Recalling Joy

Chapter 7

Trent easily put his irate girlfriend out of his mind. His day was already off to a bad start, and the bruises that came with the discovery that he wasn't capable of running through walls gave him grief every time he blinked. He had no job, chores were a waste of time, and money was something he couldn't recall the look of after the last of it was stolen the morning before.

He looked around the room for inspiration, and paused on the cascade of notebooks he had kicked over two days before. Erin had been right in saying that he never read through them. He wasn't foolish enough to make the mistake of telling her the idea had a bit of merit.

Thinking of reading everything he had written in the past few years wiped away what had been the start of a soul-shattering boredom. There were hidden stacks of paper stashed all over the apartment, and the project would be an enjoyable one. The easiest place to start was the notebook in his hand, so he flipped to the start.

After just the first few lines of the first page Trent groaned and flipped to the next. Then the next, and then the next. As the sound of rustling paper filled the room, his frustration grew. He would never admit it, but Erin may have been right about more than just reading. The only thing he read all the way through was a two page essay on the essence of nothing, and while interesting, it only served to drive home Erin's assessment of what he wrote.

“Disgusting,” he said, then watched his clock blink at him in what he took for agreement. Any of his old professors would have lit the book on fire, and every last one of the hoary old pedants had driven home the message that a superior writer could make any subject compelling. He settled with simply tossing the notebook across the room and following it to the stack in front of the bathroom.

There were better than twenty notebooks scattered across the floor, and if he didn't know better he would have said there weren't five clean pages in the bunch.

He started his marathon through the writing he had done over the past six months in good spirits, and found each notebook more abysmal than the last. He tossed them over his shoulder when the back covers flapped shut, the distance of his throws growing until they slammed in to the wall with a ruffle of paper like an indignant bird taking wing.

Thirteen notebooks in, he finally found himself enjoying what he had written. He was on the third or fourth page before he realized that he held what had once been an attempt at a novel he started shortly after arriving at the apartment. He had thrown away most of his older work, and hadn't suspected any of it still existed. It was a welcome relief after sitting through so many drug-induced entries. Half an hour later his eyes widened in alarm.

The story was good!

He set it down reverently and walked across the room to roll a few joints. His heart was racing by the time he had the first joint lit, and Trent looked at that one notebook with amazement. He had goosebumps with the hint that he had written something worth reading.

With one violent movement he snatched it off the floor and started reading where he stood. He stayed like that until the meager light of the sun through his window faded and he was compelled to turn on his lamp. He finished the first notebook of his story in the thin circle of light and hunted in desperation for the second installment of the story. He found it, relaxed, and went back to reading.

Time ceased to exist as the story came to life in his mind. The plot resurfaced in his battered memories, while the characters crawled from the tombs he had locked them in and spoke in voices held mute too long; they were alive again.

Trent picked up the third notebook, and a pencil. By the second page he was revising what he had once written and scrawling notes in the margins, just in case he wanted to come back to the thoughts he couldn't take the time to pursue.

He paced the length of the room and didn't realize the voice he heard was his own. He looked like nothing more than a schizophrenic having an involved discussion with a good friend. His voice was hoarse before he noticed, but by then the third notebook was on his bed and he was fumbling through what was left of the stack in search of what he thought would be the last one. When he located it he turned to the back cover, wondering what he had done with the ending. Half a sentence mocked him from the last line.

There was more somewhere! He had been through the stack three times, it wasn't there.

It took him forty-five panicked minutes of searching to finally find it when he upended his mattress in frustration. The notebook was in poor shape after years of suffering through his mattress sliding around on it, but it was intact. He flipped to the back and dropped it in surprise. There was no ending. He had never finished it.

For once, the thought of giving up didn't cross his mind. The ending would be written when he got to it; he still had more to read.

Trent went back to the fourth notebook and dove in. He didn't notice the sun coming up in the window behind him as he paced aimlessly around the room; the light simply got a little brighter. His body was tired, but he couldn't fall asleep if he tried. He had done this kind of thing often back when he thought writing was what he was meant to do. That dream was dead, though...

The thoughts couldn't disturb his focus. He simply continued to read, erase, and write. Trent could feel some kind of fever beginning in him when he set the fourth notebook down; edited, revised, and done. He picked up the fifth, and with no hesitation began to read through what would have been the climax of his story. He sat on the edge of his bed, bone-weary, but determinedly reading pages that were good enough to make him doubt he had written them.

Then a line ended mid-sentence, and Trent could see himself being interrupted and sliding his treasure beneath the mattress, intent on finishing later. It had been a cleaner time, before he had given up all hopes of succeeding. He hadn't meant the slums to be the end of his road, but a new beginning. His college campus had been left behind with the thought that he didn't need anything there, that he could do whatever he wanted much better without the chains that fought to hold him. His mind cringed away from thoughts of chains, and the tension in his shoulders melted away as the memories disappeared.

His body heated up as he once again put pencil to paper. But this time it wasn't to revise what he had written. He was going to finish the story. His characters deserved more than to be forgotten beneath his mattress.

He sat on the bed like that until twenty hand-written pages were behind him. His hand was cramped, and his back hurt from leaning over so long. But he had done it.

Those fateful words stared back at him from the last page: “The End'. Trent let loose the longest and loudest laugh that had ever been heard in that room. He found himself unable to stop laughing, completely unable to come up with what emotion drove it.

Reverently, he slid the notebook beneath its fellows and fell back on his bed with his arms crossed behind his head. After everything that had gone before, he had finally completed one of his stories. His eyes felt scratchy from lack of sleep, and his body was coming down off the natural high it had been on.

With one last, delirious laugh, Trent shut his eyes and passed out.

Author's Note

I've always loved this chapter. I feel it seriously portrays what we as writers find when we really give our all to writing.