Round 8

She closed the book, placed it on the table, and, finally, decided to walk through the door. The book had other notions, though, and transferred its matrix to the door. The door glowed just as she came to it, and the page she had been reading appeared on its surface.

“You said you’d read two chapters today,” the book reminded her.

She sighed.

“Hmmm,” he thought to himself, leaning back on his chair. “Maybe. Sci-Fi doesn’t seem to go over well at Three-Minute Fiction, though. And once you begin with a twist like that, you’re almost left with having to come up with even bigger twists. Nope, too gimmicky.” He started over.

She closed the book, placed it on the table, and finally, decided to walk through the door. She needed some air. The forest of flower arrangements, the earnest sympathies offered to the family, and, most of all, the loving stories of Hal that people had written in the memory book were just too much. She only knew him a short time long ago, but she was certain he couldn’t have changed enough to deserve all these signs of sorrow and post-mortem affection.

“Aack! Death again? I think we played that out in Round 7.” He highlighted the paragraph and deleted it. He drummed on his armrest with four fingers as he stared at the screen. After an interminable pause, he started tapping on the keyboard.

She closed the book, placed it on the table, and – finally – decided to walk through the door. She was loath to leave. The chill, clean, rain-freshened breeze washing through the high, open awning windows mingled with the musk from the old books, making the air in the cavernous building the sweetest to breathe. The cool scent reached behind her thoughts to educe – not the memories – but the sense of libraries past where she had spent a good portion of her contented life. She had always felt, turning Borges’s phrase around, that a library was very like heaven…

He frowned as he re-read the words. “A little too static. I might be able to paint a pretty little portrait of a blissed-out literary spinster nerd, but a picture isn’t a story.” He cleared the screen again.

Sighing, he turned to look around the room, staring at various objects in turn, willing them to offer, talisman-like, a story full-blown and complete. But they were all silent and told no tales.

He turned back to his laptop, getting more and more frustrated.

“The basic problem is that the final phrase in that mandatory first line is halting. The first two actions are commonplace, but firm. Then, after a beat and a build up, all she does is decide to walk through the door? She couldn’t just do it? It slows the rhythm down right there. Who is this hesitant, indecisive bitch anyway?” The more he thought about it, the more exasperated he became. His anger grew and turned from the amorphous fictional character to the pitiless judge who had issued this round’s impossible challenge, then to the folks at All Things Considered who just had to come up with this stupid, addictive time suck of a contest in the first place.

His irascibility was a ruse, of course; a blind for the deep-hidden fear that he was a poser, a fake, and no writer at all.

He got up. “The hell with it. I’ve gotta get out of here. Anyway, I’ve still got ten days to the deadline.”

He closed his Notebook (it was already on the table), and walked through the door.

(March 2012)