Chapter Text
"If you place a file and something that could eliminate the file in a room and sealed it, you would not know if the file were there or not there until you opened the room, so until the room was opened, the file was both "there or not there".
You see, the most important part of starting a story is certainly establishing the sequence of events.
Not very simple if you have no idea at all about the story you want to write, don't even have a character in mind, and simply need to write something by today because your brain is in a creative phase and you can't waste a single moment or the inspiration will fly away like the wind and the writer's block will come back armed with a crowbar to mess things up.
Not to mention the anxiety that builds up because the deadline is approaching and you absolutely have to send something to your publisher by tomorrow afternoon, otherwise you could lose your contract with the publishing house.
The procrastination monkey is a nasty beast, and finding yourself with less than 24 hours to write a successful plot draft is not exactly the best idea I've ever had, but you know how it is, you can't have everything in life, right?
The Word page staring back at you, white like your face in panic, the cursor bar staring at you menacingly as if it wanted to hit you on the head for your stupidity.
Who says the pen is mightier than the sword?
I say it’s definitely worse when the blank page stares at you angrily, judging because it knows perfectly well that you should have started earlier, but no!
That new game you’d wanted for so long was released, then there were new chapters of your favorite fanfic and scrolling on Instagram, the YouTube videos…
The procrastination monkey was giggling, banging the plates with joy.
That bastard was having fun as if it were carnival, damn it! But he wouldn’t let it win! Screw the monkey and its neon pink hat! He would manage to complete his draft and submit it on time, no matter the amount of caffeine needed, the cramps in his hands, or the honestly ridiculous amount of swearing, he would win!
Rubbing his fingers, he reached out toward the keyboard.
One of his favorites, honestly, with the tall keys that made a hell of a noise every time you pressed them. Unusable in an office but extremely relaxing and cathartic; when typing, you felt like a typist pounding out an old manuscript, an invaluable feeling.
Ah, how wonderful it was to work from home, where no one could complain about noises.
Yes, he could start exactly with that! A 1950s typist who, tired of working in court transcribing word by word what was said, decides to use his skills to write a detective novel inspired by the cases he had transcribed!
It would be a huge success!
Ignoring the little monkey, he began to write.
The words seemed to flow like water from his fingers as he immersed himself in the life of that weary typist who lived alone in a small, gray apartment in New York with his gray cat Leo.
It seemed that everything was finally starting to go the right way, until Leo decided to jump onto his desk.
Leo was a bit of a chubby cat, with beautiful gray tabby fur and very cute pink paw pads; his only flaw was that he was a bit clumsy.
Jumping onto the desk, in fact, he had slipped on some papers that had knocked over the pen holder, which had rolled over, moving the computer speakers that had destabilized the coffee cup he had been sipping from until that moment.
Thinking about it carefully, he should have written it earlier for the continuity of the text and as foreshadowing, but that would have taken away the element of surprise that was about to come.
In fact, the coffee cup had been poorly placed near the edge of the table, and, to save it from a disastrous fall that would probably have broken the cup and spilled coffee everywhere, he moved clumsily to try to save it.
Catching it on the fly, he let out a sigh of relief, but, for some strange reason, the little monkey kept giggling, banging those damn plates as if witnessing the funniest thing in the world.
It was only while trying to pull himself up that he realized why the little monkey was laughing.
Note for kids at home: always and very frequently save Word documents, especially if you have to draft a plot to send to your editor in less than 24 hours so you don't lose your work.
You see, he had managed to write a full 10 pages before that fatso of a cat caused that disastrous domino, which ended in that stalemate situation.
Moving to grab the coffee cup, triggered by the computer speakers, because of the fallen pen holder, caused by his fat cat's butt slipping on some papers, had trapped the chair in the computer power cables. His current situation could easily be summarized by Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger with one of his most famous experiments: Schrödinger's file.
Except that, in this case, the dilemma did not depend on a box, but on the wobbly chair, wrapped like a sausage around the tangled bundle of wires that included the computer's power supply.
In fact, the file with the draft of his work, which, of course, he had not saved before the coffee cup situation arose, both existed and did not exist at the same time, just like his future as an author. If he moved the wrong way, he could fall, unplug the power cable, spill coffee on the wires or, even worse, all three.
The dilemma of choice was paralyzing, a primal terror driven by survival that battled logic to get out of that unhealthy experiment while that damn little monkey kept laughing.
Featuring in the next chapter:
Tall majestic golden buildings reflect multicolor lights on their surface through the metallic city, a beacon of light in a world of darkness, with refined architecture and the superfine decorations surrounding the passers-by who crossed the centre of the city.
The roar of engines resonating through the metal combines with the screech of transformation gears with a constant background melody, a sweet music, rhythmic like the heartbeat, which seems to want to envelop everything around it in a tender embrace.
[...]
Damn Primus and his fucking 13 knock-off apostles!
What in the actual fuck?