Young Writers Society

Some of you may remember me posting the first part of this a while ago, but only recently have I been inspired enough to make a plan to turn it into a novel and write out the first chapter. Last time I gave it some stupid title, but I have named the piece as a whole 'Zero'. Yes, I have been drinking a lot of Coke Zero lately, and am a huge fan of both the song by the Smashing Pumpkins and the dog from The Nightmare Before Christmas, but I guess I just like the name and the symbolic value. Please, I know that there are problem with this first chapter but I can't pinpoint them, so I need help! All comments are greatly appreciated. Enjoy.

Zero, he named himself, as he sat in the bubble of light that extended from the lamp, separating him from the darkness of the apartment. The never-ending tick tock of the clock on the table in front of him, along with the arrogant glow of the knife in his hand, was scratching at his resolve with the short stabs of the second hand.

Tick.

Every tick is a defeat.

Tock.

Every tock asks for a rematch.

Tick.

Tock.

Indecision never killed anyone. It didn't do much for life either.

The apartment was filled with a new kind of darkness. It was hollow; emotionless. Normally the dark has feelings flowing through its ethereal body, but not tonight. It didn't care if there would be a suicide tonight, but then again, no one did. Maybe it was just jaded from all those long nights. The man on the couch would kill for that kind of apathy.

Tick.

I am Zero. Nothing to no one.

Tock.

No one ever made it to 10 without a Zero.

Tick.

Either way, I'll never find a 1.

Tock.

Then someone out there will never find their Zero.

He ran the blade softly across the skin on his wrist, following one of the blue lines that led to his hand. It’s down the street, not across the road. The knife was indeed arrogant. It could take life away and not be blamed or retaliated against. The perfect murder only exists for the weapons involved. Zero put it on the table in front of him, to see if things looked the same without it in his hand. They didn't.

The clock kept talking.

Tick.

I'm alone and worthless. Twenty three years and nothing to show for it. A dead end job, an empty apartment and the only person I ever cared about is gone. Maybe this way I’ll be with him soon enough.

Tock.

So it ends here? Alone in your apartment with a knife in your hand and your last words are a line in your arm? You deserve better than that, and you know he would want you to stay here and live well. Maybe his end will be a new beginning for you.

Tick.

Or maybe I can’t live without him.

Tock.

You won’t know until you try.

Tick.

Maybe I don’t want to know.

Tock.

Then you’re a quitter and don’t deserve to live.

Reverse psychology.

Tick.

Tock.

Tick.

Tock. The ultimate rematch.

Then this ends here.

He picked up the knife from the table, and reached over to turn off the lamp. With one sharp motion he put an end to the indecision, and fell back into the chair he was sitting on. Then there was silence, and the last time darkness ever saw the man on the couch it knew so well.

The sun had risen into the dull grey sky long before anything in the apartment moved. The place was exactly as it had been the night before; scarcely furnished and rather empty, except for the faded green armchair with Band-Aids of duct tape covering its wounds, the coffee table in front of it and a few empty vodka bottles scattered about the floor. There was also the motionless figure on the chair, awkwardly propped between one of the large arms and the back. There had been a death here last night.

Sunrise and silence greeted Zero as he found his way from a monotonous dream into the last place in the universe he wanted to be. His prison cell that cost $150 a month in rent. Not for much longer; escape was now a clear goal.

Leaning forward in the chair, he put his head in his hands for what felt like hours. "What is the time anyway?" he said as he removed his weary head from his hands and rubbed his eyes. He looked at the clock and then remembered the events of the night before in full.

The clock was his enemy for many reasons. A record of wasted time, a two-note song of tick-tock-tick-tock that Zero projected his indecision into, and above all it was just annoying. Now it was easier to live with.

It lay on its back, facing upwards on the coffee table, like casualty in a living room war. In Zero's frustration the night before, he had plunged the knife that was to be his end into the face of his inanimate enemy. It had taken only one swift stab and the clock was silent.

No ticking.

No tocking.

No defeats.

No rematches.

He tried pulling the knife out, but his misdirected anger had been so great that the knife had gone through to the table below and out beneath it. "Fuck it then." He could definitely live without a clock. And a knife.

When you’re young, life seems like the longest thing you’ll ever do. When you get older, a day at work takes that place. The memories you have of how you felt in your childhood – wondering what life will be like, looking forward to whatever was coming, dreading the unknown things that may come – crash back to earth and become tangible; they’re not these untouchable thoughts of wonder and anticipation. Now you know what life will be like when you’re older. You saw what came and you saw it leave. The unknown miseries that you knew would come one day are all too real now. The future was replaced by the present and life got a whole lot shorter.

Now you’re stuck at work, where instead of having one constant reality like you have in life, you have two; at work and not at work. The reality that exists when you’re at your gravestone job, and obviously your mindset with it, lives for the hours when you’re somewhere else. Periodically, you’re a child and then you’re grown up.

I wonder what life will be like when things change.

Then things change.

From youth to adulthood.

From work to spare time.

From where life has meaning to where it doesn’t.

And that is what makes a day seem longer than life.

That being said, Zero was the child that never matured. He grew up and things changed, sure, but his mindset didn’t change in the transition.

In his childhood, at work, he had nothing to look forward to. In adulthood, hours spent at home, he had nothing to look forward to. A combination like that makes life both unbearably long and depressing.

Superficially, anyone could see that working in a pay station at a parking lot would make for a long day anyway.

People drive up to the window and hand you their money.

You press the button to raise the gate.

They drive away.

You’re still there.

Repeat for the entire day.

Zero hated the job, obviously. The hate lived somewhere between the long hours and the fact that the hours were even longer at home. The only difference was that working in that fish tank he had 1: human interaction (albeit hollow and fleeting) and 2: a reason to be there. Home means loneliness and no reason for anything.

It was slightly better before Alistair died, but now it was just minutes melting into hours melting into lonely hours at home.

As soon as the neon numbers on the clock hit 6:00, it’s like a gate breaking open to let Zero free. He’s free to go home and drink himself into oblivion to make the night bearable. Sometimes he falls asleep on the floor – since he didn’t have a couch – and wakes up with what could almost be a smile on his face.

Then he remembers where he is.

And who he is.

And everything that’s wrong in his life hits him like in one moment. It’s like a waking up with a hangover after drinking sorrow all night.

One particularly long and futile day, when Zero spent the whole day insisting on bartering with the people in the cars, half out of boredom and half to prolong the human interaction involved, he came home to find an official looking letter on the floor. It laid there like some eerie message from beyond, sealed in an envelope. Zero doubted that supernatural forces could afford 40c for a stamp, or that they would even bother using the postal service. He picked it up and saw that it had been sent by Pickering, Conklin and Waters – a high-powered legal office on the other side of town. Very strange indeed.

He ripped open the envelope, since he was never the type to do things with care, and unfolded the letter from the lawyers he knew had a bad message.

They did indeed.

Zero had been summoned to attend the reading of Mr. Alistair Wintergreen on the 8th of March. Had he been aware that Al had anything of value to put in his will, he would have dreaded this day. Now that it became apparent that he obviously did have something he wanted to pass on, he was more anxious and curious than he ever would have been before. In truth, he didn’t want anything to remind him of that man. It would be too painful to have a physical reminder to accompany all the memories.

The man had nothing, but when that nothing was taken away it left one hell of a hole.