Words wormed their way through his head like an infestation of ideas. Cyril chuckled as he wrote, a vision of main character Sandra beckoning him on. And his fifteen year old heroine was writing her own novel about school life and its daily dramas. Cyril laughed again, this was a fun hobby for his recent retirement.
He heard his neighbour turn up their music and sighed. Little did he know, that hairdresser Daphne was also writing upstairs, indeed almost directly above him. In her story, heroine Sandra is the same age as her, 28, but a teacher rather than a hairdresser. And writing their own novel about school children antics. Daphne laughed as she wrote. Life should not be this fun. Words ran through her veins like ideas on drugs. And like a careful configuration of dominoes just ready to fall, words pushed a crazy pattern to its dizzy destiny … as an avalanche of words thundered through her fingers.
In the top floor flat above Daphne, John laughed as the keys of his laptop clicked like a dismembered voice. And the voice was inside him, it was in the words that streamed through his head like a fast flowing river, it was in the words that appeared on the screen before him, like imposters that surely did not emanate from him, like a visible scream of creation.
John, an IT technician by trade, wrote of novelist Sandra. At 50 years old she had a chip implanted to help her think, to write, to throw words in to the void that was life … This would be a dystopian novel about AI taking over real people. John laughed like a maniac as he wrote, words filling his heart with their wild song.
Cyril, Daphnie and John would briefly say hello to each other on the stairwell. Daphne knew their names; no one knew hers. Secret souls with hidden quests, their lives did not intersect however their private worlds were on a crash collision course of insane words on the run.
One day far in the future, the three novels were published by three different publishing houses. It did not take keen readers long to connect the three stories which featured the same character at different stages of life. The publishing world was on fire. How had this happened.
Daphne met Cyril on the stairs holding her novel, School Solstice. “That is my novel!” she gasped excitedly. John came through the front door to find the two writers in deep discussion. Soulless words hung in the air as the three neighbours suddenly spoke to each other properly for the first time. Words linked them together like invisible glue. Nervous laughter sent invisible words flying. And then the idea came … they would write another Sandra novel, together. A happy ending flickered behind their eyes as they shook hands.
On the other side of the world, Sandra sat before her laptop as words rewired her brain. She laughed as her fingers played the keyboard like a piano, an inaudible music like frozen ideas waiting to melt. And one day they would, one day the novel would be published, making fictional neighbours Cyril, Daphne and John famous. Sandra laughed again, as she described the Victorian tenement with the residents who knew so little about each other. Of course the building would be haunted by the ghost of a Victorian writer, an unpublished would be Dickens who whispered in the ears of her characters. Sandra stopped typing and picked up the leaflet next to her. Brain chips to enhance cognitive faculties. If it helped her write better, then why not? Sandra laughed as words once more played together on her screen, dominoes falling in to place, the crazy patterns of her mind.
Words whispered in the wind like ghosts. Somewhere far away, a writer hunched before a screen and laughed. Words pounded inside like demented drummers. Stories that knew no end and had lost their beginning, fiction fingering lives that would be known, the words of lost souls screaming in the night. Stories would come, a written word that would last forever.
Tessa was born on a still spring night, in a time-tarred barn. Her first memory, at a week old, was of stars through a broken roof, pins of light in the night, a pin cushion of the gods. I want to go there, she thought feebly, away from these ugly siblings. I want to go to one of the lights, I want to be free.
Tessa’s first few weeks were spent sleeping in the hay, or exploring the field next to the barn. She cuddled with her feline family to keep warm at night, but avoided them in the day. She was different, and she knew it.
One day a strange cage appeared in the field, with tasty food inside. However it became the taste of freedom denied. Tessa was locked inside the cage, no way out. Frantic with the desire to escape these grey bars, Tessa gazed at the stars in the sky. Please help me.
The next day a lady abruptly arrived and seized the cage. Tessa hissed in alarm. She was placed in a strange vehicle which began to move. The day descended to the depths of a cat’s despair. Tessa meowed, willing the stars in the sky to reappear. Finally, the vehicle stopped. A huge building confronted her, as Tessa’s cage was seized once more. A fat middle-aged man surveyed them from the door.
“A black and white kitten! Just what the doctor ordered!” Tessa liked the man straight away, knowing that a new life awaited, several purrs ahead.
The man, Derek, adored her. She listened as he composed music, purring in accompaniment. He told her that he had never known inspiration as prolific until she entered his life. Of course, she did not understand his words, but she purred anyway. Somehow, she knew that she was helping him. And somehow, he knew that she was special. But he did not realise how special.
Tessa would paw at Derek’s feet when he did not pay attention to her for a while. He would chuckle, declaring, “This cat keeps me on my toes!” Tessa purred in reply. She began to feel that she was her owner’s protector, his health in her paws, his well-being in a flick of her whiskers. Sometimes she felt compelled to follow him around the house, just to make sure no harm came to him. It was almost as if … she was waiting for something to happen.
Then one night, she had a dream. In the morning, Tessa was not there, bed empty, food bowl untouched. Derek searched everywhere for her. But she never returned.
In Tessa’s dream, she saw a man – a different man, but somehow she knew it was Derek. He was in a room full of children, pointing at a large black board with white letters on it. But something bad was going to happen. She knew it. That was when she did it for the first time. The Jump.
One minute she was observing the man while she slept. The next second she was there, really there, in the classroom with the teacher. The schoolkids looked at her like they had never seen a cat before. But there was one boy she had her eye on. The dark energy emanated from him.
Tessa ran and bit his leg. In alarm, the boy dropped something from his hand. A knife.
“He was going to throw that at you Mr Castle!” one of the children shouted.
Mr Castle retrieved the knife, and flushed while a look of trepidation dimmed his eyes.
At the end of the school day, he carried Tessa home. She was very happy living with Mr Castle (Derek in different clothes) until … another dream.
She saw him. Derek with another face, with different clothes. He was lying in a ditch with other men, and somehow she knew that the ditch was called a trench. He was in mortal danger, she understood as her heart thudded hard at the thought. She jumped … and was there. By the man lying in the ditch, the man who was about to die. She howled hideously, her voice her only weapon. “This is no place for a cat!” he picked her up and began to walk. Behind him, artillery fire felled his colleagues. He looked back in shock, his frozen heart breaking through ice as tears formed in his eyes. His friends. He held the cat who had saved is life as if he would never let go.
But Tessa had other ideas. Her next mission was massaging her mind. She jumped from his arms … and back in time to 1597, to a witch being hunted for trial. It was Derek, dressed in women’s clothes and with a female smell, but Derek nonetheless. She was cowering in her tiny cottage as men broke down the door. Tessa knew she did not have much time to help. She didn’t know what witch trials were, but she knew this woman was in mortal danger. Tessa looked in her eyes and screamed with all the cat telepathy she could muster “HIDE!”
The woman disappeared with the grace of a cat. As the angry men entered, they looked around in alarm. “A cat! She’s turned herself in to a cat! She really is a witch!”
Tessa was violently grabbed. She hissed in anger and pain. Then used all her might to … do the special jump.
She found herself in a very strange place, with large windows looking out on stars. Ahead, a man spoke to a wide room full of people. It was Derek, in uniform and of course with a different body. But she would know him anywhere.
The man suddenly stopped speaking. He had noticed her.
“A cat!” he laughed. “We have a stowaway on the ship! I like it! A sign! When I first enrolled in space academy, I encountered a cat at the door of the school, a lucky black cat like a sign of good luck. I saw the cat again the day I graduated. Is this a sign? A validation of my intent to arrive in peace rather than taking a more hostile stance? Somehow I know it is.”
Tessa purred. She could feel it, destiny shifting beneath her paws. Whatever she came here to do, she had achieved it. But this place was strange. Time to jump again.
But she could not do it. The jump energy evaded her. She did not understand the concepts of time travel and reincarnation. But she knew she had a gift, and that the different people she had encountered had all been versions of the first Derek, her Derek. But the real Derek, the owner who had loved her so much, was many years and star systems behind her now. She could not return. The gift was gone, dimmed by the bright stars all around. This was her time now.
I am in the stars, she thought feebly, I am free. Only it no longer felt like freedom. Destiny’s paws had dealt an unkind blow. She was here forever. Time to enjoy herself, time to flirt with freedom, to taste just the one life as others knew it. It was time to be Tessa.
So she stared at the stars, and prayed for a freedom that could not come. Like a mouse in a huge field, you could chase it relentlessly, but it would forever evade capture. Some mice have luck; some cats have nine lives; some cats have dreams that never end.
Annabel’s fingers paused, resting on the keyboard as her head caught up, panting, with her imagination. She had found the golden password to unleashing creativity. At times she felt as if she were turning in to the old woman, the narrator of her novel. In her sleep, she dreamt with the subconscious of another.
Annabel fingered her fiery auburn hair and sighed. Tears formed in her green eyes, doors to a writer’s mind, simple and profound married to a mix of future plots.
The fictional Francis had achieved a worthwhile life; of course, like Annabel, a teacher, rising to headmistress and gently inspiring generation after generation. However Francis’ job was merely a futile flirtation at meaning to life. All she wanted was to fill the void left by her dead husband.
Annabel lifted her fingers and began to type. She owed it to Francis, an invisible debt to an imaginary friend who lived only within the stark black times new roman characters on her screen. She owed it to herself, for the heart that cried inside for something more. She owed it to no one.
The laptop purred beneath her fingers, a hidden world behind its screen, a mutating mind on standby.
Larry laughed out loud. The three other Web Unweaved members joined him, evil in empathy.
“It shouldn’t be so easy. So many idiots, they lock their front door every day when they go to work, but have no idea how to protect their computer, inviting burglary in the virtual world by nothing more than sheer stupidity.”
Alec joined in. “Imagine using the same password for ALL your accounts. The children of the world have been let out after dark. Idiots!”
Alec’s ginger unkempt hair swayed in time to his chuckles, a halo of glee.
“What’s the target tonight?” Larry was serious again. He loved this game. He was in it to win. Redundancy had been the joker card for him, leading to a tomorrow of crime, a dark tunnel to virtual pennies and victorious punishment.
He smiled once more. Revenge on the world, so sweet, his heart coding in time to his thief’s fingers. For some things, there was Mastercard. For everything else, the rich spoils of cybercrime. A game with no end square; he would just keep on going round the board, clutching his get out of jail card. It shouldn’t be this easy.
The ipad came alive to the crunch of crime, an innocent accomplice within an invisible net.
*
Francis knew sleep would evade her tonight, an elusive criminal that could not be caught. She was in a game with no rules, designed by a madman. The password to peace deleted.
His name was James. A fleeting romance swept aside by a fierce Mother Fate. He never returned from the Second World War. She had known him so little, a mere shadow, a cobweb of dusty memory stitched in to fantasy, a character in an unread novel.
She had started to write a romance, their lives as they could have been. So much fun at the end of her biro pen. She could be who she wanted to be, believe her own fantasy, breathe its lies and hide from the biggest lie of all: that she was dying.
Annabel stopped typing, a smile dying on her lips at the thought of writing Francis’ romance. She herself had never married, but her first love was still there, a prisoner in the stone dungeon of her heart. One day she would remember, but not now.
The laptop waited for her fingers to connect again, purring with hidden promise, silent witness to the story.
*
Larry smiled. Life should not be this fun. Effortlessly he unlocked online accounts, entered another’s virtual world and, invisible, invincible, stole their banking details. So easy, so much fun.
A click of his mouse and he was there. Behind the badly locked door, its flimsy password falling off as he knocked. Words appeared, another world, espionage uncovering an enigma.
Francis held the notepad to her heart as if it could save it from breaking. Invisible, inside lived James. Their love raged through its pages, a fire uniting the past and present, fantasy and reality. Her cancer, her impending death, all burned to ashes by the hungry flames. A love that would burn forever, through all time and no time, alive in the written word.
Larry gulped. He had not seen this before. An unborn novel before his eyes. This could be interesting. He read on.
Francis continued to write, words dancing like deranged ballerinas, pirouetting their way in to the plot and choreographing a better ending. The story had taken over from real life.
Perhaps this was where she would go when she died, the heaven of her story, her own little world.
Pain shot up her middle, and she groaned. But the story did not stop, words forming a river, running through her body and drowning the pain.
Annabel paused. Was her story making sense? Thank goodness no one was looking over her shoulder, reading the infant book as it birthed from somewhere deep in her mind, a labour of literary fire.
Larry watched as the words halted. This was fun no more.
Annabel recommenced typing. This would not be fun much longer. The story could not have a happy ending.
It would stop like her own life: at a dead end. The difference was that Francis’ story really would stop, a tragedy and romance intertwined. Perhaps she should attempt the ending now, before she changed her mind.
She opened a new Word document and saved it as “the end.”
Francis lay still as stone. She could feel her fantasy world, so close. Sometimes she wondered if she had died already, but then she would wake to shooting pain, a grim reminder of the ugliness of reality. But her heart was already somewhere else, beating in her make believe world.
She had written the ending to her romance two days before. “James and Francis sat on the riverside together, arms intertwined. A tangible silence spoke of all the words unsaid. The mute words of a phantom future, the dream beating in their hearts. They watched the river winding towards its future, towards an ending that never came, time that looped and looped as the river just went on going. Perhaps this could be their future, an infinity that just drifted slowly on, healing waters of a tomorrow that would never be born. Perhaps this was all that is, that ever would be. Perhaps their river would never dry, a story that would sing forever from the pages of a long lost romance. They could feel their forever, it was now, it was here. Love would vanquish all tomorrows and turn them in to this perfect today, a day that danced in an eternity where the stars wait for a tomorrow that never comes.”
Francis closed her eyes. Her body pulsed with pain, an unruly teenager that would not allow peace. She breathed deeply and calmly as she fell asleep. Then she was there, with James on the riverbank. Her body was young, the twenty year old she had been when he went to war. She laughed at the absurdity of being there, after all these years reunited, even if it were only a dream. And as her sleeping self laughed, her body relaxed, taking its last breath. Peace painted her face with indelible make-up. In the fantasy world, she continued to laugh. And then she was really there, looking at a river, wondering where it was going – where she was going. “Francis.” She turned. It was James, just as he had looked last time she had seen him. She smiled, and in her dreams eternity bloomed, a flower that would never die.
The still face of the old lady did not stir, as the clock in the room seemed to tick louder. It was all time, it was no time, it was her time. It was the ending that comes to us all.
Annabel stopped typing, a smile on her face. Invisible eyes read her words, as a hidden heart began to beat with love.
Weeks went by. Finally, the novel was finished. But was it any good? She was so glad that no one else had seen it so far.
She would leave it for a week and then let the editing begin. A sense of accomplishment enfolded her. She had actually written a novel!
*
She had actually written a novel! Larry could not stop thinking of this unseen woman he had so relentlessly spied upon. Slowly, an idea formed in his head. His laptop confronted him, proclaiming hidden possibilities. He laughed.
He opened “the end” and began to type.
Francis lay still as stone. She could feel her fantasy world, so close. But she must get up. Today was the beginning of her new experimental treatment. A new cancer drug trial, and she had been only too happy to sign up. What harm could it do? She was dying after all.
She attended the clinic and was given the bright orange pills, the colour of mini suns. Perhaps they would burn her cancer cells.
As the weeks went by she began to feel better. Then came the tests. It really was a miracle! The cancer was in remission.
Six months later, she was free of cancer.
She had also finished her novel. It went on to become a best-seller. Her memories of James receded. Perhaps one day she would see him. But not yet. There was still too much of life left to enjoy.
A happy ever after beckoned.
Larry laughed, stroking his beard. He was in this to win. He checked Annabel’s letters folder, and googled all the literary agencies there to find out which was the most prestigious. Hopefully they would be easy to hack.
*
Annabel submitted a final query email with a smile on her face. Her manuscript was en route to several literary agencies! She should don the rejection-warming jacket, she knew, but she could not resist daring, just daring, to hope.
She walked home with a spring in her step. Let the writer’s game begin, please let her win the password to publication!
*
Julie glanced through “A War Romance” with slowly dimming interest, and then chucked it on to the slush pile. “Next!”
Two days later, she was surprised to receive an email from the author, apparently delighted to work with the Writers and Wonders agency. She checked her sent emails. It was there, clear as writer’s block and just as annoying. She had emailed an acceptance, obviously by mistake. Oh dear. She retrieved the novel from the slush pile. They would make this work, with a bit of re-editing.
*
The police van slid up to Larry’s house. He had been waiting for it; he had dropped his get out of jail card some time ago.
*
Annabel jumped up and down. She was going to be published! Francis had won in the end, her story would be known.
*
The laptop hummed its quiet lullaby, but there was no one to hear. Code cracked silently behind its screen. A novel published that a world wanted to hear; a computer career that died with a decisive good deed. Inside a book flicked its pages to a new ending, but there was no one to see. The invisible web breathed, and distant dreams were born.
Writer Unblocked 
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