You have just about forty days, Melanie. The Publishers are on my neck and I’ve stretched the deadline for you to the last of my abilities. A single hour after the fortieth day from now and the deal is off. We’ve worked too hard to let this opportunity slip past us. Have a manuscript ready by then. Please.
P.S: Maybe go out a little instead of staying locked up in your den. Might do wonders for your inspiration.
Melanie closed her laptop and stared into thin air for a good part of an hour. She didn’t need Steve, her Publicist and friend, to tell her in that wake-up email that she was slacking. She didn’t know how to free herself from the creative block that plagued her. She’d been on a roll when she wrote her first book. The words had flown like water. When Drowning in Blue Seas had become a bestseller, she had been living on the high for weeks.
She felt that it would be easy to write another book. But days flowed into weeks, months and before she knew it, three years had passed. Her publishers had been more than saintly to give her the amount of time they’d given her. And it was sad that she had nothing to deliver.
Absentmindedly, Melanie picked up her notepad and her favourite drink, Lucozade, and walked out of her apartment that afternoon. She didn’t see the possibility of getting inspired on such a bleak day, nevertheless, she trudged on.
Pausing by a creek a bit on the outskirts of town, she sat down beside it and picked a fallen leaf. It was a single leaf in the little creek. It was weirdly shaped and golden brown. Looking around, she saw no other leaf in sight. Where had it come from? Dropping it into the water, she smiled. The leaf was just like her. Spectacularly in its way but very much alone in the vast world around it.
Maybe she should write about it, Melanie thought. Picking up her notepad, she began to pat her pockets frantically. Someone coughed behind her and she turned to see a man sitting on a bench she hadn’t noticed with a book in hand. He said nothing and simply handed her a pen from his breast pocket.
“Thanks,” she said. But the man merely coughed again with his hand still outstretched.
Silently, she took the pen from him, walked up to the other side of the bench and sat down, keeping the lone leaf in view. Closing her eyes to take a deep breath, she stared intently once more at the leaf and began to write.
She let the words flow, in a more personal way than her previous drafts. In a more personal way than she had dared. Beside her, the man coughed for what could have been the seventh time since she’d seen him. Closing her notepad, she turned to him.
“Perhaps you should take water for that.”
When the man didn’t speak, she removed her little Lucozade and held it to him. He gave her distrusting eyes and she groaned. “I got a pen from you, surely you wouldn’t mind collecting something of mine as well.”
I guess the man saw her point as he slowly took the Lucozade, and without inquiring about a straw, tore it open and didn’t stop till he gulped everything down.
“Well, damn,” Melanie chuckled. She laughed even more when she saw a shadow of a smile on his face. But soon after went back to her writing. There were no more coughs and by the time Melanie woke up from the little doze she’d taken, he was gone.
The next day she went back at the exact time she’d gone before and met him there on the bench. She intentionally didn’t bring a pen this time, and when she stretched her hands wordlessly to him, he stretched his too. He handed her a pen and she handed him her little Lucozade juice box. There was a shadow of a smile on his face as he opened it and gulped it like before.
Filled with relentless inspiration and a clear spirit that had been lacking in her, Melanie opened her notepad and gazing at the lone leaf that was still in the spot she’d left it, she began to write, while her wordless companion kept at his reading. A different book this time.
When she went the next day, it was like a routine that had been going on for years. She quickly handed him her Lucozade with a smile and gave him her pen. The writing flowed like a never-ending steam and soon enough, that became the highlight of her day. It was the most unusual relationship. Two wordless fellows by the creek outside of town, lost in their worlds with the only thing binding them being their usual transaction.
On the day after Melanie submitted her manuscript, and that too four days before the deadline, she came without her notepad and met no one. She waited by the creek for hours on end and when with a heavy heart, she’d given up waiting for her wordless companion, she stood up to begin the walk home.
“Given up so soon?” Someone called from a distance away.
Melanie turned at break-neck speed to the direction of the voice. She couldn’t believe it. It was her wordless companion.
“You speak?”
He chuckled and walked up to her. “You didn’t forget your pen this time?”
She gave him a playfully reproachful look. “I see you’re not scaring the beds away this time with your fitful coughs.”
He grinned at her. “Touché.”
Preening, she shrugged. “I try.”
They looked at each other for a few seconds. Wordless companions who’d become friends. He broke it first.
“I’m Baron.”
“Melanie.”
And with that, they burst into a long, mirthful laughter.
“Same time tomorrow?” Melanie asked after a while.
“Sure.”
She began walking away but suddenly called out. “Bring a mouth this time.”
He laughed and called after her. “Bring more of your awful-tasting energy drink.”
Melanie resisted the urge to skip as she made her way to her apartment. Cackling gleefully to herself, she thought. “What if I brought a Ribena instead?”
Thumbnail created with NightCafe AI.
