Writers Block

         Lily’s fingers hovered over the keyboard, waiting for her brain to supply her with something to tap into the computer. She waited for a second.
Then another.
And another.
On the fifth or sixth she gave up, clicking the mouse onto the music player and selecting a play list from the drop down menu. Angry metal music played through the speakers, filling the room with an addictive beat and a blood lusty vibe. Lily popped the word processor up again and read the last two sentences of her chapter.

‘Ryan could only stare from the ground as his enemy picked his sword up from the dust and walked towards him. He could only pray and shake with knowing as the man above him moved in to end his life.’

         Lily sighed. She couldn’t very well kill off her main character before his fated reunion with his beloved. She tapped her foot, searching for a way out, a miraculous savior, anything to stop the bad guy getting his way. She closed her eyes and let the music wash over her letting her mind go blank and visually plot through her scene. Nothing came. It stopped dead with her antagonist raising his ugly weapon.
She gave it a good ten minutes before she shut the lid of the laptop. When nothing would come, the writer figured, nothing would come. Stories can’t be forced. She grabbed a coat and her keys.
She was late for class anyway.

         The lecture hall was full of bustle. Lily frowned. Could you really put it that way? Probably not. She shook her head and scribbled out the line on her pad. It was full of ink and time. It looked like it had been dropped in various puddles and gone through several sandstorms. She took this pad everywhere, in case of strikes of brilliance in the middle of physics lectures or a lucky line, fallen over mid experiment in the Chemistry lab. She often recorded the dialogue of her friends. This made excellent reference for them when arguments arose. Meaning Lily became the go to girl for any problems.

“Looking down today, Lils.” Samantha commented as she sat down. Her blonde hair tied piggy tails today, curling down her back.
“Writers block.” Lily responded. Samantha looked sympathetic.
“Oh well, nothing like a bit of Physics for writers block.” She said jokingly. “Who’s dying now?”
“Ryan, how did you know?” Lily was surprised.
“You always have writers block before you kill someone off.” Samantha explained while she checked her lip gloss in her reflective sunglasses. “Or you’re going to add in a sex scene.” She added, as an afterthought. She smiled oddly. Lily ignored her friends affinity for smut.
“Thanks…” Lily sighed. “I cant kill him off, he’s my main character.”
“Yeah. That would end things pretty sharpish.” Samantha said, organizing her pens from darkest to lightest. Lily smiled.
“You think?” Maybe Samantha could give her an idea. A few seconds passed while Samantha straitend her notes.

“Yeah, can’t really kill him.” Samantha concluded.
“A lot of help you are, Sam.” Lily muttered, putting her head on her arms. She considered sleeping through the lecture. She’d been up most of the night, in a groove with the action scene.
“Oi!” Samantha said in annoyance. “It’s Samantha, Sa - man - tha! My mother didn’t give me three syllables so you lazy buggers could chuck two out the window.” Lily grunted in reply, she’d heard it a million times before.
“You gonna sleep through this one too?” Samantha enquired, apparently recovered from her annoyance.
Lily grunted.
“You’re really eloquent for a writer, you know?”
Another grunt, with a shrug.

“Lily, you’re not going to sleep through this one, too, are you?” A male voice said from in front of them. Lily lifted her head to see who it was. She went red.
“Leave her be Ryan…” Samantha leant forward to whisper. “She’s got writers block!” As if it were a contagious disease. Ryan laughed. Lily frowned at her friend.
“Shut up, Sam.” Lily shot. Samantha muttered swear words as she ducked her head, possibly to plot fearsome revenge.
“Writers block? Lily, I didn’t know you wrote.” Ryan said, he sat the row in front, twisting around to talk to her. Lily planed her reply, she didn’t particularly want to sound like an idiot.
“Just for fun.” She said with what she hoped was the proper amount of self conscious embarrassment.
“I see, so what’s the block about?” He smiled, seemingly interested. Lily wondered if he actually was or if he was just making conversation. She wasn’t sure which she preferred.
“My main character is seconds away from a nasty, and possibly gruesome, death and I haven’t quite figured out the mechanics of his escape…” She explained.
Hmm, Ryan has nice hair, she noted to herself.

“I see… No friends around to come to the rescue?” Ryan prompted. Lily cocked her head in thought.
“Ooh, she’s thinking.” Samantha narrated, seeing Lilys’ thinking face. Lily ignored her.
“Not really.” She answered Ryan. “He’s in the middle of rescuing his beloved damsel, who’s kinda in distress.”
“Kinda?” Samantha commented. Once again going unnoticed by the others.
“Why doesn’t the damsel come to the rescue?” Ryan asked. “That’d be a bit ironic, going to save the damsel in distress… kinda… and being saved by the damsel from impending doom.” Ryan smiled, looking like a five year old who wanted to be helpful.
Lily blinked.
And blinked again.
And once more for effect. She really hoped that she’d left some time between those blinks or she’d look really idiotic.
“That’s brilliant.” She said in genuine surprise. Why hadn’t she thought of that? It was really obvious…
“You don’t have to sound so surprised…” Ryan said, taking it the wrong way.
“Sorry.” Lily muttered automatically, and like that the black wall was gone, the scene played out in her head in full colour. She blushed.

         Lily cocked her head, thinking. Samantha didn’t have the time to comment on this before Lily pushed the contents of her desk into her satchel. 
“Woah, girl.” Samantha shouted as Lily ran past her toward the exit. She narrowly avoided plowing into the last students filing into the theater.
“Miss Powell, while I’m glad you’re awake for once, aren’t you going the wro…” Lily rushed past the professor before he could finish his question.
“Sorry!” She shouted as the left the room, the eyes of every physics student present following her in surprise.
Samantha shook her head and looked at Ryan.
“I knew it.” She said smugly. “Smut.”