Welcome to my first free short story. This is a story about Writer. Hope you enjoy.

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There he was, yet again, sitting on the roof of the building next to her apartment. Writer was standing on her tiny balcony on the fifth floor which made her eye level with him. She could clearly see that he was just grinning at her and she couldn’t help but notice that he was kind of handsome with his cheeky grin, bedroom eyes, and slim physique. Even his slick, unwashed, long black hair contrasting his pale skin didn’t detract from his alluring qualities.
“You can come visit me, if you want?” she asked him, secretly desperate for him to jump the tiny gap between the roof and her balcony.
“No, I am rather comfortable right here,” he said with a posh English accent, his voice deep and rich like an ocean made of chocolate.
Writer shrugged, but her heart was in pieces, rejected yet again by the only one that she truly needed in her life. Since there was nothing else that she could do, she went back inside. She was in her tiny writer’s room which was really just a guest bedroom in her tiny apartment. She looked out of the balcony door again. He’s been out there for weeks, and no matter how many times she asked him to visit her, he’s declined – especially when she felt she needed him the most.
Instead of sitting down in front of her computer with the taunting blank page, she gave up for the day, wondering why she should even try anymore.

The Realization

His refusal to visit her caused her to think about him whenever she ironed, or vacuumed, or even when she went to work. He was all kinds of crazy and she felt that she needed him in her life. But no matter how many times she has invited him in, even offering him cookies, he’d only ever show up on the roof across from her writing room whenever it suited him and clearly had no plans to change his preferred seat. She constantly thought about the way he looked at her – half-mocking, half-enticing, fully smug. Writer tried to think of something, anything, to lure him into her home, but she realised that nothing was going to work. And one day, on her way home from the daily grind, she realised that she was a fool. Why go through the same rituals when they clearly didn’t work? She decided that it was time to make a change.

She went to her writing room as soon as she got home, ready to put her plan into action. Step one: Avoid eye contact. Step two: Open the balcony door – just in case. Step three: Switch on the computer and write, write, write. For the next few hours, she wrote the most amazing stinker of a story – but that didn’t matter. She wrote until she couldn’t keep her eyes open anymore and called it a night. As she closed the balcony door, she snuck in a very quick glance in his direction and wondered if she was imagining that he was sitting closer to the edge of the roof. She felt a tiny bit of hope trying to creep into her heart and she vowed right then that she would see her plan through. The next morning, she woke up two hours before her usual waking time and immediately went back to writing. One quick look out of the balcony door told her that he was at least normal enough to not be on a rooftop at 4am.

Meeting Someone New

At work that day, Writer met a very interesting woman. She wore enough jewels to make a queen green with envy and was an easy mark for anyone who could see her. However, Writer noticed in her mannerisms that she was not born into money and only recently acquired great wealth. Writer introduced herself before the woman had a chance to leave.
“Is this really it?” the woman said, waving a lax hand over the general vicinity of Writer.
“Yep! Don’t worry, I’m sure we’ll get along well. What is your name?”
The woman looked like she was politely ignoring a strong odour but answered nonetheless.
“Alice.”
“Hi Alice, please sit down. I have a few questions to ask you.”
Alice took a chair in the corner of the room and Writer periodically asked her some rather personal questions. When it was time for Writer to leave, Alice followed her back to her flat.
“You can’t really expect me to stay in this dump,” the woman sneered.
“It won’t be long, I promise,” Writer said, and led the way to her flat on the fifth floor.

Later that same night, Writer shut down her computer and moved over to close the balcony door. To her surprise, he was sitting there in the exact spot that he was sitting in the night before. She didn’t imagine it – he really was sitting closer than he’d ever been. The citylights made it impossible to miss him waving. She said a cheery goodnight before closing the balcony door.

The New Ritual

Writer kept this up for several weeks. She was at her desk for two hours in the early morning, and she went back to her desk after work until it was time for her to go to sleep. She declined phone calls from friends and family but sent them texts during the day to keep them from checking her flat for a dead body.
Every evening, she saw him sitting on the opposite roof, sometimes grinning, sometimes serious, always intrigued.

She loved weekends because silly old work didn’t get in the way of writing. One Saturday afternoon, when she was deep in thought and trying to come up with the most shocking way for her main character to find the body of a loved one, she heard a noise behind her. She spun around expecting a burglar, and couldn’t believe her eyes when she saw who it was. His black hair was greasy, but flowing. His eyes were emerald green, his smirk was intoxicating, and he was standing right there in her writing room.
“The door was open,” he said as a way of excusing himself in.
“I like it open,” she said, trying to look as nonchalant as she could possibly be. “Fresh air helps me think.”
She swiveled her chair back to write, her heart pounding in her ears, but she was interrupted again when Alice walked into the room, clearly crying, but shakily clutching a plate of cookies.
“Ooh,” Writer said and took one.
“I begged you to save his life… I pleaded. We had an entire discussion about why he is important to me and how empty and shattered my life would be without him. Why are you still doing this?”
Writer shot a glance at him to see what he made of this scene, and was pleased when he had raised eyebrows at Alice’s existence.
He looked at Writer with a new expression on his face. “Is this really a-”
“Yes, it is. Just a moment, please…” Writer turned back to Alice. “I never said this was going to be easy. But it’s the only way this story should go.”
Alice shook her head. Denial. “Please reconsider. Please. He’s all I have. I… I’ll make you dinner, OK?” She put on a brave face and left the room with renewed hope, thinking that cooking dinner would swing things in her favour.
Instead of turning to him after Alice left, Writer turned back to the screen and started typing away, muttering, “Glorious. Absolutely glorious.”
“She seemed rather upset,” he said behind her.
“She should be. And… there. I just killed the only one she ever loved.”
“Is that what you’re working on right now?” He made himself comfortable on a chair she placed in her room for him all those months ago.
“Uh-huh,” she confirmed, first checking a bit of research she had on bullet exit wounds.
“You expect me to believe that you came up with Alice all by yourself?”
In an instant, Writer spun around and faced him. Months of repressed frustration with him boiled over in an instant.
“Yes, Inspiration, I came up with Alice all by myself! I realised that I was an absolute fool waiting for you to come in and help me with my stories. So I just got to writing one day and she showed up when I was at work-”
“You can’t do this without me,” he interrupted softly, smirking at her fury.
Writer’s jaw dropped.
“Clearly, I can. I’m not called Writer because of eccentric parents. I’m called Writer because I choose to be one. I don’t need you for this anymore. You can leave.”
Writer swiveled back and kept writing but she was a little disappointed when he did as she asked. Little did she know that Inspiration looked at her like a proud parent before leaving the balcony door.

Writer Writes

Writer kept at it and was secretly glad the next time that Inspiration came back into her writing room and she was especially ecstatic when she realised that it wasn’t just going to be once-off. He didn’t always visit her, but when he did, he showed up in her writing room or even her place of work to tell her a small snippet of a story. She was delighted when he even told her some interesting gossip about her fictional world whenever she was traveling or doing chores. He never stayed for too long, though, and she knew better than to rely on his infrequent visits. She learned a valuable lesson. Writers will write – be it with or without him.

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More to come! This website is still new (at the time of this writing) so be sure to sign up for updates here. This story was inspired (ironically so) by a quote from Stephen King:

“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.”

Image Credit: Clem Around The Corner on Unsplash