In His Own Words

It began with a word on a page; after that, Thomas Richards could not stop.

He quit going to work so he could make more time to write. He filled up hard drives with stories and once he ran out of money (and space in his house) for those he switched to printing out pages. The bills went unopened and were soon misplaced.

When the last cartridge dried up, he made a rare trip to the attic – careful, as usual, to maneuver around the piles of paper cramming the hallways – and he brought the typewriter down.

After he liberated the machine from a generous layer of dust, he sneezed hard and bumped into the couch; two paper stacks toppled from the cushions onto the floor. He would pick those up later – he had wasted enough precious time getting the damned thing downstairs.

Selecting a new page, he sat down and resumed typing.

After several minutes – or maybe hours – he heard his front door open and close; he didn’t look up.

A paper bag appeared before him and rustled. He glanced up then.

“Tom, it’s late. You haven’t eaten yet have you?” His neighbor opened the bag, and looked around for an empty surface. She saw no islands visible in the ocean of black and white; they had all sunk long ago. Leigh sighed and just handed the fast food to him. He batted it away.

“Not yet. Gotta finish this.”

Then the lights went out.

“Nice. Did you forget to pay the electric again?” Leigh sighed, and dug around in her purse for her phone. When she found it and pulled it out, she swiped its surface; the screen illuminated her face.

“It’s fine. I got the typewriter. Find me some candles.” Thomas squinted down at the keys.

“Absolutely not. This place is a fire trap.”

He sucked in his breath and rolled his eyes. “I’ll sit on the porch then.”

“Unbelievable.” Leigh finally found the icon for the flashlight app; she gripped her phone tight enough to bend her nails.

Both of them made their way across the poorly lit room, knocking over several more unavoidable stacks in the process. Thomas wrangled the typewriter and an armful of blank pages and moved his operation outside. The streetlight was not an ideal light source but he thought it would have to do. Somehow, Leigh managed to convince him to take one bite of cold burger before he settled in again to work.

“Have you considered…you know… sending any of this in to a publisher?” Leigh asked. “You have more than enough material. You have enough to ski on.”

Thomas shook his head. “Can’t do it. It has to stay here. With me.”

“Well, what about this: I’ve got a couple of plastic bins in my garage. We could at least sort-”

“No,” he snapped. “It’s fine where it is. I’ll sort it later. I really don’t have time…”

“I could hel-”

“You wouldn’t do it right. I have a system. Look, Leigh, I appreciate all your help. I do. But I really need to focus, so I’ll see you tomorrow, all right?”

She shook her head, dropped the remaining food beside him, and stood up. “Have a good night, Tom.”

When the sun rose, Thomas gathered up his things and went back inside. He set the new pages down on the stack beside his chair and took a moment to relax. He remembered how, after his divorce, a coworker suggested that he take a creative writing class – to have something to do. He had thrown himself into it, and he had thrived.

His writing wouldn’t tell him it needed a break, his writing wouldn’t take custody of the kids, and his writing wouldn’t leave him for someone with more money.

He inhaled deeply. The air inside the house was stale, so he stood up to stretch a bit and waded through more piles to reach the window. He had to tug hard – the thing hadn’t been opened in ages; he remembered rain coming in one night and soaking several chapters. As he pulled at the stubborn window, he leaned at just the wrong angle.

His foot slipped and his chin came down hard on the window ledge. Thomas bit his tongue and cursed, red droplets dribbling down his jaw. A pillar of paper collapsed and knocked over a large table lamp; it careened straight into the legs of the folding table, which buckled and slammed to the floor. Then the typewriter slid and toppled, crashing down onto his head.

A gust of wind carried several bloodstained pages out the window, and he bled and died there – buried in his own words.