“I know that,” said Todd, testily. “I’m sorry,” he added. He felt his hands loosen.

“Just get going,” said the cop. Todd started the engine, Todd’s hands released the brake, and the car drove off again.

Todd sat behind the wheel, sweating. His life was—he could see the cliché coming—out of his hands. As if to confirm the thought, he saw his hands turn the wheel and make a U-turn in the middle of the road.

A few minutes later, they were at the drug store.

“Now what?” Todd said to himself as he collected a cart from the entrance. He began walking, looking for Band-Aids. But his hands had other concerns. Or so he eventually worked out after he started slapping himself in the face. After a while he realized with a sick lurch that he was being directed by his own hands—left side of face for left, right side for right, and both sides for stop.

Todd walked around the store, slapping himself like a maniac, and pausing only to look at shelves and work out what it was he was supposed to be buying. After a few minutes, he had several packs of aspirin and paracetamol, some long-life milk, several bottles of water, a box of energy bars, and—

“Oh no,” said Todd. “The fuck no.”

He was standing in front of a shelf of adult diapers. His hands reached out for a family pack (a family pack?) and placed it in the cart. Todd knew then that this was going to be a big book.

*  *  *

Back home, Todd found himself arranging the food and drink on the desk in front of him (he had already, against his will, put on the adult diapers, an experience he hoped he might one day forget) and sitting down at the typewriter. He’d been able to bathe his fingers in alcohol (sadly not the kind you could drink, although Billy Cairns might have had something to say about that), which he hoped would relieve the pain (he was wrong about that, but the paracetamol helped a little).

Todd pulled a fresh pack of typing paper from a drawer—he had literally reams of the stuff lying around, just in case he ever had an idea that would sustain more than a chapter—checked that the typewriter ribbon was okay for a few more miles—make that “a few hundred more miles,” he thought grimly—and slid in a new sheet of paper.