Blocked

          He had been setting at his desk for almost twelve hours, and awake for three days. Nothing. The old electric typewriter stared back at him, almost mockingly. What does a person do when they have a best seller in their mind and cant get it out on paper? It was the greatest idea Arnold had ever possessed but it stubbornly stayed locked inside his head. He typed a few words out trying to coax the story along but ran out of thoughts before he could get a sentence done. Again, he questioned the wisdom of becoming a novelist at age forty. For that matter he questioned becoming anything different at this age. For years he had been an English teacher at a local community college and did ok at it. But the things that had happened as of late caused him to reevaluate his situation. His wife left him and he was passed over for tenure at his job. Though to say his wife had left him was a bit of a misnomer, she changed the locks on his house and told him to expect papers sometime in the following months. He didn’t find out why till a few weeks later. He decided to quit his job because teaching was impossible in the state he was in and his psychiatrist said he could do with a change.
                  But the shrink didn’t do much to allay his fears that his life, that was pretty much good, had came crashing down around his somewhat oversized ears. The head doc just told him that change is normal in life and had given him some coping exercises to help with the emotional blender his soul had been thrown into. That and some oft prescribed medications for anxiety and depression and lectured him for the rest of the session about not missing a dose. From this visit to the doc he knew he had to change something, maybe everything. But what?
At first he busied himself with the everyday mundane’s of a person in his situation. He rented an apartment, cleaned out his bank account (before she could) and went to the local big box store to get some essentials to furnish the sparse bachelor pad. Sitting on the second hand couch he got from a friend the former English teacher came to the conclusion that he could be the next great writer. In hindsight the decision had been made out of bravado.
“Damn it” he exploded ripping out the paper from the still worthless typewriter. He launched it at the waste basket to join its brethren in the abyss of failure.
                The story was perfect. A totally new take on love, life and the happiness that all human beings longed for . His characters were unforgettable and more perfect than he had ever crafted in his ventures as a short story writer .But a novel? Maybe his soon to be ex wife was right and he couldn’t cut it writing something longer than twenty pages.
                  “Not a chance in hell” the ex teacher muttered to himself. His estranges not so better half, Dolly, was as much of a mainstream-following blockheaded clone as the experimental sheep of the same name. A thought occurred to him. The cloned sheep Dolly died young from genetic malfunctions. He could only hope for the same fate for the human shrew that had screwed around on him and got pregnant from an athletic trainer.
He stood up and started to pace running his hands through his graying hair and thinking about the novel. The character, Jena, was an innocent who had been abused by her mother. She has to rise above adversity and does. For a while. Then, in what at first seems like a glorious stroke of fortune; she is yet again thrust into the belly of the beast. In the end she has to face true evil motivated by greed and triumphs. Joseph Campbell would be proud of this work and he resolved to do it.
                  “But how?” he again muttered looking at his gangly frame in the mirror of his bathroom where he often found himself during these pacing sessions. While there, he again had the feeling he was forgetting something but disregarded it as his problems seemed to be mounting. His finances were dwindling, his novel was stalled, and his slut ex wife’s bloodsucking lawyer was asking for alimony. A lawyer! Jena needs a lawyer. But how does he characterize that man (or woman)? What is their name? And to complicate that a name needs to mean something. He couldn’t just name someone Joe or Jane Blow and it resonate with any audience. His muttering became a full out rant.
“All these questions. But that’s what a novel is, questions. And I have to answer them.” as the feeling of overwhelming despair returned to him he found himself in the diminutive living room again. He didn’t remember how he got there. The brief blackout scared him because he had been having them more often. He tried to shrug it off but the fine tremors in his hands and the pulsing feel in his chest and head would not let him move past the incident.
“I must be insane.” he stated taking his spot back behind his desk. He felt a twinge in his back. An angry sore that had formed there from setting against the wooden chair so long. It felt Infected: he didn’t care.
Again he began to type and again he ripped out the paper
              Overwhelmed was the first word that came to him and then a metaphor
“This must be what a retard feels like at a caravel” he said as he began to shake more. It was almost palpable when his sanity snapped. Green auras appeared around everything. The laughing voices of his ex wife echoed in his head
“No’ he said in desperation ‘Stop laughing” this time screaming “STOP LAUGHING AT ME”
                  His wife’s voice returned, not laughing this time, but speaking in the flippant tone he had always loathed.
“Oh no honey pie, I’ll never stop. And if you ever do get this novel out you get to pay me alimony from it.” he could almost see her head thrown back as she laughed mirthlessly
“Your so stupid. But come on, keep typing, if you get published my baby gets to go to private school and you get to drive a Hyundai to your book signings.”

He opened his desk drawer and said “Not if I can help it.”
                                           
                                                                    *
            It was near the end of the shift and the lines had been pretty quiet. Robby, the emergency operator, sat playing World of Warcraft on his laptop. Then a call came in. Robby clicked his headset and opened his emergency checklist book
              “911 what is your emergency?” he said robotically; thinking it was another kitty caught in a tree call.
The frantic voice (yes their always frantic) quickly belted out “Yes my name is Gene Thompson and I live in Shadow Lake apartments on Markham and I think I just heard a gunshot next door”
Robby hastily closed his laptop and opened the checklist to the “shots fired” section. Damn.
                “Ok sir, stay calm’ Robby said trying to do the same himself, he hated shots fired calls ‘When did this happen?”
                “About a minute ago. Look, my neighbor, he’s a little down on his luck. And I heard him yelling before it happened.”
                “I understand sir I’m sending help. Stay on the line with me and go to the inner most room in your house”
Robby kept the phone line open and clicked over to the police band radio and said
              “Police dispatch, 911” the protocols were to only say who you wanted to talk to and who you were calling for times sake. The response came in.
              “ 911, police dispatch. Go ahead”
              “Roger, we have a report of shots fired at Shadow Lake apartments apartment number … ‘ Robby clicked over to the phone again’ sir what apartment are you in. And what apartment did the shots come from?”
The caller responded “I’m in twelve and the shot came from fourteen”
                “Dispatch, 911 did you get that?”
                “Roger 911, Shadow Lake apartments, number fourteen. Were rolling units code three”
Five minutes later two police officers, with guns drawn, broke down the door to apartment fourteen. They found a middle aged man with a fatal gun shot wound to the head.

                                                                                      *
                            Finally what was in Arnolds head came out on the paper.