NanoWrimo - 30 short stories

[deathpixie]

The words wouldn't come.

Greg sat in front of his computer and stared at the blank Word document, willing the words to appear, a plot, characters, a setting created instantly and painlessly, by magic. More than anything else he wanted that burst, that feeling that the words were streaming directly from a wellspring of creativity, using him only as a conduit. On those occasions, the only thing that had stopped him writing were basic human needs – food, sleep, sex. Greg let that memory, that sense of power, wash through him, hoping it would trigger something, make something, _anything_ come to him.

Nothing happened.

"Fuck this," he muttered, and switched off the computer. It would give him that annoying little error message about not shutting it down properly later, but all he wanted now was to close that accusing blank stare. Six months, and nothing beyond random words, deleted almost immediately. Six months of frustration and agent's demands and gentle concern from his family. Six months of calling himself a writer and the word feeling like a lie on his tongue.

"You should listen to me. I've told you what the problem is."

The voice came from the corner of his study, where a particularly comfortable arm chair sat. The table next to it was piled high with children's books - Harry Potter, 'The Hobbit', the Big Book of Fairy Tales - because it was the place where he read to the kids as they curled up warm and sleepy in his lap. Even when he sat there alone, on these long nights of non-writing, he could feel their warmth, smell that sweet scent of talcum powder and young skin, feel silky hair tickling beneath his chin as his voice took them to places beyond the big green chair. In the early days he’d tell them stories out of his head, of dragons and talking furniture and spaceships and magic and villains. Then, as the words had begun to fail him, he’d turned more and more to the works of others. He’d never been able to explain to their satisfaction why he wouldn’t tell them the special stories any more, but gradually, with the adaptability of the young, they’d accepted it.

There was nothing child-like or comforting about the figure seated there now. Large and heavy-set, the rugged features unremarkable except for a piercing blue stare: Greg wasn't sure why the personification of his inspiration looked like his old football coach, but he suspected there were some 'issues' involved.

"Go away, Leonard."

"Telling me to go away won't solve your problem."

"And you can? It's just writer's block, Leonard. I've had it before, all writers do. It'll come back on its own, eventually."

"But can you wait that long?" Leonard got out of the chair, came to Greg's desk, perching on the edge like that long-ago football coach used to do against the fence. "The bills are piling up, Greg. You're behind on the mortgage payments. It's the start of the school year soon - the kids need shoes and uniforms and books. And don't forget that ding Sarah put in the car yesterday."

"A bit more than a ding, but I get the picture." Greg's nervous hands reached automatically for a pen, turning it over in his fingers. "I'll cope. We always do. We used to manage just fine before 'Rising Star' and the royalties."

"That was before you had another two kids and a house in the suburbs." Leonard's face took on a concerned expression. "Look, I'm saying this because I care, Greg. You're a writer. You shouldn't have to worry about money and mortgages and all that. That stuff, it'll suck you dry, drain the creativity right out of you."

"Like it or not, Leonard, it's part of the Real World. And you’re not. So why don't you slink back into my subconscious like a good little delusion and let nature take its course?" Greg threw down the pen in disgust. "I can't believe I'm sitting here, arguing with myself."

There was no reply. When he looked up, he was alone again. Leonard, it seemed, had done what he'd been told, for once. Greg sighed, in relief mostly - now was not a good time to be losing his marbles. He’d always lived inside his head too much, and it seemed this football-coach Muse was another aspect of that. But he couldn’t help but wonder if maybe this projection of his subconscious had a point; his ideas, fleeting and fragile, tended to be crushed before their time by petty concerns, money, the house, the kids… He shoved that train of thought away. A man had to live in the real world, even if he was a writer. And the real world had its own demands.

Besides, everything would work out. It always did.

Although not convinced, Greg nodded to himself and left the room. Better to spend this extra free time with his family, instead of sitting in the dark, arguing with shadows.

***

Another month. Days of perfect ordinariness, evenings wasted in pursuit of something that refused to co-operate, nebulous ideas that fled as soon as he looked at them fully. Greg sat in his study again, but this time in the green armchair, brooding. Sarah had mentioned tonight, oh-so-casually, that she was considering taking on another job, just something temporary, until their position improved.

Remembering, his teeth clenched, the twinge along his jaw reminding him it was something he been doing altogether too much of late. He was pragmatic enough to see the sense in Sarah's proposal, but it still stung. He could see the unspoken criticism in her eyes, in the shadows that were growing beneath them, in the tiredness in her face. It had been enough that she'd supported them both in the first years of their marriage, when he'd been sweating blood to write that first publishable novel. To see it again, when he was supposedly successful, was doubly bitter.

"Still blocked, I see."

"Leonard." Greg said the name with neither malice nor welcome - it was simply a statement of fact.

"It's been some time since we last talked, Greg. I can't help but notice things are a little more… tense around the place. You, my friend, don't look at all well." Leonard shifted slightly in his seat upon Greg's desk, careless of the strewn papers - fragments of sentences, crossed out paragraphs - looking even more like Greg's former coach than usual. "The pressure's getting to you, I can see that. Sarah, the children, your responsibilities… I could help."

"I told you, I don't need help. Not your kind, any way," said Greg doggedly, but a note of desperation had crept in. "Go away."

"Now, Greg, you know you don't mean that. I'm your friend, I only want to see you happy." Leonard's smile was practically beatific, but it failed to warm those piercing blue eyes. "I'm here to help." The reasonable tone echoed in Greg's memory, resurrecting the impotent guilt he felt every time he failed his team, and Leonard - his high school coach, not this figment of his imagination - somehow managing to turn his gentle words of disappointment into a stinging rebuke. The memory ached, the same way an abscessed tooth ached, bone deep.

He pushed the feeling away, and still Leonard-the-figment was talking:

"It's not fair that she should expect so much of you, Greg. You're not like the rest of them. You're special, talented. Sarah could never understand what you're going through. Not like I can. I know how to make this stop…"

"GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME!" Greg screamed at the apparition, his voice cracking, heedless of the sleeping house around him. Outside, a neighbour's dog started barking; upstairs, he heard the soft thud of bare feet along the hall and down the stairs, the click of a light switch. The strip of yellow light shining under the closed door seemed very bright to his dark-adapted eyes.

"Greg? Is everything okay?" Sarah's voice trembled slightly. She tapped lightly on the study door. "Greg, honey?"

"I'm fine, Sarah. I… I fell asleep. Must have had a nightmare." Greg looked over at his desk, its chaos undisturbed. "Just a bad dream," he repeated. There was a pause, and he could almost see Sarah on the other side of the door, a small frown creasing the space between her eyebrows. Sweet, caring Sarah, always the sensible one, the practical one, the one who had always looked after everything. The unspoken disappointment in her eyes, the small lines appearing in her forehead, they needled away at him until he had to flee, had to lock himself away in his study. He knew she was wondering if he still actually loved her, if she was somehow losing him; in the depths of his soul, his guilt festered and curdled into resentment and anger.

He wanted nothing more than to open the door and go with her to their bed, lose himself in her clean smell of shampoo and soap, in that most ancient of releases, but then he remembered Leonard's words:

'Sarah could never understand what you're going through. Not like I can.'

"Greg?"

"Mommy?" called a small voice from upstairs - Sam, his youngest, by the sound. "Mommy, I'm scared!" The last syllables rose, wavered, becoming a wail.

"I'll be right there, sweetie," Sarah called back. Then, softer, to the door. "Are you sure you're okay, honey? You scared me."

"I'm fine, Sarah," he replied. He glanced at the empty desk again. "Just fine."

The words sounded hollow, even to him.

***

"Dad?" The hesitant tapping at the door paused, repeated. "Dad? Mom wants to talk to you."

'She can’t stand to come in here, so she sent you to get me.' Greg didn't speak the thought, but his face twisted with unconscious contempt. He started to pour more scotch into the glass by his elbow, but his aim was off. Pungent amber fluid flowed over the table, soaking into the bright covers and thick pages of "Terry The Turtle" and warping Harry Potter beyond redemption. "Damn," he muttered thickly, and then pushed the glass away. He didn't need it any way, not when he could drink straight from the bottle. The liquid burned down his throat, joined the ball of impotent anger simmering in his guts.

"Daddy?" Lisa sounded worried. His eldest child, his clever, sensible girl. She looked like him, with her dark straight hair and near-sighted brown eyes, but she was her mother in personality. Without her help, he'd never have managed to run the place whilst Sarah was working. "Please answer, Daddy. I know you're in there."

"Daddy needs some time alone," he mumbled, taking another swig and spilling more of the special Christmas gift scotch down his shirt, onto the fading green fabric of the chair. "Time alone with his muse." He looked up at the figure standing by the desk. "Right, Leonard?"

Leonard smiled and nodded, and Greg felt that glow of happiness Young Greg had always felt when Coach had smiled upon something he'd done. There was another small thud at the door, a childish fist taking out an unchildish frustration, and an even smaller sob.

"Daddy? Please come out."

Another memory hit Greg's fuddled brain, this one from his early writing days. He and Sarah in the one-room shoebox that had been all they could afford, Lisa just a baby then. He'd slip her into the baby harness strapped to his chest on those long nights of writing as Sarah slept, both of them comforted by the close presence of the other. He could feel her now, her heavy warmth lying so trustingly against his heart.

"Lisa?" The bottle was set down on the table with a clunk, as Greg stumbled upright, weaving towards the door. "Don't cry, sweetie, Daddy's here."

Leonard watched him fumble to open the door and smiled. It was an expression without warmth, without compassion.

"See you later, Greg."

***

"Hello, Greg."

The writer didn't react straight away. Behind his desk, before the dark and silent monitor, the shadows rose around him, sheltering him, hiding him. A haven. Or a prison.

"Ah, things are that bad, are they?" Leonard settled himself into the armchair, noting the dust that had settled on the pile of children's books, the sticky glass-rings, the musty smell that showed the room had been largely closed up and unused. "No, don't tell me – money’s getting tight, things aren't so good with the wife, even though you did as she wanted… Tell me, Greg, what's it like, being a telemarketer?"

Bloodshot eyes flicked upwards, and Leonard chuckled. "Oh yes, I know about that. I know everything." He leaned forward, his own eyes glittering. "And this, these last few months, they're just the start of it, Greg. The beginning of the rest of a tediously mundane life. Life without that spark, that something extra, that makes you different. Every day you fall further and further away, until there's nothing but work and bills and getting by. Is that how you want it?"

Greg's voice was scratchy and low. "No." His face, in the light from the street light outside, was gaunt, stubbled, haggard. "Tell me what to do."

"It won't be easy," Leonard warned. "You'll have to do… unpleasant things."

"Tell me." Still low, but filled with intensity, a kind of desperation. "Whatever it takes. I need to know. I can't do this. All the good that’s in me, everything that makes me special… I can feel it being sucked out of me by that place. I have to get it back."

“As long as you’re sure, Greg.”

“I’m sure. What do I have to do?”

Leonard smiled, and pulled something from his pocket. There was a soft 'click'; stainless steel caught the dim light. "It’s very simple," he said, and paused, his smile triumphant. "You just need to concentrate. And to do that, you need peace, quiet. Time to do things your way. Let's get rid of all those distractions."

“Distractions?”

“You know what I mean.” Leonard passed over the knife, handle first. “You know I’d do it if I could, but like you said, this is the Real World.”

“Is it?” Greg held up the knife, mesmerised by the way it caught the light. “Doesn’t feel very real to me. It’s all a bad dream.”

“Well, there’s only one way to wake up.” Leonard gestured towards the door. “Go get ‘em, tiger.”

***

Greg wrote.

Every piece of paper he could find, the blank white walls of the place where he slept, he filled with words, line after line of cramped, torturous handwriting. They wouldn't give him a pen, so he stole them, stole the crayons from Occupational Therapy, even the lipstick from a carelessly-unwatched handbag. And once, when he'd been put in solitary confinement, he'd used other, more unpleasant things. He wrote and wrote, losing himself in the words, forgetting, no, _fleeing_ the outside world. The drugs they gave him didn't help, the images were still there, behind his closed eyes. Blood. Blood and the empty eyes of his wife, his children. His own heavy tread upon the stair, his hand, shaking slightly as it turned the knob. Sarah, so tired, sleeping deeply. The knife, gleaming briefly in the faint light coming from the hallway, and then gleaming no more. So much blood, coating his hands and chest – he remembered with perfect clarity, with his writer’s eye for detail, the crimson handprint he had left as he’d pushed open the door to Lisa’s room. And then, and then… Again and again he saw it, and again and again he put it into words, all of it.

He wrote, and it made sense, what he'd done.

The distractions was gone. And he could write again.

It was as simple as that.