Ladies and Gentlemen! Nanowrimo is here and I haven't done a thing for it. I was looking forward to it for so long, but here it is, November 4th, and I haven't even begun. I haven't built a plot line, I haven't designed a main character, I haven't done anything. Maybe this year just isn't going to happen. Or maybe I've just become so preoccupied with blogging about women's rights that I haven't had much time to think of much else. Most likely, I am making excuses for myself and I'm just incredibly lazy.
In any case, in honour of all of the true writers out there, I'm posting my rejected short story for Asimov's Science Fiction for you all to enjoy. But let me warn you, it is a piece of work that is entirely self-gratifying and has very little literal value. But if you were a Bradbury fan, you may like it.
William looked up from his newspaper. His gaze caught on the empty middle ground of the room and he watched the nothingness for a while as he thought. His calloused hand was still wrapped around the rapidly cooling mug of coffee he had brewed and forgotten. The only sound lulling through the otherwise silent house came from the soft patter of rain against the large bay window. All in all, it was another sleepy Saturday afternoon that he assumed would be spent catching up on the mountain of paperwork overflowing on his desk in the study. The work week was always getting shorter and William’s weekends were virtually non-existent at this time. It left him weary but he didn’t mind. Progress on his interplanetary engine was finally coming to a head after years of study and planning.
The more he worked, the stricter the deadlines became. Gradually William had discovered that this one project had consumed his life entirely. He never had much interest in the normal American social life and the lack of free time never bothered him too much. Even as a young boy he never had time for such trivialities as little league or trading cards. He spent the majority of his evenings building forts out of blankets or hiding inside his closet with a flashlight to read by.
“Ray Bradbury.” He said aloud, if only to himself. It was a name he knew so well in younger years that had slipped away as he grew. Like the name of a childhood friend he had lost touch with. It was familiar in how it formed in his mouth.
Suddenly he was twelve years old again. An odd, lonely pain struck him squarely in his chest. It filled his rib cage; not quite sharp, not quite dull. He took a long drag of the stale coffee to try to swallow back the lump in his throat with no avail. It seemed to crazy to him. Ray Bradbury was an author. He wasn’t a father or an uncle. He wasn’t his favourite grade school teacher or a close friend. How could someone he never met grind his whole day to a stop?
It was easy, really. William may never have met Ray Bradbury face to face but he knew him inside and out. There was something in the way he chose his words that gave everything away. While William was reading his favourite short stories, he was busy discovering Mars and space, but he was also finding out a lot about himself and about Bradbury at the same time. There is a funny thing about producing and consuming. You can’t entirely escape giving up a piece of yourself and you can’t keep from taking from someone else.
With mug in hand William went to his desk in the study. Maybe focusing on his work would clear out the cobwebs in his head. Many of the papers already had the brown rings of coffee stains. What was one more? He plunked the mug down in an uninterested fashion on top of the blue prints. He rifled through the pages idly, but without focus he knew nothing would get accomplished.
It shouldn’t be that big of a surprise that he was gone now, Will thought to himself of the deceased writer. He lived to a very tender age of 91 and from what the newspaper reported there was no suffering. It still left him feeling hollow. The numb feeling was comparable to the guilt he felt after his grandfather passed away a few years after William had graduated from university. The grief he felt was far away. Worse was the guilt he felt for not having called more often, for not staying in touch, for not feeling very sad at all. He knew how he should feel but it just wasn’t there.
In the bottom drawer of his desk, behind a bulk of unused envelopes, William found his flashlight. He kept one in most rooms in case of an emergency. The battery tested to be charged, though a little dull, but it would do.
His bedroom seemed awfully cold for the time of year. May had been exceptionally cold and June wasn’t shaping up much better. The room was mostly clean. The floor and the dressers were spotless, but the bed wasn’t made just yet. The door opened into a soft darkness and at once he felt at home. More at home than anywhere else in his apartment could possibly make him feel. He closed the door behind him and curled up. It was darker than he expected but that’s what the flashlight was for. It clicked to life deftly within his hand and extended its illumination around the whole space.
Space was such a funny idea. William mused on it as he shifted his weight to sit more comfortably. For something that technically does not exist there was an ungraspable amount of it. It has amazed him since a very young age and the older got the more real it became to him. He always wanted to see it for himself. It was his primary motivation while working his way through school and now it may just become a reality. Even unmanned crafts projected past Mars to the gas giants would return images unimaginable to humanity. The idea filled the empty, aching hole in his chest with bubbles of excitement.
The police ambulance went up into the palisades at the wrong hour. It always the wrong hour when the police ambulance goes anywhere…
William grinned down at the illuminated pages like it was the first time he’d read these words. It was like catching up with an old friend. Rather, it was like discovering an old friend he forgot that he even had. Like a child again, Will stowed away in his grownup closet in his grownup home and he read. Until long after midnight, he read.
-Long after Midnight, Ray Bradbury. 1976
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