Novella:

In descending order, alphabetical

By Pablo D'Stair

[Part 1]

To the bone with dried fatigue and he could tug fists of the hair from his head starved for some idea, Remy Faulk lay back, head propped on an old coat he had worn the last week for some reason, a cigarette sapping down in his thin lips though he had no idea he was doing this.

Central character "Remy Faulk"

But now no work shift for at least a week, until the new contract started, because he had put in for the assignment, pretending he had someplace to be the week off, really just in his apartment, wanting for some idea, something.

He was a playwright, even introduced himself as a playwright and not a security guard, though he felt nothing like a playwright even with the eight nine plays he had written, none produced, feeling like a liar because when was the last time he had written?

A long time since he had written.

Nothing.

Up, stood up and walked to a new cigarette, not wanting the thing, not wanting the taste but he wanted less to get hungry because there was no chance of an idea if he was glut wet with food and needed to pace around with stomachache and a tense bladder.

The blinds stood open and with plenty to see, he hoped for the easy distraction and the drift of thought and all out of nowhere he would have something, the way it usually happened, but none of that was going on so he found his thoughts chugging for hours and hours, the same creeping nothing as always, the same things that would go nowhere, only coming up with ideas for plays about playwrights and if he tried to come up with one more idea for a play about a playwright he could not stand it.

How many?

That was all that was surfacing and it was horror, it was the worst of it, ideas for plays about playwrights, a play about a playwright trying to come up with an idea, even the trick of an idea for a play about a playwright writing a play and he would then just think up some idea to have the character writing about in the play and then write that, but nothing.

Or painters, but Christ's not another idea about painters, he didn't even know the most rudimentary thing about painters, but like a piddling obsession he would think up this or that about painters, obviously phony, not worth the time it took sigh with dismissal of the thoughts, using painting as an object, like it was that simple, inauthentic.

If he did go for a walk, he might get something going the grocery store, the proper grocery store and not just the convenience store affixed to the gas station, something about grocery stores, the curt chill and the music while he walked, he would either get an idea, something, some crumb he could at least work up some excitement about before it flagged limp, that or he would just find some woman attractive and follow her like some degenerate, though he felt it should be easier than that to approach women at grocery stores, because why not, why not find a woman at a grocery store attractive, he lacked the nerve to do anything about it, like he would be cursed in some arcane, macabre way if he tried it.

Did have paper, lots of that, had a sheet fairly crisp there in the typewriter and the typewriter had been humming alive for more than two hours so the apartment smelled all soaked through with warm, muttering ink, heated dust from he never cleaned the things and it had been months, a year almost, since the switch had been tilted up to On.

He had even gotten out of the habit of while idly trying to think things up leaving the thing on, no paper, just to stand at it and clack in random sentences for the snapping spits of the keys to the chime and the solid thuk of the Return key, as this activity used to, at the very least, prompt something, even just a pang of panic for being some simpleton who was wasting thoughts, might as well have paper there, if he had paper he might find the thoughts waiting later, they might strike something in him, not just they were wafts of warmer air from the motor going, a sharp to his inhales and then he was a damned if he could even vaguely remember a single one of the thoughts, even pretend to.

The most obvious thing was that he needed to do something different and not something that had to do with fanciful character construction or any of it, that was the yawning damp of the grave, a closed fist of the wrong thing to be doing, he just needed an idea to run with and it needed nothing to do with reinvention, with any of these pestering, jabbering conversations he had with himself and it meant nothing what he had written before, he did not need to keep with anything, he just needed something like it was nothing to do with him that he could inhabit, cramp his thoughts and ideas into, anything else but the dregs up from the crusted cold plate of his mind, he was stuck with scenarios, it was like he could not come up with anything for a scenario but if he could just get that then everything, then everything would come, something to make him alive, something he could not think of was the best way he thought to put it, he needed to be given something he could not have thought up even had he wanted to and skulk away with it, some drooling thief, hide it under something and take it out to fondle whenever, shivering and numb, all of that nonsense.

He stared at the window, at the man there on the public telephone and wheezed his eyes in a slurp of a damp wince, the only thing coming to mind an old idea about the photographer answering the payphone and it was some woman saying Point your camera behind you and take a photo, just right behind you and don't look just shoot the photo then go home, go home have a look.

***

A car in the lot just outside, direct in front of his drawn down shut blinds, and the thing had its headlights on and the light against the blinds was giving strags of shadows of the little trees and the sticks of the shrubs and all of it, dank and out of proportion, the windows were given the appearance of the veins all strangled around in the scum of bleary eyes.

For about two minutes, while he sipped at coffee with a bit too much bourbon in it, the light, the blinds, all of it was beautiful, but soon became irritating and he glared, listening hard, trying to think what it would be, what kind of a person was just parking there and they didn't turn off their lights.

And so with a hard shrugging and some hissing to the motion, he walked over into the parlour room and set himself down on the sofa, vaguely looking at the ledges of shelves in front of his worthless little books along the bookshelves, hoping he might have left a part way smoked down joint around or that he would just like that see a bit of some plastic baggie sticking out from somewhere and remember that there were some shavings, a bud, something, stems in there, but it was some pointless, that wasn't going to happen.

Left to just loll through the television stations, his videocassettes were sloppy piled there and he didn't want to touch them, the same disappointing labels, all of that stuff he had taped from before, most of it the television had even worse reception than now and add to that the age of the tape and the obsolescence of the VCR he would be twaddling with the tracking buttons through the entire thing.

He sighed by not moving and not blinking and not breathing for a moment and then a tip to the side like weight had shifted in a trash bag, untied, filled with rank tin cans and toilet paper used to blow his nose, spilled, got into a slightly better position, but even with the pillow the sofa arm was a pain against the base of his skull, his neck and a slat of his shoulders if he scooted up some more.

A few of the sleeves from the collection of DVDs were on the floor, on the little table, one or two over on the chair, nothing new, he'd lent the player out to Krista and who for Christ's knew what she was up to with it, but his coffee gone he felt a little better and so took one up and gave it a read, smiling even before he knew there was a reason he might be smiling, just a smile because under each description one actor from each film was listed, like they were the ones to watch the awful little films for, this actor called Yanti Sommer and what kind of name was that for a person, he chuckled, same as any name, either way, but funny, just the same, Yanti Sommer, film star, the leading man in some low budget, never watched film called Star Odyssey from some random year decades and decades ago, Yanti Sommer.

The brief description almost made him want to watch the thing, because of awkward grammar and the fact that it would be fun to look at, a few more drinks, easy to drift in and out of sleep to.

"Electric Typewriter".

The opposite side of the flap had the synopsis to the three films on the reverse side of the disc, of which he was most intrigued by Frozen Alive, starring someone called Mark Stevens whose name was ordinary but it still struck him the guy would be a loser, like trying to concentrate through a headache to know sort of person, not worth the trouble to approach.

Frozen alive

Thing was, the character in it, some scientist, is frozen and in the meantime his wife gets done in and he, despite being frozen, at least this was how the description makes it out, is accused, the prime suspect in the whole mess.

Eerie. Though he knew he was giving it far more than its due-the film would be some nonsense, drawn out mess of a thing, going nowhere, meaning nothing while the eeriness he was thinking was brilliant, some kind of existential nightmare, Christ's, some kind of trap of illogic, the poor scientist in with "But I was frozen and so how can it be I did it?" and no one seeming to see why this would make it impossible for him to have done his wife in.

He let the thought swish swosh and made his way over to the bourbon and it into the cup and just a lick of coffee, full of grounds, from the bottom of the pot in with it, two quick swallows, a touch more bourbon.

And the scientist would be faced with the accuser's logic of his being frozen just meant he could not verify anything, made him defenseless, a menace of an idea, film should have been brilliant but it was just some waste with Mark Stevens.

It should have been his idea, the thing of it.

And he made a face into the reflection of his face in the dusted over of the bulb of the television front, read the synopsis of Terror At The Red Wolf Inn and of Robot Pilot and of Ring Of Terror the other films on that disc, bent the sleeve in half and reached, nearly upsetting the bourbon cup, down to the carpet for some more sleeves, the telephone then a shrill clatter like teeth in tense jaw all down an old glass table, another swallow and "Hello?" standing there hand down the front of his pants, another swallow and picked up a sleeve and threw it a whir, flat square disc, over at the desk, over at his typewriter, off a tick from its corner catching the lamp side, a cup of pens and paperclips and various other things knocked back behind the desk, a terrible noise, thing must have landed on the cord to the lamp because the lamp jumped, hit the wall, stayed standing and now the bulb shown dimmer like it had lost an eye.

To be continued