Wordless and Painful and Old

Even Tried Voodoo Right Outside Your Home

There was an author. He struggled for years writing novels that no one read.

Then, on a foggy night with a full moon out, he took a pen name. And started churning out short stories. Simple, witty, memorable pieces. Quick reads. And always centered around a tragic love affair.

And as the stories grew more and more popular, Hollywood came calling. Six of the stories were turned into movies. But the movies were all horrible and the author took his name off the credits of all of them.

Nearly all the stories were narrated by broken men, devastated by heartbreak and unwilling or unable to come to terms with their pasts.

For years, the author avoided interviews, until he learned he was dying and finally agreed to talk to the press.

The question they all wanted to know was how he could write such memorable and completely different women -- each of whom managed to break his narrators' hearts in completely different ways.

And each time he admitted that he had no special gift for female characters. All the women were the same woman. The one who'd broken his heart in a million pieces. The one he pretended he'd forgotten.

The one who haunted him every day of his life.

Because he thought that maybe, if he just talked about her, he could finally break free of the hold she had on him.

And it might have worked -- except that each of the interviews and articles ran long and had to be cut. And in every case, the fact that the different women were all the same was edited out before publication.

Which wasn't what he wanted... but was the way he would have written it himself.