sorting receipts.
"You want me to pretend it was great, I can," she added over her shoulder.
"No," he said. "Honest is better."
"Alright. Then it's crap."
And that was that.
Two days passed before he opened the drawer again.
The script was still there. He hadn't touched it. He hadn't rewritten anything. He didn't even take it out. Just sat with it for a minute.
It wasn't perfect. He knew that now he'd always known. But it was what he had. It told a story. It had a beginning, middle, and end. There were bodies, there was blood, there was a lake, and it ended with a bang.
It was enough to move forward.
He pulled it out and clipped it together with a brass fastener he'd found in the supply drawer. Then he grabbed an envelope from the desk, wrote out his own name and return address, and sealed the script inside.
Linda looked up from her desk. "We mailing it somewhere?"
"Yeah," he said. "I'm registering it with the Writers Guild. Copyright. Just to have it on file."
She nodded. "That cost money?"
"Twenty bucks and a stamp."
"Alright. Should I log it as project expense?"
He hesitated, then nodded. "Yeah. Start a new page. Title it Friday the 13th. Just make it its own column."
Linda pulled a fresh sheet from her binder and started a new ledger page.
James stood by the door for a moment, envelope in hand, then paused.
"I'm gonna start looking for crew next week," he said.
Linda stopped writing. "People?"
"Yeah. Cinematographer first. Sound, probably. I'll need someone who can help with effects eventually. Might rent equipment. All of it's going to add up."
She nodded. "You want me to keep weekly totals?"
"That'd help."
James lingered another beat. "Things might get messy soon. Phones ringing more. Visitors, maybe. I don't know what this is going to turn into yet."
Linda gave a small shrug. "As long as the checks clear."
He smiled at that faint, but real.
Then he walked out with the envelope and headed down the street toward the post office.
It was time to stop thinking of the movie as something he remembered.
Now it was something he was making.