A New Short Story: Good To Be King

Wednesday is about books and/or writing. I haven't shared one of my short stories with you for a while...so here goes...a wee attempt to stave off the writer's block...

Jack hadn’t been able to write. Not with all of those books staring down at him. They were supposed to be the inspiration. The aspiration. The influence, even. Instead, he just sat there, day after day, crippled by a fear of failure, a fear of imposter syndrome, a fear of inability, a fear of, um, repetition.

The ideas had all been done. And owning every Stephen King book – not just every title, but all the editions – was, in the end, a very bad idea. Yes, they’d carried him through school, taught him not just to read but the joy of reading, taught him the hope and hype of writing, held his hand, and made him hold his breath. They were everything. And everything was all encompassing. And so impossibly daunting.

How could he say anything new. When there was nothing under the sun that hadn’t been done before. Even that line had been said better when first placed on a page.

So Jack made his protein shake each morning and turned up for ‘work’. He sat at his desk in the corner of the room, a full wall of every version of every King collection silently judging him. All of them up there containing every word in every permutation. Anything he wanted to say was already there. And in many cases, it had been said many times too.

But a funny thing can happen when you commit to doing the task. You can go stir crazy, absolutely. You can have imaginary conversations. You fear the worst. You exaggerate. You procrastinate. You dodge and duck and dive and you go do any quick Google wormhole to avoid the task. You fill your day, just barely. But enough to call it a day. You know it to be so because it so typically resembles the others. You log off and stare at the wall for some more of that crippling ‘inspiration’. This had always been the pattern for Jack. Well, not always. Obviously, it fell into place with time. There was a time when it had to be the first time. There was a time before it was a pattern. But since the pattern had emerged there was no escape. It was a tessellation so tight that he would stare at the rug and imagine the carpets of…well, of the Overlook Hotel. Oh fuck!

The funniest thing that can happen though – and it does – and if you don’t believe me then you really must believe Jack, is inspiration truly is a cliché. It can and will strike when you least expect it.

It was a Thursday for Jack. He finally saw through the prison. He wrote and wrote. The idea percolating from seemingly nothing. He had crawled through a river of shit and emerged. The idea nothing to do with the books on the wall. And as he wrote – as the key strokes grew faster, more furious, more focussed, he was leading himself to believe that actually this idea was possibly better than anything on the wall. Any of the stand-alone stories anyway. Words ganging up to be stronger together in paragraphs, across pages. Words triumphing where Jack had always failed. Words truly becoming, um, king.

He typed all day and through the night. He read it back twice. The best thing he’d written. And maybe – just maybe – the best thing he’d ever read actually. He stood, punch-drunk, his legs jellied, his mind an atrophy. But the story, sitting there on his computer, that was a trophy. That hadn’t just taken a single session across a very long day. That story had been with him for days, through the entire daze of dozens of weeks and many months too. That story was his life’s work quite possibly. And he would need to be able to do it again one day, sometime soon. For Jack was no one hit wonder. No way. He would need to summon this kind of strength at least once more – but for now he would sleep the sleep of, well, a king. He would retire. To bed at least. He would live to write another day. And the majesty of what he felt in those final strokes would be enough inspiration to try again. The perspiration that had carried him through – reminder of purpose.

This was a story for the ages. This was something unique. Something real. Something whole. And something other.

One final re-read as the wind outside announced itself. A huge draft. The window in his room blew open. All around Jack now the shudder of the bones of the house, the lights flickering, but a new electricity would carry him through. Except it didn’t. What happened instead is the walls started to shake with an anger late in that night. The shelves wobbled and the books lodged themselves free.

The first couple landed soft blows. But then, hundreds of books, all at once. Like darts. They hit Jack in the face. They delivered blows to his gut. The hardbacks dive-bombed to his feet. A copy of Under The Dome was the first to land on his head. It hurt. But he laughed when he saw the spine of it rolling off his own. Then the volumes of The Dark Tower built themselves up around him. Desperation slapped him hard across the face. Elevation blew a soft, fleeting kiss. If It Bleeds was no longer a question. Now another cruel kiss (Revival). Jack’s battered face buried in books. His limbs slapped at by Misery and Insomnia.

Finally, the expanded edition of The Stand in hardback landed square on the top of his head. It stopped Jack from being able to stand. And on his back the books opened themselves to their best passages, their favourite pages. He was smothered by white space and cruel words.

When they found the body, after removing every copy, they worked for days just to get the smile off his face.

And if this all seems like a stupid, cruel joke, imagine the faces when they finally retrieved the story that started this strange sequence of events. For the ‘masterpiece’ was there on the hard-drive. It ran for several pages. Its typesetting following no real pattern. But the words churning over and over again.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and

 no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and
no play makes

Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes

Jack a

dull boy. All work and no play

 makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull

boy. All work and no

 play makes Jack a dull boy.

All work and no play makes Jack a

 dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and

 no

 play makes Jack a dull boy.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull

boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no

play makes Jack a

dull boy.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

All work and no

play makes Jack a dull boy. All

work and no play makes

Jack a dull boy.

All work and no play

   makes Jack a dull boy