Mordechai Stone

Contempt never breeds with familiarity

The Choice

Another day. Another God forsaken, fucked up day that begins with me opening my eyes followed immediately by THE CHOICE. FUCK. Will I write? Or will I do nothing. I agonize in bed, the covers pulled tightly over my head.

Maybe if my life was full, if I had a job that ate up the majority of my day and a relationship, with a sweet, young thing, that took up the remaining hours I could look at myself in the mirror and shout, “SEE! I have no TIME to write. I am BUSY!” Unfortunately, I can’t look in the mirror because I have time, eons of cursed time.

I have ordered my life to have this time. I put almost 30 grand in the bank so I wouldn’t have to work full time for a year. I find menial jobs to pay some bills. I found the perfect writer’s chair and new lap top computer. I dumped the drunk, deliciously decadent, ex-stripper fiancé to give myself more TIME to write.

And yet I will do nothing.

I know this.Of course that is not entirely true. It is impossible to do nothing because doing nothing is actually doing something. Even as I lay still I am in the act of reclining. I f I shut my eyes I still breathe, my heart still beats.  And I can never shut off my brain. “WRITE, you LOSER! WRITE!” it shouts, howling in the silence of my apartment, my spiritual prison.

With every beat of my heart I move close to interminable death, to infinite regret at a life spent in the promise of better things if only I would have WRITTEN. I look back 6 months upon my barren artistic path. I have sown it with salt. Nothing has grown.

I read Kerouac and dream of writing as he does. My dream mocks. I am a hack with the singular talent of writing a good hook at the end of average chapters of verse.

The clock is ticking. The money is getting thin. When will I write?

I pluck the white from my brow.

Richard Matheson wrote I AM LEGEND. How nice. I AM PARASITE, SUCCUBUS, SYCOPHANT. I must borrow from my many selves to accomplish even this simple task.

And now – to sleep! I regard my anticipated slumber with bitterness and trepidation. Because, on awakening it will be there again, waiting with bared claws, dripping fang and leering grin…

…THE CHOICE.

Categories: Short Stories

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