Pieces of a Writer

As a child Greg had always been a dreamer. Living in his own world, spending more time imagining how things would turn out instead of actually doing anything to achieve those outcomes. That way life had been peaceful and passive, flowing like an undisturbed stream that got separated from the river by pure accident.

Living like that wasn't risky at all, it required no sacrifices and Greg was content with that. Each time an opportunity appeared he spent days recreating all the outcomes in his head all the while the real opportunities flew by. He liked it that way. In his opinion, those who struggled to achieve something in life were the ones who did not understand what life was all about.

He had found himself a job that would provide just enough pay to rent a tiny apartment and afford two meals a day. Something that most of the population wouldn't have been satisfied with. But Greg never bothered with such meagre things, what mattered to him was that he had a place to stay, nothing more, nothing less. Where he stayed never mattered because by that point he had lived thousands of lives in his own head and that was more than enough to compensate for his awful apartment.

One night while he had been on his shift, a co-worker tried to strike up a conversation. "So how'd you end up here? Not many people dream to be night shift workers at a gas station in the middle of nowhere."

Some time had passed since Greg actually came up with an answer and during that time he had already lived through ten possible ways the conversation could have went. "I don't know, the pay is good I guess." He answered and lost himself in his thoughts again. For him imagination was like a drug, he couldn't go a day without it.

"Yeah I guess so." His co-worker replied. He noticed that Greg's answer was completely mechanical and that he said something solely for the purpose of saying it. Realizing that there would be no further talking, he finished his cigarette and went inside. All the while Greg stood there in silence not even noticing that he had been standing alone for a while.

Arriving home from his short night shift, he switches on the warm lighting of his apartment. Papers and broken pieces of led were scattered across the floor. He didn't have much furniture aside from a desk as he only saw others as waste of space that could've been taken up by his work.

Putting down his bag, he laid on the floor with a stretch. Papers flew in the air and landed on his torso and face. He enjoyed scribbling down any ideas he had throughout the day and laying them in a pile. That way, he doesn't expect which idea will hit him today.

Today's idea was of a fisherman who was aiming to catch food for his bedridden son. It wasn't quite the plot he enjoyed, so to dilate the amount of realism, he'd often add fantasy elements.

Taking the piece of paper, he put it on his desk and began to write the rest of the story. Though it was near the witch's hour, his heart still beat in excitement and adrenaline. It was as if he was living in the stories themselves, feeling what the characters feel, and the sensations of the environment he describes around him.

After a couple hours, he leans back in his chair, satisfied with another finished plot line, putting it in his drawer with the rest of his manuscripts.

With an absent gaze, his mind wanders again as he stares up at the ceiling. He doesn't know why he continues to live the way he does. Writing so many stories that'll most likely never see the light of day. Perhaps it was an escape from the real world, to erase any realism in his life, he turns to his imagination, filled with unrealistic standards.

Greg had always wondered what sparked this fire in him, was it a false interest, a scrape to his knee, or maybe imitating somebody he looked up to. He just couldn't recall the first time he wrote a story.

And like any other thoughts, these ones stayed in his head for a couple of minutes before he turned his attention to something else. He jumped down onto the mattress and continued staring into the celling.

Some time had passed but the outside world was still veiled in darkness with no Sun in sight. There were two solid hours before the sunrise and Greg knew that he did not have to work that day so he kept on staring at the celling.

An idea had suddenly struck. He bolted up and landed into his creaky wooden chair like someone had been chasing him. Rummaging around the desk he managed to pull out a half-sharpened pencil with a barely functional eraser still attached to it. For someone so carefree, he hated making mistakes.

Then the search for a blank piece of paper began. Pushing aside everything else from the desk, he crumpled up some papers in a futile attempt to minimize the chaos that surrounded him. Despite his efforts those pieces of paper, regardless of his intentions, would always end up on the floor. Creating another mess that he will never clean up.

Because he had spent a good few minutes searching for an empty piece of paper, the idea started to slip out of his mind. Not letting go of it so easily, he opened the drawer and pulled out a paper that already contained an unfinished story from who knows when and started writing the idea down on the other side.

By the time he had finished it, the Sun had appeared on the horizon. That meant little to him. Time had never been something that he worried about. Greg thought that whether or not someone paid attention to it was irrelevant because in the end it was all a human concept. He believed that just like he gets sudden inspirations for his stories, that same way someone got an idea to create time. For reasons he could not explain, Greg believed that if he were to act upon someone else's idea's, in this case, the idea of time, he would be following another man's path. Thus he rarely bothered with anything else that did not come from his own head. There were exceptions to that rule of course but only those that he had deemed necessary.

Greg began to recall distant memories of his childhood. Despite growing up in a two parent household, he never quite found a connection with either of his parents. Most of the time, he would be out of the house, looking at various bugs and nature sites. His mind was a curious case, able to absorb vast amounts of knowledge through his bodily senses. He'd often enjoy his time sitting on a solitary rock, translating his senses into mental environments.

The touch of a tree, the feel of the wind, even the taste of the air. It seemed as though he could never forget any moment in time, but despite that, his mind had a gaping hole he couldn't fill, a blurry sequence of memories.

His father had always been somewhat lackluster in Greg's eyes. Any amount of effort or presentation only seemed to garner a faint mumble from the man. However, that's when Greg learned that no matter how big or small an effort, it'd always be the same result. He could obtain the same approval from minimal effort.

On the contrary, his mother seemed to be a mass of hot air, circulating around her at all times. Greg didn't like to get close to either, but he'd much rather choose his quiet father over her.

It was a fateful day in middle school. Greg had finished putting his books in his locker before putting on his shoes and walking home. Out of the corner of his eye, he spots movement from the alley.

Alas nothing caught his attention. Whatever had been going on there did not invoke any kind of intrigue in his mind. When he had already made some distance from the alley, he had even forgotten that something had been there. The present moment did not matter at all, Greg already had better things to attend to. The stories in his mind.

While walking home he had come up with ten different stories on what could have been going on in the alley. But only one held his attention for longer than a few minutes. He called it "Lost and Found". Greg had kept repeating the main idea behind the story over and over until he got home.

He carefully arranged his shoes, placed his backpack on a stool but before that he had already prepared tomorrows books and replaced them, at last he hung his jacket. Moving throughout his house he went through the living room first where his father had been reading some foreign book. He had acknowledged Greg's arrival and nodded at him. A simple gesture was worth more than a thousand words in his fathers opinion. Greg's mother though was nowhere to be found, and he did not bother to seek her out. Finally he went to his room and got everything ready to start writing.

Several hours have passed since Greg began writing, but there was only one problem, he could not move past the first page. When he began the story everything made sense, the alley, the stranger inside of it offering unforgettable experience, the madman who stumbles upon that same stranger, their erratic conversation. Every single detail was accounted for, but he still couldn't move past the first page.

Night had already engulfed his house but he didn't make any progress. Each sentence he would write, he would immediately come back and erase it. Nothing was good, but what he had buried deep inside of him and was never willing to come to terms with, was that nothing will ever be as good as his imagination and daydreaming made it out to be.

In Greg's head everything was a movie, every little detail made sense and it was perfect. Absolutely perfect. The characters were alive and breathing, living in his head and doing whatever their destiny was. Whole planets, continents, cities, villages, everything was bustling with life or death, depending on the story. Despite all that complexity, no story was ever good enough when it needed to be put on paper. In the end, Greg had decided that it would be the best if the story had found its place amongst many more that were hiding in his desk drawer.

Greg's still body made a lump in the piles of scattered paper on his apartment floor, slowly rising and falling in sync. It was a quiet night, not a sound could be heard aside from faint breathing.

Then, when the clock struck exactly 7:13 PM, Greg's eyes shot open as he rolled himself upright, papers flying all around him. It wasn't exactly because it became 7:13 PM that he had woken up, but that his body felt like it. He never followed a strict sleep schedule, believing that his own body knew when the time was right. He had grown comfortable to only four hours of sleep per night.

With a deep breath, he held out both of his hands in front of him, fingers sprawled out. Greg counted one by one as he put them down. It was his daily finger exercise; he couldn't stand it if they were dull when writing.

"Good, I can start."

With that, Greg grabbed a pen and paper and began to write about the dream he had, mostly noting about the fog in it. Since it was also his day off, he could tune out any distractions as he wrote.

***

It was 9:31 PM and Greg had finished over fifty pages of the story. Though he couldn't recall most of the dream, it seemed as though his imagination filled in the rest for the next forty-five pages.

The longest story Greg had ever written was over two thousand pages, but unfortunately, he had lost most of them in the piles of paper around his apartment. He didn't think much to store them properly when he was writing since his mind seemed to be in another place. The least he could've done was mark with them numbers.

Greg took a moment to fall onto the floor, but the home phone quickly interrupted his short brainstorming session. He wouldn't often get calls this late.

Crawling over to the phone, he answered. It was his boss from the gas station.

"Hey Greg, sorry for calling so late on your day off, but I just wanted to let you know that I have a special job for you tomorrow. I'll tell you more about it when you clock in."

He was confused. After all, he had never been important enough at work to be assigned a special mission. Greg's mind began to race again with possibilities he'll surely write about.

"Sure, I'll see you then."

Hanging up the phone, Greg lays back on the floor again, new ideas sprouting. 'Maybe I'll get sent across country.'

Knowing that now he had something to attend to, Greg, for the first time in a long time, went to bed early.

The next morning, he was woken up by his ringtone. "Who could it be this early?" Greg thought because when he had looked out of his apartment window, night was still very much present.

"Greg! Where the hell are you!? Did I not tell you yesterday that I have a special task for you? Its already midnight and you were supposed to be there three hours ago! Get your ass down here and do it fast!" His boss was furious, who knew that such a calm man could get so angry.

Despite all the yelling over the phone, Greg was unbothered. He had learned early on that any stressful situation in life could be handled much better if approached with patience. Thus he did not feel any urge to change his usual pace. After all, he had planned to live for a hundred years minimum, and that required a lot of patience. But while he was trying to find where he had put his clothes, he wondered what kind of job was waiting for him. What kind of special mission could one come up with at a remote gas station. Greg had started to daydream again and his mind birthed a dozen new stories just by the time it took him to get ready. Before leaving he wanted to write down one of his more interesting idea, but as soon as he grabbed his pencil, all of them vanished. He let out a sigh and exited his apartment.

When he arrived at the gas station, at 1:30PM, no one was there. Greg wondered if he had taken the wrong bus and ended up at a different one but he was not forgetful nor foolish despite his easy going nature. He entered the back office that had been nested between the storage room and the toilet, but the office had been empty too. Something was fishy, despite that he came up with three different stories as to why the situation was the way it was.

After half hour he searched the whole place. Not a single soul in sight. Baffled for the first time in his life, Greg thought that his boss was surely pranking him because he was late.

As Greg sat on the floor, his feet aching, he could hear a faint metal clanging outside. He peeked through the blinds that led to the dumpsters, and in an instant, his eyes widened to the sight of his boss holding up a shovel, scooping up trash.

He didn't realize his boss was so hands-on; he'd usually be napping in the office most days. Greg opened the door to the alleyway.

His boss whipped around and saw him, shovel over the shoulder. "Ah, Greg. Took ya long enough," he said as a bead of sweat dripped down his chin. "Here, take a shovel."

The shovel rattled against the pavement as Greg's boss kicked it to him. He didn't have any words to say, but the revelation at his boss being someone mysterious lit him up inside.

Why was he doing it alone when he'd usually get Mable to do it for him. Was it some secret service he'd do for the community, an unsung hero?

The boss looked at Greg's daze and raised his voice. "Hurry up, would ya?"

Greg returned to reality and hurriedly picked up the shovel. "Right, sorry about that, boss."

For the next thirty minutes, the only sounds that could be heard from the store weren't bustling customers coming for donuts or other gas station food, but the metal scrapping of two men with shovels.

Greg's shirt became drenched in sweat. He wasn't one to neglect his physical health, but he didn't train his stamina very much. The alley looked cleaner than ever, even if Mable had done it.

However, aside from that, Greg noted a strange interaction when he tried looking inside one of the dumpsters. His boss quickly pulled him back and berated him to not look inside.

'What's he hiding? Is it a body wrapped in trash bags? Did he toss away his wedding ring, he's married, right?'

Greg thought up of countless possibilities once again, falling into a daze.

His boss let go of the shovel as it fell to the ground before taking a seat and wiping his forehead with a towel. "That's good enough, Greg. I'm giving you the rest of the day off."

Greg positioned himself upright and thanked him, trodding away as he bubbled with excitement.

As the universe would have it, Greg had left for home with a head that was brimming with ideas. Almost like the world was planning on that in advance, like it had been purposely putting him in such situations after which he would have so much material to come up with wildest fantasies.

On the bus drive home, Greg felt like he could explode. Excited like never before he allowed his thoughts to take him for a different kind of ride. One where he would be able to experience it all just the way he had imagined his worlds to be. Because of a job that many, if not all, would consider to be an over the top chore that they were not getting paid enough for.

After living through a dozen different stories he had finally settled on one. His boss was involved with the secret service, there was no other explanation. Owning a gas station in a middle of nowhere is not really a lucrative job. Who in their right mind would invest so much money in such a thing if they didn't have any ulterior motives or were forced into such a thing. Of course Greg knew that there had to be a reason why he was involved with them, and that reason was out of this world, literally.

Greg quickly shifted back to reality because he had already arrived at his apartment. He couldn't wait to sit and write down everything that he had come up with. It was only a matter of time when his pencil would be in his hand.

He burst into his apartment like never before. That was completely unusual for him. No other idea had ever got him that excited. Clearly, Greg thought that he had struck gold. He sat down and miraculously everything had already been prepared. His pencil was right there and sheets of paper were neatly stacked on one another. It all felt like a dream. For the first time in his life, Greg had been satisfied with how things have turned out. Now it was time to write but, something curious happened. Each sentence he wrote looked like gibberish. The letters were turned upside down, some of the parts were written in an unknown language, some parts even disappeared right after he had finished writing them. Dread had suddenly overcome him, something was not right.

"Hey! Hey you!" Greg jolted up from his seat. "Yeah yeah I didn't want to have to wake you up from your nap but this is the last stop. I'll be heading for the garage and I need you to leave. Can't drive back if I've got company." The bus driver chuckled.

"Oh no, it was all a dream." Greg thought. The sudden realization had hit him like a sledgehammer hit a brick wall. He was devastated. He had no idea how he would get home considering that he had missed his stop long ago. Greg had also not been the type to carry around a decent amount of cash for a cab fare. What frightened him the most was not an hour walk to his apartment, it was the fact that by the time he arrived home, he would have already forgotten everything.

For most of his life he never bothered with feelings. In his opinion, feelings were a chore and thinking about them was useless. Meaning that dreading over them was the worst possible thing someone could do. But now, he was in that exact situation.

It was mostly disappointment with a little bit of sadness. Those were new feelings for him. Especially because they still reminded him that he had unwillingly let an idea go. It was an awful experience.

By the time that he had gotten home, the Sun had already risen and its rays fell upon the hill where his apartment was located in such a magical way that anyone would stop and enjoy the view. Greg did not bother to look, he felt utterly defeated. He could not believe that he was unable to handle those feelings.

When Greg had entered the apartment and saw the mess that had waited for him, he got on his knees and slowly started collecting all of those unfinished stories. Then he had opened the drawer where he kept the ones he thought were special and stacked them on top of those he picked up from the floor. Now, all of those stories were intertwined and no matter how hard anyone would try they would not be able to find one whole story, from start to finish. After a few minutes of rummaging around in his room, he had found a backpack large enough to fit all of those papers. He stuffed them inside the bag and left the apartment.

Luckily in the near vicinity was a 24/7 market that had all the necessities one would need. This was Greg's first time visiting it. He would usually buy everything at the gas station he had worked at or some other supermarket. Greg did not stay there for long, he quickly grabbed what he needed and left.

After a while he had found a secluded but open enough space that had old empty trash bins. He had emptied all of the contents of his backpack into one of them, poured some lighter fluid all over his papers and took a step back. Greg lit a match and without a second thought threw it in the bin. The stories he had been writing his whole life, were now lit ablaze while he stood and watched emotionlessly.