Are You Dreaming

The experience of writers block and one solution.

Ella Avers sat in her four by four cubical on the custom desk chair and stared at the screen of her computer. The blue green fabric walls felt as if they were closing in on her, but her mind was blank.
She could hear the clickty-clack of her coworkers fingers as they produced reams of work from their identical cubicles. Ella wondered why she was the only one without any ideas to commit to a document. She knew she was smart. She had been writing for nearly ten years, now suddenly it was if her mind had just gone dry. A desert with nothing in there to coax into a story.

“Oh, Ella!” a distant voice invaded her space.

“Crap,” Ella thought, “What does she want? To gloat I bet.” Ella ignored the call and continued to wander in the wastelands of her mind.
“Ella!” the voice was more insistent this time.

Relenting, Ella answered, “What do you want? I'm busy.” Then she noticed that someone was standing in the opening of her cubicle. When she turned, she saw Rena Turner smiling broadly at her.

“More like daydreaming,” Rena said sarcastically.

Feeling defensive now, Ella glared back into the dark beady eyes of her nemesis. “I'm just arranging the words in my head before I write them down, for your information!”

Rena continued to smile but then said, “Mr. Albertson called for our drafts a few minutes ago. I thought I could take yours at the same time as I took mine. I was just trying to help.”

Embarrassed now, Ella replied, “Thanks, but I will get mine to him in a little while.”

Rena moved away carrying her pages in her hand as Ella turned back to her computer screen. “Wonder why we can't just forward our work to him. Is he that far in the past that he has to have hard copies of everything?' Ella mumbled to herself.


Ella stood in Rena's cubicle tapping keys and searching files. So far she hadn't had any luck getting anything open so she could look. Ella was desperate. He mind remained a wasteland and even the old bones were not helpful. What was she going to do?
She was so busy trying various arrangements that might be pass words that she did not hear Rena walk up behind her. “What exactly are you doing?” came an angry screech.

Ella turned, eyes wide with the fear of discovery and stared into the contorted face of Rena Turner. Before Ella realized what she was doing, she grabbed a letter opener from the desk and swung it in an arc that brought the point into the left side of Rena's neck. Suddenly everything was red as an arterial spray covered the surrounding area with blood. Ella stopped breathing. What has she done? She has no chance of getting out of this.

“Ella!” a disembodied voice called. “Ella, wake up!”

Ella sat up with a start as she looked into Rena's face. No Blood. Then Ella realized she had just experienced a “day-mare”. “Sorry,” she said, “I must have dosed off.”

“I'll say,” Rena replied, “You were shouting about blood being everywhere...it must have been a really bad dream.”

“You don't know the half,” Ella managed to mumble.