..:: Written .:. Off ::..

I deserved to be punished for what I did; instead, I drank from the nectar of the gods.

I was asked to produce a piece of flash fiction for a horror blog carnival, and what did I do? I waited until last minute and turned in a half-baked piece of trash. Literary suicide they would call it, if anyone in the industry even knew anything about my blog.

My readers were kind. They left nice comments and didn’t savage me the way those reviewers on Amazon do when their favorite author produces a piece of garbage. Just look at how they crucify Robert Jordan every time he produces a novel! The man can’t sign autographs anymore because his pen keeps falling through the holes in his palms!

My betrayal kept me up all night. I stared at the ceiling, knowing that I had committed the ultimate betrayal of my readers and myself. Thank god that my wife, who slept soundly next to me, didn’t know she was laying next to a fraud.

I had to make amends. I had to make things right with both my readers and myself.

But how?

Then it hit me like a bug falling on my face from the ceiling. I had to write the Greatest Flash Fiction Story Ever Written.

It sounded easy at first, but let me tell you, it took me at least a half hour to come up with the premise, and what a premise it was! My hands were shaking with excitement as they pulsed with raw creative genius. I reached for the journal that I keep by my bed just for these emergencies and found that it was gone! Wait a minute, it wasn’t missing, I remembered that I never got around to buying a bedside journal. Do you see how I sabotage myself?

I leapt out of bed and skinned my forehead on the canopy bar but was undeterred. I had the Greatest Flash Fiction Story Ever Written in my head and nothing would stop me from writing it.

I passed my wife’s office and noticed that her Windows laptop was powered up and ready to go. Yeah right. That was just inviting disaster. I moved onto my room and powered up my MAC; knowing that I was righteous and about to do the work of the gods. I sat down at the keyboard and began to type furiously. The words were spraying out my fingers like a garden hose turned to 10! Every perfect sentence constructed itself into a fine web of mastery waiting to capture the fly of the reader’s imagination. I guided the racecar of my mind around the track of every plot twist. I kept thinking of Sean Connery yelling, “Pound the Keys!” from that stupid movie.

Finally, it was complete, and I collapsed in front of the keyboard.

I awoke to the sound of my wife rustling around my room. She asked me what I was doing at the keyboard and told her about my eruption of creativity. I sat her down in my chair and let her read the words that I had written. Her mouth hung open as she read, and when she got to the end, she began to cry with amazement. She told me that it was the Greatest Piece Of Flash Fiction she had ever read. I tried to hide my smug, knowing look but I couldn’t. I had truly tapped into the ether that of the great writers of mankind had, and produced a thing of wonder!

Or had I? My wife wasn’t really a reader and she certainly wasn’t a writer. Did she have the “know” to decide true greatness? I decided to email the story to my friend who was an English Major in college. Okay, so he was a failed writer and spent more time drinking than studying but at least he was well versed in the Classics, which is what I needed!

I sent my story off and waited. Instead of emailing me back, he called, sobbing. He told me that in all of his years, he had never read anything so magnificent and wondrous. He even admitted to wishing that he wrote it himself. “How could something so perfect be created by man”, he said.

“Only the gods know, my friend,” I replied and hung up.

Satisfied, I sat at my keyboard and copied the story into Word Press. I was about to publish the story, when something occurred to me; why should something so grand be given away for free? It was mine! What if I published it on the Internet and someone stole it? I felt a shudder pass through me. That’s exactly what would happen! Someone out there, some writer, who hadn’t been chosen, would try to pawn off my masterwork as his own. I took a deep breath and went down to my kitchen to get a glass of water, when I came back to my room, I was surprised to find my wife sitting in front of my computer. She told me that she just had to read it again. When she left the room, I noticed something in her hand. Was it one of the portable Key drives? I blinked then panic struck. I had sent it to my friend. My failed writer friend! I couldn’t recall the email since it had already been read so I would have to go to his house and demand that he delete it. I was about to leave when I began to feel uneasy about leaving the story on my PC. I quickly printed out a hard copy and deleted all traces of it from my computer. I even deleted it out of my Sent Items in my email.

I left my house clutching the only copy of the story in one hand and some wooden persuasion in the other. My wife asked where I was going with the bat and I said flatly, “To play baseball.”

My friend was easy enough to persuade (and I didn’t even need to use the bat). He said nothing as I sat in front of his computer to make sure that every trace of the story was gone. I also checked to see if he had mailed it to anyone and even dug into his print queue to make sure that he didn’t print it.
“You never read the story, got it?” I said to him before leaving.

********
I’m sitting in a park, holding the last remaining copy of the Greatest Flash Fiction Story Ever Written. As people pass me by, I know that they know what I have in my hands. And I know that they want it.

But it’s mine, I scream at them in my head, its all mine!

I walk for a bit, holding the paper to my chest when I come upon a group of kids setting a fire inside a barrel. I ask them what they are doing, and they tell me that every year, at the end of the school year, they burn their books to bring in the summer. One of them throws in a copy of the Complete Works Of Shakespeare while another kid drops in a copy of Charles Dickens.
I sigh and know what needs to be done.

I drop the single piece of paper that contains the Greatest Flash Story Ever Written into the fire and watch it

burn

beside the works of my peers.

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