A Self Made Monster Read Online Free Page A

yes. For a novel? Did the readers of The Best Year His Life ever wonder why Alex never wrote another book?
    Alex walked down the hall to his study. He leaned against the door frame, looked at his desk. On the desk was his computer. Next to the computer, a notebook with several ideas for a novel. The notebook was mostly scribbling and doodles.
    The notebook beckoned. He flipped through it, pausing every few pages to review his notes. The notes were mostly character sketches, based on people he knew at the college. As he reviewed the sketches, Alex was angered for the thousandth time. He had written his first novel in three months, filling four yellow legal pads. He wrote standing up, fifteen hours a day, quitting at midnight to sleep on the floor. Alex had been afraid that if he quit writing, he would lose his train of thought: just as when he was a teenager, he read novels in one day, stopping only for lunch and for whatever psychosis medication was in vogue.
    Now, staring at his desk, Alex’s anger soared. The anger demanded satisfaction, but the satisfaction had to be gained carefully, without mistakes. He straightened out his notes, filed the letter from Blood , then went for a drive.
    He took highway 40 south, past Pine Lake. After a half hour on the highway, Alex turned left onto an unnamed gravel road. He cruised at 45, enjoying the soothing hum of tires against black road.
    As he tossed his fifth cigarette butt out the window, the headlights revealed the blue windbreaker and red cap of a hitchhiker. Alex slowed, as if to pick up the hitchhiker; as the hitchhiker smiled, Alex stomped the accelerator. The hitchhiker dropped to his haunches and raised his hands, as if praying.
    Alex parked the car on the road’s shoulder, and walked the twenty feet that separated the collision from the body. The hitchhiker was on his back, yet his face was flattened into the road. Alex could not see where the bony gruel of the hitchhiker’s face ended and the gravel began.
    After studying the body, Alex removed a notebook and pen from his jacket pocket. “This is probably a futile gesture, but the way you landed…Jesus!” In his note book, Alex recorded the geometrical perfection and skeletal perversion with which the body rested.
    Alex leaned on his lectern, trying to sound professorial. “Come on. We have to proceed. Come now. Review is important. Who can tell me what rank Mellors held in the army?”
    The students shifted in their chairs. A few made no pretense of interest and slept. Holly Dish glanced at her watch, bored, but knew she had to make a good impression. She raised her hand.
    Alex nodded.
    “Indian,” Holly announced.
    “Indian?”
    Holly repeated herself, then looked at her classmates. Several were laughing. Damn, she thought, he asked what rank, not what army.
    “He was an officer,” Holly nearly shouted.
    “Good,” Alex said. “As long as we’re on it, what nation?”
    More shifting in chairs.
    Edward Head rolled his eyes. He waited for someone to answer. Finally, almost wearily, he spoke. “Mellors was an Officer in the Indian army. And as long as we’re on it, his father was a miner, just like Lawrence’s.”
    Deciding that only Edward had read the novel carefully, Alex continued with his lecture, often turning to his notes. Whenever he lectured, Alex was grateful that his secretary, Mrs. Mathews, was well organized. She kept all his notes on file. They were cross indexed by title, genre, and author.
    Alex wanted to discuss the novel’s ground breaking eroticism, but he ran out of time. “Let’s break it off now. Next time, we’ll talk about the real reason the book is famous.”
    A few students smiled.
    As Jimmy Stubbs watched Holly walk out of the room, he stifled a lust driven groan. She was wearing a skirt today.
    Jimmy’s unabashed stare amused Alex. The little guy wants to wrestle her, Alex thought, and she’d pin him in ten seconds. Edward was watching Holly, too. But he was sly. He