Prologue

After he picks up an old typewriter from a garage sale, Kyle can't stop writing... literally and figuratively.

It was 1:53 A.M. when I woke up the first time that night, or morning I should say. The motion-detector above the garage door in my backyard had gone off with an uncommonly loud CLICK and cast a light through my bedroom window that made it look as if the walls inside of it had been caught trying to escape from the rest of the house by a watchtower guard. Most nights, there would have already been a light on in my room, even at that hour. The flickering glow from the TV that sat on the dresser beside my bed, however, ceased to exist. It's not that I would have the TV on because I had a problem with sleeping in the dark, it's just that, usually, I would fall asleep before getting the chance to turn it off. At least that's what I told myself, but really, I had been too tired to even channel surf after embarking on a writing-marathon that began at noon.

          I had spent most of the day pattering away at the keys of an old Underwood typewriter I'd picked up from a garage sale earlier that morning. The thing was so ancient, it made anyone who sat behind it look like the Phantom of the Opera-- a giant, rustic organ whose keys sprung out from its bulky body on a couple dozen spider legs; long ones, that when pressed down on, made sounds equivalent to an AK-47 losing a round. God forbid I was on a roll with a sentence, or a paragraph, or a thought because if I was (and indeed, there were some pretty good stretches where that had been the case) my room sounded like what I imagine Osama Bin Laden's compound did when he met Seal Team Six for the first and last time. Luckily, the only other tenant whose noise-level I needed to consider was my roommate, Steven's, who'd spend most of his off days playing Counter Strike anyway. Counter Strike, for those of you unfamiliar with PC games, is a first-person shooter responsible for the same kind of noises that my typewriter made, only the gun shots from Steven's speakers got funneled into his ear drums by a massive set of headphones that had likely added an extra four pounds to what many would consider to be an already large head to begin with. Even when Steven logged off of the game, the headphones remained around his neck like a fashion accessory. It made him look like a Korean talent scout for a Hip Hop record label, fresh on the hunt for the next big thing. After my ex-girlfriend, Amy, moved out of the house ("I feel like- like I have to schedule an appointment just to see you, Kyle, which is crazy because- because we live in the same f*****g house" was one of the last things I'd listen to her say), Steven responded to an add I'd placed on RoomHunter, and filled the financial void left by the former love of my life, who, apparently, had already begun filling her penis void with some fitness guru named Jason. From what Instagram was suggesting, he seemed nice, but also perhaps like he was interested in secretly filling his own void with the same thing Amy had. Oh, well. What can you do? You can't pick everyone's next, I guess.

          Anyway, the stuff I'd written that day was gold and it had been a long time since anything other than coal came out from the old imagination mine. For a good few months after the break up, all I'd been able to write were bitter letters about relationships to an unknown audience (Facebook Likes kept my Relationship Advice column running longer than it probably should have). As an author, my bread and butter had been a science fiction series called "The Complex." It was about a motel in New Mexico that was run by aliens. The people that checked in, as you can imagine, never checked out and if they did, it was by the skin of their teeth. It was surprisingly successful and even had its own little mini-series run on Netflix that left me well-off... for a bit, or at least until the well went dry. I mean, it hadn't gone completely dry-- it never does if you're a true writer. There were the occasional drops of inspiration here and there, but what made it frustrating was that they'd fall into a barren pond. Nothing came of them; there was no body of work formulating. I was an idea man, tossing them out, left and right, but unable to follow them up with the words necessary to create a real story. The creative wheels were spinning, but they were spinning in a mud-filled ditch, splattering an occasional paragraph or two onto a predominantly blank Microsoft Word document.

          The new story I was working on, that literally poured out of me all day long, was called "Simon Says." By Ten O'clock I'd typed out a full seventy-five pages. It was about a nine-year-old boy named Chase and his late-night encounter with a serial killer in his backyard. When his cover is blown, the serial killer invites the boy to play a game of Simon Says. The stakes? If Chase doesn't do exactly what the killer says, his family dies. "Simon Says, grab some alcohol wipes, some gauze, and bring it back out to the garage. Simon Says, get some needle and thread, and stitch up Simon's cut. Simon Says, don't wake up your parents or Simon will make them go back to sleep forever." The material was so freakishly good; I'd given myself goosebumps just by writing it. That's when I knew I was on the right track-- when the scary story I was writing to scare people, scared me. But by Eleven O'clock the words came more slowly and my eyelids more heavy. The clanking taps that the letters made against the stationary had become intermittent and instead of the AK-47 it had sounded like for much of the day, a popcorn bag approaching its final lap in the microwave was what it started to sound like towards midnight.

          I remember leaning back in my chair, pulling the last sheet of paper out from the tray, and adding it to the rest. How nice and thick that stack of work was, and by default, how accomplished I'd felt. There were at least four spelling errors I'd caught as I brought the stack over to my chest for an embrace that only a writer could understand, but I was okay with it. For not having auto-correct and for not having written anything substantial in at least a year, spelling was the least of my problems. When I sat the stack back down on my desk, I gave my adjacent, neglected MacBook Pro an acknowledging nod.

          "Sorry Mac, I just prefer them a bit older and with more experience," I told the Apple as if it had rolled its eyes at me. I re-stacked the nearly finished draft of "Simon Says" on top of it and headed over to the bathroom to brush my teeth.

          The mirror above the sink had no problem showing me what eleven hours of non-stop writing did to my face. My face had grown long, the hairs of my goatee spiraled out of control from my chin, and the bags beneath my eyes looked like they were packed for a month-long trip to Alaska. I couldn't complain though-- I was a good-looking tired. Not since "The Complex" had I been on such a writing binge. It felt good. I wondered how "Simon Says" had even came out of me so furiously and without pause. Was it the switch from laptop to typewriter? Or the typewriter itself? The guy I'd bought it off of at the garage sale that morning seemed all too eager to part with it. When I asked him how much he wanted for it, he'd said, simply, "Take it. You're the first person to show any interest in it in the many years I've tried to get it off my hands. It's yours." He'd even given me some extra ribbons to boot. Despite his generosity, I'd left a Twenty for him on the table. When I got home, I'd found the same model Underwood going for $227 on Ebay. Maybe it was the idea that I'd gotten such a great deal on an antique word processor? Was "Simon Says" me laughing all the way to the bank? It was hard to tell since I had yet to deposit it, but the story sure felt like a million bucks. "No," I'd said aloud through teeth foamed over by Colgate paste. The story had been brewing all along. It had to have been. The typewriter was merely the priest that had exorcized the demon from me... or was it the other way around? I'd given myself the goosebumps again, spit into the sink, and dried my lips off with a towel.

          "You've got to stop doing that to yourself, Kyle. Save that s**t for your readers," I'd said to myself, before flipping the light switch down, and re-entering my darkened bedroom.

          I'd fallen asleep at 1:25 A.M. and part of me... a great big part of me, wished I'd stayed asleep. The other part, a much darker part of me, I suspect, is grateful that I woke up at 1:53 A.M because as much as I would like to believe that I would have woken up the next day and finished "Simon Says" all on my own; the truth was, was that I didn't. I couldn't; not without Simon.

Reviews

[matrixmark]

The way in which you have gone into details with this piece....u for ibe really appreciate. From the way in which you descrive the pattering of the old typewriter to the pulling the paper out and placing it down onto the 75 page pile...oh not to forget about the colgate. - really engages you into this story. Really well thought out and to think about such details is such a good thing in my book - it really makes the reader more involved. Simon says 'The ending was good.'......sorry couldnt resist.
Nice structure to this. It flowed how a story is meant to.

Kudos to you
Mark.