3 Minute Fiction

"Honor" is the first story read. I liked it because it painted a picture and it really showed the emotion of the narrator. I told who the characters were without actually saying it. The next one i read was "The Gym", I liked this story because it showed the strength of friendship between the two men and it allows you to put faces and names to them allowing your imagination to determine who the characters were. The last story that I read was "Good Luck, You Say", I liked it because it was about two people that had never met but they were associated by more than just a car crash. It wasn't my favorite but it was still captivating.

The Manuscript

The Manuscript

            The house was empty and the lights were off. The darkness gave a cold feeling that grabbed you. It was as if you would freeze as soon as you stepped inside.  In the back a light was seen, let out by the tiny crack between the ground and the door. Behind the door a man sits at his typewriter searching his mind for a way to finish his book. All he sees is a dark expanse full of nothing. His frustration boils and he takes the typewriter and throws it against the wall.

            “Dammit,” he screamed.

            He had been trying to continue his story for months. The company that published his first book had him sign a contract for three books in five years. He had completed one within the first year and it had seen more success than ever could have imagined. But it had been three years since he had started this story and it was going nowhere. He had a good beginning but midway through he just drew a blank. Everything he tried didn’t work. It all seemed forced, and unnatural. All his creativity had left him. His book sat there all alone on his desk waiting for a new page to come along and save it from the mountain of dust collecting upon its weak foundation. He had experienced writers block before, but this was no ordinary writers block. This was something more.

            “Hello?” He said as he answered the phone.

            “Hey, Mark,” a familiar voice answered.

            “Oh hey how’s it going?”

            “Good, but I need that manuscript by Monday.”

“Ok, ill see what I can do…. Ok…. You too… all right by then.”

            Mark knew that they wouldn’t accept an unfinished book so he had to finish the entire story in a week. He decided to go for a walk. As he stepped out into the cold stormy night he heard the snow crunch beneath his feet. The sound broke the perfect silence that he needed to think of a way to finish his book.

            Mark had grown up in the same place when he was a child. He never moved and even when he got a job he decided to stay in the same town. But when he got that major book contract he needed to move to the city close to the building that housed the publishing company. When he was a kid he always wrote short stories and always wanted to become a writer. He thought he could write a story in a heartbeat. And he probably could have, but now he had exhausted all his options and all he needed was to think.

            He was thinking about everything that he had done and everything that was going on around the word. Wars, elections, family dinners, and then suddenly he stopped. Screeching to a halt he knew what he had to write. He ran back to his house and slammed the door behind him, and began to type;

Before he was able to get out of the house a man in a military coat came up to his door. He knew he wouldn’t be able to see his family for a while. He had to immediately go to camp. His…

: this was it he was writing furiously. Smoke was rising from the typewriter as his fingers went faster than the speed of light. He knew this would make a great story. It would have even more success than his other book. But it was about the success, he had written a great story and that was what mattered.