Picking Up Roots

It started in the inky darkness of the morning under a thin stream of light. I fed a piece of white opportunity into the spool of the typewriter and sat staring at it.

I don’t know if it was the lack of thoughts in my head or the lack of life at 3am, but the silence screamed in my ears. It was oppressive.

After 15 minutes of nothing, I walked to the kitchen and made coffee. Anything to break up the monotony.

I wanted to jump on the Internet to look for inspiration, but I knew if I did that I would find distraction. It’s why I was using the typewriter.

The coffee beeped its completion and I jumped a foot in the air. I took down a bottle of brandy and covered the bottom of my cup. It didn’t matter that I had to work later, this was too important. I needed to start. I needed courage.

Fear is a horrible thing. It paralyzes.

I don’t like blood either. It’s a piece of you coming out exposed to the world. If I hit a key on the typewriter I would be offering up myself in faded black ink. I couldn’t stand the thought of someone not being responsive.

So I was afraid to start. Even though I controlled whether or not anyone ever saw the page, I was paralyzed.

The coffee steamed in the pale light and I continued to stare at nothing and everything. I thought about how I ached to tell this story. And I wondered how I would screw it up. Then I felt horrible at the thought of never doing anything I wanted.

I took a sip of the coffee. The brandy burned. It began:

Tears streamed from her eyes as she pounded the keys.

A car door had slammed out on the street a minute before; that was the only reason he heard the soft knock at the door.

At this hour of the morning there was silence. No one else was fool enough to be up this early. S had been up this early. Most often, she was just falling asleep due to the insomnia and body aches that kept her restless.

He wondered if it might be her at the door. Whenever there was an unexpected knock, he always hoped it might be her, but he’d fallen out of the habit as the years passed.

When he left, she was seeing someone else. He’d said all the right things, but he was shattered. He knew he was a fool to have felt the jealousy and the anger, but he couldn’t help how he felt. Still, he didn’t want to interfere with her life.

He’d put the money in the account, and emailed her the access information, telling her if she was ever interested in taking the shot they hadn’t had to withdraw the money and buy a plane ticket to wherever he was. She said he was ridiculous – she’d said that often – but he had insisted. That had been ten years ago.

He checked the account from time to time, and they had stayed in contact, although that too had slackened over the years.

His anticipation at random knocks on the door had faded as the money continued to sit untouched and he was met with another set of Jehovah’s Witnesses or someone from the electric company asking him to switch to wind power.

As the soft knock came again, nervous anticipation raised the hair on his arms. Two days before he’d checked the account and the money had been gone.