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Sweet Dreams Versus Sidewalk Cement
Every blank page in his little marble faced notebook was an insult. Every second he sat in front of a computer monitor not typing was a sulfur tipped match being struck, then pressed into his skin.
He tried to flip through page after page of “how to” with no avail. Everything he seemed to have prided himself on was a lie.
“You’ve got such imagination, you’re going to go places.”
“I know, I’m actually working on a script right now. I’m the best writer I know, but certainly not the best one I’ve read.” Ha ha ha… All but a joke.
He had never made the time to write. He never grew as a writer and had only just discovered that he had missed the boat. Now he was in the most frustrating position he could imagine himself in. Drudge on with the writing, feeling the dull ache in his heart every time he put a word to paper, or keep the pen off to the side forgetting he had ever held such silly dreams in his head.
The typing cursor kept time with his heartbeat. He could imagine a million things in that very instant but he just didn’t know any way he could possibly express them. He had never known such a sense of feebleness. It was crushing and oppressive. He was too struck to even move, so he didn’t.
For minute after minute he just sat, shaking the mouse every time the screensaver would come and interrupt the blank gaze of an empty word document
Muscles burned for no reason and his stomach roared in hunger but he’d no sooner feed himself than toss himself out the nearest window. Every thought that wandered into his mind saw what a mess the place was and quickly retreated. His blood pressure rose. His fingers quivered over a keyboard but still he couldn’t bring them down onto it. The whole ordeal was a mental purgatory that he could do nothing to pull himself from.
His mind only settled on each inadequacy that he had ever perceived. Of course, they started out rational. “Why do I bother? Is this in any way worth the stress I put myself through?” As time wore on however, his mind tired of going over the same rational insecurities and found more pleasing activity in entertaining the completely unreasonable. “This is all about my self image. If I wasn’t so paunchy I’d have the self confidence to truly create.”
He forgot completely that the screen was still staring back at him. He lost sight of the blinking cursor trying to coax him along. Still his mind flittered onward.
With tick after tock, he soon ran out of insecurities leaving a vacuum of thought that he had to fill somehow. For the moment he had once again gained control of his thought process. “I’m being crippled by my own anxieties and depression because of Writer’s Block? How did this happen? When did I become so weak? I’m going to march on and completely forget all of this, because none of it is important.”
He didn’t, because his focus was once again brought to an empty page which once again began the whole thought process. After another twenty minutes, during the lull in thinking in which he had previously decided to “march on”, he instead rationalized his utter lack of any performance as a product of hunger. His feet led him to his kitchen and his hand revealed the emptiness of his refrigerator.
Condiments not being the stuff of meals, he walked absentmindedly to the nearest restaurant. He allowed himself the greasiest thing he could find on the menu.
The fish fry went down easily and filled that portion of him that just wanted a hot meal. He mistook this as mental satisfaction and set back home to once again sit blankly in front of a computer.
However, before he could pull up to his apartment complex he was stopped at a red light. He looked around for the first time he could remember. It was like a fog that had been around his head since he tried to record the first word of his story had magically dissipated.
He saw the person stopped next to him picking her nose in what must have been the strangest red light habit he’d been privy to. He watched a blue Prius make an illegal U-turn that would have resulted in a severe crash were the driver of the other car, a red Volvo of some kind, not been swifter at the steering wheel.
That moment made the man see that those two cars were going to continue down their same paths, not deviating whatsoever from what had been preset for them. They needed that little bit of chaos to wake them up. An idea came to him and a smile spread across his face that banished every demeaning thought that he’d had.
In as little time as it could take to travel three miles while abiding most rules of the road, he screeched to a halt outside of his building. The parking job was atrocious and would later result in his car being keyed, but that thought hadn’t even bothered approaching the man’s brain. He leapt up the stairs, taking three steps at a time until he got to his floor. He ran at his door wielding the key in front of him, letting it pull him towards the door. As soon as it turned the lock he burst through the door like a poorly dressed six foot explosion.
He ran to his computer where the monitor waited, no different than it had been before, though he had changed much in their short time apart. Rather than setting to take his eager sweating hands to his keyboard he rather roughly put them on his keyboard.
With a swift yank it had divided from the rest of the computer set. He took it in both of his hands like a sword.
He ran at his largest source of natural light and slashed across the glass with the soft plastic. His first effort met with a thud, but with a hard jab the keyboard stuck through the glass with a delightful crash.
Waving it carelessly in the wound he’d just created, the man knocked out all the barely grasping teeth of clear glass.
The window having been transformed into a gaping hole, he stuck his head out of the window. This would do. Without so much as a thought he tossed the keyboard out through the windowpane. He walked fervently back to where the rest of his computer set lay in waiting.
For a moment he had to choose which would be next to reach its end by gravity. He decided on the stubby PC. Its light signaling power supply had faded as he tore it out from the wall.
The monitor twitched as the cord connecting it to the other doomed device was pulled taut. He dropped the PC where it was and disappeared for a moment. When he came back he held a kitchen knife in his hand. With four clumsy strokes the bond of the two machines was broken and the man was left to drag the PC by its copper lined entrails to the window.
With a savage bloodlust he threw the machine onto the street below. He watched as it exploded with the ground, the keyboard lying unfazed next to it. He broke his concentration on the wreckage below to glance back over at the monitor.
Its earlier movement left it staring back at him. He could still imagine the cursor blinking in time. His heart beat much faster now than it had when the cursors tempo matched it.
With an angered grimace he walked slowly towards it. He was going to take his time and enjoy this. He held the thing in both arms, the weight of it seeming to struggle against him.
He began chuckling his way to the window. Reaching the abyss through which the monitor’s friends had gone through, he stopped. He lifted the screen as to allow it to once more peer into his face. The blinking had finally stopped and with a howl he let the machine fall to its death.
With the crash of the thick screen meeting even thicker concrete, the man stood back for a moment in glory. He let the joy of victory wash over him for a moment.
Cold air meandering through the eternally opened window brought him to attention. He walked hastily. He knew exactly what he was going to write.
He threw the book to the ground letting it fall open to whichever page fate had decided. He pulled out a stolen bank pen, the only writing utensil left. The last one he decided he would ever need. He closed his eyes and let his pen hand clamber onto the paper. He didn’t know where the lines were but he knew where the page was and that was enough.
For a great many hours catharsis ran through his veins instead of blood. His eyes remained closed as to not corrupt his mind with any other outside influence. He felt his body awash in greatness and every functioning system in him peaked with the realization he was done.
Slowly he set the pen aside and closed the book. He stood up and opened his eyes. Bending over, he picked up the scrawny cardboard bound notebook and carried it with him to the nearest chair. He flipped open the book searching for the page he had started his story. When he finally did, a pained growl crawled from the back of his throat. The pen hadn’t had any ink.
~ Alex Nemm