My three daughters playing peacefully on the floor, I sit back on the living room couch with my laptop, pondering about the theme of the latest competition announced in StoriesSpace.
‘Are they looking for a complete story within the limited timeframe announced? Or a story around the theme?’
I decided on the latter, struggling with how to begin. The cursor continues blinking while nothing comes to mind.
“Please,” I cry out. “Just give me something. Anything.”
“Mommy, can I help?” Adie, my oldest asks.
“No, sweetie. Mommy is just having a hard time writing something.”
She returned to her Duplo blocks as I sighed about the simplicity of her life at four years old.
I glance at the computer calendar. The countdown started on February 13th. Today’s the 15th and still nothing. Two days wasted away. Day three and nothing. Absolutely nothing. Only eleven more days to go.
“Sh*t!” I exclaim loudly.
“Mommy!” Even at age four, Adie knew that word wasn’t appropriate.
“Sorry, Adie. I’ll be more careful.”
I reread the contest announcement. “Do whatever it takes to meet the deadline.”
I reread it. Noticing the answer to my dilemma.
Something about “giving a sacrifice to the gods of old.”
‘Okay, but which one? Perhaps one of the Greek muses? Sure, that’s it. Surely the muses can inspire me. After all, the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey” begin with prayers to the Muses. But which one?
‘Calliope, Muse of Epic poetry? Maybe Erato, Muse of Love poetry?’
‘No, the contest rules forbid poems, songs, musings, and plays.’
‘Euterpe or Melpomene, muses of tragedy?’
‘Perhaps, but I have only 1,000 words to work with. Tragedy will be too long.’
‘No, maybe my prayer should be directed to Mnemosyne, goddess of language and writing?’
“I give up!” Throwing my arms up in the air and slamming the laptop shut.
And there was morning and evening, the first day of writing.
I wake as the sun shines through the window curtains. Stressed as it is now day four.
‘Think! What inspired some of the great writers of the past?’
Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Honore de Balzac in the 19th century. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Stein, and Joyce in the 20th?’
“That’s it!” I scream out.
‘Paris, La Ville Lumiere. Paris, La Ville de l’Amour.’
‘Paris, the city of lights. The city of love.’
I sit back on the couch again, ready to type.
‘Okay, you’ve got the setting. Now what girl?’
‘Maybe a story about a steelworker erecting Gustave Eiffel’s Tour Eiffel, 1887-1889? Underpaid, overworked, with scant attention to his health or safety? Like the other workers, unmercifully pushed to get the structure completed in time for the upcoming ‘Exposition Universelle.’
‘Maybe a story about the family he leaves behind after tragically falling some 300 meters?’
‘Or maybe, both. He as the Tragedian and she as the Tragedienne?’
‘What was he thinking about before he slipped off the wrought iron girder hanging precipitously above the Champ de Mars? Perhaps he was daydreaming about his wife, longing for her arms, her kisses? Making love to her, entranced by her feminine charms? Or was it his children and the bleak future they faced?’
‘How did his wife react as she answered the apartment door in a less than well-to-do section of Paris, the only place they could afford on his paltry salary? Seeing the uniformed police officer at the door, hearing him clear his throat before announcing,
“Madame, j'ai le regret de vous informer que votre mari a été tué dans un terrible accident cet après-midi.”
(“Madam, I regret to inform you that your husband was killed in a terrible accident this afternoon.”)
‘Perhaps he wasn’t thinking about his wife, but about his mistress? His L’arrangement.’
‘The teenage woman who worked at the sidewalk café he visited daily, either on his way to or from work?
‘A girl young enough to be his daughter, half his age but with an exuberant sexuality that sated his continued appetite for carnal pleasures. An appetite his wife, exhausted from tending to their two sons and their two daughters, found too demanding, both mentally and physically to continue fulfilling?’
‘Maybe, the story should be about the mistress?
I sigh a gasp of relief. Relieved I sit back and stare at the photograph for the story I’ve chosen to illustrate the story. Hoping it will stir my imagination for tomorrow. I made my decision.
And there was morning and evening, the second day of writing.
I was up early the next morning. Listening to a jazz trio, I typed away. Confident.
“Antoine entered the café and shuffled over to the table in a far corner. There he could observe the young waitress, Marguerite, who had held his attention since he began stopping in for dinner, shortly after beginning working for Monsieur Effiel.”
“Monsieur Antoine, what will you have today?”
“Vegetable stew, some cheese, a baguette, and a bottle of wine with two glasses.”
“Two glasses, Monsieur?”
Reaching back and pulling her towards him, “Yes, two glasses my little renarde.”
“Monsieur! Your wife!”
“I don’t want my wife, I want you, Marguerite, you little tarte.”
“Monsieur Antoine, what would you want with a girl of seventeen, Monsieur?”
“I don’t think you have to ask that question, Marguerite. We both know what I want. I know you want it too.”
‘That’s a girl, Meagan. You’ve got this. Keep going.'
Suddenly, one of the twins, Abie, bolts to the loveseat to look out the bay window, destroying the Duplo Block creation the girls had been working on. “Mom!” Adie shouts as Alie, the other twin, cries.
Serenity is shattered as is hope of finishing the story.
Resolving the ‘crisis’ and restoring order in a child’s universe where chaos reigned a few moments ago, I sit back down.
And noticing only eleven words left.
‘Writing ‘Flash’ is hard and I still have nothing!’
