(the prologue)

need i offer you a red-candied apple, my sweet, to lure you into this mysterious web?
its threads glistening silken and opalescent when touched by the sun's rays
weaving the background against which only such a meticulous handicraft as this
could stitch a luscious and intriguing narrative, penned in cursive.
or shall i leave a trail of breadcrumbs for you to follow?
arrows and clues that, if only averting the sparrow's hunger, hint at la naissance of this tale-- an immaculate conception.

it began with your castle painting. of that much i am sure.
you will receive a package in the mail with instructions. it will probably arrive the latter half of next week. before then, you should familiarize yourself with "A Night in Tunisia" (preferably the version off the recording entitled Diz 'n Bird at Carnegie Hall).

You have a deadly secret.
Time is running out...

   What day is it, anyhow? She glances at the calendar hanging next to her desk. Sunday the 27th. She woke at two in the afternoon with a splitting headache. Fucking hangover, she thinks. What she remembers of last night resembles a vague dream. Like the one her mother once told her about, though now she says she doesn't recall ever telling her, least of all dreaming it. 
Maybe you made it up, her mother says. A per usual comment. Ironically, it was her mother who was the bonafide writer. 
She described the dream as a dark blank stage over which thick fog hovered like a film-noir dry-ice mist. 
No movement. No sound. Just the stage in the fog.
She had always been fascinated, unknowingly haunted by the concept of this silent spacious reverie. Envisioning it over the years it had taken on a life of its own, become more ethereal. The stage floated above a swamp-like, dusk-lit green lagoon. Swans with black-tinged feathers elegantly glided over the murky waters, parting the bluish haze like keepers of this underworld. The thought of this scene over time had come to be like a refuge she held in her mind, a quiet place to go where she was undisturbed.
Nothing like the feeling she has now. Hungover. Irritated. Restless. Unlike herself. There's something she can't place. Last night. Something about last night.
She remembers going out, going to a bar called Le Meridien. He was there. After discussing the latest literature releases and the poetics of language over several drinks, he paid her tab and she invited him back to her flat. 
Once there she opened her last bottle of red wine and he phoned the boyfriend to say he'd be home later than expected. She read him a few excerpts of her latest typed work while he cut out fat lines on the glass table. 
It gets blurry after that, like a scene fading to black just before the end credits.
Suddenly, the sound of her alarm. Its monotonous pounding inside her head, a mallet against her temples. She glances back at the calendar on the wall. It's from the British Architectural Library Drawings Collection, Royal Institute of British Architects. The drawing for the month is John Alexander's unexecuted design for Northwick Cinema in Worcester, circa 1938. It's familiar. Eerily so. Perhaps the image had simply migrated into her subconscious.
Pen in hand, she lights a cigarette and walks over to the side of her bed. Reaching out to her headboard, cluttered with stacks of papers and books, she stops.
It's not there. Her journal is gone...