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Writer’s Block

Michael Schmidt

    They are all talking about this and that. Just a small group setting, dinner and then drinks afterward.
    “And the good thing is,” Frank says,” my writing block’s broken. I’m on a new piece now.”
    Everyone congratulates him, even his wife, who didn’t know this.
    Afterwards, they say their goodbyes. They go home and Frank goes into his writing room and begins typing on the keyboard randomly. Lisa retires to her bedroom, glad to hear the sound of Frank writing again.
    Frank goes on typing randomly, hitting any key, sometimes the same key, over and over again. By the end of about an hour, he has about twenty pages of complete gibberish. He prints it out and tries to read the pages, hoping something came through, some morsel of sense, but there wasn’t any, especially the pages that have only three or four letters typed row after row a couple of hundred times.
    Frank goes to his desk drawer and pulls out a revolver, puts a bullet in. He spins the chamber and puts the gun in his mouth. The hammer snaps and nothing.
    The typing continues, again, as before, he types randomly, hitting this key and that key, sometimes hitting the same key over and over again. It is now well into evening and his wife is asleep. The only person he is fooling now is himself. He takes the revolver out and spins the chamber. The hammer snaps and nothing.
    Frank finally sits back in his lounging chair and has a Scotch neat. Frustrated, he knocks back the drink and has another. And another. For a third time, Frank goes back to the keyboard and types randomly. Then the revolver again. Nothing. Not even fear of death can get this man to write a word of sense, or develop a story of any kind.
    Then it dawns on him that maybe the stakes aren’t high enough. So, he goes back to the keyboard and starts writing, trying to make sense this time. He writes a story about a boy and a dog who go on a long journeyÉ
    But who and why just aren’t coming. He doesn’t care about the boy. The boy is flat and has no character. And the dog is just a prop for the boy. And their destination is aimless. And they are coming from no where going no where, like Frank.
    Frank knocks back a few more Scotches and does the revolver thing again, this time adding one more to the chamber. Nothing. He goes back to the keyboard and starts to write about a drunken woman alone in her apartment who tries to get guys to come in and have sex with her, but nobody does. And it ends there. He doesn’t care why she’s alone or who she is and sex is just a prop for her.
    Scotch. Adds a bullet.
    From behind him, his wife says, “Honey? You still up?”
    Frank, startled, blows off his nose and the bullet strikes his wife directly in the heart. She falls dead as Frank scrambles on the floor, blood and tears pouring from his face, screaming.

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