Hey, everyone.
So, I'm one to talk. Here I am saying this week's theme is going to be about the earnest endeavor of writing or whatever and I'm procrastinating till almost four in the afternoon to start. Geez. Well, writing about writing in poetry and non-fiction is easy. Writing about writing in fiction, not as easy. Not to mention, how many of us have written a story where the main character is a frustrated author of some sort? We've all done it. Anyway...
Wheel of Genres, turn, turn, turn! Tell me the genre I will discern!
Today's topic is... Science Fiction! That's a bit of a bust. I was hoping for something like horror or a psychological thriller because I did think of a way to write about writing and make it interesting, but it needs to be a horror story or thriller. Fantasy would work, too. Maybe I should ignore the wheel and run with my idea. Yeah, I think I will. Geez, what a monster I've become. I can't even follow my own rules. Anyway, I'm going to try to make this one actually flash fiction and keep it less than 1000 words, maybe shorter. Get in, get out.
Thirty minutes on the clock: 30:00. And... go!
Darrell had been at it for weeks. He had locked himself in his room and hadn't come out since who knew when. All the words were up there in his mind, but he had trouble getting them out. He would sit at his desk before his typewriter and freeze. His fingers would touch the keys, but he couldn't make them move. In frustration, he's stand up again and start pacing. He had worn a track in his floor from the route he walked.
Darrell then thought that if he could get some of it out, he might be able to make more sense of his problem. Fragments of sentences and images came to him. He jotted them down as he went about his day, but they were barely anything; they were just words strung together. "As immobile as a drunken mist", "given to the placidity of a pale moon", "as passive as a crow's stare". Most of them he barely understood himself.
He soon ran out of paper, but he still had plenty of pens. He started writing things on the walls, on his tables, and on the floor. Once while eating toast, he carved a phrase into his kitchen counter, "April devoured brings May's coward". He stabbed the knife into counter and wandered back to his office. He was careful not to tread on any of the words he scribbled on the floor which outlined a crooked path for him. He turned on the light ever so gently so as not to smear the delicate inscriptions that littered the walls and mocked him with their very presence.
Every sentence tormented him; every image was like slow death. The only place he saw the story clearly was in his dreams which he always forgot upon awakening, and maddened at the incompetence of his own memory, he felt like the story would burst from his own head, ending him rightly.
He felt the madness take hold and soon he only thought and spoke in garbled language which not even the great Bard could have comprehended. He forgot how to keep himself, and would bash his head into the walls, walking around, trying to make his way to his desk. He never tread on his precious words, but he soon realized they didn't belong to him, he belonged to them. He was servant to them. He muddled through nonsensical prayers under his breath begging for release but they never would. They couldn't. He had never been able to release them, so they wouldn't release him.
Months passed and a terrible smell came from Darrell's room. When it reached its climax, they broke in and found him long dead, sitting at his desk in front of his typewriter. Stale blood soaked into the hardwood and left sticky stains on his legs, clothes, and arms. They leaned his body back and found that he had carved more words and phrases into his very flesh and face with a fountain pen. They covered up his ghastly appearance and sent him to the morgue. A great shame it was too, because then the only person who experienced the true rapture of Darrell's magnum opus and understood the mystery of his torture and how his death was the price he paid for his release was the mortician. What would a lord of the dead do with the secret to life?
***
Stop the clock. Alright, I have seven-and-a-half minutes left. So, that wasn't as good as I was hoping. When the idea came to me, I thought it was great, but trying to get it out--it just wouldn't come. I felt like Darrell myself toward the end. But as I wrote, I was kind of like, how many other people know exactly what this feels like? I'm betting a lot of us do. As for the length of this piece, about 536. I went back and edited it, so I don't know for sure.
But anyway, that's it for today. If you want to use the wheel I made, you should be able to access it here. And if you have the time, please check out my books for sale on Amazon which you can find through my author page. The link is below. Also, I reworked my Patreon page, so why not give it a look and consider becoming my patron. I would appreciate it.
Keep writing, my friends.
More About Bryan C. Laesch:
My Works:
Amazon: My Author Page, My Influencer Page
Facebook: Bryan C. Laesch, Bawdy Scholar
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Twitter: BryanofallTrade
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