Author: zpotter

It started in the inky darkness of the morning under a thin stream of light. I fed a piece of white opportunity into the spool of the typewriter and sat staring at it. 

I don’t know if it was the lack of thoughts in my head or the lack of life at 3am, but the silence screamed in my ears. It was oppressive.

After 15 minutes of nothing, I walked to the kitchen and made coffee. Anything to break up the monotony. 

I wanted to jump on the Internet to look for inspiration, but I knew if I did that I would find distraction. It’s why I was using the typewriter. 

The coffee beeped its completion and I jumped a foot in the air. I took down a bottle of brandy and covered the bottom of my cup. It didn’t matter that I had to work later, this was too important. I needed to start. I needed courage. 

Fear is a horrible thing. It paralyzes. 

I don’t like blood either. It’s a piece of you coming out exposed to the world. If I hit a key on the typewriter I would be offering up myself in faded black ink. In my case, the only blood that hurts to give up.

So I was afraid to start. Even though I controlled whether or not anyone ever saw the page, I was paralyzed.

The coffee steamed in the pale light and I continued to stare at nothing and everything. I thought about how I ached to tell this story. And I wondered how I would screw it up. Then I felt horrible at the thought of never doing anything I wanted.

I took a sip of the coffee. The brandy burned. It began:

Tears streamed from her eyes as she pounded the keys.

            Crows screamed murder as I walked through the dark winter morning. Fresh white splotches of excrement lined the sidewalk and I didn’t dare look up for fear of getting an eyeful. 

            It was 20 minutes to the office, and they would be with me the entire way. They never moved from tree to tree, their ranks were swollen enough they could afford to have eyes everywhere.

            It didn’t matter the path I took. They lined all the roads and walkways their calls beating away at my ears.

            I would look around at my fellow commuters and they seemed oblivious, hooked into their cell phones and the dreary monotony of the morning. No one ever looked up as the din echoed off the concrete walls of the office buildings they trudged towards. Perhaps they had grown accustomed to the watching?

            They never flew down to pick at carrion or scavenge the sidewalks, but instead stayed away up in their naked branches with clear sightlines of those below. It was as though they were waiting for something.

            The walk through the park was inevitable. It was impossible to avoid and the worst part of the journey. Its walkways were covered in shadow, so one had a sense of foreboding even without the crows screaming. It didn’t stop them.

            I refused to run, but my heart begged me to. This day would be no different, I was not going to give fear any purchase within my mind, so I put my head down and walked, looking neither up nor back despite the deafening cries.

            The crows screamed after me as I entered my building, one final piercing cry that struck at my soul and lodged there causing a shiver to run the length of my spine. 

            As the door shut behind me I knew: they knew.

He pulled the sheets close where he’d kicked them away during the night. He had forgotten how cold the mornings were on the island; the cold slipping through the cracks in the old house, assaulting any exposed skin, burrowing deep into the bones.

Outside it was still black. The moon, so full and clear the night before had set, and the post-Solstice sun was still yet to gray the morning sky. 

He didn’t want to wake, but routine was routine. Then it struck him: he didn’t have to get up, so he crawled deeper inside the blankets’ warmth, and the morning’s silence. 

Mornings in the city were quiet, but it was city quiet. Traffic still stormed by on the I-5, bottles and cans rattled in the street. He’d sit most mornings over a steaming cup of coffee letting that calm wash over him. He craved it, a small escape from the demands of the coming day.

Here on the island there were no demands. There was little traffic, what cars could be heard were dull hums carried across the water. The quiet here was natural, and in the winter, more complete.

He thought of pulling out his book, but didn’t want to expose his arms to the cold. Instead, he lay there, contemplating what he would do with the day, unsure of what direction to go in but not wanting to waste a minute of it. To sit and read felt wasteful, but at the same time it was what he wanted to do. He hadn’t indulged a want in some time. The thought scared him.

The sky outside the window began to lighten with the pink and orange hue of the morning. A fresh start waited.

He pulled back the covers and placed his feet on the floor.