The overly-tanned agent slid the manuscript across the desk towards Riley.

"I don't understand," Riley said, eyebrows knitted into a V. "I thought we were good."

The agent, whose gold nameplate read HAZEL BROWNING and whose face had been Botoxed into a perpetual expression of ennui, pursed her collagen-filled lips. "We were, honey. It's just, we've ran into a few wrinkles."

" . . .Wrinkles?"

The woman sighed. "Harpers has dropped out. As has Goldwin-Moore. Which leaves us with Grey Moon. But listen, there's good and bad with that. On the good side, they really seem to want The Basile Strain."

Riley nodded. "And the bad?"

"Well, they've decided to "revise" their desires about its length. It's still too long, they say." She put an open hand to the side of her mouth like she about to say something secret and said: "Usually that's a nice problem for a fellow to have, but not in this case."

Ignoring the last bit, Riley bowed his head and sighed. Sons of bitches wanted more cuts, he thought. Of course they did. Nothing had come easy with his book. Why not another roadblock so close to the publishing finish line? He lifted his head. "How much we talking?"

"We're currently sitting at a hundred and sixty K, right?"

"You know we are."

"They say a max of one-twenty now."

Riley almost fainted. "One-twenty! Jesus, Hazel! You—you know how painful it was for me to get it to one-sixty. Now another forty K? I don't know. I don't know if I can do it."

"Oh, honey," the agent said. "You can and you will. I'm confident. It sucks, I know, but this is the game we play with you being a newbie."

Riley bristled inwardly at that, but he knew she was right. He was an unproven rookie, and the publishers sat in the position of power. "Shit," he said, getting up out of the faux-leather chair positioned in front of the agent's desk. "Okay, okay. At least we still have a publisher on board, right?"

"Right as rain, sweetie."

Riley huffed and grabbed the manuscript. "I'll see what I can do."

"Good boy." Hazel rose and shook his hand. As ever, it was like shaking a dried-out fish.

"We'll get this sucker published yet. Just gotta keep whacking away at it." She considered this and laughed. "Literally!"

Resisting the sudden urge to slap the tan off her face, Riley turned and fled the office.

* * *

The manuscript sat on the coffee table, silently mocking Riley. He'd been at it for a week now and had yet to make a single cut. He'd tried; eight times over the last seven days he'd tried. But each time he did, he kept gravitating back to the same conclusion: the story was perfect the way it was. "This is bullshit," he found himself saying over and over.

It got no better either as the days progressed into a second fruitless week. Frustrated and anxious, Riley began taking long, introspective walks around Lincoln Park, thinking the activity might help inspire him. When that didn't work, he retreated to his apartment's large balcony, sitting for hours on end in his favorite wicker chair, drinking Leroux and watching boaters float down the Hudson. Again he hoped for inspiration, and again it didn't come.

Kayla stopped by as much as possible during this time and tried her best to be supportive, but Riley, consumed by his own ineptitude, hardly paid her any attention. Even so, she brought him dinner and stroked his head as he sat bouncing his attention between the untouched manuscript and the glass of Leroux in his hand.

"What can I do to help?" she asked one night after sex and take-out Thai.

"Nothing," Riley said, looping her auburn hair around his index finger. "Nothing, nothing at all. I just have to figure it somehow."

She ran a palm along his rigid abs. "You been good with your pills?"

Riley felt a flicker of annoyance, but the smarter part of him knew she wasn't being a dick. He acted different when he wasn't taking his Cymbalta and Lamotrigine, less patient and more irritable, and Kayla had become astute at recognizing the signs.

"I've been a good patient," he said, though he wasn't sure that was true. With how distracted he was with Grey Moon's mandate, he'd gotten bad about remembering the simple stuff, like grooming and taking his meds. "I just need some time."

Realizing he really meant "solitary time", Kayla told him she understood and began limiting her visits to twice a week. The next time she came over, Riley, in a clearer mood, asked her how she ever put up with him. She claimed it was the money—the half-million in insurance payouts he'd received after his parents' death. But of course that was a joke. She'd been there before the money came and would be there if it ever evaporated.

"Is it because I'm so good looking then?" Riley asked.

Kayla ran a hand through his mop of chestnut hair. "It's your sweet, virgin ass," she quipped. "That or the fact that we're in a relationship, and that's how things work, you doof."

The following week she flew to California to hike Yosemite with her sister. In her absence, Riley's lot worsened. He began drinking more and remembering his pills less. He took more stabs at cutting, poring over every line of prose, but fared no better than before. Losing his patience, and a bit of his sanity, he turned to the internet for help. The move immediately proved fruitful, showing him he wasn't alone in his inability to pare down his work. In fact, there were whole message boards dedicated to the affliction. These he searched thoroughly, and eventually gleaned several tips on how best to overcome it—the most popular being what was termed "elimination of distractions". Simply put: if it distracted you at all, you needed to get rid of it.

In his increasingly fuzzy state, the concept made perfect sense to Riley. Taking it to heart, he put all of his furnishings up on Craigslist. At week's end all of his furnishings were gone except the bare essentials: his mattress, his computer desk and a single dresser for his clothes.

By some miracle, the process actually worked. With no art on the walls or furniture to glance at, he managed to redline a detailed sex scene and ax a minor dream sequence, cuts that cleaved two thousand words. Ecstatic with this, he sold his car, disconnected his apartment phone and quit his part-time sys admin job at Verizon. That got him five thousand more. Next he buzzed off his hair, tossed out his cell, and dumped all his pills into the toilet. Slash, slash—another four grand gone.

"What else?" he asked as the scalpel began to dull.

The apartment, he decided. It had to go. He needed something smaller, less flashy. So he broke his lease and found a dinky little shithole across the river in Renssalaer. Studio-style, barely bigger than a tool shed. The move was good for another three K. Glad but needing more, he used a pay phone to tell the five friends he considered close that he was no longer available for friendship. Four thousand words there. Chop chop chop.

"Almost halfway home," he said as the weeks bled into the next month. "Come on, Riley boy. What other dead weight can go?"

Kayla, he thought.

"No," he said, horrified. "Not her."

Yes, his thoughts shot right back. Snip the cord, at least until the book is ready. You have to. She'll understand, and come back. If not, it's a pretty big sea out there.

He called her from the gas station pay phone on 7th street. Kayla didn't understand. "Sorry, baby. Love you tons, I just . . ." was all he said before hanging up.

For his troubles he was awarded another four thousand words. The story had dwindled to anemic proportions by then, but Riley no longer cared. All that mattered was the word count.

The week that followed was a blur of unproductivity. Getting rid of his dresser and desk helped, but only to the tune of five hundred words. Nettled, Riley wracked his brain to figure out what more he could excise from his life, but there was nothing else. His desperation mounting, he returned to the internet.

Twelve hours of scouring and seven Mountain Dews later he happened upon an arcane blog by an author who'd taken part in a study involving the brain's usage of blood. According to the author, the study had spanned the course of five years and turned up a correlation between limb loss and enhanced creativity. In specific it stated that those who had suffered amputation without extensive blood loss were sixty-three times more likely to experience some form of cognitive expansion. The prime example cited was the number of Iraq War veterans who'd returned home less than whole and wound up developing penchants for the arts. The exact reason for the phenomenon was unknown, but one theory suggested by the author was "hemo-redirection"—the body's natural rerouting of its blood supply in the event of trauma. The idea was that the body would ship the blood for the lost limb to the brain for use, which in turn would increase mental acuity.

Intrigued, Riley guzzled an energy drink and branched out to other medical areas of the web, hoping to bolster his knowledge on human physiology. Over the next several hours he ingested article upon article dealing with everything from immunohematology to the autoclaving of surgical instruments.

The mind-blinks, as he came to think of them, started occurring as dawn approached. He was staring at an online article about hemostasis, when his brain abruptly stalled and went blank. A few seconds later it kicked back on and he found he was reading about limb occlusion pressure. He experienced similar episodes throughout the morning until at last he drifted off to sleep.

In the afternoon, Riley woke refreshed and brimming with ideas on how to move forward with his cuts. The mind-blinks started the instant he opened his eyes. After some quick googling, he learned that they were symptoms brought on by not taking his meds. No big deal really. According to PharmacyAnswers.com, his body would adjust on its own.

Relieved, he disregarded the blinks and decided to act on his newly-formed ideas. He dressed in the few bland clothes he still owned and caught a cab to the Walmart on Troy Road. The supercenter had all the supplies he needed. Going as fast as he could, he rounded everything up into his squeaky cart and headed for the self-checkout line—given what he'd gathered, he reasoned it best to avoid any prying cashier eyes. From the payphone out front he dialed another cab to take him home.

Back at the dingy shithole, Riley laid out his purchases across the floor. In between the mind blinks, he began plotting how to accomplish what needed to be done.

* * *

EMERGENCY, the glowing red and white sign read.

Riley peered at it from his hidden perch across the street, thinking it odd that hospital emergency rooms often used red in their signs. He got that the color was eye-catching, but it was also the color of blood, which seemed rather gloomy to him. Almost like it was saying: Welcome to our den of gore, everyone is bleeding here.

Then again, with what he was about to do, it wasn't as if he had much room to criticize.

"I'm doing what's necessary," he reminded himself.

He pulled out the cheap TracFone he'd bought specifically for tonight and placed the 911 call. He repeated his message twice, then hung up and tossed the unneeded phone into the street, where it broke into pieces. After a moment to steady himself, he switched on the small portable generator he'd bought to power the miter saw. When the LED indicated 120 volts, he sat on the ground, removed his pants, and applied the tourniquet to his left leg, just above the knee. He'd considered taking just the foot but wanted to be sure he got enough to cover the remaining cuts. Tourniquet in place, he got into position and did a couple unpowered test runs to be sure the blade was lined up correctly. Then, confident he was all set, he sat back and waited.

The ambulance that came did not originate from the hospital itself. It approached from the north, speeding down New Scotland Avenue with its siren blaring, evidently dispatched from the ambulance service on Quail Street.

Riley waited until the ambulance pulled up to the curb before him. The driver, seeing what Riley was about to do, yelled out to stop, telling him he didn't need to do it. Riley ignored him. He did need to do it.

As the EMTs pushed open their doors, he engaged the saw's trigger. And as they started to run towards him, he brought the screaming blade down onto his bare leg.

* * *

"I really wish you hadn't gotten rid of your phone, Riley," Hazel Browning said as she reviewed the new manuscript. "I thought maybe you'd moved to Canada, or something. Anyway, I'm glad you're okay."

Riley sat across the desk from her in his wheelchair and rubbed his aching stump. It had been six months and the thing still hurt like a mother, despite the hydrocodone. It surprised him that Hazel knew next to nothing about what had happened. But then the woman wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, was she? In truth it was good she was so clueless, for it saved him from having to ply her with too much bullshit. Other than the lie about the tumor in his calf, which she seemed to buy readily enough.

The state officials who handled his case had been less gullible, however. Deeming him a danger to himself and others, they awarded him with five months of psychiatric evaluation. Having anticipated this, Riley stuck to his plan, claiming that he hadn't known what he was doing. He'd been off his meds and wasn't in his right mind. The premeditation of the act made the officials overly suspicious, but Riley stayed the course and in time they bought into his act. They signed his release papers, assigned him a pest of a case worker, and sent him back into the wild. It helped that Kayla had stayed by his side the entire time. Her presence gave the illusion of him having a healthy support system to lean on.

Yes, in all, it had been one mighty bitcheroo to pull off, but pull it off he had. And in the end it was worth it because the amputation had worked. With the leg gone, he was able to pare down the word count to what Grey Moon wanted. Even better, with minor resecting and reshaping he managed to retain the general integrity of the story.

"I'm good now," Riley told the agent. "Ready to rock and roll again. So, have you heard back from them?" When they'd spoken weeks earlier she'd just sent the manuscript over to the small publisher for approval and was waiting to hear back.

Hazel sat up in her chair; her eyes glittered. "Straight to it, then, huh? I hear you. The answer is yes, and they said they love the streamlined version! Ready for this? They want to move ahead with a contract, three books like we said!"

Riley released a huge sigh of relief. At last his dream was coming true. "Finally," he said, laughing. "Wow. Thank God."

"I know," Hazel said. "Who's the man?"

"You are, Hazel," Riley said. "You're the man. Yes." He cleared his throat. "So, okay, what's next for us then?"

The agent folded her hands on top of his manuscript. "Paperwork mostly. A meeting in New York next week. We'll negotiate an advance and they'll hook you up with an editor of their choosing."

"Okay," Riley said, giddy. "Kayla will be excited. Hell, I'm excited."

The agent's purple fingernails tapped out an abrupt cadence on the desk's laminate surface. Her eyes locked on Riley's. "There is one thing, sweetie. One minor request from Grey Moon as we go into this."

"Oh?"

"Seems they've decided to allocate some space in the back of your book for promoting other novels they plan on publishing. And they're going to need one final-final pre-contract trim to be sure everything will fit."

Riley's right eye twitched. He rubbed his half-leg again. "How . . . how much?"

"A thousand should do it, they said."

Riley blinked. Then his mind blinked. He'd been off his meds and faking it for weeks now. His eyes drifted down to his right foot. He felt a familiar resignation setting in. He was closer than ever, too close to turn back just because of another unfair roadblock. He had to see it through, no matter what the cost.

The saw had been so effective. How much, he mused, would it take to shave off another thousand words? A toe? Several toes? The whole foot?

Wondering if there was an Ace Hardware on the way home, he snatched the manuscript off the desk and wheeled himself out into the hall.