Chapter 1
White stacks of paper lay in the metal trashcan. Black, lettered ink on them, from there visible is a man’s back. Walking away toward a house.
Inside, the fictionist’s visage haggard from disappointment, his written tales can take hours, months to finish, however life waits for none. Brewed a coffee cup and sat in the living room to consume slowly, each individual sip, hotness and caffeine entered his body, accumulating a recharge bit by bit.
A warm, mild breeze blew in. Many people would regard as a pleasurable assail, this man wanted none of it. Got up, closed the window and returned to his chair, his mind wanted to settle on what comes next - sipping.
Did that window open? Before he can saver the drink, wind blew once more. Only somewhat harder and colder on a sunny day. He gets up again and trots over to the window. ‘The Hell? What opened it?’ Not only shuts, locks, the response.
He sits and resumes his beverage. Normalcy returns until a noise snaps him out. Getting up, walks into an adjoining dining room. A chair is upside down on the floor. His face totally incredulous. ‘A haunted house to complete my day.’ Remarks dryly.
Alright, he’s visibly shaken.
Hell, if he’s the man to know what’s going on. Returning to the living room to try and gather himself, confronted by the sight: BRING THE PAPERS BACK NOW.
Written in coffee. Unmistakably the wall carried the devil’s message. Official permission to freak out.
Clasps the sides of his head by the hands, face a sketch of fear and confusion.
Takes the few steps outside the front door leading to the ground and ultimately the hand lifts the can’s metal cover and reaches the other hand in to extract the several pages.
A sense told him sit in front the Underwood typewriter. Returning to that albatross. The pages are arranged on the table. Deep in his mind buried the question, What now? A thought he didn’t wish to utter aloud.
BESTOW A VOICE. From nowhere in very large, pitch black lettering on a painting in the room.
Perplexed but figures he has to type it. Its instruction. Readying the Underwood and inserting a fresh page, continues the story writing.
The voice came, spooky, disturbing as though bowels of a forsaken beyond.
BONDED ARE WE ALWAYS.
In keeping to the scribe’s typing really sounded as written – spooky. The voice came from nowhere yet everywhere and to him imagined reached the center of his being. Turning the head didn’t make him find a source. ‘Who are you? I don’t know what you want.’ Nobody is with him.
CREATE TO YOUR HEART’S DESIRE.WE PARTS OF THE WHOLE. EXERCISE YOUR WILL AND GIVE FORM - KRUDERNIK.
Wanted to speak out loud the obvious. The whatever it was knew his name, but scratched it.
‘I’m supposed to make you come alive?’ Was it cocaine? He thought. A little secret those white filled days were behind them.
MANIFEST THE WILL INSIDE AND GIVE FORM.
‘I’m a scrivener. I put things to paper. I’m supposed to make you alive with a typewriter?’
The disembodied voice believes the writer is able, would happen even without their machine. The man is asked to think back. Way back. Out the blue struck like a thunderbolt.
‘A child back then – scribbled for something to happen and it happened…’ His body exudes shock and epiphany.
THE VOICE IS MANIFEST PER YOUR WILL.
‘My god. Buried what happened in a pile somehow. Power to create things.’
The speaker gives permission to put aside the typewriter and do an exercise – write something on paper by pencil. A red penknife appears, touchable, has weight, the blade sharp.
The man stunned again in as many seconds. ‘I’m not with a ghost,’ he reasons. What he knows of them doesn’t fit here. Then the answer is buried elsewhere?
RETURN TO THE MACHINE.
‘Why?’ Told the man is most accustomed to it than writing by hand. He speculates probably, only to correct – ‘Wait just knew my preferences.’ Connected to his mind somehow. Krudernik’s fingers at the ready over the keys. Taking a minute to gather his imagination.
Punching keys began, well-nigh lost, consumed by the word’s passion. From each sentence to finish the story, more and more fleshed out, it is corresponding to a creation’s formation in real time second by second.
By prosaist’s hand, fiction, fiction that ceased to be, transcending into reality. No more rummaging the mind’s recesses for some more explanation.
Fingers sore a little, all the same every fibre of his being awed. At the last key punch, the creation is before them, complete. Fruit of the mind.
Author’s note – as done last few times a story released on my birthday. A Mr. King an influence. Stephen threw his manuscript for Carrie in the trash till wifey rescued it. The man wrote stories on this model typewriter and engaged in substance abuse.
Not least me taking a chance to write about a penman protagonist. Revving up the vocabulary, the job described in various names.
Elected the creation not explicitly shown but left to imagination reader.
10 August 2021.
