Chapter 6

• Luna sat at her office desk in her bedroom ready to write the next chapter of the book she was working on. The twinge of writer’s block stirred in her stomach again as he bit at her thumbnail.
• At the corner of her desk, she spied the old short story she’d found when she had been cleaning out her closet weeks ago. It had come from a box of old stories from the back of her closet she had collected over the years. As she’d flipped through old manuscript notebooks, she’d come across it thinking the story was sure to make her a household name.
• “I thought I scrapped this one, but glad I didn’t. I stopped writing it because my blackouts were so bad.”
• Luna always used Gunner and the Tribe crew in her early books for inspiration. She started writing this particular story in her late teens with a budding thirst for storytelling. She was inspired when Gunner and Zane started a tag team, and the Tribe were the new up-and-coming stars, making a name for themselves individually. It was around the time she first started to notice Gunner romantically. Before long, she had her college dorm covered in posters and fan memorabilia.
• “Wow. I forgot about this story,” She thought to herself, flipping through the pages. “It was one of my favorites. I just never finished it. I must have been… eighteen when I wrote this. This story started my true passion for writing. Before it was just a fun thing to do.”
• Many of her stories’ first drafts were about people she knew or TV stars she liked. Fanfiction at its finest. She would later change the names and locations so no one knew who they were really about to save her dignity by being a raging fan girl.
• Fanfiction had been her secret guilty pleasure for years and she still dabbled in it from time to time. As she started to get involved in writing communities, she realized she was not the only one who got their start as a fanfiction writer and built her confidence to go further.
• Ever since she’d rediscovered the manuscript, she had been daydreaming about it nonstop without even realizing it. Now she looked at it sitting on the corner of her desk and wondered if it could help unstick the writer’s block that she was struggling with in her current novel.
• “Maybe I’ll get some inspiration. I could pick it back up for my next project, just for fun.”
• With that notion, Luna sat reading her old manuscript, leaning back in her chair. As the story came to life, her mind started to seem almost stuck in the pages. Her current writing, and this old fanfiction, meshed to perfection.
• The old manuscript was about Gunner taking over the tag team and starting a faction that had been a big hit for a few years. His on-stage wife, Blair, was a big part of that. As well as four other wrestlers who shot to superstardom. At the time, Zane had gone on his own and posed as Gunner’s onstage rival. Leading up to the injury that put Zane out of commission for over a year, this book flowed with hints of reality.
• Her new story was based on recent events mixed with the supernatural, but equally in line with the other. The old manuscript seemed to mimic real life which made it even more bazaar. When she’d written it, it had obviously been a fiction story, but now, all those things had come true, like a psychic prediction. She couldn’t look away as there in the pages of her fictional book was a timeline to reality: show storylines, Gunner’s real-life experiences, the Tribe’s history of friendship. Even some of her own experiences. The difference was that her novel was not ingrained in normal reality. It was a supernatural fantasy using them as a muse.
• “This can’t be right.” Luna leaned toward her desk for better light from the table lamp, trying to understand what she was reading. It couldn’t be possible for her to know what would have happened back then. She was no psychic. “Maybe I was writing amid the blackouts over the last few years, and I just don’t remember. I couldn’t have possibly known those things would happen. This is so bizarre. I wrote this about me being a writer, too. Even my illness is in here and I wasn’t even sick then. How did I do this?”
• Luna continued reading until the end and sat back in her chair in awe. “This is unbelievable.”
• With inspiration flooding her like a tsunami, she grabbed a pen and picked up where the story left off, writing until her fingers almost bled. The forgotten manuscript had ignited her imagination with visions of the present and the past, looming into the hopes of the future. The words flowed like waves through her mind as her pen traced over the notebook pages with ease. She hadn’t written anything with such flow in ages. It was like creating magic and the pen, her wand.
• Later she would transfer all her words and thoughts to her computer to add to her current novel, but for now, she was in the zone, creating a masterpiece with pen and ink.
• A while later, as Luna was caught up in her thoughts, she heard a faint scratching at the window. A shiver of fear pricked up her spine as she slowly reached to pull back the blinds and expose the darkened street outside. There, she only saw her neighbor walking his dog just under a street lamp.
• “Febie. She must have been running through my patio again. Stupid doggie. You sure are cute but annoying.” With that, she shut the curtains tight. “I hate being alone at night. I can’t help feeling like I’m being watched. I feel it, but everyone thinks I’m just being crazy.”
• She peeked out the window again and checked to make sure the window was locked and secure. It was clear she wasn’t going to sleep tonight. Easily spooked as of late, tonight was no different than the weeks prior. Another restless sleep and sounds that go bump in the night.
• She went back to her writing and soon forgot about the strange sounds she had heard. Soon, as her daydreams entered her mind, the words came, and thoughts consumed her. Her mind became trapped in the pages of the visions of her daydreams. A never-ending cycle that she couldn’t escape.
• ***
• Three days later, Dee was visiting her bestie with a bit of worry since she hadn’t seen her in a few days. She used the spare key to let herself into the little apartment, with an odd sinking feeling. Immediately upon opening the door, Dee felt like something wasn’t right when noticing Luna was nowhere to be seen but all the lights were on. Her car was in the driveway and the TV was blaring, so she had to be there.
• “Hey, LuLu! Where are you? I brought sushi!” Dee called, going down the hall towards Luna’s bedroom where the little table light flickered. “Oh my God! Luna! Can you hear me?”
• Quickly she ran over to her friend, who was slumped over backward in her desk chair shaking uncontrollably with her eyes rolled back and making gurgling sounds.
• “Oh no! Luna, I’m going to get you help. Just hang on.” Dee pulled out her cell phone, calling 911. “Stay with me, LuLu. You’re going to be okay.”