Writer's Block

The boy idly wondered whether he was a murderer. He considered all the words he’d deleted, all the words he’d removed from his essays. He still thought about them. There were guilty words, to be sure, grammatical monstrosities that had no place anywhere. But he missed the innocent words, the words he’d expelled just for being different. The essay had demanded it. Those misfit words just didn’t fit in; they had to leave, to be punished equally with their more wicked compatriots. He wished them well. Perhaps in another plane, they assembled with other like-minded fellows and renounced their lesser brethren. Maybe they formed exclusive clubs, ones with all the words who almost made it. And so the chain went, with every link claiming some special status that made them innocent. Who did they all consider guilty? Probably the boy, but at this point, he was used to being blamed.

His daydreaming was interrupted by his father’s question, directed, luckily, at his sister: “What is the scientific symbol for magnesium?”

Her face crinkled in consternation, desperately searching for the answer in the ceiling. She didn’t know it. Of course, she didn’t. She’d been watching The Amazing World of Gumball for the past two hours. When their father came home, she’d slyly turned the television off (even remembering to put the remote in the exact position it had been in previously) before creeping quickly back upstairs in her bare feet (their house was tile, and slippers made too much noise). He’d told them. He’d made it clear that they’d have an examination when he came back. The boy wanted to shake some sense into his sister. He also wanted to tell her the answer.

The boy’s father started counting. Technically, they were only allowed to get one answer wrong, but depending on how suave they were (and what mood their father was in), they could get two wrong answers, or even three. After an arbitrary amount of time had passed after a question, his father would gleefully begin to count, his face cheerfully indicating that he did not, in fact, want to know the answer. The boy’s sister had already missed a question—–and been defensive about it as well. The boy’s throat tightened up.

His father leaned forward, face alight, and began the pre-punishment lecture. She had been playing, she spent all her time thinking about makeup and boys, she was lazy (on this, the boy agreed), and she had missed an easy question. She didn’t listen to her father, who was only trying to raise her on the right path in life. Yes, she never listened. Then, the Christian element. She brazenly scorned her father’s words, who was only trying to keep her from the dark forces of this world, satanic forces trying to bring her to destruction. The boy’s father looked solemnly at the two children.

“The right way,” he said, “is narrow.”

It was unclear whether the boy’s father was quoting Jesus, who’d said similar, if more context-specific words, or simply borrowing biblical verses as metaphors for why they should listen to him. Their father reached for a Bible. So today, it was the former.

As the verses of Matthew chapter 7 burst discordantly into the room (their father liked to read the Bible in a different voice, one he imagined was melodic and resonating but was just jarring), the boy suddenly wondered what the scientific symbol for magnesium was. Earlier, he’d been moderately sure it was “Mm,” but now he wasn’t so sure. Luckily, his father never asked questions of one child that the other sibling had gotten wrong, except when he felt vengeful or thought one of them wasn’t paying attention.

Wait. His father had stopped talking. The boy lifted his brown eyes to meet his father’s darker, red-tinged ones; had he noticed his daydreaming? They stared at each other for precisely two minutes. The boy would have wagered on it. He’d had staring contests with his friends, who told him he was the best, and he had an uncanny ability to measure time. Were two minutes fortuitous? The boy had a problem with numbers. He liked fives and sevens, and his favorite number was seventeen, but he never seemed to be lucky with the numbers he preferred; just the other day, the boy had won bingo on the number thirteen, a victory that had left him semi-furious, as he loathed the digit.

Shit. He’d zoned out again, and this time it did not go unnoticed. In a deceptively soft voice, the boy’s father asked him to repeat the last thing he’d said. The boy furrowed his brow and nervously ran through his options. He could say something generic related to the Bible verse, but the chances he’d land on the right words were slim. The other option was confessing he hadn’t been paying attention. But no. That’d be worse. He would become the new object of his father’s anger, and there was no way he was doing that for his sister. He’d told her! She never listened to him, and it infuriated him to know that now he too was in danger. The boy didn’t deserve this.

Instead, he dumbly stared at his father, hoping to God that his trembling hands and blinking eyes didn’t betray his growing anxiety. He realized what it felt to be one of the characters in one of his novels now. The boy swallowed, and he could swear he saw his father notice the movement in his throat. Outside, a ball bounced, irregularly thumping against the ground. That was his brother. He’d passed his test with flying colors (obviously, he was a genius), and freedom, glorious freedom was his reward.

The boy’s father stared at the boy. He watched his son grimace, look away, and turn back to stare at a random point on his father’s nose. His son was doing this more frequently, losing attention. It became noticeable a few months ago when he started eighth grade. Then later, at the first parent-teacher conference, the tall, gaunt math teacher, Ms. Kelly, had broached the idea that he might have some sort of disorder. His father balked at this. The boy didn’t have a condition; he just couldn’t focus. The boy remembered his father scoffing, even laughing, before leaving the classroom. But he wasn’t laughing now.

The boy’s father hesitated, mustering what he thought of as an encouraging smile, and asked again for the scientific symbol for magnesium. The boy blurted out, but carefully, something that was definitely not the correct answer.

The boy’s father had read somewhere that children who couldn’t focus had trouble learning, so he’d started organizing these study sessions to encourage the boy to set aside time every day. His motives were not so pure, though. His coworker at BanTech had recently been crowing about his daughter’s success at the Writing Fair, and the boy’s father had been desperate to say something, really anything, to shut him up. Standing at the end of the bar with a Moscow Mule (his favorite drink), he’d told his coworker, Steve, that his boy, his son, had written a book, which was to be published early next year. Of course, Steve immediately went quiet, which was very satisfying, but the fact remained: the boy hadn’t written a book.

The boy’s father didn’t tell his wife; that would’ve been folly, and she’d likely make him fess up. He’d gone home that night, faced with the reality that if he didn’t find a way to produce a book in six months, he was done for. He couldn’t be made a fool. At least, not in front of Steve, of all people. The boy’s father had rushed home after the incident, terrified and suddenly sober. Sitting in the squat living room, he tried to brainstorm some ideas. What if he tried to write the book himself? Surely he could produce a book great enough to be considered children’s literature. But no. There’d be no way the deception would hold up over time. There’d be interviews and book signings; there’d be questions. The boy couldn’t answer those.

What if he stole some other would-be child author’s work and had his boy work on that? Surely his boy could understand the brain spawn of another child and complete it. The boy’s father frantically dashed to the family computer (there was only one device capable of accessing the Internet in the household, to minimize exposure to dangerous foreign influences). He’d typed, “Budding child authors in my area.” But apparently, child authors meant authors who wrote for children, because all that’d come up were links to buy Roald Dahl and Harry Potter books. The boy’s father decided to try again, entering “Great authors who are children in my area.” No difference. After trying different variations of similar phrases, the boy’s father decided it was best to stop when the search results began to read things like, “Child pornography and its effects on the mind,” and “Child exploitation is illegal.”

And so, sitting in front of a dimly lit clunky computer at 2 am, faced with the prospect that he might have made a mistake, the boy’s father did the only thing he could do: he texted his brother. Surprisingly enough, his brother was awake and willing to listen. The boy’s father explained his predicament to him, clutching the phone tightly as he spoke. Painting the story in the most positive of lights, he recounted how his boy had been struggling to write a novel, and that the deadline for the submission was in fact in six months. If the boy did not submit the novel by then, he would be ineligible for the scholarship covering the costs of publication. The boy’s father started crying. All his boy wanted to do was write, and all his father wanted was for him was to make a name for himself. The boy’s father tearfully finished his much-enhanced story, and carefully paused to wait for his brother’s response. Quiet filled the silent house. Ears cocked, the boy’s father listened for what he hoped was a solution.

The disembodied voice spoke. “Pray,” it said. And then the line went dead.

The boy’s father angrily slammed down the phone. Faith was good and all, but he had long ago realized that sometimes God just needed a little help to make things happen. But he couldn’t blame his brother. The boy’s father had attended a religious seminary every year for the past seven years and was privy to more spiritual knowledge than his sibling. Still frustrated, the boy’s father began pacing the squat living area. It was 4 am by now; he had work in the morning. As he furiously tried to come up with ideas to alleviate his predicament, the boy’s father started pacing. He made his way from the living room to the kitchen, finding himself standing next to a black toaster and a waffle iron. While his mind spun, his eyes fell upon a black journal lying on the kitchen counter. It was filled with stories, and all were in his boy’s handwriting. The boy’s father grinned.

So basically, he’d noticed the boy’s scribblings and thought he might find a way to salvage his pride.

Specifically, what happened was, after a couple of drinks one night, the boy’s father bizarrely decided he should organize events which, by encouraging the boy to focus, would enable him to write. He could not simply tell the boy to write, as that would give the game up, so he enthusiastically held “game nights” where prizes would be given for academic merit. The ensuing lack of interest meant that soon, these “game nights” became examinations, with mandatory attendance and punishments for errors. In a desperate bid to avoid detection and produce results, the plot grew wildly out of control. The other siblings were included, and questions began to range from academia to the children’s habits. The wife, previously bemused, wondered whether her husband had started doing drugs.

The boy gazed deeply into his father’s eyes. Man looked at boy intently, attempting wordlessly to communicate his wretched wishes. The boy looked back, fearful and confused. He didn’t know what his father desired. No one told him anything. The boy had tried doing well on the examinations, sometimes getting perfect scores and earning himself a short break. But things never changed. The tests kept getting harder, and whether he did well or not, his father only got more and more frustrated. The boy didn’t know what was going on. All the boy wanted to do was write.