Writer's Block

Greetings all. Here is another scrap of writing that I recently put through the editing process and ended up with a short story. I am enjoying this compression of plot, even if it costs me pages of description. It's easier to stay on task and finish a thought with such condensing afoot. Enjoy!

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Standing at the front door, Myron fidgeted in the waking day’s groggy wakening. Writer’s block, he frowned as the thought danced through his mind as it had danced for the past 48 sleepless hours of his crestfallen life. Myron had been on a writer’s spree up until this point, THE point, actually. He couldn’t close this novel, not on his own as it was no longer his own.

Arnold was a childhood friend by trade, but in Myron’s case, Arnold was his publishing agent. Their relationship soured in the weeks surrounding Myron’s first accomplished publication, which through shrewd tactics and ventriloquism throughout the chain of unknowingly participating companies, found its way into Myron’s damp basement by the crate-load. The novel was a flop, and in turn Myron was a flop, and both of them were forever branded by the publication world as unsavory and dishonest fellows.

If it weren’t for that bastard Arnold, Myron wouldn’t be here right now, toiling over the most irrelevant of minutia. Myron needed to finish his redeeming novel; he needed to make everything right. Myron fidgeted again as the sun peeked through the low hanging trees in front of Arnold’s sleeping home. Turning the knob quietly, he watched as a sliver of golden light expanded on the foyer floor. Myron needed to end this novel. He needed to right his wrongs, and as he tightened his grip on his raised sledgehammer: he knew exactly what changes were in store.

Only Darkness Remained

This was written for an exercise, I took about ten minutes writing and editing this piece and then did some finer/minor tuning when I transferred it to digital. This short short is a self contained tale, I meant it to be something of a commentary on attitudinal difference between my generation and its parent generation as well as some other old world themes. As always, I am open to any commentary or criticism. Enjoy!

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The crowd hissed and swayed, a chorus of ten thousand locusts. They paid for blood, from the lowly, wracked gambler to the naïve infantile, who knows something momentous is occurring and yet can not comprehend its vessel. ‘DEATH,’ they jeered, screeched, and volleyed. The dim arena below, a macabre theater of abject gore, beheld two nameless figures too sorry to have escaped such a fate. One stands bent albeit proud, a gray and withering old man. On the arena floor, drowning in both blood and bile lies the other, a helpless adolescent hardly able to wield the sword issued to him at the start of the duel. The surging masses in the stands mouths frothed with ravenous bloodlust, eager for the axe’s inevitable and terminal descent. The grizzled victor to-be towers over his young challenger. Shaking and haggard, he knows he will not see the New Year’s dawn but reassures himself that his life is worth this one last effort. Anything to ensure his own survival, he reassures himself, as he raises his bloodied and worn axe.

“I am sorry, my son, for I have not the courage to face my own mortality. And so I must perpetuate this season of death so that I, not you, may inherit this defunct world to which I have you brought you in to. One last day, for myself.” And then only darkness remained.

The Glass Castle.

I have decided to make an honest effort to finish stories that I have started writing instead of starting brand new ones that I will never get to finishing. I began writing this story in pieces over the course of a few weeks, adding a few parts here and there or editing out other bits to make it more dramatic. I had it saved as The Arena.doc, but titled it The Glass Castle as of a day ago when I re-read it and started working on it again. I always seem to gravitate to a more common tongue in my short stories (mostly just swearing) I noticed. I just don't want to end up using 'fuck' as a comma is all.

Here is the prologue that I have thus far:

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The Glass Castle

“I am just giving the people what they want, what they need.” Blood dripped down his trimmed golden beard, three of his precious pearly white teeth had been kicked out, his spotless gums now swelled with blood and pain. His eyes, eyes that stared calmly and motionlessly into the public for years on end every night at exactly seven o’clock, now darted nervously around the dark corridor. George Henson, executive director and host to the Global United Federation’s top rated 24-hour news and entertainment station, could not help but laugh at his current predicament. Droplets of scarlet ejected from his lips as he heavily exhaled, squeezing out a belittling scoff, “Even now, I am giving you what you want and need. Go ahead and kill me, it’s not going to do shit in the end.”

The figure that stood above him, fists clenched and dripping with fresh blood, stared with furious eyes into the perfect blue irises of George Henson. Henson struggled on a sprained wrist to sit up as he brushed aside matted blonde hair, trying to look his best for his final moments. The silhouette grabbed him by the collar, Henson yelped for fear of a painful death as he was swiftly pulled into a sliver of light escaping into the hall; just inches from the figure’s face. George could see the man’s pupils shrink as they came into the light, like a stalker about to close in on it’s prey. “I am going to let you live, to see the abomination you have created collapse on itself. I am going to hunt each of your pawns down and twist their arms until they scream so loud it wakes the public up. No, George, I won’t kill you tonight, but you’re going to wish you were dead after I am through.”