Here's Another One

Here's another one. Again, I really didn't add much; this one might be 50 or 100 words longer than it was before being revised. This one, like the previous, is kind of a short bit of text explaining an elucidating an idea. This one was written after I finally lost the story from another tale I was working on that night (that one comprised something like 10 1-page entries. It was going well, I was feverishly writing it, being drawn in more and more by the story that seemed to flow of my fingers like water (or blood). All of a sudden, though, it fell silent. The spark was extinguished, and the story expired. This 1-pager explains my thoughts and feelings about it.

And So It Fell

As I sat here, typing away, it fell.

The story plummeted, like a stone into a well, like a virgin star into a warping black hole; the story fell right into the abyss of non-being.

Of course, the story did not physically cease to exist. It was still very much there, appearing glaringly on the screen of my computer, like a neon, finger-pointing obituary in the Sunday post. It was almost morbidly depressing that it was still here; it stood as stark reminder of my failed ability.

For, in essence, in everything except body, it was dead. Gone. Vanished. The spark I felt as I churned out the tale, mechanically pounding the keys as my mind raced from point to point, was gone. I no longer was writing the story, with all of the shapes finding their corresponding holes by mere design, no longer penning what I saw in my head without giving it an editorial eye; rather, I was trying desperately and fleetingly to find answers to the impossible questions that sprung to life from the dull, still text in front of me. I felt as if I was chasing the fraying end of a piece of fabric, with two strands fraying for every one I bound. It was a dreadful feeling, really. I would see a hole, and seek to answer it, and in doing so create more paradoxes, contradictions, and irrationalities. Every time I tried to advance the story, it felt like I took it back a few steps.

And so, the story fell. It collapsed in on itself, pulling apart all of the silkily fine tendons holding it together. It was like watching a marble drop into a delicate, dew-filled spider’s web. I tried to save it, I truly did; however, I was riding the story down. Every time I would try to grab the tale, to pull it upwards, I only was able to shift positions; now, the story was riding me down. I threw lines up to the mouth of the hole, clever little loopholes that choked off any protruding discrepancies, but it was to no avail, for the spiny problems quickly cut through even the most logical of containments.

It fell, deeper and faster down the pit of inadequacy with every letter I typed. Finally, I knew what must be done, and, inhaling, braced myself for the inevitable, unfortunate truth.

I wrenched myself from the tale. I reached into the depths of my own heart, pulling the vine-like tendrils that had wrapped themselves around my muscle, and as they came off, amid crimson spurts and splatters, I saw that they pulled with them bits of me, of my soul, my mind, my everything. I ripped myself away as I pulled them from my core. I took a last look at those now-and-forever lost pieces of me, and I pushed off from the story, leaping impossibly high from it and simultaneously damning it to the eternal plunge even more rapidly. I leapt, and felt the last vestiges of it leave me. I leapt, reaching for the delete key as my only hope for a support.

My hand grabbed earth.