Eat Or Write

I wake up with a headache in my downtown apartment. I only wish I had been drinking and partying all night to get this migraine clawing at the inside of my skull. Instead it is just the dull and incompetent tension of my soul crying out from within. How do I know it is my soul, or if I even have a soul. Looking into the mirror on this old antique vanity that is worth more than my life, I see the dark circles around my eyes.

Like a raccoon I am and I see the evil simmering beneath the surface, it is what very few people ever see but it is the true me. I am quiet and in all my life I have barely spoken enough to fill a page of a journal yet I have so many thoughts that simmer on the crown of my brain that they fizzle out into nothingness.

Long gone and fleeting are all my dreams that I once had with the failed words that my lips never uttered. If I have a soul I cannot find it, all I see is the dark lines under my pale eyes and the shadows of all the things that haunt me.

Locked away in a sky scraper I am a prisoner in a tower. Replace the city for a castle and the bleak overcast sky for the mist of Avalon and I can dream for a while longer. The images only make my brain hurt more and my eyes dimmer. I can't even face another day in front of the blank screen. The cursor mocks me with it's incessant blinking, at least it knows what its job is and is waiting for me to do mine.

A white feather drops from the ceiling and I look up to see the light. I dream it is my angel come to rescue me from my life of misery but the feather duster is on top of the entertainment center and the ceiling fan is blowing the loose feathers down. I scoop up the feather and place it on the desk to ponder it. Is it a real feather from an actual bird or just some synthetic plastic and cotton?

Money, food, job, school, family, tragedy, death, guilt... you are not married yet, you have no children. You are not getting any younger, dear. I hear it all racing through my brain as I ponder the feather. My life is wasting away... it seems everyone but me is aware of it. So I close my eyes and use a bulldozer to scrape the rancid thoughts of guilt away so I can remember my plot points and where I left off last night... er night, well it was still dark out when I gave up and went to bed.

I think and think... my mind wanders. One thought trails off into another and soon I am pondering last night's debate with my sister over who's hot gym trainer has the best butt. No! An hour wasted in endless mind clutter. I decide to have coffee, yes, caffeine usually helps me perk up. I make a cup to discover that I am out of creamer. So it's off to the grocery store...

I can't go outside I haven't showered. I look in the mirror again to see if anyone will notice, if my hair can pass another day as clean. Ok I slap on a baseball cap, end of worry about that. Is it raining? I have to walk so I better check the forecast.

Google.com... waiting... Google search box... wait some more. My internet is slow today... I just want to check the freaking forecast. Finally my virus ridden computed coughs up the results for the search box. "W-E-A" Google "-weat, webkinz, wedge tornado..." everything but what I am looking for. Finally Weather.com pops up. I click... circle thingy spins and my page freezes like I asked it to collect the databases of a million users which is exactly what my spy-ware virus hackers are making me do at the moment.

Weather.com. Finally I get to see the forecast and the radar for my area. Great, no precipitation I can go without a rainproof coat. So, walking I ponder everything. Who am I? Why am I still living here even though I hate this city and I can't stand this weather? Look at the cloud it looks like a heart. I don't care what anyone says that is definitely a heart shape in the sky. Maybe this cloud is a love symbol from some invisible higher power. I feel a little warm tingle inside. Maybe someone does love me after all. A splash and honk and I am soaked in rainwater.

Ugh, so much for a dry walk to the store. Up ahead I cringe to see teenagers standing on the sidewalk, they know the rules too well. Kids can harass an adult as much as they like and there isn't a damn thing you can do about it, they are just innocent kids having fun calling me fatty and ugly and every other stupid insult in the book. It doesn't bother me so much that they are immature as the fact that they get closer to assaulting me every single day. What am I going to do when one of these skinny low pant-wearing freaks finally reaches out to strike me? I can't hit him back or even stop him for fear of child-abuse.

I make a quick turn and take a long route to the store to avoid them only to run into another problem. A collection of ragged bums on the sidewalk and not another soul within a block. I clutch my phone in my pocket, no, it has no service on it but I have heard in an emergency you can dial 911 and all. So I will stand there while a hobo beats the shit out of me and dial 911 on a service less phone and wait to maybe get a signal if the buildings aren't too tall and thick...

Fortunately a cop pulls up just as I walk by them and stops a street peddler for a violation, one more breath of relief in my life of tension. I notice the old tower nestled behind the buildings that no one here pays any attention to anymore. I know that this tower is an old siren system in the event of the need for evacuation. See this city use to have a very well laid out evacuation plan fifty years ago, today all a loud siren would do is incite chaos and panic if it were to sound.

My thoughts quickly turn to the matter at hand, a long line in a tiny store. Coffee? I turn away to the door adjacent and go to Subway instead. My choices are rich but dear am poor, so I opt for my own unique combo which irks there clerks to no end. If you order a number three with a combo pack they are good but if you ask for two different meats on the same roll they freak out. I order pepperoni and turkey and they damn near have a breakdown.

The new girl is excusable because she is young and frightened by the array of toppings before her but the manager's blank gleam at me is not so much, he is trying to summon the sandwich fairy to give him the register code for this awkward meal. I plunk down my cash and take my stash away. Subway is to look healthy when you're not, and Starbucks is to look smart when you're not. I go to both and try neither so I get the double blank stares in both places from the workers and the customers.

Out on the sidewalk I smack my forehead which is still aching slightly; I didn't need to spend this money, I could have used it for something more productive like this beggars' cup he's holding out. So I ditch my 'wich in his cup, he is pissed at me and gives me the finger and tosses my bag of murdered meats whacking me in the back with it as I walk away. It is still wrapped in plastic so I scoop it up and reclaim it, his loss. I get back to my apartment...

Damn, my computer light is still blinking! I left my computer on and Hackey, my lovely non-consensual co-user has been busy stealing more of my hard-drive from me. I can't report my hacker because at least he gives me free access. Internet prices can kill you these days. So I eat my twice-claimed meal and still have no coffee but it is raining now and I am not going out in this.

After I am done complaining to my sister on the phone of my half-ass life, she tells me all about her troubles. Her husband is mean, her kids are out of control, her pets are monsters and her beer is gone. I try to sympathize with her but I can't because I have never been in her situation. My other sister calls me and tells me all about her wonderful trips around the world, her boyfriend buys her everything her heart desires, she has a lovely home and everything is bliss. I sigh wishing I had even an ounce of what she claims. I am not saying I don't have good things but not on a grand scale like her.

When I get off the phone after both toxic conversations I let my head cool and think about funner times when all three of us sisters were kids; it usually helps to melt any frustrations I have with them. Here I am, alone in a cheap apartment with a meal a bum refused. I start to cry when I think of what I could have had. Maybe if I had given whats-his-name a better chance maybe I too could be blissfully in love or at the very least have a couple of kids to occupy my time. Looking around I wonder why I chose this?

All of the sudden like lightning it hits me... the picture on my computer screen is staring at me. A handsome face in a purple hat and suit, his eyes black as coal gleams from the cold outdated monitor. I don't see the model that is posing for this stock photograph, I see Javier Sinclair my character and hero of the best novel I have ever written. Like a lover I look over his every detail and know his every thought, feeling and motive much deeper than any human could know another. I both love and hate him for the year I have spent wrestling with him for the details of his elusive life.

A half smile is all I can muster from this encounter. I look back at him and go over the story of his life one more time and it is a damn good story even by my incredibly high standards. I sit down like his servant to obey his every command and open up his life on the page one more time. The words come sloppy but they are out and soon my fingers take off and I am a passenger once again on this thrill ride. This is why I do it, this is why I am here and why I wait in agony for every ounce of inspiration. Somewhere at some point in this madness there is a moment when the story writes itself and everything in the world falls away.

In that moment there is something where there was moments before, nothing. A story now exists that has never been told before and I was the lucky pawn chosen to tell it. It is my love, my child, my enemy and my teacher. I protect it fiercely but often feel cheated-on at the same time. My fingers are dancing once again and the music is the rhythm of the story coming to life. This I would not trade for all the bliss in the world.

(this is just a funny little thing I am writing, it's 2 AM it may not make much sense)