| Humor Fiction posted January 20, 2024 |
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The Block
The Realm of Nonexistence
by John Ciarmello
Allow me to introduce myself. My name is John Ciarmello or JohnC. Some of you may know me, and most of you may not. I’m an okay writer who’s developed in some areas of the craft and moderately to less than effective in others. As a writer, I understand my physical presence in any piece of fiction is highly unorthodox. But I’m at war.
You see, the characters you’re about to birth, turning and kicking at your cranial cavity, have no idea who they’ll become and what experiences they’ll encounter. If they allow you to birth them at all, it will be against their will.
My role in this piece of fiction is physically penetrating the realm of nonexistence. The Block, as the “nonexistent,” so purposefully call it. It’s a contentious world of contrived personalities weaponized against the involuntary servitude of a writer’s muse. Is this a place where life begins solely if conjured by the stroke of one’s pen or the fingering of one’s keyboard? I believe it is not!
It’s a world left abandoned by the goddesses of the Muses, who claim no responsibility for the art of fiction writing. Therefore, it lies within the sculptural shadows of one’s imagination. The two-sided, one-dimensional spolling head. The floating appendages and discarded words of unused and underdeveloped characters, past and present. They’re all poised to block the door to their precious realm of nonexistence.
I’m here standing before that door, ready to go to battle. I’m armed with sharp ideas, holstered points, and in-depth advancement plans. Confident I can beat them, I ram the door of nonexistence with my quill, and it falls ajar. I shoulder the door open and stop, gazing curiously at a child. Thus, the war begins. He appears to be a child of no real character, plain-faced and motionless. He stood before me, surrounded by parentheses, armed with a period question mark strapped over his shoulder and an exclamation point sheathed at his side. It caught me off guard as I didn’t expect a child to be so well-armed. I lunged at him, pulled the exclamation point from his sheath, and took out the parentheses with a single blow. The boy stared directly at me, motionless and expressionless.
Frustrated at his lack of retaliation, I slammed my newly retrieved exclamation point into the ground beside me. I yanked my quill from its holder, and with one heated swipe, I erased a gash across the boy’s narrow chest. It only took a few seconds before he fell to pieces before me. I’m not one for erasing children in the heat of war, but he served no real purpose.
I moved across the boy's pink, gritty remains and covered my head with a wastepaper basket as crumpled sheets of paper rained from the sky. I knew they couldn’t kill me, but it was maddening. I'd never return if driven back through the door of nonexistence now. I had to keep my head. It was do-or-die!
I figured the only way out was a trick I learned from years of fighting this same war. I had to get a complete thought on a piece of paper. With the white stinging balls falling around me, I changed tactics and playfully jumped into the deep pile on the floor. I tore open a crumpled ball of paper, pulled out my holstered quill, and what came to mind was this:
‘Progg family characters from Inkwell to paper without them knowing. I’m hovering above their every move. Their fate, good or bad, is in my hands! Am I GOD? Nah, I’m just a guy with a pen.’
At that moment, I lifted my head and saw the soldiers of erroneous prose standing before me!” They threw their shoulders back with evil grins and licked their marginal cuts. I knew then that the shit might hit the “fan,” providing I had a fan.
Unsurprisingly, the soldiers retrieved the crumpled balls of paper from the ground and slung them at me with unbelievable force. The balls of paper drove me backward ever closer to the door of nonexistence where I had entered. In desperation, I opened another crumpled sheet of paper and began to write:
‘It was like any other Christmas Eve in the Progg household. The single thing out of place was an ornate Christmas ball the family cat had swatted off the tree and paw-volleyed across the room in the wee hours of Christmas morning. Silent Night played at low volume continuously so Santa would have a tune to listen to while he placed the presents under the tree.’ I recrumpled the penciled thought, and as if I held a hand grenade, I heaved the ball of paper into the group of unsuspecting soldiers.
As suddenly as the soldiers of erroneous appeared, they were gone. I took advantage of my victory to advance deep into enemy territory, and to my surprise, things were quiet.
I wasted an hour or two pondering what part of my knowledge of the craft of writing beat them. As I read what I wrote off the crumpled paper, I realized that I had a new set of problems on my horizon, and they didn’t take long to rear their superfluous heads.
I recognized them instantly, the dreaded purple prose pygmies. They crawled over the mountainous terrain on all fours and tumbled elegantly onto the white sheets of ground cover before me. There were hundreds of them. They were all quite beautiful, elaborate, and ornate. I was hypnotized at first glance, but I couldn't let them fool me. I knew they were vicious predators.
I slipped away unseen and ambushed them from behind. Are they clever? Yes, but they’re not super versatile. Anyway, I was armed but with ancient weaponry. Whiteout, effective nonetheless, was one of many I had stored in my top pocket arsenal. I didn’t waste a second aiming the goopy brush and covering them one by one. Believe it or not, I’m well-trained in whiteout warfare. So, I wasted a few more hours waiting for the whiteout to dry to decipher if any of the purple prose pygmies or PPPs had survived my wrath.
I thought the war was over at that point! I thought I had penetrated the Block of the nonexistent. So, I dropped my ellipses belt and fell to my knees with my quill poised. I began to write:
Bly woke and nudged his older sister. “Shanny, Shanny wake up!”
“What, Bly! This is the fifth time you’ve woken me. Are you gonna ask me the same question?”
“Well, I was going to, but…”
Shanny tossed her covers to one side and sat on the edge of her bed. “For heaven’s sake, Bly. Yes, Silent Night is still playing. Would it help if I went downstairs and turned the player up so you could hear it?”
“Would you do that, Shanny, would you? I just want to make sure Santa isn’t disappointed.”
Then, it was as though someone whacked me in the face with a Christmas frying pan in the middle of January. Christmas is over, Idiot! My head echoed inside like an empty warehouse. I had nothing again! Nothing I tell you! Blocked, Blank, Notta! Zilch! Sorry about the drama. I’ll fight that in the next war.
As I shook the rattling noises from my brain, something loomed high in the day sky I hadn’t encountered before. It’s no wonder I lost my train of thought. Indoubt Mountain towered before me with its penciled peaks and toxic lead dust spewing from its heaving crust. The pelting graphite left hundreds of tiny prick marks scattered on the white-canvased backdrop below.
The (what-ifs), the (I-can’t-say-that-yets), the (too-soons) coupled with the (not-soon-enoughs), all boggled my thoughts within the choking dust of the erupting Indoubt Mountain. I finally fell to the ground, exhausted, defeated, and beaten.
I managed to muster enough strength to roll over and onto my knees. I can’t allow any of these nonexistent thugs to capture me, I thought. I have too many ideas and too much top-secret intel. I had to end it and end it now. I reached behind my ellipses belt and pulled six sample bourbon bottles from the amo rings. I crowded the bottles between my hands and raised them to the fiction goddesses. “You can’t have me! I won’t be your play toy!” I screamed.
That said, I doused myself with the bourbon and struck a match. As the match sizzled to a smoldering puff of smoke against my bourbon-soddened leg, it occurred to me that bourbon was the least flammable of all alcohol. “Idiot!” I pounded the ground. “You win! Please take what you will from me, you nonexistent bastards, but I beg you, leave me with one story. Please, just one complete story!”
It had to be seconds after my request that a blunderous voice echoed between my ears. A giant rose high above Indoubt Mountain.
“No! I can’t take anymore! I have no fight left in me, giant!”
To my surprise, he smiled, tossed a manuscript from his towering palms, and it fell before me. “Thank you, giant! Thank you for this! What’s your name? The least I can do is call you by name.” The giant pointed to the story he had tossed to me.
“My name is on the cover sheet.” The giant’s voice bellowed, shaking the empty battleground to its core. I slowly hung my legs over the mattress-soft cliff ledge and read his name. I read it again to ensure it was right. Then again, before the giant's rumbling chuckle released me from the process. I cocked my head and peered up at him with one eye. Your name is Ed It?
After the Ed It dust had settled, I still wasn’t sure if I’d beaten the Block. However, I did gain a new respect for the craft I love. I realized, this time, that the war I fight, the one we all fight, isn’t a war at all. It’s a challenge to push forward against all odds and strive to etch out our muse beyond the door of nonexistence.
I’m sure this isn’t The End.
Allow me to introduce myself. My name is John Ciarmello or JohnC. Some of you may know me, and most of you may not. I’m an okay writer who’s developed in some areas of the craft and moderately to less than effective in others. As a writer, I understand my physical presence in any piece of fiction is highly unorthodox. But I’m at war.
You see, the characters you’re about to birth, turning and kicking at your cranial cavity, have no idea who they’ll become and what experiences they’ll encounter. If they allow you to birth them at all, it will be against their will.
My role in this piece of fiction is physically penetrating the realm of nonexistence. The Block, as the “nonexistent,” so purposefully call it. It’s a contentious world of contrived personalities weaponized against the involuntary servitude of a writer’s muse. Is this a place where life begins solely if conjured by the stroke of one’s pen or the fingering of one’s keyboard? I believe it is not!
It’s a world left abandoned by the goddesses of the Muses, who claim no responsibility for the art of fiction writing. Therefore, it lies within the sculptural shadows of one’s imagination. The two-sided, one-dimensional spolling head. The floating appendages and discarded words of unused and underdeveloped characters, past and present. They’re all poised to block the door to their precious realm of nonexistence.
I’m here standing before that door, ready to go to battle. I’m armed with sharp ideas, holstered points, and in-depth advancement plans. Confident I can beat them, I ram the door of nonexistence with my quill, and it falls ajar. I shoulder the door open and stop, gazing curiously at a child. Thus, the war begins. He appears to be a child of no real character, plain-faced and motionless. He stood before me, surrounded by parentheses, armed with a period question mark strapped over his shoulder and an exclamation point sheathed at his side. It caught me off guard as I didn’t expect a child to be so well-armed. I lunged at him, pulled the exclamation point from his sheath, and took out the parentheses with a single blow. The boy stared directly at me, motionless and expressionless.
Frustrated at his lack of retaliation, I slammed my newly retrieved exclamation point into the ground beside me. I yanked my quill from its holder, and with one heated swipe, I erased a gash across the boy’s narrow chest. It only took a few seconds before he fell to pieces before me. I’m not one for erasing children in the heat of war, but he served no real purpose.
I moved across the boy's pink, gritty remains and covered my head with a wastepaper basket as crumpled sheets of paper rained from the sky. I knew they couldn’t kill me, but it was maddening. I'd never return if driven back through the door of nonexistence now. I had to keep my head. It was do-or-die!
I figured the only way out was a trick I learned from years of fighting this same war. I had to get a complete thought on a piece of paper. With the white stinging balls falling around me, I changed tactics and playfully jumped into the deep pile on the floor. I tore open a crumpled ball of paper, pulled out my holstered quill, and what came to mind was this:
‘Progg family characters from Inkwell to paper without them knowing. I’m hovering above their every move. Their fate, good or bad, is in my hands! Am I GOD? Nah, I’m just a guy with a pen.’
At that moment, I lifted my head and saw the soldiers of erroneous prose standing before me!” They threw their shoulders back with evil grins and licked their marginal cuts. I knew then that the shit might hit the “fan,” providing I had a fan.
Unsurprisingly, the soldiers retrieved the crumpled balls of paper from the ground and slung them at me with unbelievable force. The balls of paper drove me backward ever closer to the door of nonexistence where I had entered. In desperation, I opened another crumpled sheet of paper and began to write:
‘It was like any other Christmas Eve in the Progg household. The single thing out of place was an ornate Christmas ball the family cat had swatted off the tree and paw-volleyed across the room in the wee hours of Christmas morning. Silent Night played at low volume continuously so Santa would have a tune to listen to while he placed the presents under the tree.’ I recrumpled the penciled thought, and as if I held a hand grenade, I heaved the ball of paper into the group of unsuspecting soldiers.
As suddenly as the soldiers of erroneous appeared, they were gone. I took advantage of my victory to advance deep into enemy territory, and to my surprise, things were quiet.
I wasted an hour or two pondering what part of my knowledge of the craft of writing beat them. As I read what I wrote off the crumpled paper, I realized that I had a new set of problems on my horizon, and they didn’t take long to rear their superfluous heads.
I recognized them instantly, the dreaded purple prose pygmies. They crawled over the mountainous terrain on all fours and tumbled elegantly onto the white sheets of ground cover before me. There were hundreds of them. They were all quite beautiful, elaborate, and ornate. I was hypnotized at first glance, but I couldn't let them fool me. I knew they were vicious predators.
I slipped away unseen and ambushed them from behind. Are they clever? Yes, but they’re not super versatile. Anyway, I was armed but with ancient weaponry. Whiteout, effective nonetheless, was one of many I had stored in my top pocket arsenal. I didn’t waste a second aiming the goopy brush and covering them one by one. Believe it or not, I’m well-trained in whiteout warfare. So, I wasted a few more hours waiting for the whiteout to dry to decipher if any of the purple prose pygmies or PPPs had survived my wrath.
I thought the war was over at that point! I thought I had penetrated the Block of the nonexistent. So, I dropped my ellipses belt and fell to my knees with my quill poised. I began to write:
Bly woke and nudged his older sister. “Shanny, Shanny wake up!”
“What, Bly! This is the fifth time you’ve woken me. Are you gonna ask me the same question?”
“Well, I was going to, but…”
Shanny tossed her covers to one side and sat on the edge of her bed. “For heaven’s sake, Bly. Yes, Silent Night is still playing. Would it help if I went downstairs and turned the player up so you could hear it?”
“Would you do that, Shanny, would you? I just want to make sure Santa isn’t disappointed.”
Then, it was as though someone whacked me in the face with a Christmas frying pan in the middle of January. Christmas is over, Idiot! My head echoed inside like an empty warehouse. I had nothing again! Nothing I tell you! Blocked, Blank, Notta! Zilch! Sorry about the drama. I’ll fight that in the next war.
As I shook the rattling noises from my brain, something loomed high in the day sky I hadn’t encountered before. It’s no wonder I lost my train of thought. Indoubt Mountain towered before me with its penciled peaks and toxic lead dust spewing from its heaving crust. The pelting graphite left hundreds of tiny prick marks scattered on the white-canvased backdrop below.
The (what-ifs), the (I-can’t-say-that-yets), the (too-soons) coupled with the (not-soon-enoughs), all boggled my thoughts within the choking dust of the erupting Indoubt Mountain. I finally fell to the ground, exhausted, defeated, and beaten.
I managed to muster enough strength to roll over and onto my knees. I can’t allow any of these nonexistent thugs to capture me, I thought. I have too many ideas and too much top-secret intel. I had to end it and end it now. I reached behind my ellipses belt and pulled six sample bourbon bottles from the amo rings. I crowded the bottles between my hands and raised them to the fiction goddesses. “You can’t have me! I won’t be your play toy!” I screamed.
That said, I doused myself with the bourbon and struck a match. As the match sizzled to a smoldering puff of smoke against my bourbon-soddened leg, it occurred to me that bourbon was the least flammable of all alcohol. “Idiot!” I pounded the ground. “You win! Please take what you will from me, you nonexistent bastards, but I beg you, leave me with one story. Please, just one complete story!”
It had to be seconds after my request that a blunderous voice echoed between my ears. A giant rose high above Indoubt Mountain.
“No! I can’t take anymore! I have no fight left in me, giant!”
To my surprise, he smiled, tossed a manuscript from his towering palms, and it fell before me. “Thank you, giant! Thank you for this! What’s your name? The least I can do is call you by name.” The giant pointed to the story he had tossed to me.
“My name is on the cover sheet.” The giant’s voice bellowed, shaking the empty battleground to its core. I slowly hung my legs over the mattress-soft cliff ledge and read his name. I read it again to ensure it was right. Then again, before the giant's rumbling chuckle released me from the process. I cocked my head and peered up at him with one eye. Your name is Ed It?
After the Ed It dust had settled, I still wasn’t sure if I’d beaten the Block. However, I did gain a new respect for the craft I love. I realized, this time, that the war I fight, the one we all fight, isn’t a war at all. It’s a challenge to push forward against all odds and strive to etch out our muse beyond the door of nonexistence.
I’m sure this isn’t The End.
 Recognized |
I've had chronic, everyday writer's block the past few weeks, and stress levels are through the roof. My experience tells me to write anything that comes to mind. So this is a story I started. The raw outtakes and all are incorporated into a war of frustration I needed to wage against the dreaded BLOCK! It was fought in the realm of nonexistence-January of 2024.
I'm not sure I won! Thanks for reading this!
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and 2 member cents. I'm not sure I won! Thanks for reading this!
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© Copyright 2024. John Ciarmello All rights reserved.
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