Chapter 1:

The microwave beeped as the timer reached zero. The smell intensified and, from what Floyd could see, the disk was thoroughly destroyed.

He ran his hands through his hair, pushing the hair from his face, and sighed deeply. He was tired of this shit. All throughout this six-month period, he had been full of ideas for a new novel. At the start of this period, he was excited. He couldn’t wait to sit in front of his computer, write these ideas down, and prepare to make himself a better living.

But then his elation waned as he ran into a problem. The problem was that they all turned out to be bad ideas. Well, most of them, anyway. The ones that were good and had potential were the ones that were forgotten as soon as his ass made contact with the chair.

He would sit down, prepared to write a great novel that would make the critics shit in their pants with awe and envy, but then his mind would blank and he would wonder what the hell he was doing here in the first place. It all seemed so wrong to him.

Sometimes he would spend hours sitting and staring at a blank computer screen. And sometimes he would waste time by pacing around his little apartment, his hands clasped behind his back, mumbling to himself. On other days, rare days, he would not even bother to get out of his bed, with his computer left untouched. Those days were the worst days to live through, because he would feel like the life that he was trying for was over. He would lose all sense of purpose and would feel as though his dream of writing had come to a screeching halt.

But today, he had decided to write, because he was tired. He was tired of wasting time, doing nothing. He had thought of another idea that he wanted to try out. His idea for a plot was a bad one, he knew from the very beginning, but Floyd didn’t care about that. He just wanted to see where it would lead. And also, he had nothing better to do with the day.

So he leaned forward and wrote. He didn’t know where the story was headed, but he didn’t bother telling his fingers that.

He typed a tentative title to the story, not really a title but a one-phrase idea that he wanted to write about, and typed the words Chapter One.

He pulled his long blond hair back and tied it into a ponytail with a rubber band that he had found on his desk. His hair dropped neatly into place between his shoulder blades. He settled into the leather-padded chair as he got himself more comfortable. “Now let’s see what I can come up with,” he mumbled to himself as he made his fingers flash across the keyboard. To an observer, Floyd looked like he knew what he was doing. The truth was he didn’t have the slightest clue. But that simple truth did not stop him from trying. He was actually letting his fingers do the talking, more or less.

After about fifteen minutes and ten pages of slow-going that seemed like torture, he stopped typing and saved his writing on a floppy disk, unconsciously hoping that saving the idea would somehow make it a good one.

He closed his eyes and rested his forehead on the top of the computer’s monitor. He inhaled deeply and let the held breath out slowly, all the while willing his writing to come to life.

He opened his eyes and looked at the screen. He blinked a couple of times and focused most of his attention on the words.

Then he read what was shown on the computer screen and discovered that saving his work did nothing to change the quality of it. Not one damn thing. He shook his head as he went through paragraph after paragraph. Words. Just words. Nothing made sense to him. What was he thinking? He got fed up with the damn thing after only a few paragraphs of this literary garbage.

He couldn’t believe this shit. How could he have written so much about nothing? He must have talent to do that. He laughed to himself. It takes real talent to waste time, he thought as he smiled deeply.

So he ended up throwing an almost new disk into the microwave. The bad idea was destroyed, along with the microwave. Actually, he did not know for certain about the microwave, but, looking at the scorched interior, it was a safe bet.

He let out a breath in exasperation and cleaned out the microwave as best he could, throwing the ruined disk, which was still slightly hot, into the trash. He left the microwave’s door open and turned the kitchen’s exhaust fan on, hoping to get rid of that overwhelming smell.

Floyd retrieved a new floppy disk from the top draw of his desk and inserted it into the computer’s disk drive. He decided to put another bad idea on the screen. He started to think like a gambler on a losing streak: one of these times he would get lucky. He would win. He just had to keep on losing before he came to the right moment, no matter how many times it took.

He was typing for about half an hour before grunting and deciding that it was once again hopeless. Not thinking about all the words that were going to be wasted, he turned the computer off without saving anything and without going through the required shut-down steps (which was not like him; he had promised himself that he would shut the computer down properly). The computer beeped at him, but he chose to ignore it. There was nothing he could do about what he had just done. He pounded on the desk with his fist and leaned back.

Floyd then leaned forward and put his head in his hands and shook it slowly. “Damnshitfuck,” he muttered into his palms, the three curses flowing together into one word.

He had to try something different. Something in the way he was doing things wasn’t working. He didn’t know what he should change so that he could write a good story, but he knew it had to be something.

During this six month dry period, Floyd had found his older stories published in a few small-time magazines. Some were even published on the internet, which brought him some more money, but not as much as he received from the small presses.

These published stories also brought him some pleasure, but the pleasure only lasted a while. In time it faded away, leaving him feeling empty inside.

But he couldn’t get a handle on writing now. He didn’t like this moment of time that he was living in. Every day seemed to be another day of writing hell. It was even torture just to get up in the morning.

The problem wasn’t the money. Not really. He was doing okay financially, but he was far from rich. He was even further away from fame. But he was patient. One of these days, he told himself as the days went by. One of these days.

But that day never came. Nevertheless, he continued writing (trying to, anyway) and submitting his older work and having them published in magazines. He was content at being an unknown author. Yet, he kept hoping for that one jewel that would bring him to a higher level.

Six months later, nothing but bad ideas still came to him and he found that he was losing hope. And now he found himself wasting his time. And he didn’t like doing that. Because, he believed, a writer never did that.

Waiters wait; writers write. That was a saying he had once read in one of the magazines that had published one of his stories (a very good story, he thought to himself with no sense of real pride). It was a simple saying, but true to the core.

He smiled. Not because he had a sudden inspiration. Nothing had come to him. He smiled because of that saying. It had a ring of truth about it that made it seem like the ultimate meaning of life. It was also a little funny to think that something as simple as that saying could mean so much.

The microwave still smelled after a few hours of letting it air out. Now the smell reminded him of over-cooked popcorn.

But he acted as though it didn’t bother him, for the benefit of no one. He got up from his seat and strolled around the room, with his hands clasped behind his back. His head was lowered in a sign of minimal defeat.

Extreme depression kicked in. He suddenly found himself not feeling like doing anything. He began to feel as if his whole dream of becoming a famous writer was hopeless. Why should he be lucky like that?

Should he just give up on writing and try something different? Was that what he was meant to do? If so, this was as good a sign as any. After a six month career, maybe it was time to call it quits. After all, six months was a pretty good life-span for some writers, he supposed. Maybe it wasn’t as permanent as he had first thought. Maybe it was time to find something else.

But what else could he do with his life? He had no other training, no college degree to fall back on. He had been a high-school drop-out, so certain that he was destined to become a writer that he did not bother to get any more education. This, now that he thought about it, was a really bad mistake.

He should have listened to his parents. When he was sixteen, after writing his first short story, which was published in the school’s newspaper, he came to them with the plan he had to become a famous writer. When he told them that he had decided to drop out of school, they tried to convince him that this was wrong. Tried to persuade him to continue with his education, but, in the end, after almost two months of recurring arguments and slamming doors, reluctantly let him decide on his own. Now, he cursed his parents for leaving the decision to him. Didn’t they know that it was just typical teenage rebellion talking? In a way, he rationalized, it was their fault that he turned out the way he was now.

Shortly after the fight that he had with his parents, he moved out and found a place of his own. With the problem of rent and the expense of fending for himself, he was forced to get a job at a nearby gas station.

The job did not pay much, but, when Floyd decided to cut down on eating and social life (this could wait until he became a successful writer), he managed to make his rent and pay his bills. Most of the time it was barely on time. Such was the independent life of Floyd Kensington.

Now the prospect of having any other purpose in life was confusing him, and that made him even more depressed.

He’d had this type of emotion before, and he thought he knew how to counteract it. Fortunately, he was well-acquainted with depression, but unfortunately, he could do nothing about it now.

For the first time since he had quit, he felt the urge to smoke a cigarette. He needed something to relax him and get rid of the depression that he was feeling. He felt that he needed something stuck into his mouth. God, he wanted a cigarette. He needed a cigarette so bad.

A cigarette would be good. So good. It would take his mind off his problems. He would lean back, take a drag, and let his worries out with each exhaled breath, along with a trail of smoke.

He shook off these thoughts, since he had quit smoking about two months ago. He had felt that his life might be in danger (after watching a documentary on smoking being related to lung cancer; there was nothing else on, and he was fresh out of ideas, both good and bad) and had decided to quit cold turkey, because the documentary had stated that this was the most effective way to do it. It was one of the hardest things he had done, though. That was one fact that was omitted from the documentary.

At first, each day without a cigarette had been torture, he remembered. But, amazingly, during this period, he kept on attempting to write and was quite content with a smokeless environment. Though his writing still was non-existent, he felt that, after a while of being smokeless, inspiration would find its way to him. And after a while, he needed the sweet nicotine of the cigarette less and less until, one day, the need diminished. Even though inspiration didn’t come knocking at his door, he was quite content, if not happy, with his new lifestyle.

He fought and won by resisting the urge to light up. It was a tough mental struggle that he won only by remembering the promise that he had made to himself. He told himself that he would stop, and he did. That was the end of that. As for the depressive state that he was in, he would just have to ride it out, much like a wave. Sooner or later, he thought, it would have to end.

He satisfied the nearly overwhelming urge a little by sticking a piece of chewing gum into his mouth. Having something in his mouth comforted him somewhat.

He chewed slowly, and after a minute or so, there was no taste. But he kept on chewing anyway, making the gum in his mouth softer as time went by.