Finally, after months of waiting, after countless arguments with the shipper, with border services, with his wife Shirley and with his son Miles, and with his wallet to cover all the extra importing fees, Carl Jones’s package arrived and sat in his study.

It was a dented cardboard box, basketball-sized, swaddled with duct tape, and it screamed nondescript. If he had passed it in the street he would have kept on walking, avoiding eye contact – were it not for the shipping label, which said: to Carl, from Industrial Creativity Corporation.

“It’s here!” Carl whispered with glee.

He tore the tape, ripped the flaps, and fell backwards when packing peanuts volcanoed from the thing. And then he gasped, for from the box rose a fully grown woman.

She stood tall and stretched her arms wide, her joints popping as packing peanuts cascaded down her voluptuous toga. Then she shook her sprightly curls, donned a golden laurel crown, and smiled wry with the rubiest red lips Carl had ever seen.

“You must be the muse!” he said.

“Trish.” She extended her hand. “Charmed.” After he shook it, she dug a small card out of one of the toga’s folds. “And you must be…” With the flick of her wrist, she put on a pair of gold-rimmed reading glasses. “Here we are. Carol Jones. Pleased to meet you.”

“Uh, no, it’s Carl.”

She arched an eyebrow. “No, I assure you, my name’s Trish.”

“What? No, I meant I’m Carl. Not Carol.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Obviously.”

She scanned her card dubiously. “That’s not what I have written here.”

“Well they must have done a typo with my order.”

She grimaced. “My colleagues at Industrial Creativity Corporation are consummate professionals.”

Carl sputtered, flailing his arms halfway between a powerless shrug and a powerful tearing out of the hair. “My name’s Carl!”

“Fine.” Trish rolled her eyes. “Do you have a pen?” When he handed it to her, she made an exaggerated crossing-out on her little card. “Carl. Is that with a K or a C? Or a Q.”

“C,” he said, scowling. Then he let out a frustrated huff. “Look, sorry. I think we’re getting off on the wrong foot. What do you say I help you out of that box and we start over?”

Trish nodded and let Carl help steady her as she stepped her golden stilettos out of the package.

“How was your trip? Can I get you anything to drink?”

“I could absolutely murder a pint,” she said.

“Um… coming right up.”

“Say, Carl, what did you need a muse for anyway? I see you have a svelte dancer’s body – do you aspire to dance sveltely? Or are you looking to pick up the drums? Interior design? Website SEO?”

“I want to write a novel!”

Trish deflated, with a long, drawn out sigh. “Better make it two pints.”

When Carl came back with the beer, he found Trish sprawled on his couch, smoking a cigarette from a foot long golden cigarette holder, while chatting on a cellphone.

“–a writer,” she said. “Can you believe my luck? Bleh.”

“Hey! You can’t smoke in here!”

“Look, I gotta go. I’ll call you back.” She rose, ashed her cigarette on the carpet – eliciting more frustrated noises from Carl – and downed the first pint.

“Carl,” she said, and then she winced as someone hammered out a particularly discordant piano noise elsewhere in the house. “Gaia! What is that atrocious racket? I think my ears are actually bleeding!”

“Hey! Watch it! That’s my son, Miles.”

“Oof. My condolences. I don’t think I’ve ever heard Three Blind Mice butchered this badly, by One Deaf Pianist.”

“Hey!”

“Look, Carl, I can’t concentrate. Is there somewhere we can go? A mall or bar or something.”

“There’s a park nearby.”

“Fine, fine.” Trish downed the other pint. “Let’s roll.”

They found an unoccupied bench under the branches of a sycamore, with a view of the park’s picnic field, and they sat quietly for a long while. Carl twiddled his thumbs, wondering if Miles’s piano lessons were worth it or just another money sink. Trish lounged and smoked, beholding the world with half-lidded eyes. By the third cigarette, Carl got worried about other money sinks.

“Well?” he said, with an edge.

“Yes, just fine, thanks.”

“No, I mean–” He consciously untensed his hands. “I mean: well, can we please get started now?”

“Whatever you say, chief.” She sat up, put her cigarette holder away, batted her eyes. Drummed her long red nails on her knees. “So. You want to write a novel.”

“Sure do! I have this great idea too. It’s about this guy, Charles Johnson, who’s just an everyday guy, but there’s these terrorists, see? And he saves the president, only aliens were actually behind it, and he’s a karate champion, and it turns out it was all just a dream, and it’s the first of an epic seven book series, and–”

“–Whoa, easy! Gonna interrupt you for just a sec. That’s nice and all, but ideas are like assholes: everyone’s got at least one. Okay? We need a bit more than just an idea. Do you have a manuscript? Let me see what you have written.”

Carl dug out his phone, opened his draft, handed it over with a grin.

“Danger Code Omega,” Trish narrated the title. “Sounds… exciting! I like the Greek.” She scrolled the phone. “Chapter One.” She scrolled the phone further. And further. And frowned.

“That’s all it says. ‘Chapter One’.”

“Yup!” said Carl. “That’s all I got right now. I need your help for the rest. I need inspiration!”

“I see.” Trish sighed, deflating further, and handed back the phone. “Well… um…”

“Is that why we’re at the park? Get me inspired by nature?”

“Sure,” said Trish. “Sure! That sounds like it makes sense. Why don’t you take a moment to get all natured up, and then hammer out a chapter or three.” She hopped off the bench.

“You’re leaving?”

“Just running some quick errands. Don’t want to interrupt the delicate genius of creation. We’ll meet up later, don’t worry!”

The next morning, Carl found his muse passed out under his writing desk, buzzsaw-snoring and surrounded by a sangria fug.

“Trish?”

At once she rose, blinking the blear away. “How’d you get on then, mate?” she mumbled through a yawn, which made Carl yawn.

“It was okay!” he said. “I saw this dog at the park, and I got an idea that my hero needs a dog.”

“Oh Carl, another idea?”

“Yeah, but it’s good! Everyone loves dogs.”

“Fine, fine. So long as you’re excited, that’s all that matters. Let’s see what you wrote.”

She held her hand out, but he looked away guiltily. “I didn’t actually get to writing yesterday.”

“Carl!”

“It’s just, I got thinking, what if the dog was also a cyborg from the future? I could just see the awesome gun battles in my mind, and I bet audiences would love it. It would totally own the box office!”

“Wait, what?” Trish blinked. “Audiences? Box office? I thought you were writing a book.”

“I am! But it’ll obviously lead to a movie, and the movie will obviously be awesome, and Carl Jones will become a household name, and–”

“–Aren’t you counting your horses before they hatch?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” she gesticulated wildly to the study and the piles of blank sheets of paper on the writing desk, “don’t you first need to actually write the book?”

Before Carl could answer, Miles started another round of harassing the piano.

“Gaia, that’s brutal,” Trish said, wincing. “I can’t concentrate. Let’s go to the back yard.”

Outside they grabbed a couple plastic chairs on the patio. Trish lit a smoke and soon the gentle aroma of tobacco settled around them. Carl looked at her, and wondered. Did she have a point? But wasn’t there merit in visualizing his goals too?

“Carl,” she said, turning to him abruptly. “Dreams are nice and all, but I need to know: do you want to write, or do you want to have written?”

It had the uneasy weight of a rhetorical question, and one he wasn’t certain he entirely understood on the surface – and one he feared he did understand deep down. He watched the clouds crawl across the morning sky, wondering. First, about the question, but then his thoughts drifted as the clouds did – particularly the one that looked like a dog. Then came another idea, a realization that, yes, naturally, a cyborg dog from the future could fly. And with that, he also realized he had his answer.

“I do want to write.” He turned to her, certainty swelling in his heart.

“Yeah?”

“Definitely. I just need… more inspiration.”

Trish nearly rolled her eyes. “Okay, fine. We can work with that. Probably.”

“Okay. So can you inspire me now?”

She shrugged. “What do you want me to do?”

“Well I don’t know, you’re the muse.”

She scratched her head. “Posing? I did posing once for a statue guy.”

“A sculptor.”

“Yeah. Would posing inspire you?”

“It’s worth a shot, I guess.”

“Fine.” Trish got up and scanned the back yard for a posing spot. “But you better get your pen or phone or whatever, and write some dang words.”

“Got it.”

“And you better give me a good review,” she grumbled.

They spent the better part of two weeks posing. She’d make like a statue all over the garden, and he’d sit on his chair, hemming and hawing over his phone, but rarely typing. Carl long suspected Trish’s plan wasn’t really working, but he continued the game because part way through Shirley came out to join them, inspired to take up the camera again. And he had to admit, she snapped some great photos of the muse.

But two weeks was the limit.

“It’s not working!” he whined.

Trish tossed back the rest of her merlot and tromped across the grass, muttering about “Gaia help me, these people.”

“Come on, let’s see,” she said. When he handed her his phone, she scrolled through it, her expression darkening. “Well. A couple paragraphs, at least.”

“It’s rubbish!” Carl buried his face in his hands.

“No, it’s… yeah. Have you tried just typing more words? Some of them are bound to be good.”

“I can’t! I need the perfect words, and you’re not giving them to me! I feel blocked.”

“Eat more fibre.”

“Har har. This isn’t working. Posing was a dumb idea.”

“Well sorry!” She glared at him. “I’m doing my best here. I don’t know what you want from me.”

“I want you to inspire me. Come on, Trish. Do something.”

They scowled at each other and then scowled at the garden for longer. Trish reviewed the paragraphs, looking for her own inspiration, and Miles meanwhile started his daily piano practice. She was surprised to find it wasn’t so jarring this day.

“You know,” she said, “your little crotch goblin is actually improving.”

Carl grunted. “Thanks? Anyway, he better be, what with all that practicing.” He scratched his chin. “Listen, Trish, back to my problem–”

“–Wait!” she said. “I think I’ve got it!” She furiously scrolled Carl’s sentences again, and he braced himself for her revelation.

“Yes!” Trish raised a triumphant fist in the air.

“Yeah?”

“Okay, so you’re blocked, and your writing is crap, right?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say crap–”

“–And how do you get better at something you’re crap at? That’s right! Just have an AI do it for you!”

“What!? You want me to have an AI write for me!?”

“It’s perfect!”

“No, it’s terrible! I want to write my story!”

Trish bit her lip. “That’s important to you, is it?”

“Yes!”

“Dang, thought I had the answer there.”

“Well you don’t,” said Carl, crossing his arms. “Figure something out, Trish. I paid good money for a muse.”

“Fine,” she hissed, lighting up another cigarette. “But I’m going to need a few days to do some research.”

“Fine.”

“Fine!” She stalked off, muttering about writers.

A day later, Carl was hopeful she’d come up with something good. Two days later, he was worried what it might be. Three days later, he was worried it had been three days with no updates. Four days later, he was terrified he had thrown the receipt away and couldn’t get a refund. Five days later, he had resigned himself to being an uninspired hack who chased away his own muse.

And that night, as storm clouds smothered the evening and rain battered the house, as Carl drowned his failures in whisky, in his study with the lights off, and when a shock of lightning rocked the sky with a terrible ca-ca-rack! – the darkest corner of the study suddenly stirred, and by the storm light a horrible, sodden shadow leapt out.

Was this cruel apparition the ghost of his own dreams, come to haunt him for failing? Was this the guilt buried in his heart, for having told everyone he was going to be a writer even though deep down he knew he was rubbish and always would be?

“Hello, Carl,” it said.

Carl screamed.

The shadow lit a cigarette. “Why’s it so dark here? Power go out or something?”

“Trish, you’re back!”

“Of course. And I bring good news! But first, could I get a towel?”

Only after Carl got her a towel and turned the lights back on did he snatch her cigarette away, dunking it in his drink.

“Right, sorry,” she said. “Forgot. But hey: good news!”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah! You’re going to be a writer!”

Carl clapped his hands, just as thunder boomed overhead again. And then, they heard somber piano notes haunting the house.

“Woo,” said Trish. “Is that Toccata and Fugue in D Minor? Is that Miles!?”

Carl grinned wide. “You bet! That’s my son. He’s really put the work in, and I think it paid off. Don’t you?”

“I’ll say. He’s great!”

“That kid means the world to me. I mean, he still would if he was terrible at the piano, but moments like this… I feel so proud.”

Trish smiled too.

A little too wide.

“I’m so glad you said that, Carl.”

“So, you said you had an idea to inspire me?”

“Oh yes. I went right to the source with this one. Looked at how all the great writers did it. And I found a common thread – a secret formula that’ll make you a winner for sure.”

Carl was giddy with energy. “Well don’t hold me in suspense! What is it?”

“Wait. This is serious. I need to know you’re committed to your craft, because this’ll be shocking. You need to be strong, and to do exactly as I say. Okay?”

“Yes – I’m all in!”

“Good.” She stepped back, and then with one smooth motion, she drew a foot-long meat cleaver from her toga.

Carl gasped. “What’s that for?”

More lightning cracked the sky, and the lights flickered, momentarily leaving them illuminated only by the wild sky fires.

“You must kill Miles!” Trish said, raising the blade.

“What!? Are you insane?”

“Be strong, Carl! You must kill your darlings!”

The lights came back on.

“Kill your–” Carl blinked. “Kill your darlings!?”

“Yes, I’m afraid it’s the only way. It’s what all the master writers do–”

“–Trish, you idiot! That’s a metaphor for cutting out purple prose and author self-inserts!”

A moment of silence passed between them, as the rain abated.

“Huh. Is it now.”

“Yes!”

She lowered the cleaver and pondered this, while Carl ranted and raved about “worst muse ever” and “psychotic ideas” and “refunds”. She supposed that’s what she got for just skimming those how-to-write books – and now she’d get a bad review.

Suddenly Carl fell silent, and only the notes of Miles’s playing filled the air.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “Wait just a minute. All this time you’ve been pointing out Miles. First how terrible he was, then how he gradually got better, and now when he’s finally good, this insane idea to – I don’t even want to say it. But all this time, you’ve been trying to direct my attention to him and his playing.” Carl’s face lit up. “Oh, Trish! I finally get what you’re saying! You’re a genius!”

“Yes?”

“It’s not inspiration I need, it’s practice! That’s what you’ve been trying to show me all this time – oh, show and not tell, I see what you did there – and I had to arrive at it on my own to make it stick! You’re brilliant!”

Carl hugged her and it was all she could do to fling the knife away so he didn’t butcher himself.

“Yes,” she said, patting him on the back. “That’s what I was doing, all right. Yep. You got me.”

“You’ve changed my life, Trish! Hard work and persistent practice – that’s what it’s about. How can I ever thank you?”

Trish smiled. With a flourish, she pulled a sheet of paper out of her toga and presented Carl with his customer review sheet.