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Scribe
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: In the Hot Hot Desert
Posts: 51
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The Writer's House of Words
The Writer’s House of Words
“Regardless, baby. You’re not thinking rationally.” Charles says, his voice calmly chiming into the phone.
“How am I not thinking rationally?!” says the agitated female voice on the opposite end. “I just really want to see you tonight, is that too much to ask?”
Holding the phone away from his ear, Charles closes his eyes in frustration, running his fingers through his shaggy black hair. In contemplation, he sighs to himself before speaking again.
“Like I said before, I’m really busy with homework tonight, baby.” He says keeping his calm as much as he is humanly able.
“That’s so typical of you.” The voice on the other end of the phone said ringing and coursing with frustration. “We make plans together, and when it comes down to it, you find an excuse to get out of it.”
“It’s not like I don’t want to see you baby. I just really need to get this stuff done. You knew things were gonna get harder after I graduated.”
“Yeah, I knew, but you always reassured me that we’d be able to get through it”
“Are you saying we can’t?”
“I don’t know anymore”
“What do you mean you don’t know? You love me, right?”
An uneasy silence engulfs the once talkative phone line. Waiting eagerly for an answer, Charles’ ears burn with mounting tension.
“Hello? Aren’t you going to answer me?” he says, a frustrated hue shrouding his purposely-calm voice.
The split second mute on the other end of the phone hinted to him that his beloved opponent had successfully added call waiting to her growing phone bill.
“I can’t give you an answer I don’t have, Chuck. I gotta go.” The voice said quickly.
“W-Wait!” sputtered Charles, but he was to late and the infernal dial tone seemed to laugh at him as he slowly pulled the receiver from his ear. Biting his bottom lip, he clenches the phone in his hand. He cranks his arm back for a moment of handset release, but he controls himself and opts to toss the phone spiraling onto the carpet instead.
He rubs his eyes and leans back against the back of the sofa. As continuous anger runs circles through his brain, he holds his chin and lets his eyes wander the room: The constant hum of the ceiling fan that seems to be blowing a barrage of unheard insults up and down his skin, thwarted with one click of the chain; The irritating flashing of the muted television that is quickly taken action against. Tossing the remote to the coffee table, he runs his hands through his shaggy black hair again and tries half-heartedly to calm down. Eyes red from his rubbing and his hair in a mess from the constant attention from his fingers, he peers again around the room, only to find something that stood on the edge of his nerves more than the muted television, more unbearable than the fan… the phone. The dormant device still lay where he had tossed it a short time before, and with one long pondering stare, he feels contempt for the electronic luxury, feeling as if it had caused the current dilemma that he is faced with.
“You ring and all you bring is bad news,” he says directly to the phone. “You ring, and it’s always her, and it’s always a new problem.”
He stares through the haze of the cigarette smoke filled room at the device as if to stare it down and frighten it off into a corner. Pausing, he realizes that trying to intimidate an inanimate object is not going to make the situation better, nor get his homework done.
Leaning back onto the sofa, he closes his eyes in preparation before he leans forward to the book that lay open on the coffee table in front of him.
“Chapter 11,’Writers and Personal Problems: Incorporate or Neglect’" He says as he automatically skips ahead to see how many pages he must read for the assignment and his shoulders slouch in disbelief at how long the chapter is.
He starts the chapter and thumbs for a cigarette as he reads silently to himself, his lips moving with the words as he reads until he twists the cigarette in between them and lights it. With a ribbon of light grey smoke climbing through the dense motionless air, he presses on through the chapter. It seems like hours he had been sitting there reading, comprehending every word and absorbing every footnote. Confident that he is very close to done he looks up to the clock rested on the TV and spies that only seven minutes had ticked by, he sighs louder than ever before as he flips through what he has left of the chapter. Half way giving up, he draws his attention from the book and begins mingling his focus around the room once more. His shiny green eyes dart about the room, as if having a conversation in his head, linking one object to another by coincidence. Eventually, after moving his gaze from several other objects, he finds his weary hazel eyes once again lying upon the fallen phone, and he rests his chin in his hands as he stares once more. Feeling as if he must justify his action of tossing the phone to the floor, his face begin to morph into a more consoling version of himself. His eyes widen a bit and he hesitates before speaking, as if he wants to choose the right words.
“It’s just…. Just that she never used to be this way,” he says in a stammered voice. “We always got along. She was always so understanding and gentle…but,” he pauses briefly as if afraid of what might be said if the phone could reply, “…but after I graduated, she changed. I know she’s still young, but she’s so much more mature than others girls her age. Why is she doing this?”
He realizes that he is actually waiting for an answer from the cordless telephone before he snaps out of his short-lived semi-dementia.
“I’ve gone nuts.” He says confidently about his conversation with an object that dies if not charged.
Slightly irritated with himself, he quickly lights another cigarette determined to finish his reading before he begins talking with the remote next. He drudges on and on through the chapter, skipping paragraphs here and there, quickly skimming over sub-listings and completely ignoring important footnotes. On and on he goes until he decides to flip forward once more to see how many pages he has left, and seeing that he is still fifteen pages from the end, he opts to simply read the last paragraph just for closure. As he eyes over the last little bit of the paragraph, the last few lines catch his attention. Highlighted in golden neon, he reads and re-reads the lines repeatedly, as if he found a grammatical error or a contradicting statement. And, as if he were somehow snapped out of concentration, a chiming sound begins dancing around his mind. The sound echoes through him steadily like and alarm clock. He looks back at his book briefly before standing up and walking toward the door, grabbing his cigarettes off the coffee table and truck keys off television. With one last glance over the silent house, over the muted TV, over his book, out the door he goes, shutting and locking it behind him. The house is now empty. The moving air from the ceiling fan wisps around the grey ribbons of smoke from the freshly crushed cigarette that is still smoldering. All is silent, except the chiming still goes on like a determined marathon runner. On the floor, the source of the chiming can be found where the fallen phone lies ringing on an on desperately. On the coffee table the book still lies open and those last few lines glow brightly in the light from the lamp overhead. Through the transparent neon, it says simply:
“As writers, it is our job to build a house out of our words. It must have structure, it must have a foundation, it must have stability, and be kept clean and tidy. However, even the most experienced of writers break the last rule of the writer’s house of words. Problems do occur, dilemmas of the worst kind happen to the best of us. And a lot of the time, we leave the footprints of our problems tracked across the floor. However, sometimes it is in our best interests to leave them there.”
The End
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-Your puppies are sick, my friend.-
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