[A/N: Want to know what happens when a writer is deprived of his writing? Here you go.]
Brain-eating Light Bulbs
I stared at the food on the table, slowly bringing up my hands to pick up the utensils in front of me. Gingerly, I brought a spoonful of rice into my mouth, chewing with the same turtle pace that had been with me all morning. I don’t know if I hate or like the morning. All I can seem to care about is the food and the things going on in my head. There was conversation going on at the table, but I can’t seem to hear anything. I was focused on my next spoonful of rice.
I imagined them, all those rice grains, with a face and a mouth contorted into that of horror, all of them screaming as I shoved them into the wet crevices of my awaiting chops. I heard each disgusting squelch their soft little carbohydrate-filled bodies made as they were ground in between my teeth, sticky little pieces of them sticking to the holes in my teeth. Those still on the plate were huddling closer to each other, frightened of suffering the same fate their squishy white kinsmen had beheld. The spoon was a big, metallic spade of death; the terrifying scooping menace that brings demise to their poor damned rice-y souls. Oh well. It was their fault for being so damn nutritious.
I imagined myself a predator. My prey were these helpless grains of rice. I played with them, stabbing them with the tip of my fork or flattening them with the back of my spoon, taking delight in the wails of anguish which escaped their tiny little mouths, shaped into a giant ‘o’ in their great shock. I wasn’t touching any of the eggs and ham that were laid in front of me, enticing as their grease and aroma may be. I suppressed the sadistic grin which threatened to spread across my face like a long cord of telephone wire. I continued with my monotonous actions, still moving slowly, as if any sudden jolt might scare the rice; make them scamper away from my plate. To me, though, it never got tiring.
Unbeknownst to me, my family was giving me strange looks. “What’s eating her?” I caught on subtly, but it didn’t really sink in. “I dunno,” someone mumbled. I couldn’t really place a name on the voice. “It must be some kind of writer’s block. She’d bug me sometimes for that, telling me to shut the heck up so her ideas could flow in peace. Happens all the time,”
But what I’m experiencing isn’t writer’s block. It’s the exact opposite, actually.
I’m getting sabotaged by ideas.
See, when an idea starts out in your head, don’t you get that nagging feeling that won’t piss off until you’re able to pin it down? It won’t let you sleep, it slows down your ability to think, you start laughing at nothing, you space out, stare at nothing and do all that crap you do all frigging day when you’ve seriously got the urge to write, but you can't for some reason. It’s a strong urge, and it kills. It really does. See here – these light bulbs, they eat your brains out. Don’t get me wrong, they’re from your brain, but they prey on your brain if you don’t throw them out quick. They gouge at the brainy flesh, gnawing at it with their metallic and glassy voltage conductors, torturing it, poking it, squishing it dry of gray matter and blood until you decide to let them out through the door - the door meaning the written word; a story. They eat until there’s nothing left but them. They unravel the seams of sanity on your head, makes it explode until they’re finally out, and you won’t feel a thing anymore.
You’d just be numb from the exhilaration of having your brain free from these brain-eating light bulbs.
And then you wait for some feedback.
