It powered up and made its annoying music
and then he picked the program that knew all his preferences for shows. He
couldn't think of anything so he turned it off again. He switched around to the
section where his games were and picked a particularly aggravating one. He had
kept getting stuck on this one, it would let you get a certain amount of
progress and then it would suddenly change the 'rules' on you. It was a lot of
fun but was also incredibly frustrating seeing his on screen protagonist
getting beaten up, ripped apart, burned and electrocuted. He played for about
fifteen minutes, dying in a similar way over and over and finally gave up and
turned the whole system off. He lay back on his couch and thought about his
writing. NOw that he had completed something he was actually proud of, what
should he do? Should he keep going? Did he have to keep writing every day? He
had heard that was what made a good writer. He wasn't sure if he could bring
himself to do it though. Although he did it all the time for work, but that was
copy writing. It was to a set of rules and a set of objectives and he could
easily find the bits and pieces of information to put the story together that
would make the client happy and hopefully attract the customers. There was a
formula to attracting the customers too and all he had to do was pay attention
to the trends of the day and how they changed the way people thought about the
ads they looked at and merely modify them. With his fiction, though, it was a
lot harder. Everything came from his head, his own experiences, the things he
had said or thought he should have said. It came from his imagination which
sometimes he felt was rather dusty and was also why he was so proud of his
story, because it was imaginative. At least, he thought it was. It was just as
likely the agent would think it was immature and puerile and not get past the
first page before throwing it in the trash. In Manelaus's opinion, that would
be a great shame.
He got up again and grabbed his laptop and
his little stable table and went and lay down on the couch again. Ok, time to
try writing ot masterpiece number two. He began to type, "In the Himalayas
there lives a huge white beast with shaggy fur and an overbite. All the adults
call his "Daskrogen", all the kids call him "Uncle
Wooley"."
Hmm, not bad. He kept writing, "One
day when the beast was collecting wood from the forest for his fire he came
across a small deer that had broken its leg in a bear trap that had been set.
It was unconscious from loss of blood and twitching. The Daskrogen reached down
and opened up the trap and gently pulled out the deer's mangled leg He
inspected the leg and could see it had been broken. This made the beast very
angry, however he controlled his anger and found a small twig with which to
splinter the deer's leg. He pulled some of his shaggy fur off of himself and
stretched it out to make a makeshift bandage which he used to fasten the splint
to the deer's leg. He leg very carefully picked up the creature and took it up
to his little hut in the mountains. When the deer awoke, at first it was
frightened to see the beast and tried to scramble away but discovered it could
not put any pressure on its leg and cried out. The sound broke the beast's heart.
He had a bowl of broth ready, which he put in front of the deer and the deer
eagerly licked it up and then cried for more. The beast put him more broth and
then sat back with his long-necked banjo and softly twanged out a song. He sang
as well. He sang in his native voice, which was low like the rumble of a
wolcano but melodic and fluent like a breeze through the trees. He sang of loss
and of sorry, of remembering and of happiness. He sang of the hills around the
forest and of the forest ithin the hills. He sang of the animals that lived in
the forest and the ones who hunt in the hills, and of the animals in between
who are not sure if they would like to be hill animals lost in the forest or
forest animals lost in the hills. Finally, he sang of an understanding of
purpose between all living things, that we all have a right to live and a right
to die. That there is a circle of life and a way of doing things and that the
forest and hills are built on the history that came before them, from right
back when the trees were saplings and the hills were small mounds of ice and
dirt.
The deer sat quietly and listened to this,
and when the beast had finished the dear carefully shuffled itself over to
where the beast was with its three remaining good legs and rested its head on
his lap and went to sleep. The beast had other things it needed to do, but for
now it stayed where it was and gently tuned its banjo while the deer
slept."
Not a bad beginning, Menelaus thought, but
where does it go from there? Does he go the traditional children's fairytale
route and make them best friends? Does he do a modern take on it in the style
of all those Little Red Riding Hood rewrites and make them lovers? Does he make
it a warning tale about conservation and make it about the townspeople cutting
down the trees or threatening the beast and the deer or even, bizarrely,
somehow being directly responsible for the ice on his mountains melting? Did he have to pick any of these? It seemed
he did because the natural flow of the story seemed to stop exactly where he
had left it. How could he possibly make a choice? He remembered he should
probably save it and did so, then heard a knock at the door. He shut down his
laptop and went to answer it. As he expected, it was Tina, although it seemed a
little early.
"Hello you!" He said and gave her
a kiss.
"Hello loverboy!" She said,
"Can I intrude?"
"Always, come in." He stepped
aside so she could enter his apartment and she skipped in.
"So, isn't it a bit early? Get an
early minute?"
"Noooo I just had work finish early.
There was a fire drill and they dismissed us straight from there. They don't
really care about productivity too much."
"Obviously."
"So what have you been doing? I see
your new toy is off."
"I've been writing, actually. I had to
rewrite something I did a few months ago for a new target audience."
"Oh that sounds annoying!" She
sat herself down on the couch and grabbed one of his games magazines and
flipped thorough it. He sat down next to her. "It wasn't too bad, I just
had to work out what they would probably want. It's nothing I haven't done
before. Really, it's easy money."
"So that's all you've done
today?"
"Well, I also tried to write a short
story."
"The one you've been working on for a
while?"
"No a new one. Hey, how did you know
about the other one?"
She looked up from the magazine she had
been flipping through and smiled "I know everything, remember?"
"Seriously..."
"Seriously, you've talked about it
before. But months ago. You used to bring it up every now and then when we got together
with Peter and some of the other guys. I was part of your friend circle,
remember? Remember me? I'm your friiieeend."
"Ok, ok, that makes sense."
"Why were you keeping it from me? Or
thinking you were keeping it from me?"
"No, i just didn't want to show you
anything I wasn't sure about."
"Aw, I'll always think what you're
doing is amazing because you're the one doing it! So... this was a new story?
What's it about?"
"I was just writing it off the top of
my head, it's about a big white creature in the Himalayas..."
"You mean the yeti?"
"Well no. I mean, kind of. It's sort
of like the legend of the yeti except it isn't actually the yeti if that makes
sense?"
Tina looked a little confused but she said,
"Go on."
Anyway, he liked in the icy mountains and
down below there's a forest"
"A forest right next to icy
mountains?"
"Yeah..."
"In the Himalayas?"
"Well, yeah."
"Are you sure about that?"
"Look, I haven't Google Mapped it.
Anyway, he goes down into the forest and he finds this little deer with its
foot stuck in a bear trap."
"That's horrible!"
"And he decides to help it. He
bandages up it's leg and takes it back to his house and..."
"Fucks it?"
"What?"
"He fucks it, right? They become
lovers?"
"What, no! He sings to it!"
"And then they start fucking?" She
looked at the stricken look on Menelaus's face and laughed, "Oh baby, I'm
sorry I didn't mean anything by it. I didn't mean to traumatise you either! But
you know, there's a few stories that start like that, like the fairytale and it
ends up being the two creatures are actually lovers and..you know."
"Yeah I know, I was actually
considering if I should go that route to be honest. But it seemed to degrade
all the scenes of him looking after her, setting her leg, playing her
music..."
"Do you think our sex degrades our
friendship?"
"Well, no. I mean, it's
different..."
"Is it really? Are you saying all sex
is dirty, that it contaminates things?"
"No, of course not, why would you say
that? If I thought that, do you think I would have sex as often with you?"
"Well hormones make people do crazy
things!" She smiled, "But no, I'm just goading you."
"Well alright then. Um did you want a
glass of water of something?"
"No, I'm fine. Can I read what you've
done of your story?"
"Well I've pretty much told you all of
it. It's not particularly poetic or anything like that. It's just the story. I
was writing off the top of my head."
"What about the other one from months
ago? Did you ever finish that?"
"Yeah actually, I finished and
polished it."
"Can I read it? Please? Please?"
She bounced on the couch and brought her knees up next to him and kept
bouncing, pushing him playfully on the shoulders with every word, "Please?
Please?"
"Alright alright you crazy girl!"
"Yay!"
He grabbed his laptop and opened it up to
his story and passed it over to her. She read for a minute and then said
"There's no chance you have a printer is there? I just find it hard to
read long things off a screen."
"Uh sure..." He grabbed the
laptop again and told it to print the story to the network printer he kept in
his cupboard. Once it had rattled off all the pages, he handed them to Tina.
She stretched out on the couch and kicked off her shoes. "Ok, you can make
me a drink now" she said, "a cup of tea would be really nice. Thank
you!"
He made her the tea and wondered how she
would react to the story.
---
