The Pen

It was here! Finally.

John opened the package to pull out the small black Moleskine Notebook. He had grown up watching his grandmother flip the elastic band to write about her day. Now, his next notebook was here. He had hated when the delivery had not come as scheduled. Looking at the postage stamps all over the envelope he wondered what story the notebook could have told if it had written its own pages. He couldn’t even read the countries on the stamps let alone find them on the map.

Reaching for the jar of 7 pens that were always on his kitchen counter, he pulled out the fifth pen. It was easy to find because it had a large red 5 on the end cap. He had used #4 yesterday. It was Friday and so the fifth day. He had always thought calling Sunday the first day of the week nonsense. Nothing started on Sunday. It was a day of rest, the last day before his work week began. He used pen #7 on that day.

As he clicked the pen to write his name on the upper right side of the first page of the notebook, the pen end shattered in his hand. The ink tube shot across the kitchen counter, propelled by the sudden release of the internal spring.

John looked down in bewilderment at the carnage in his smooth hand. As he did so the notebook’s torn package in the trashcan beside him caught his eye. John could just see something sticking out of its opening. Before he could stifle the impulse, he reached down and pulled it out. It was a shiny black pen. The surface of the pen perfectly matched the surface of the notebook. They both looked and felt like the richest, blackest satin. John ran a fingertip gently along the cylinder's length.

It was warm. How odd. Well, he didn’t use unknown, alien pens, no matter how comfortable they seemed to be. He reached for #6, his soul wrinkling a little because the number was not right for the day. He clicked to open it and the click plunger-thingie snapped in half. He tried to put its writing end down to write with anyway, but it just shucked back up into the pen’s body with nothing to keep it down. In disgust, he gently put it neatly beside pen corpse #5. He looked at the new pen, then looked at his pen jar minus 2.

Should he risk it? Two had already broken.

What would he use tomorrow?

He would have to go to the store and get a new pack of seven. Looking with regret at the numbers 1-4 so beautifully written on the pens, he picked up #7, watching it like one might watch the thin ice of a lake one was standing on.

He clicked it open and put it to the Moleskine’s first page. When it didn’t spontaneously combust or explode in his hand, he let out the breath he didn’t know he was holding, and started to write his name.

Nothing. No ink. Shaking the pen, he tried a second time. Nada. He scribbled a tight swirl on the corner of the sticky notepad beside the pen jar. Again, nothing.

Giving up, he put #7 down by its broken comrades. He just couldn’t risk any more of them. Picking up the foreign pen, he looked at it as if his future were in the balance of it’s ergonomic design. Gingerly, he looked for its mechanism. Finally, he found a little black button near the end and pressed...maybe?

Click. Okay!

Pushing the angst of the pens aside, John wrote his name and contact information in the notebook. He paused to just stare at the clean white sheet, decorated faintly with blue lines.

What was on his mental list of things he had to do for tomorrow? Oh!

#1 Plant saplings-- front yard.

#2 Call doctor--abdominal nausea test results

#3 Deposit $20 insurance refund check

Looking at the 3rd item on the list, he pulled his wallet out and grabbed his phone knowing it would be the easiest to complete. He really hadn’t needed to write #3 down. Mobile deposits made going to the bank superfluous. It was fun to be able to mark things off the list, though, making life somehow more neat and tidy.

John went into his bank app and quickly took the check’s pictures, plugged in the correct amount of $20 to deposit, and set the check aside.

Startled, John jerked at the screech of tires in the street near his house. Whirling around he upended the vase of daisies near him, causing the flowers to topple and splatter water all over the counter. He paused momentarily to wipe at the wetness on his new notebook’s first page, before going to the window.

In shock he stared at the lumber truck twisted sideways, blocking the main road. Rough hewn tree trunks spilled over the side of the truck, and had embedded themselves to point thin treetop-end down, into the dirt of his yard. Vertically, they jutted out of the ground like sentinels on guard, evenly spaced.

Like they had been planted.

He didn’t know how much he could help, so was relieved when the truck driver waved him back into his house due to the danger of more trees sliding off. John breathed a sigh of relief, grateful his car was in his garage today instead of parked out on the road like he sometimes left it after getting home from work.

Back in his kitchen, he tried to remember what he was doing. The list!

Staring at the list, he marked off, #1. He grimaced a little at the “saplings” “planted” in his yard. Oh well.

His belly rumbled, reminding him he had yet to make dinner. His appetite had been off lately, so the fact that he was hungry and not nauseous was a pleasant change. Getting up to make his dinner, the ringing phone interrupted his walk to the fridge.

“Hello, John here.”

“Yes, John”…the words were said in a slightly hesitant tone from the man on the other end of the line. “This is Doctor Benjamin, the Abdominal Specialist. You had an appointment with me the other day. I am calling to follow up with you about...your symptoms.” Again, John wondered at the pauses, heavier now in the other man’s voice.

“Oh! Thank you, Doctor Benjamin, I was just about to call you. I didn’t know if you would still be in the office or not. What is your opinion concerning my symptoms?”

“Yeeesss, as to that...John, I know in this day and age, people make decisions to be whatever gender they feel led to be, and that is fine. However, it would have been helpful knowing that you have chosen to be ‘Male’.

John sucked in his breath in surprise and confusion and choked on his own air.

The Doctor continued, despite John’s audible choking sounds. “Your abdominal nausea would have been more easily explained if you had just told your General Practitioner that you are actually ‘Female’. You really didn’t need to come to an Abdominal Specialist just to find out you are pregnant.”

“Wait! Whaaaat?” John’s voice went up an octave higher, sounding like the woman the doctor accused him of being. “No! NOoo! There must be some mistake! I’m a man! I’ve always been a man! I can’t be pregnant.” His voice, hoarse from shock, tapered off.

“You are more than welcome to get a second opinion.” the doctor said with sympathy in his voice, “but it is just past 6pm on Friday, and so I must let you go. Have a good weekend...and congratulations on your coming bundle of joy.”

John stared at the phone in horror.

Gently, he placed his phone beside the broken pens and stared down at the notebook. Not being able to help himself, he picked up the alien pen and slowly put a mark through #2 Call doctor: abdominal pain test results. Carefully placing the pen back down on the counter, he stared unseeing at the list. Faintly, beside the word “results”, John noticed through his brain fog that the water mark from the spilled daisies vaguely resembled a fetus. It even had little finger and toe buds. His charts must have gotten switched around with someone else’s.

Wonderful.

Taking a deep breath, John pushed himself up from the counter. Food. Now.

Before the soup had finished heating up on the stove, John had begun to calm down and was starting to see the humor in the conversation with the doctor. Bending over to pull the ladle out from the cabinet, he was startled again by a very loud pounding on his front door. Jerking upright, he rapped his head on the open cabinet door.

John yelped and held his head while he shuffled to his front door. Through his haze of pain he could just make out “Open up! It’s the police!”

“Yes, officer!” John said, tiredly while opening the door.

Once the door was open, John saw three police officers standing before him, crowding his doorway. The heavy-set one in the middle spoke up, saying, “Are you John Hastings?”

“Well...yes…” John said hesitantly. How would they know his name?

“You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to…”. Suddenly, John was spun around by the officer speaking, he could feel the handcuffs snap around his wrists.

“Woah! Wait, this isn’t about the tree wreck? What is going on?!” Wide-eyed, John tried to look over his shoulder but winced when he jerked his head too far.

Incomprehensibly, he looked from one hard face to the other.

The heavy-set police officer was still reading him his rights but he heard the officer to his left say over his partner’s droning, “$20,000 was stolen from AllState Insurance through your mobile phone app and was deposited into your bank account a little while ago. Congratulations, you’ve just been caught.”

John sank to his knees, in a semi-faint. What on earth was going on today? His usually placid world was turning inside out, upside down. First his pens malfunctioned, forcing him to use the new, unwanted pen. Then, the trunks planted themselves in his yard, then the doctor switcheroo with his symptoms...now this!

The snapshots of all those events played in slow motion through his mind as the police officer roughly picked him up off the floor. The pen, the trees, the watermark on the notebook, the deposit...the pen….

The pen.

Sputtering, John said, “It’s the Notebook! The embedded trees instead of the saplings, the fetus watermark next to my abdominal symptoms, now the $20,000 instead of $20! It all makes sense! It must be the pen. All mine had broken, you see, and it came with the notebook. I had to use it! It caused all this. Let me just show you!” John swiveled his head side to side, his eyes too wide on his face.

The officers continued to lead him out the door to the waiting police car, making a wide detour around the spilled trunks still jutting out of the yard.

“What fine sentinels, you make!” John yelled at the row of silent trunks still standing guard along his yard edge. “Thanks for nothing, stupid wood!”

John’s hysteria teetered over the edge when he saw the deputy still holding his gun, widen his eyes, and mutter. “Ooooh, we’ve got a crazy one today, don’t we?”

As they led John still sputtering about the pen and the new Moleskine Notebook to the cop car, he could hear the other deputy saying behind him to the third cop, while they both holstered their guns, “Did he honestly think we wouldn’t be able to trace the computer trail back to his home? Sheesh. Some people...At least guys like him make our job easier at times.”