Bang.
Gunfire shattered the humid air, shredding leaves, splintering bark. A bullet tore through Merlot's right lung, hurling him back into the mud. The shot came from the tree line — precise, merciless, tearing a fist-sized exit wound from his back. Blood soaked his OG-107 uniform, pooling in the mud. His fingers clawed at the dirt, slipping in the muck as he tried to crawl. Every breath was a drowning, froth and red bubbles spilling from his lips. His vision blurred, and the world was shrinking to black. He was slipping away, alone—just another nameless casualty of the war.
No. This isn't right.
Merlot survived. Not zipped into a body bag, not left to rot beneath the jungle canopy. He lived under Uncle Sam's roof, paying high rent for borrowed time. Alan, his comrade, didn't find him drowning in blood, cursing his own delay. Alan always had his back, whether it was covering him during a firefight or slipping him a cigarette when the rations ran dry. He'd hauled Merlot from the mud, beyond the gunfire, out of death's grasp. Merlot once shielded him from the bullies who mocked his Asian heritage; now Alan repaid the favour by protecting him from bullets, which were faster and less creative than children with nicknames.
When Merlot stepped off the plane, his mother ran to him, arms flung wide, eyes brimming with tears. "I thought I'd lost you," she whispered, clutching him like he might vanish again.
His mind was a traitor, spinning lies that dragged him back to the jungle, to a death that never happened. The reunion wasn't a dream, stitched by grief; Alan had stuck by his side. He didn't abandon him to join a safer unit.
Survival carried torment, like an unwanted gift. Merlot would do anything for fame—even borrow the name Robert Galbraith, swirl it around like a vintage he couldn't afford, hoping the taste would linger long enough to be remembered. Fame was his addiction, identity his hangover.
He was real, damn it—an author, not some literary phantom conjured from thin air like J.T. LeRoy. His middle name, Cabernet, was not a tipsy whim plucked from a wine list—although he didn't know why it felt destained on his lips like rotten wine spoiling his taste.
He stared at his reflection in the bathroom mirror, the overhead bulb flickering, casting his face in alternating bands of shadow and light. A feminine voice grated in his mind, sharp as fingernails on a chalkboard, questioning his dominion over The Sangria War. The title felt stolen, better fitted to Huth. Yet Sangria, vivid as fresh-spilled blood, painted a battlefield in his mind: fallen soldiers, their crimson-drenched bodies a haunting vision of perfected slaughter. He clung to the name for his book as stubbornly as a cat clings to its master, unable to fathom another.
Behind him, on the desk in the living room, lay the unfinished manuscript for The Sangria War—its fictional world of Intermarium, Ossory, and Anua felt more stable than his own mind.
The narrative slipped from his grasp, tugged by unseen strings like a puppet being pulled by its master. He pressed his palms to the cool porcelain sink, fingers twitching. The voice was relentless, having haunted him for years, entwined with his buried desire to wear women's clothing, a truth smothered beneath the ill-fitting armour of manhood. He'd dreamed of surgery—tightening his vocal cords, silencing her forever. But what would that silence reveal?
She mocked his identity, insisting he was as fictional as his characters. Please. He'd practically invented metafiction, weaving his story with deliberate chaos, not some flimsy cardboard construct. He wasn't a last-minute character cobbled together from her imposter syndrome and abandoned plot outlines.
If anything, she was fiction.
He just had better dialogue.
Her words pierced his brain cold and clinical: Your book's a rip-off, Merlot. Playing transgender for attention? Pathetic. Your whole life reads like someone workshopping a sympathy card. Every motivation I gave you is so transparent.
I gave you. The phrase made his skin crawl. Why was she lurking in the depths of his subconscious mind?
The voice was a persistent hum beneath the scrape of his razor. Cold foam bloomed across his face in the bathroom mirror, stinging not just his skin but a raw nerve in his memory—or was it memory? Sometimes he felt like he'd stepped into his life mid-scene, with no clear recollection of Act I. The blade of the razor wavered, echoing the doubt in his mind. Her words, sharper than any blade.
"Shut up," he whispered, dragging the razor across his jaw. The sting couldn't drown her out. Why waste time on this garbage?
Grabbing the threadbare towel from the steel rack, he scrubbed his face raw. Leaving the bathroom behind, he entered the living room, his latest rejection letter lay splayed on the white table, a death certificate for his dreams.
"Dear Mr. Jupiter," He read out loud, his voice flat: "Your manuscript reads like someone trying to escape their own fiction." He grinned and tore it into pieces that drifted into the trash like snow.
Microsoft Copilot was his only refuge, smoothing bruised prose while his blue eyes ached behind the screen's glow. His grandfather's typewriter sat on the desk he inherited after the funeral.
"Why waste time?"
The thought was not his, yet it echoed beneath his skin. He strode to his bedroom, opened the dresser, and pulled on a high-collared shirt and a dark brown coat—that cloaked his character, James Evergreen ruler of Intermarium. Intermarium was Merlot's escape, a fictional haven from his crumbling New York apartment.
James was flawed. His politics were sloppier than a dog's kisses and his marriage with Leslie, rockier than the mountains. The Ossory province of Intermarium didn't care about James' personal life; its citizens viewed the royal family as too dysfunctional to rule.
Merlot's plan was never to meddle—only to haunt the edges, a ghost offering the cruel comfort of false existence. He made Lolita an alcoholic for a reason. Sober, she might see too clearly: an author unravelling, at war with the voice in his head.
Lolita loved Sangria. The suffering in Intermarium was the least of her problems. She siphoned her father's money—without his knowing—to feed her addiction to red wine. To James, Lolita could do no wrong. But Merlot knew better. He could see past her pearly smile and glimpse the rot inside, fermented by Sangria. Her backstory as a survivor of sexual abuse gave her sympathy, but Merlot knew readers wouldn't overlook her cruelty.
Intermarium—a country that never came to be—was a sanctuary for a name scorched into literary infamy by Nabokov. To Merlot, Lolita wasn't a nymphet. She was a lighthouse, a shard of his soul. He could relate to her struggle with alcoholism. After his deployment, he drank for a decade before checking himself into rehab. Healing didn't come cheap. Still, he endured nights waking up drenched in sweat, convinced he was bleeding in a jungle, not lying in his bed. Dozens of therapy sessions, no peace. Just a lighter wallet.
When he walked through a dark tunnel, she was the beacon guiding him to hope. Hope that if literature could burn a name into ashes, it could also birth it anew—a phoenix rising from its own ruin.
He carried this thought back to his rickety executive desk, like heavy luggage, the laptop screen casting a pale glow.
The voice seeped in again, insidious and knowing: Check your non-existent birth certificate, Merlot – what year were you fabricated? You can't remember because you were never born. You were written. He clenched his jaw, the muscle ticking.
"I know I exist," Merlot hissed to the disturbing voice. "What's a life without being heavily taxed and being burned out?"
Merlot cradled a chipped ceramic mug, the bitter tang of stale coffee a meagre anchor in a reality that felt like it was constantly fraying at the edges. But the voice offered no respite: You're not an author, Merlot. You're just another character waiting for the final edit, deletion.
The mug slipped. His numb fingers offered no resistance. It shattered against the worn linoleum, the sharp crack echoing in the confined space.
Kneeling, he gathered the pieces, careful not to cut himself. The Sangria War wasn't just a story—it was bleeding through the pages, staining his very being. He wondered if he was the author or merely the story, fragile as the world around him.