Waiting

Fern’s notebook was spread out in front of him, its pages white and pristine. It was urging him to write something, but at the same time, it seemed so daunting a task that he dared not move his pen.

This notebook is like a slab of marble, he thought, and I’m the darned unfortunate sculptor that must make a statue of Athena out of it. I’m nowhere close to being capable or worthy of this task. Sometimes he thought the notebook was mocking him, its pages fluttering with boredom, yawning at his silence.

He was waiting for his muses to take pity on him, or to see talent in him, or anything at all so long as they could give him the mere semblance of a hint to success or fame.

It was eleven o’clock already, and he had been sitting there, unmoving, since he cleaned up after his brief supper. His buttocks were sore, but he couldn’t bring an ounce of energy to his limbs to support movement.

He let out a breath that rasped out of his throat. The hiss of air astounded him, and his attention was briefly lit up, back on the line, and his heartbeat spiked, leaving his eyes to blacken, his lungs to flail, and his nose to heave in breath.

He directed his eyes towards a picture framed by a small oak frame that sat demurely upon his desk. Beside a young and awkward version of himself stood a brunette girl with a wide, uncaring smile and a smear of blue ink on her face. He shook his head at the picture warningly, chastising it for not going away. Simona Westford was now a full-fledged, six-figure freelance writer, and he, her college deskmate, was still wallowing in cheap beer and scrawny cigarettes. Fortune favors the bold – Simona had bravely submitted her writing to all competitions and magazines available and had secured herself a permanent welcome seat in one of them, but Fern had waited and waited for the perfect piece, for the perfect debut work, for the perfect phrases that he would never want to change in his life. They never came. He remembered the day she waved her first check at him, giddy and glowing, while he clutched a rejection email with trembling eyes. If he didn’t know better, he would’ve thought she was mocking him. But whatever he thought, he would never believe anything harmful that could be done by that girl, that idealistic, shining knight with a pen mightier than a sword.

An unread email notification blinked from the screen of his phone. He didn’t dare open it. Not yet. Maybe not ever. What if I do write something, and it’s just average? Worse—what if it’s completely forgettable? He waited for the burst of adrenaline to come, and it soon filled his veins with dread. There was a small clock in his head that was ticking, counting the time that had passed without him being enlightened.

He sighed and turned off the small yellow bedside lamp, preparing himself for bed. Perhaps inspiration would flow easier if he was to have a change of scenery, so to speak. Out of habit, he touched the notebook on the left side of his pillow and patted the pen and mini flashlight alongside it. He both hoped that he would be writing something in it and hoped that he wouldn’t have to get out of his comfortable cocoon in the middle of the night to jot down a piece of a glowing lightbulb above his head that would probably seem ridiculous in the morning.

And as he lay there, he waited, he waited, and he waited.

Just before sleep took him, he reached over, dreamily opened the notebook, and wrote one line: “She smiled, and the night forgot it was ever dark.”