Lineage(57)

The computer screen before him lit up with a new Word document, the whiteness of the page blinding in the storm’s dusk beyond. He focused his thoughts until they became a laser within his mind. The familiar feeling of the story’s path opening before him was overwhelming. The plot began to unroll like a carpet before his character’s feet, and details that had been fuzzy only days ago were now sharper than the edge of a razor.

Lance breathed in, set his fingers on the keyboard, and began to let the world inside him flow onto the page.



It was six in the evening when he paused long enough to glance at the clock in the kitchen. The storm had raged over and around the house like something alive yearning to pry its way inside. Light rain still fell, the drops from the darkened sky rippling the face of Superior in all directions.

Lance arched his back and was rewarded with several muffled emanations from his aching spine. There were two chapters and twenty-two pages of words before him on the screen. Not bad, he thought, as his stomach issued a gurgle of hunger and his bladder felt close to tearing. His own sensations were normally background noise when his writing flowed well. He recalled different occasions in the past when trying to finish a novel, the ending rushing up to him, the call of nature and his thirst the only things that could divert him from his keyboard for a few moments.

His recent session had been a new level as far as immersion in the story was concerned. He had never felt so close to a character, nor had the plot been so clear before. His nerves thrummed with excitement even after nearly six hours of work, and the compulsion to continue called to him above the complaints of his body.

Reluctantly he saved the draft, hesitating when the request to name the document appeared. He typed two words and closed the page, exhaling a sigh of contentment between his lips.

He stretched again, and went to relieve himself in the downstairs bathroom. When he finished, the hunger pangs that had been slight earlier took on a life of their own and commanded food immediately. He rummaged through the refrigerator until he had cobbled a meal together from leftovers. He ate in silence at the small counter in the kitchen, listening to the patter of rain on the nearby alcove and relishing the sense of creation that washed over him in warm waves. The story was good. Better than he had guessed it would be. He now felt no guilt in asking Andy to give him space and time to produce something grand. He felt triumphant—his talent hadn’t died two months ago as he had feared. It lived and breathed in the pages he had written that afternoon.

After finishing his overdue dinner and cleaning the few dishes scattered on the counter, a crushing fatigue draped across his shoulders and all his thoughts began to revolve around the bed waiting upstairs.

His cell phone chirped at him from his nightstand above, its electronic cry like a bird being crushed beneath a heavy boot. Lance didn’t hurry to answer it. Instead, he slowed, hoping whoever wanted to speak with him would give up and try again in the morning.

Without bothering to brush his teeth, he walked into the room near the top of the stairs and undressed. The sheets on the bed were cool and welcoming as he slid beneath them. A peace he hadn’t felt in weeks fell over him, and as he slipped into dreams of his story, his characters started speaking, their words comforting like the sounds of home.



He walked down the stairs of the house. He could see the living area below him. It looked very wrong for some reason. The floors were no longer darkly stained oak. Instead, they were burgundy.

Lance stepped on each stair, each new tread feeling strangely more wet than the last. He could see someone sitting on a chair facing the lake. A storm was blowing across the water toward the house; spires of lightning and twisting clouds suggested high winds, but the house neither creaked nor groaned with the assault of the tempest outside. He could see the man was holding his face in his hands, as if he were abhorred at the sight of the approaching storm. Lance could imagine the man’s face frozen in a soundless exclamation, a dark O where his mouth should be.

“Who are you?” Lance heard himself ask.

The man didn’t turn toward him or even flinch at the sound of his voice. Lance wondered if he was homeless and had somehow wandered inside to escape the rain that would surely be falling soon.

The man’s arms jumped and his head twitched oddly. Lance stopped at the base of the stairs and stared at the now-jerking man before him. He suddenly realized that the man was naked, and Lance could see sinuous muscle ripple and writhe below the pale surface of the man’s skin as his arms worked back and forth, driving the hands at their ends in work Lance couldn’t see.