Prologue

Evan Jameson, famed and acclaimed writer, puffed away pensively on a pipe as his fingers clattered away on an old typewriter. He came to the end of the page but before removing the milky parchment, he looked out the open window next to his maple desk. The clouds had been swelling up, and if it weren’t for his clock he would have never guessed it was nearly four in the afternoon. Without his two lamps, the room would have been in almost complete darkness.

Moments later, droplets began to tap upon the glass plane of the window as if they desired entrance into the smoky room. The pairs of droplets soon multiplied into scores. The noise resounded through the room as the beads simultaneously hit the glass. The loud clap of thunder was followed by a white dagger piercing the sky.

Turning his attention back to the typewriter, he took out the piece of paper and hastily read it over before crumpling it up into a ball and lobbing it into the already half-full waste basket on the side of his desk from the other various pages he had thrown away today, having made little-to-no process since the night before.

He sighed to himself, taking the pencil from its resting place on his ear and tossing it onto the desk before him, watching it bounce back and forth across the dusty surface before landing horizontally and rolling a short distance. Taking the pipe out of his mouth and placing it on its holder, he stood up from his chair, making his way to the stereo system at the far end of the room to turn on the radio to his favorite music station (classical, of course), and sat down in his preferred chair near the fireplace which spread its warmth throughout the cold room.

The writer picked up a newspaper on the table adjacent to his chair and began to read, calming himself and letting the thoughts about the progress he had made today (or lack thereof) be driven from his mind.

~

After about fifteen minutes of reading and relaxing, Evan came to feel he was ready to begin writing again. The recliner rocked back and forth as he stood up, making his way to his desk again. The soft squeak of his chair was accompanied by the click of his typewriter being reloaded. Nearly an hour later Mr. Jameson found he had written seven full sheets of paper, a commendable feat given his previous failure the night before.

Feeling the pangs of hunger gnawing at him, he abandoned the papers on his desk and proceeded to the kitchen, where he prepared a sandwich with a grilled chicken breast, bacon, cheddar cheese, and lettuce on French bread; consuming it before it could touch the plate he had set out for it. Draining the glass of milk he had poured with his dinner, Mr. Jameson walked back to his desk where he tidied up the stack of pages and stapled them. Counting twenty-seven pages, he was extremely pleased with the novella that had been in-the-works for nearly a week and a half.

"Time to edit," he muttered to himself, the short celebration over.

Leaning back, he turned the lamp on his desk to illuminate the papers sufficiently, and, pencil in hand, he began to read while crossing words out and making various marks.

~

Finishing the thirteenth page, he looked once again at his clock to see that it was approaching midnight rapidly.

Good, he thought, I’ll be able to finish it tonight. He knew that he would be up past one or two, but didn’t let that bother him; he had been up later in the night before, after all.

As the hours flew past, Mr. Jameson could feel the weariness overcoming him. He started to doze off, and after a few minutes he fell asleep completely: this time, with a dreamless sleep.