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The Manuscript Hunter, part 2

Whiplash woke up with his heart practically in his throat. Another nightmare about the otter’s goddamned books. The memories were already fading, which suggested to him that whatever had happened wasn’t a real worry, but it didn’t make him feel any better.

What had that dream been? The sun, slowly choked out by black claws coiling around it. One final flare of red light before everything was plunged into darkness forever. Was it a premonition? He mentally went through all of the otter’s stories. Sometimes, dreams were just dreams, meaning nothing. Other times, because of all the ways that reality had clearly been fractured, they meant everything.

It could be Furnace of Stars. In that one, the sun had turned into a red giant. It wasn’t an exact match, but it was uncomfortably close. That story, though, was purely science fiction. There were no Muses, no black tentacle-leg-claws, simply the sun reaching the end of its natural life with predictable consequences for the people of earth. If someone were to read it, that might be the result, but then, did the Muse really have that much power? So far, all of the books had only caused small effects. Reality fractured because reality didn’t like changes, but in the end, the results weren’t all that significant, at least not immediately. A copy of a person. A gender, switched. A species of invasive mushrooms or brainwashed drones that would only be a problem if allowed to spread. The worst he had seen had been the Muse’s interpretation of itself.

Not snuffing out the goddamn sun. That felt unrealistic, like bad writing. Then again, the otter herself was known to dream up outlandish scenarios. Whiplash hated how he was only sure that he couldn’t be sure of anything, but one thing was certain. He had to take the dreams seriously, at least for now, but if it was Furnace of Stars about to be read, he had no leads on its location.

With a sigh, he laid back down next to Julien, who was still sleeping peacefully. Just yesterday, she had been a male. Now, not so much. Yesterday, Whiplash had a copy of himself come into existence, too, and now he no longer existed, having sacrificed himself to destroy the Muse. Or well, one iteration of the Muse. Certainly, it wasn’t the same one that had turned all the books anomalous to begin with. Nor was it the same one that, if everything his copy had said was correct, had inspired the story that he lived in.

Was this the second chapter, then? The hyena rubbed his temples firmly. It wouldn’t do him any good to think about. He didn’t want to consider how many months it had been since the last chapter had been written. Or how, just a few actions past this one, nothing might be written at all. Just a blank page, beyond which nothing existed at all, until it did. And he’d never know.

He desperately hoped that this existence wasn’t just a story. But then again, if it was a story, at least there’d be a happy ending. Assuming that the person writing it was anything like the version he knew, who wrote the books that had since turned anomalous.

Whiplash shook his head. Even if all of that were true, there was nothing he could do about it. Thinking about it would just end up driving himself insane. He’d start noticing random details – like the slow dripping of water somewhere up in the hotel ceiling, suggesting that the owner would soon have to pay for rather substantial renovations – and then he’d wonder what purpose they served in a fictional story. Who would write about the little tear in his blanket? The fact that the shower in the room couldn’t seem to decide if it was set to hot or cold water, and meandered between the two as he showered?

Stop it, hyena, he thought. You have more pressing issues to think about. Stuff that you can actually affect.

He couldn’t fall back asleep, though, and his thoughts kept drifting back to the books that were still missing. He didn’t have any leads on their locations, yet. He had no idea where the otter herself was, either, though he was under the impression that she was somewhere in her home city still, just keeping a low profile and not writing much. Maybe he’d get in touch. She had to have at least some idea about the rest. Then he thought about his copy again. And then, the Muse. Then, once again, about how he might not even be a real person, and so his thoughts went, in ever-faster circles – spirals, perhaps – until he had no choice but to get out of bed.

It was still night, here in France. Everything was quiet, bar for the patter of rain on the windowsills, and that incessant drip in the ceiling. Yet something compelled him to get out on the balcony anyway, just to look at the state of the world.

The cool, humid air met him the moment he opened the door and stepped onto the rubbery balcony carpet. Below him, the city – he couldn’t recall the name, but it certainly wasn’t Paris – was still. Whiplash couldn’t quite tell what time it was, but he was fine with that. The time of day wasn’t really important at a moment like this, when nothing was happening.

He looked down at the rain-slick streets, illuminated by both streetlights and countless other sources, each reflecting off the glimmering asphalt. Nothing moved bar for the rain coming down, to the point that Whiplash began to feel a little uneasy again, as if he was trapped in a snow globe, forever stuck in a static scene of a rainy city.

Thankfully, before he got too lost in that particular thought-loop, someone walking their dog passed beneath him, breaking the illusion of total stillness, and the hyena shrugged. It was getting hard to tell what meant something and what was just a coincidence. He needed clarity, and that meant that he had to talk to the otter again. While she might have been just as fictional as him, she’d still understand a story better than he did, no matter how many of hers he had edited over the years.

That, and Furnace of Stars was one of her favorite works. If anyone knew where the original manuscript was, it’d be her. For all he knew, it might even be on her bookshelf, cracked open by an unsuspecting visitor. Yes, his course was clear.

He stepped back inside and pulled out his phone. A quick booking later, he had a flight waiting for him in the morning at the nearest airport. The time was, as it happened, about three at night, and now the time became something that mattered again. He had about four hours.

Julien, he’d leave here. She lived in this city, after all, and as far as the hyena knew, there were no more anomalous books present. Explaining why she was suddenly a woman might be tricky, unless the book had made it so that she had always been a woman. But it wasn’t something that Whiplash could concern himself with. Everyone had problems, everyone had worries, and if he focused on all of them he’d never accomplish his mission of hunting down the remaining books.

As he got dressed, though, he did leave his phone number scribbled on a piece of paper on the nightstand. Just in case Julien had some trouble adjusting. Not that Whiplash really knew how to help her, but a listening ear was at least better than nothing.

Moving as quietly as he could, he packed up his things and left, calling a cab on his way to the reception, and checked out. The hotel clerk – another hyena, as luck would have it – asked him why he was leaving in the middle of the night.

“Surely it’d be better to just wait until morning?” he asked.

“I can’t sleep, anyway,” Whiplash said in turn. “Might as well get to the airport now.”

“At three AM? I mean, you do you, It’s not really my business,” the clerk answered. “Just that it seems like it happens basically every night. Someone comes down in the middle of the night, suddenly in a rush to get coffee or, well, get to the airport. Or they wake up and start fighting and make it my problem.”

Whiplash shrugged. “Everyone’s got their demons, I guess. So, I’d like to check out.”

“Alright. And your friend? She’s staying?” the clerk asked.

“Yep, she’ll stay until morning,” Whiplash replied. He felt a little out of it, even this conversation was sparking some kind of déjà vu, as if he’d had a similar conversation countless times. “I just need to get going and clear my head. Got any coffee?”

The clerk sighed. “We don’t, in fact, serve coffee in the middle of the night. Gonna have to go to one of those 24-7 corner stores.”

“Is the pool open, at least?” he added, only to quickly continue as he saw the other hyena’s face contort with mental anguish. “No, don’t worry, I get it. Guess that rules out breakfast too,” Whiplash chuckled, handing over his room key to the frowning clerk.

Really, he needed some moments of levity, because his entire life had become one enormous struggle after he took charge of the task of finding every single one of the otter’s malevolent, anomalous manuscripts. She worked at it too, but at the same time, she was a writer, not a detective, so there was only so much the otter herself could do. And then there was the matter of certain bad habits of hers which helped with writing, but were rather detrimental to this kind of thing.

He waited for the cab outside, and the drizzling rain and cold gave him some much-needed clarity. His copy, summoned by the book and now gone as if he had never existed, came to mind. Having another one of himself – more or less himself, anyway – especially one not only familiar with but spawned of the otter’s writings would be deeply helpful in finding the rest of the damn books. But he was dead. The book had large chunks of the story missing, erased by the solvent.

As far as Whiplash knew, the book still held the anomalous magic that the Muse had imbued it with. If the otter could convincingly rewrite the missing parts, it should work again, but that was a big ask; she had hundreds of stories, and likely wouldn’t remember the details of this one. There was someone or something else that did, though. That being said, Whiplash preferred not to think about it. It’d be the absolute last resort, but then… unlike the Muse of the books, the one that possessed the otter at times wasn’t inherently evil. It protected and inspired its host, after all, and the more destructive properties were more akin to the product of utterly unhinged and boundless inspiration.

Somewhat similar to how a nuclear reactor wasn’t bad, but an improperly built or maintained one was very bad. Maybe. Whiplash couldn’t be sure. The otter insisted that her Muse protected her, too, beyond inspiring her stories, but on the other hand, it was behind all of this.

His cab arrived and interrupted his introspective thoughts. The hyena got in, and they headed to the airport. From there, it’d be a long flight to where the otter lived, and then, they could work out a plan together. Soon enough, he was at the terminal and boarding the plane.

In a way, Whiplashed liked planes. They were a good excuse to simply relax, due to the fact that he couldn’t do anything to make things go any faster. He leaned his head against the window, looking down as the world disappeared beneath him. Thankfully, the times of people reading physical books in the air were largely a relic of the past – at this point, the hyena had a rather negative reaction to hearing the subtle sound of the turning of a page.

The otter’s anomalous manuscripts weren’t that many, and these days few people read that kind of thing. While tragic in a sense, it did limit spread; even if someone came across one, they were unlikely to actually read it instead of selling it to a collector.

That made hearing the sound of paper shifting a little more bearable, though there was still a spike of anxiety as some instinctive part of him expected the world to shift and warp each time.

The first few hours were uneventful. The world didn’t break and shatter. And then, it did. Only it wasn’t because of anyone on the plane.

Whiplash was only half awake when it happened. He was woken up by a red glare outside of the window. The other passengers didn’t react; few people reacted to reality shifting around them, as if their minds simply refused to accept that anything was wrong, much like how some people – when going blind – thought that they could still see with such conviction that their minds filled in the blanks with normalcy.

But the hyena saw it. With his adrenaline spiking again, he looked through the window. The sight was unreal. Something black was creeping over the sun, like tentacles or claws, each blocking out a sliver of light. And beneath them, it looked like the sun was being choked, redness growing where it’d previously been bright white and yellow as normal. A red… giant? Or dwarf, actually. Fuck.

Furnace of Stars. It had to be that one. Somebody had found it, opened it up, and rather than cybernetics, they’d gotten the end of the world.

Suddenly, Whiplash desperately wished he wasn’t on a plane so that he could do something in the dimming light but quickly told himself that he had no choice. His only plan was to find the otter and see if she knew where the book was; blindly scouring every English-speaking country wasn’t a possibility, not alone, not even for him.

The most eerie part wasn’t the world going dark and red. It was, and it always was, nobody else reacting to it. The pilots saw less, yes, there was less light, but their minds still told them that it was daytime. The average person had no concept for the impossible, and so they failed to register it when it happened.

The temperatures would drop quickly. Well, as far as Whiplash knew. He didn’t really know how much heat a small, red sun would put off, but slowly freezing at least beat it swelling into a red giant like in the story. The “claws” around it, though, they worried him.

With nothing to do, he could only wait until they landed. By now, a nap was entirely out of the question, but at least he had slept well, cuddled up with Julien last night.

When he did eventually disembark, Whiplash noticed a distinct chill in the wait. The otter lived in a cold climate, so it could’ve just been natural, but at the same time, seeing everything cast in a sickly orange light made him feel uneasy regardless. He had to move quick, he knew, and so, he hailed another cab that’d take him across the city and to the otter’s home.

One hour and an exorbitant fare later, he knocked on the unassuming door. No response.

“Cinos? Otter? You do live here, right?” he called out. Nothing. He tried the door and found that it was open, and upon stepping inside, he immediately stepped on something. A page? The floor had pages scattered here and there, most with some amount of writing, and all of them appearing discarded.

He followed them – and the sound of a keyboard tapping – through the otherwise quiet house, and they led him to a little office, where the otter was sitting, frenziedly working on a new story, and as usual, not wearing any pants. She didn’t pay him any attention; probably wasn’t even aware that he was there at all, but at least she was clearly alright.

Bar for the couple of empty bottles of vodka next to her desk, and another half-empty one placed on top of it. He couldn’t really blame her. If he drank, he would’ve been doing it right about now.

He tapped the otter’s shoulder, and she turned around, alarmed and nearly falling over. She was also visibly drunk.

“Oh. Hi,” she greeted him. “What’s… what’s up?”

“I need to find Furnace of Stars,” the hyena sighed, helping the otter out of her chair and moving her to the sofa in the living room for a more comfortable seat. “And all the other books. As you know.”

“I… I’d really prefer not thinking about any of that,” she replied, closing her eyes.

“Well, that’s not really an option,” Whiplash replied, matter-of-factly.

“You know what I see every time I close my eyes? Strawberry jam with glass shards in it,” the otter said. “I thought I’d get over it, but fuck me, it’s like…”

“Yeah, I get it,” Whiplash replied. He was still thinking about the poor mouse who had opened The Muse, but he had gotten a lot better at compartmentalizing, whereas the otter had clearly gotten worse. At least while indulging in her vices. “You probably shouldn’t get drunk and actively think about it.”

“I know, but like… helps me focus on writing,” the otter groaned. She leaned back on the sofa, a little too intoxicated to even realize that she was bottomless. Not that Whiplash looked; he had more self-control than that. “I think Furnace is just here on the shelf though.”

She paused for a moment before continuing. “Don’t open it, please.”

“Wait,” Whiplash said. “It’s… in your bookshelf. And you haven’t read it.”

“No, why would I? I’ve just been writing. All the writing,” the otter sighed, with a weak little giggle, as she got more comfortable and closed her eyes. “I don’t really think I can do a whole lot.”

The problem was, as it dawned on Whiplash, that if Furnace was on the otter’s shelf, a book that had she’d actually been able to find, it meant that the sun was going out for a different reason. Which book was it, then? He didn’t know. He didn’t have the faintest clue. It was the only true post-apocalyptic book the otter had written, and the only one that featured the sun in any meaningful capacity.

He would need help, because right now, he was at a dead end.

Whiplash dug into his bag, finding the half-dissolved manuscripts for both that unnamed story and The Muse. The latter, he discarded, hoping that it’d never have to be written or read again, but the former, he held up for the otter to see.

“I need you to write the missing parts in this,” he blurted out, drawing only a confused stare from his writer friend. “Like, rewrite them. It got solvent on it. It was an emergency.”

“Oooh, man, I don’t know what that one was about,” the otter sighed, eyes closing as quickly as they had opened. “You edited it, you’d know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know? You wrote it,” the hyena snapped back.

His friend seemed to be perfectly comfortable just relaxing on the couch in a drunken haze. “I mean, I always write kind of in a blur, thank the Muse for that. I think the story had like… a hyena fighting the Muse, but I have no idea how it plays out…

She trailed off. Goddammit. Whiplash remembered how the plot went, but not only was he not a writer, even if he told the otter what he knew, the story had to be accurate enough, or so he assumed, or the book wouldn’t work in that strange, anomalous way. Yet another dead end.

And then, she was snoring, evidently falling asleep even as the world was ending around them, slowly and coldly. Not a bang, but a whimper, Whiplash thought. He had no leads. He had nothing to go by without someone to assist him.

With the otter passed out, something happened. By now, the hyena knew the signs; a blurry darkness began to build up in the room. Instinctively, he recoiled, taking a few steps back from his sleeping friend as the Muse emerged. It didn’t exactly burst out of the otter as much as it manifested through her, shadowy legs and limbs in a tangle that he couldn’t make any sense of, as always both a blur and incredibly in focus, hard to either look at or away from.

“Only… this, again,” it murmured. Whiplash had almost forgotten that the Muse wasn’t the same creature as the thing spawned from that now-ruined book. It seemed to look around, or at least, the part most like a head turned, though nothing moved when it spoke; no mouth or orifice opened. It appeared to somehow be both standing and floating at once, and trying to make any sense of the far too many legs was a fool’s errand. They seemed to be both tentacles and many-jointed legs at once.

Whiplash had often wondered what the Muse was. It wasn’t of this earth, at the very least. An alien, perhaps, or some sort of extradimensional spirit that had attached itself to the otter. Maybe it was her soul, though the hyena certainly hoped it wasn’t. Suddenly, he felt its attention become fixated on him.

“And only you,” it spoke.

It wouldn’t possess him. After all, he was an important part of the writing process. Possessing him would only lead the otter to produce less, which wasn’t what it wanted, in its quest to inspire others. Or at least, that seemed to be its motivation. In truth, it was unknowable, but it appeared to be roughly analogous to the Greek muses of old.

“Only me?” Whiplash asked.

“Only you. Nobody to inspire as my host languishes,” it replied.

For a moment, it felt almost jovial. As if it made fun of the fact that the hyena lacked a creative streak like what the otter was blessed and cursed with. That, he supposed, was the difference between it and the book-manifestation. Not that it couldn’t break every bone in the hyena’s body if it wanted to, but it showed no desire to do so. And that moment gave Whiplash a terrible idea.

If the otter wasn’t capable of fixing the unnamed story_,_ maybe he could be.

Yes, he lacked creativity of that degree. But the apparent source of truly endless, unhinged, and often terrible inspiration stood before him, lingering idly as it waited for its primary host to wake up and get back to work.

It wasn’t just a terrible idea. It was outright horrible.

But if he could convince the Muse to possess him for a moment, he could finish the book. He had enough experience. He knew how the plot went. He presumably had enough self-control to stay focused instead of being distracted by making artwork with his intestines. Yet, it seemed to exert a terrible burden on everyone that wasn’t the otter; even she complained of headaches and fevers, and nobody else seemed to survive the encounter. At least, nobody who Whiplash was aware of.

“Fine, if she can’t do it, I need your help,” Whiplash spoke, regretting the words as soon as they left his muzzle, as he felt – but didn’t see – a dozen pairs of eyes focus on him.

“You are the host’s friend. I will, once and only once, ignore that request,” the half-formed mass of darkness spoke.

That, Whiplash supposed, was a gesture of mercy. Perhaps not towards him, but to the Muse’s host. His eyes hurt as he kept looking at it; it was like staring into the sun, though more mentally than physically painful.

“I think I could handle it. I’ve edited enough of her stories,” the hyena continued, digging his hole deeper. But there wasn’t any other way to go but through. “And this book needs to be… fixed. Rewritten.”

“You think editing her stories will allow you to handle her inspiration?” the Muse asked. It turned towards him, those strangely flexible legs clicking against the floor where it chose to touch it. “You think you could write?”

“I don’t- I don’t think there’s much else we can do,” Whiplash replied. His skin prickled and crawled as the Muse drew closer. The thing was horrifying, and one of these days he’d have to figure out how to deal with it, ideally without ruining the otter. But right now, they were technically on the same side, or so it seemed.

“I do not end with this world,” the Muse spoke, now sounding like something crawling across the treetops at night, just out of sight. “Why do you think I would choose to help?”

“You- I don’t know what you are exactly, if you’re fictional, if you’re real, if you’re bound to anything at all, but I think the otter is part of this world. At least, this otter is,” Whiplash improvised. He wasn’t entirely sure, and there was a real chance that the Muse was lying to him, too. He had, after all, read the original story. Not that this was the same creature. “And I don’t think you want to risk losing her.”

“No. But what is to say that you will not kill her? Rape her while she is passed out? Slice her fingers off to write with and leave her to bleed out?” the Muse asked, and the worst part of it asking that was that Whiplash saw each scenario play out in his head, with the kind of vividity that he’d never been able to muster on his own. He didn’t like it. But it wasn’t real, at least not yet; no different from watching a movie or reading the otter’s tales.

“I’ve read enough of her stories. I know how she wants them to go,” the hyena replied. “And I… I think I can resist my worst intrusive thoughts.”

“Mmh. Prepare the book, then. Anything that happens is entirely your fault, and you will live with the consequences forever,” the Muse replied grimly, though it seemed to always sound grim, hostile, and inhuman. “Though forever might not be long, in your case.”

Stupid fucking idea, Whiplash told himself. But the world was ending. He’d die either way. He set the book down, open at the worst half-blank page. The introduction was missing, as were most parts describing the copy created. He’d have to improvise. Maybe writing his own copy into the book would work, or maybe it had to be the original.

“I don’t suppose you have any advice?” he asked the Muse.

“Advice? Mine? You have been chasing my creations across the entire world, you have hated me with all your heart,” the muse spoke, its voice a whisper now as it drew closer. “And now you want my advice? Very well, as I’ve told the otter. The story doesn’t matter. It only matters that it’s written well.”

So, he could just wake the otter up and have her do it. She’d just have to come up with a new story-

-and he had, he realized, as the Muse engulfed him, chosen poorly.

Inspiration, boundless inspiration flooded his mind. He looked at his hands, seeing the Muse’s claws superimposed on them, like two photographs overlaid with each other.

He wanted to- oh, he wanted to- everything was wide open, every forbidden door and subdued intrusive thought in his mind. Wide open. He could- no!

Whiplash, through some heroic feat of willpower, forced his attention to the pages rather than the more sadistic, orgiastic murder that the Muse was trying to steer him towards. He felt warm, feverish even, but he managed to stiffly pick up a pencil and begin to write.

From there on out, it was a blur. He wrote, and he kept writing, page after page, utterly fixated on the text. And he had to be, because if he paused even to take a deep breath, his mind flooded with thoughts of making art of the sleeping otter instead, or going outside, stealing a car, and driving it headfirst into a semi to see what shapes the metal would take.

He didn’t know if he was doing a good job or not. What writer did, while in the flow? All he knew was that the words came naturally, and they filled out the missing segments on each page, slotting perfectly between the otter’s own paragraphs. Just written well. That’s all there is to it.

Soon his hands were burning with the exertion, and his head pulsating with a growing ache, but the book was almost done, every page repaired as best he could with his black claws and thirsty pen. A deep-set panic began to dawn as he neared the end, though. Only a few pages remained, and then he’d have no outlet. How would he get the Muse out of his head? Did he even want to, or did he want to embrace every depraved fantasy that it fed him?

The book was finished, and Whiplash found himself scrawling notes in the margins, about all the other stuff that he could’ve included but didn’t. How many hours had it been? It didn’t matter, he couldn’t tell. Any hour was like the one before it; all existing together, smeared into one eternal constant. It was almost completely dark outside by now, the sun choked out to mere embers and a chill creeping in. It wouldn’t be long before there were permanent consequences.

But Whiplash struggled to think about it. Instead, there came the dreadful dead end of inspiration. His outlet had run out, but his mind was still overflowing with ideas, all of them – good and bad alike – swirling like a maelstrom and threatening to drag him down with them.

It wasn’t entirely uncontrollable. But he could feel himself slipping. Wouldn’t it make for a wonderful story if he forced himself on the sleeping otter? Oh, the bitter sting of such betrayal and violation. It’d make for a great final twist before the end of the world, his out-of-control fantasies ruining the last chance of saving it all.

Better yet, he could just kill her and write a book she’d wanted to write in her own blood. His arm twitched. It’d be beautiful. Her last work, finished with her spilled blood. Yes. No. Whiplash slammed his head against the desk in a desperate measure to resist the Muse. It wasn’t even the Muse commanding him, he frenziedly thought. It was just unleashing every possible permutation of intense, intrusive thoughts. He wasn’t being controlled, but that was just the problem; nobody was in control for as long as the Muse remained overlaying his body like a shadow.

No, he couldn’t fight it. He had to express all those thoughts. He had to-

-the otter stirred, opening her eyes, and in an instant, the Muse was gone, back inside her. It felt it leave with a cruel laugh, though it was more like an emotion that flashed across Whiplash’s mind than any sound, human or not.

He slumped down on the table, wheezing as his mind was suddenly left empty, either like some important part of him had just been violently torn out, or that he’d abruptly been detoxed of the most wonderful yet destructive drug he could imagine.

“Are you alright? Ugh, how… when’d you even get here?” the otter spoke, clearly a little hungover from her earlier drinking. “The… everything is so red.”

“World’s ending, I think. Something about your books, I think. I’m alright. Not dead, at least,” Whiplash replied. His words felt so dry and uninspired, as if he was forcing them out through great effort, one by one.

He felt incredibly weak. The fur around his knuckles had gone grey. His vision was blurry, his muscles felt like they’d been drained by half, and every ounce of fat on his body had been burned away to fuel the Muse. His joints ached, and the air smelled like burnt toast.

Brain damage. No, don’t think about it. It’s probably something useless like game mechanics or one of those college classes.

“How do we stop it?” the otter asked. “I don’t remember writing anything like this.”

“I’m about to find out, I think. I fixed that… never mind,” Whiplash replied, leaving out the part about the Muse, mostly because he didn’t want to worry the otter.

Well, that and how worn out he was. He felt like he’d been ground up, dehydrated, then reconstituted and assembled roughly into his old self, and there seemed to be a hole in his thoughts from whatever space the Muse had occupied. But he was alive. His body was still cohesive. He wasn’t melting, dissolving, or rotting away. That was a triumph beyond belief. As far as he knew, he was the only person – at least, the only living one – other than the otter who had managed to control the Muse without being driven to the point of his body entirely giving up.

He took a breath. The air burned in his lungs. And yet, he couldn’t rest. With the book “repaired”, he opened it up immediately, and the world shifted again the moment he read the first few lines about how his reinvented fictional self originally encountered the Muse. He didn’t get any further than that before someone with his own voice spoke up behind him.

“Why do I exist again?” he asked. “I… was nothing. It was peaceful.”

Whiplash spun around and faced himself, or at least, a copy of himself. He looked no different than when they’d met the other day, before his sacrifice. He stared back with a pained expression, looking just as worn as Whiplash himself, though the corners of his mouth tugged up into a strained smile upon seeing him.

The otter stared at the two, but she didn’t seem alarmed. At this point, Whiplash doubted that anything would really surprise her. The events probably made perfect sense when seen through the unhinged imagination of a writer.

“Did she rewrite the book? Did you rewrite the book? You did, didn’t you? Oh, what a foolish plan,” his copy lamented. “And now I’m back. With the world cast in ember-red and fading.”

He was a little more eloquent and poetic than Whiplash himself. Maybe it was only natural, given his literary background.

“Yeah. I’m sorry for bringing you back into a situation like this. But I need your help,” Whiplash said. “I needed you back. Why is the world ending?”

He hesitated to say “I missed you,” and ended up not doing so.

His copy shrugged his shoulders. “You expect me to know, having not existed, then existed for a few hours, being gone again, and now back?”

A fair point.

“But you are still… you still have more insight into it than me, you said – and you are – connected to the other books,” Whiplash argued. “What could cause this?”

“Not your Muse, certainly,” his copy spoke. He was slowly warming up, as if getting used to having a mind and body again. “The person writing your story perhaps, inspired beyond inspiration to end the story in tragedy. And those black claws would be their Muse’s. Figuratively, anyway, through the author’s words.”

“You still think we’re all in a story?” Whiplash asked him, frustrated. He didn’t want to think about it, but he realized that he had to, given the lack of other answers. “And not real?”

“Who’s to say that the person writing this isn’t in a story of their own?” his copy countered. “And if a god exists, isn’t the world their story, regardless of whether if written in text or creation?”

It was some sort of point, at least. Maybe the big bang was a sort of aimless writer, telling a coincidental story. But there was no time for this meandering philosophy, not when the temperatures outside had already started dropping. He half expected the sun to either explode into a black hole after being reduce to too small a size, or to blink out and leave them in total darkness.

“And what is that story, then? How do we stop it?” the hyena asked, prodding at his clone, who took his first few steps towards him on entirely new legs.

“Well, it seems like this story is simply about us dying,” his copy spoke. “With the author in a frenzy, writing us all towards our deaths. Well, writing you. I doubt she considered me.”

“Will you stop that? You’re just as real as we are. If this is a story, you’re part of it,” Whiplash growled. “How do we stop it?”

“How do we stop an inspired author from writing a story that she wants to write?” his copy scoffed. “I’d sooner recommend just enjoying our last days.”

“What if we were to convince her that the story she’s writing is bad? That the ending wouldn’t be satisfying?” Whiplash suggested, mostly out of desperation. Not that spending a few hours with his copy wouldn’t be a pleasant diversion. Just thinking about it had him hard again, in spite of it all.

“And how would you tell her? You’re a character. I’m less than that,” his clone snapped back. But he took a step closer. “Anything you say is what she wrote you to say.”

“It can’t be that simple. She – um, this otter-” the hyena replied, gesturing towards her. “-has talked about how characters sort of go their own way and end up with motivations different from her intents.”

“I suppose we could find the original of The Manuscript Hunter,” his clone mused, pressing a hand flat against the hyena’s muscular chest, then sneaking it between the buttons until it rested on warm, thick fur.

“I… I don’t remember that one,” Whiplash started, but there was a horrific sensation in his head. He hunted manuscripts. No. He refused to even think about it, instead focusing on his copy’s touch. “What would it even tell us?”

“It’s a book about a certain hyena hunting for anomalous manuscripts written by his friend, and now, have become Muse-cursed. Which is the only reason I’m aware of it. As for what it’d tell us, what it might do? The consequences to the ending of this story, perhaps?” the clone suggested, deftly unbuttoning Whiplash’s shirt. “Maybe there’d be nothing more to it.”

Whiplash almost wished that the Muse hadn’t retreated. But then again, there was no chance he’d take that risk again.

“And where is the book?” he asked.

“That’s what the otter has been writing. I believe it was only half finished when she brought it to show at the publisher's on the day all the cursed books were printed,” his copy spoke, speaking with the certainly of a fictional creature who knew its author’s every whim. “Maybe we can inspire her to finish it.”

“I mean… I don’t- I don’t know,” Cinos hesitated, finally speaking up, as if she had been afraid to interrupt the moment before. She was watching the two, still. “Y-yes, I’ve been working on The Manuscript Hunter, but it just… I think the ending is good.”

“Maybe a bad ending is the wrong way to go about it, though. Clearly, you wanted it to end in tragedy, but maybe it should end in a more hopeful way,” the copy spoke, while pulling Whiplash’s shirt off his shoulders and tossing it aside. “Dark, but with some hope for the future.”

“And how would that help?” the otter groaned. She laid back down. “Definitely gonna need more booze for this.”

The copy merely shrugged. Regardless of his insights, he couldn’t know the exact details. But if it was like he thought, Whiplash reasoned, then the writer of their story would see the ending to their version, and maybe – thanks to the Muse’s powers – it’d inspire them, to stop their Muse from causing the end of this world. Maybe. It was such a long shot it felt almost delusional.

“Where do we start?” Whiplash asked.

“Well, you went through all this effort and took insane risks to bring me back, despite me being a fictional character. Isn’t that worth some hope for better things? What would the point be if we were all just going to die slowly, anyway?” the copy asked. He undid Whiplash’s belt. “Maybe just a moment of pleasure before our end. Or maybe a different climax to the story.”

Fuck it. So, their last chance was maybe convincing an author who might exist by inspiring the otter to write the last few pages of The Manuscript Hunter, evidently – or so it seemed from how his copy’s hand was sneaking into Whiplash’s boxers and quickly finding his slowly hardening cock – by fucking. Or making love, he supposed, to think of it in a more positive way.

He was in a weird state of mind. He was both utterly drained and still felt the lingering inspiration of the Muse, faint as it was. One side of that emotional state told him to go lay down; the other to fuck the night away even if it didn’t lead to anything.

“I guess I’ll try to finish it. Wow, it’d be kinda incredible if we were actually characters in a story, but… I dunno about that,” the otter stated, grabbing her almost-empty bottle of what seemed to be vodka again. “Imagine if there’s another me somewhere above us, seeing us only as text on a page, guiding our every action. It’s worth a try, though.”

She then took a heavy swig of her booze and got to writing, just in time for Whiplash’s copy to pull the original’s cock out.

“You know, my biggest regret when we first met was that I didn’t get to fuck you,” he grinned.

“I’m not exactly a bottom,” Whiplash replied.

“But I am,” his copy countered. “I’m a textual reflection of you_,_ after all.”

As good a point as any, Whiplash supposed, and then his mind went completely blank as his mirror-self caught him in a kiss that immediately turned both heated and passionate, plunging his tongue into his mouth while stroking his cock with the kind of need that he’d been created to feel. A rough finger slipped under the original’s foreskin, making him quiver as it brushed over his glans, teasing forth precum.

He surrendered to the feeling. It was worth a shot. One last display of genuine affection, as if his sacrifice in bringing his copy back wasn’t enough. If nothing else, if this was all fiction, it’d be a gratuitous ending. The otter wrote about what they did, how the copy lowered his mouth and swallowed Whiplash’s cock down to the hilt, how the original trembled again, thrusting into his mouth and then throat reflexively, guided by the flames the copy quickly stoked in his loins.

The copy sucked him gently, his cheeks sucked inwards even as his tongue danced over his foreskin and glans, his teeth softly pulling on the former, just hard enough to make the hyena see stars. He was already leaking. Maybe it was all this stress that had him so needy, or maybe some hesitation had been burned out of his head by the Muse. But either way, Whiplash made a final decision: he’d just enjoy this, regardless of what happened next.

In a heartbeat, his hands were all over the fur of his rough copy. He’d been manifested without any clothes on – Whiplash vaguely remembered writing him naked in the story – but that’d be a problem for tomorrow’s hyenas.

The fingers on one hand wrapped around the copy’s cock in turn. The others dug into his muscular ass, greedily taking in the body that was almost – but not quite – identical to this own. He had never told the copy that he had missed him, but his actions spoke volumes, and soon both were panting with growing need as they teased each other’s cocks, groped anything they could reach from feet to toe, working each other up into the kind of state where nothing mattered but their union.

The otter, as she always did, made notes. Maybe she was writing “their” scene into her book as they raced towards the finish line. Maybe it was just inspiration. Either way, neither of the two hyenas thought much about it.

Whiplash pushed his copy onto his back, pinning him to the floor with a ravenous hunger in his eyes. His mouth was watering with desire. For those blissful moments, the end of the world stopped mattering, and instead, he grabbed the copy’s ankles, pulling his legs onto his shoulders.

“Now fuck me,” the copy groaned. It felt almost like looking at himself as their eyes met again.

“I’m going to,” Whiplash growled in response. His cock prodded at the copy’s ass, and smeared precum all over that puckered muscle. He was leaking so much that he realized they wouldn’t even need lube.

“I might even forgive you for bringing me back and taking that- rrgh!” the copy growled as Whiplash thrust, his slick cock pushing into his copy’s body. The feeling was so intense that he couldn’t help but moan too, feeling him clamp down around him like a vice, but he didn’t let that distract him from once again grabbing a hold of the other hyena’s cock and pumping it, letting his own need leak over his light-furred belly, even squirting out over his muscular chest as Whiplash thrust, as if directly at his prostate.

From that point on everything was pure instinct and need. Whiplash nearly folded his copy in two, hunching over him as he fucked the other hyena with hard, sharp thrusts. And yet there was no hint of domination or degradation; his copy was simply his mirror image, and they both wanted what they were getting. They were hungry for it; Whiplash for feeling his copy’s every clench, the sensation of his warm body engulfing him as if begging for his cum, and the copy for having that cock inside him, relentlessly battering his prostate to the point that it made his toes curl, his ass coaxing Whiplash on in a primal bid to get filled.

It didn’t take long before Whiplash had his teeth clamped down around the copy’s shoulder, his hips a wild blur of thrusts as he hammered his cock into the other hyena. Oh, there was so much he wanted to do. To taste his feet, to feel them all over his cock, he all but wanted to devour the mirrored version of himself, but right now, the urgency of their rutting overshadowed everything else.

He was close, so deliciously close. The pressure was already building up, and Whiplash wasn’t slowing down. His hand didn’t slow down either, and it wasn’t long before his copy gasped, in exactly the same voice as his own. He tensed up, a look of aroused concentration in his eyes, and then his cock throbbed hard in the hyena’s hand. A rope of cum erupted from the tip, soaking his belly. Another reached all the way up to his chin, leaving another lusty mark of pleasure on him. The third, Whiplash only felt in the form of another needy jerk of his shaft, as he reached his own peak and screwed his eyes shut, burying himself as deep into the copy’s warm embrace as he could before letting go.

He let everything out. Pleasure washed over him for the first time in what felt like forever, all worries dissolving as he filled his copy with spurt after spurt of cum, filling every little crevice inside him with his seed. It felt, he found himself briefly thinking in the middle of spasming, all-consuming pleasure, like a fitting ending. Like he wouldn’t mind if their little story ended here, even if he wanted more. It was almost peaceful despite every muscle in his body tensing each time he grinded against his copy’s shapely ass, riding out his orgasm for as long as he could, if only so he didn’t have to think about anything but the squeezing, milking muscle draining him dry.

Eventually, of course, reality reasserted himself. Whiplash refused to think about the absurdity of the situation of effectively fucking himself, and instead slowly pulled out and laid down, letting his empty head remain empty for as long as he could.

Almost all of the otter’s stories ended in sex anyway, and why wouldn’t they? It was as good a climax as any, especially given her favored genres. And so, this was it, wasn’t it? They had written a satisfying conclusion. Or rather, the otter had, watching them, even if she wasn’t quite done yet as she worked on what looked like a brief epilogue.

They laid cuddled up and dazed for the longest time, the only sounds being the tapping of the otter’s fingers on her keyboard, and their at-first ragged and then soft, relaxed breathing.

“I really did miss you,” Whiplash sighed. “Even if you insist that you’re not real.”

“I could tell,” his copy whispered quietly, though not without a playful edge to his voice that made Whiplash chuckle quietly. “Thanks for bringing me back, I guess. Even if it was only for tonight.”

Whiplash hoped it wouldn’t be, but he barely had energy to think. He felt drained, though at least this time it was in a good way rather than having half of himself melted away by some horror. This time, it was nothing but the sweet satisfaction of sex; the wonderful, limp bliss of having reached a thoroughly massive climax.

Yet there was that nagging feeling of knowing he still had more to do. Had they inspired the otter? Certainly, she had stopped writing. Had she just written a long sex scene to end the story on a positive, or least pleasurable note? Whiplash didn’t ask about the details.

Just then, the printer in the room beeped and began to work.

“Did you get it done?” he asked, and in response, the otter stood up. She was visibly wet, but Whiplash was satisfied enough that his cock didn’t even stir upon seeing his friend’s need. For once.

“Yeah. I mean, I think so. I don’t know if a story like that should end in sex, but… well, I tried to make it kind of emotional too,” the otter responded. And with that, she walked to the printer to gather the pages.

Here goes nothing, I guess. At least we still have power, or she’d have to write by hand.

Whiplash and his copy stayed in bed until the printer went silent, at which point they had to leave their perfectly cozy and warm position, much to his dismay.

The otter finished printing the pages. Together with the sample that had been professionally printed, it looked like a Frankestein’s monster of a book, with the front half like a paperback and home printed A4s full of text stapled to it, serving as the back half. Still, Whiplash could practically sense the Muse’s influence on it, like static electricity.

Briefly, he wondered if the Muse even knew what each book did. The effects seemed to be only vaguely inspired – there was that word again, and it made Whiplash shudder – by the events of the book, as if it was the text itself that decided what was most important.

Whiplash and his copy sat down at the otter’s desk fully naked, glanced at each other, nodded in agreement, and then opened the book to read it. There was that feeling of the world melting away around them, the hitch in time and space, and soon enough they closed the book again. Neither hyena could remember anything of what they’d read, as if what was inside was somehow not for them. It was an eerie sensation, like a comprehensive redaction of it all, only not from paper but from minds.

Maybe it really was the story they were currently in. Maybe it wasn’t possible for the subject of a story to read about their own fates. Or maybe they were just too exhausted to remember anything. Neither of them wanted to push their luck and try again. It wouldn’t make a difference anyhow.

By then, the sun had already set, leaving them none the wiser as to if anything had changed. But there had been that lurching sensation of the world taking a new course. The otter described it as the feeling of a plot changing as she was still writing it, and while Whiplash couldn’t really remember what writing had felt like, he tended to agree. It was either that, or like being in a car that suddenly took a hairpin turn and drove in an unexpected direction.

Together, the three of them waited quietly throughout the night. Either the sun would rise and everything would be okay, or it wouldn’t, and that’d be the end of everything they knew.

“What does not existing feel like?” Whiplash asked his copy, a few hours into it.

The copy – relaxed and splayed out, and still full of Whiplash’s cum – grinned, so widely that Whiplash wondered if he looked equally disconcerting sometimes when he smiled his hyenine smile. “I suppose it feels like blinking.”

A comforting notion, Whiplash thought. The otter was already asleep again, and with a few hours until a potential sunrise, he found himself dozing off from sheer exhaustion, too. If the world was about to the end, it didn’t really matter if he was awake to see it, because like his copy said, if nonexistence was a blink of an eye, sleep was much the same.

He dreamt of the remaining books. A few of them, he didn’t even know the effects of. He dreamt of how Julien was doing, imagining her happy and comfortable in her new body. And he dreamt of the Muse, looming just outside his field of vision, terrifying and yet so strangely inspirational. Maybe it was a literal muse, only corrupted by everything people had thought of between its creation and modern times.

He woke up to darkness, and for a brief moment, there was a flare of panic, until his groggy mind reminded him that he hadn’t opened his eyes yet. When he did, he could tell the sun had risen once more, its golden rays filtering into the otter’s dark house through tightly closed blinds. A relief, certainly.

The world, evidently, hadn’t ended. Whatever had caused all of this had retreated, perhaps inspired by their actions, or perhaps simply reconsidering for any number of other reasons. He was none the wiser, and maybe it was for the best.

But there were still dozens of the otter’s manuscripts to find. A daunting task for a single hyena, one that he’d already been on the verge of giving up on. But now, he was no longer alone, at least for as long as he could keep the unnamed story intact.

That morning, he spent cuddled up with his copy. He had been reduced somewhat by the Muse. Maybe he’d recover, maybe not, but either way, at least with two mirrored halves they’d have one whole between them.

A happy ending, then. At least to this chapter, he thought, imagining who might be writing it, if any of it was true at all. Had it originally been planned to be much darker? If the world was fiction, he’d never know, and truthfully, neither did he want to. It felt real enough, and that was enough for him.