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The Writer
#WritcoStoryPrompt47
He unlocked a door and led me through an office that was empty of furniture, although I could still see square clean patches on the grimy linoleum, where the legs of a desk had once stood. On the wall was a curling calendar with April 1989 showing.
“I was the writer that sat at a desk that once was here”. The man gestured toward those square clean patches of linoleum on the floor. The ones free of grime and dirt and detritus.
“It was a plain affair, but sturdy. Built by the Union Furniture Company.”
My eyes traced his gesture to where his old desk once stood. The contrast between the accumulated dirt on the floor and the place where the legs had been was clear. I realized it had been some time since the desk had occupied that sullen space, or more importantly, it had been quite some time since the room itself was free of grime. The square patches of clean flooring were themselves dirty, though cleaner than the floor itself. Perhaps he was a man unconcerned with cleanliness, or perhaps he was a man consumed by his trade, so much so that janitorial tasks were of no consequence to him. Either way, it was of little concern, as I had no love for such menial tasks.
“Where is the desk now?” I questioned the man and looked around the room. It was small and plain, with a single window that faced the gray urban waste of Chicago. Plaster walls, common for buildings in this part of the city, appeared yellow. Stained with age and nicotine. The surface was filthy, but the walls blended well with the flooring. Small sections of rough lathe strapping were exposed in areas of the room that saw the most use. Alongside the door, at the bottom corners of that solitary window, a small section crumbling away by the vent near where that desk had been. I noticed that the broken and peeling plaster was thicker in some areas, built up of many layers, enough to make the walls uneven and lumpy in appearance. I suspected countless repairmen had completed the myriad of repairs and patchwork over decades. Each with varying degrees of skill. Every layer and skim coat that was plastered on those crumbling old walls was of a different texture and tinted in a different colour. Some of those layers were brighter than others, and some were cleaner. The room was all grime and stain and dirt and age. The pattern stamped on the linoleum floor in some bygone age when it was new, now lost. Worn away in most places and covered in a brackish layer of dust and the grime of the city.
“I had the desk removed two weeks ago.” The man lit a cigarette. “The desk is the writers, the room is not.”
“Mm-mm, I suppose”. I agreed and continued surveying the room with a view of the city. So much dirt, I thought. So many layers of dust and dirt and taint. That entire room was in a terrible state. Even parts of the ceiling were sagging and stained with black patches. Mold, I suspected. Water damage and disrepair over many years had seeped into the floorboards and joists above. The rot was prevalent and the musty odour was thick in the stale air of the room, yet the fragrance competed with the smell of old tobacco smoke.
The window itself was fogged yellow by a thick layer of cigarette smoke and whatever foul air belched forth from the boilers, coughing in the bowels of the decrepit building. Of the twelve window panes of leaded glass there, only one permitted a view out into the city. The bottom left corner pane had a smudged and smeared handprint there. Someone at some time had attempted to clean that pane for viewing. Nevertheless, the view wasn’t worth the effort. Everywhere was filth, everywhere except for the door. The heavy wood was free of stains or soot, even though many coats of paint peeled and cracked upon its aged surface. Unlike the countless layers of plaster in the room, each layer of paint was clean and free of taint. White paint. Layer after layer of white paint, exactly the same shade. It was an odd detail to be assured, but I thought little of it.
The man dropped the rest of his cigarette to the floor and crushed it with the toe of his left shoe. Stylish Italian leather, natural brown finish, and I guessed vintage. Mid nineteen thirties. Overall superb craftsmanship.
“Salvatore Ferragamo?”
“Mmm”. The man acknowledged, peering through the dingy pane in the left corner of the window.
“That man made a nice shoe.”
“I suppose he did.” He never looked away from the window. “I’m rather partial to the quality of a product, and its function. Quality of build and practical function over all other attributes. Aesthetics, you see, and those things that are pleasant to the eye; hold little in the way of function. Frills and fancy, bells and whistles, understand. Such things serve no purpose in this place, only utility. Function and quality are paramount and above all other things.”
I nodded in agreement.
“When I wrote Chicago,” he continued, never taking his eyes from the windowpane and its yellowed and smeared portal, “I did so on an Underwood B690 typewriter, unparalleled in quality and function. The font and typeset crafted by the best print houses in the world and built to surpass any apparatus of the era. The best engineers in the field machined those word works, the great Underwoods, and a well maintained B690 would and could last a lifetime.”
I had no argument, and my silence lent credence to his claim. Any writer worth his salt knew of the great Underwoods, those machines that wrote the world. Though I was partial to the Royals, it was a personal preference and nothing else. Writers are fickle and so are their tastes, yet there was no disputing his claim. Those machines were in a class all their own.
“I sat right here.” Once again, he motioned to those four clean squares on the floor. “Right under this very window I would sit at my old Union and Co. desk and peer out that window. It was clean back then, when I first began, when I wrote the city. It was here that wrote its people. All of this, everything you see out there, was my work. The greatest achievement a writer could hope to accomplish was out there through the dingy glass. Nevertheless it was my only work.” The man was smoking again.
He continued his history, pulling occasionally on the tobacco in thought and reverie. Each exhale from his old lungs filled the stale air of the room with a sweet fragrance, and just as harmful. Grey-Blue smoke hung low in that ruinous old room as I watched the gray light of the city filter through the yellow stained leaded glass of the aged window; it created an odd shade on a truly grimy palette. The man told me nothing of who came before him, he only told of the details of his tenure. Of his work as the writer. He spoke of a golden age that had graced the city and how he had brought it to life on his old Underwood. As he regaled me with his mystical history, I could see the glitter and glitz of the swing era and all of those roaring days come to life in the soot of the dirty window. I could hear the big band playing and the singers singing. I watched the golden age of Chicago pass by and fade across the yellowing lead glass.
He recited each name, first and last, of every inhabitant that had ever lived and died in the city. Their occupations, families, histories, loves, losses, triumphs and sadness. He spoke of all these things in such detail and insight; with such passion and love that it felt as though I was there living among them. The screech of a siren rose sharply and abruptly, ending his monologue. It faded off into the north, or so it seemed, and from there I imagined the man only knew. Down in the streets of that urban expanse, life busied itself with its mundane purpose and the first drops of rain fell onto that asphalt and concrete kingdom, past that dirty amber portal where we stood watching.
“Rain is common in the city this time of year”. The man extinguished his cigarette under the same shoe atop the ashen remains of the first.
“More so than sunlight.” I remarked.
The man nodded and paused in thought for a moment, never taking his gaze from the sickly window and the things beyond.
“It was once shining, you know. The city. It was once vibrant and alive, more than the gray concrete monoliths you see these days.”
The man shifted on those brown leather Faragamos and turned toward me. He glanced around the room, unconcerned by its grime and disrepair. He looked to the place on that dirty floor where his Union and Co. desk once was. I noticed a sadness etched upon his plain but aged features. Barely noticeable but present nonetheless.
“I wrote Chicago from this room. All the stories and all the sagas. I wrote its history and its future. I wrote its rise, and I wrote its fall. But like all things, I grew old, and that tale grew old with me. I became complacent and proud of what I had accomplished. With time I became disinterested in the story itself and became solely interested in its people and their infinitely complex stories. Time wore on and I wrote less and less until one day I stopped writing altogether. I spent each day sitting at my desk, looking out that window. My hunger had gone, replaced by the full table of accomplishments, and the pages became empty. At long last I watched the colour fade from my tale and like me my monumental work had grown old and gray. Like me, the rot had set in.” His voice faltered once while he recounted his tale.
I was gazing at the man and failed to notice the rain had stopped along with the sirens. All the white noise, or should I say gray noise, from the city had faded away. The room was still dirty and tainted and rotting from neglect. The door was clean, however, and the man was now standing upon its threshold. His hand was on a worn brass door knob, polished gleaming bronze in the places where a man’s hand wrings it open.
“Like the city, I myself have fallen into disrepair. Into a state of neglect of my own doing. I fell in love with the tale, and its people. I stopped writing the tale and instead only watched it from afar. I didn’t tend to the dust on the windowsill, nor did I clean the glass or polish its panes. Today, I could barely see outside. The way was clouded and opaque and I’ve lost sight of the city and the people in it. Tending this city and its story is my responsibility no longer, for I have written myself out of its pages and its history.
He lit another cigarette and studied a plain white package emblazoned with a blue bullseye for a moment before placing it back into his left jacket pocket. He studied the room once more before opening the door into a long and rundown corridor. It was in a similar horrid state of squalor and neglect as the writers’ room. He turned to leave.
“Where will you go now? What will you do?” I asked, stopping his exit.
The man paused in thought for a moment and responded.
“I’m not sure. I’ll go home, I suppose, though I can’t remember where home is. By the shores of a great river if memory serves me right, but not this one.”
He exhaled gray-blue smoke into that crumbling hallway beyond and lowered his head. “And as for what I’ll do, I suppose that’s up to you now.”
Without another word, the man closed the door and was gone. I walked to that old window there singular, in that dirty old room. Through that one pane, the one he had tried and failed to clean, I could see out into that urban expanse. The landscape he had so meticulously crafted had faded. Through the glass, stained with the dirt and grime of ages past, there was nothing. The city was gone. All that was Chicago, all that was his, had gone, replaced by an endless gray horizon. The rain had gone as well, as did the sirens and the white noise of an American metropolis. Nothing remained of that story he had writ upon the empty pages of history. All the things he forged and crafted as he sat by the window those long years, erased. An empty landscape now replaced his life’s work. All the years he keyed at the old Underwood by the window, erased and left with empty landscape and a new beginning. The room still smelled of tobacco and dingy worn layers of age still clung to the walls; I thought then that this room would be the perfect place from which a new tale would be born.
I looked up and noticed the old calendar fixed to the crumbling plaster wall had changed. I didn’t know how it changed or when, just that it did. The curled and yellowing paper of that calendar no longer read April 1989. It read May, for this place did not belong to the writer. His claim was out there, in those realms beyond the window and past the glass.
#prompt #surreal #scifi
© chriscroW
He unlocked a door and led me through an office that was empty of furniture, although I could still see square clean patches on the grimy linoleum, where the legs of a desk had once stood. On the wall was a curling calendar with April 1989 showing.
“I was the writer that sat at a desk that once was here”. The man gestured toward those square clean patches of linoleum on the floor. The ones free of grime and dirt and detritus.
“It was a plain affair, but sturdy. Built by the Union Furniture Company.”
My eyes traced his gesture to where his old desk once stood. The contrast between the accumulated dirt on the floor and the place where the legs had been was clear. I realized it had been some time since the desk had occupied that sullen space, or more importantly, it had been quite some time since the room itself was free of grime. The square patches of clean flooring were themselves dirty, though cleaner than the floor itself. Perhaps he was a man unconcerned with cleanliness, or perhaps he was a man consumed by his trade, so much so that janitorial tasks were of no consequence to him. Either way, it was of little concern, as I had no love for such menial tasks.
“Where is the desk now?” I questioned the man and looked around the room. It was small and plain, with a single window that faced the gray urban waste of Chicago. Plaster walls, common for buildings in this part of the city, appeared yellow. Stained with age and nicotine. The surface was filthy, but the walls blended well with the flooring. Small sections of rough lathe strapping were exposed in areas of the room that saw the most use. Alongside the door, at the bottom corners of that solitary window, a small section crumbling away by the vent near where that desk had been. I noticed that the broken and peeling plaster was thicker in some areas, built up of many layers, enough to make the walls uneven and lumpy in appearance. I suspected countless repairmen had completed the myriad of repairs and patchwork over decades. Each with varying degrees of skill. Every layer and skim coat that was plastered on those crumbling old walls was of a different texture and tinted in a different colour. Some of those layers were brighter than others, and some were cleaner. The room was all grime and stain and dirt and age. The pattern stamped on the linoleum floor in some bygone age when it was new, now lost. Worn away in most places and covered in a brackish layer of dust and the grime of the city.
“I had the desk removed two weeks ago.” The man lit a cigarette. “The desk is the writers, the room is not.”
“Mm-mm, I suppose”. I agreed and continued surveying the room with a view of the city. So much dirt, I thought. So many layers of dust and dirt and taint. That entire room was in a terrible state. Even parts of the ceiling were sagging and stained with black patches. Mold, I suspected. Water damage and disrepair over many years had seeped into the floorboards and joists above. The rot was prevalent and the musty odour was thick in the stale air of the room, yet the fragrance competed with the smell of old tobacco smoke.
The window itself was fogged yellow by a thick layer of cigarette smoke and whatever foul air belched forth from the boilers, coughing in the bowels of the decrepit building. Of the twelve window panes of leaded glass there, only one permitted a view out into the city. The bottom left corner pane had a smudged and smeared handprint there. Someone at some time had attempted to clean that pane for viewing. Nevertheless, the view wasn’t worth the effort. Everywhere was filth, everywhere except for the door. The heavy wood was free of stains or soot, even though many coats of paint peeled and cracked upon its aged surface. Unlike the countless layers of plaster in the room, each layer of paint was clean and free of taint. White paint. Layer after layer of white paint, exactly the same shade. It was an odd detail to be assured, but I thought little of it.
The man dropped the rest of his cigarette to the floor and crushed it with the toe of his left shoe. Stylish Italian leather, natural brown finish, and I guessed vintage. Mid nineteen thirties. Overall superb craftsmanship.
“Salvatore Ferragamo?”
“Mmm”. The man acknowledged, peering through the dingy pane in the left corner of the window.
“That man made a nice shoe.”
“I suppose he did.” He never looked away from the window. “I’m rather partial to the quality of a product, and its function. Quality of build and practical function over all other attributes. Aesthetics, you see, and those things that are pleasant to the eye; hold little in the way of function. Frills and fancy, bells and whistles, understand. Such things serve no purpose in this place, only utility. Function and quality are paramount and above all other things.”
I nodded in agreement.
“When I wrote Chicago,” he continued, never taking his eyes from the windowpane and its yellowed and smeared portal, “I did so on an Underwood B690 typewriter, unparalleled in quality and function. The font and typeset crafted by the best print houses in the world and built to surpass any apparatus of the era. The best engineers in the field machined those word works, the great Underwoods, and a well maintained B690 would and could last a lifetime.”
I had no argument, and my silence lent credence to his claim. Any writer worth his salt knew of the great Underwoods, those machines that wrote the world. Though I was partial to the Royals, it was a personal preference and nothing else. Writers are fickle and so are their tastes, yet there was no disputing his claim. Those machines were in a class all their own.
“I sat right here.” Once again, he motioned to those four clean squares on the floor. “Right under this very window I would sit at my old Union and Co. desk and peer out that window. It was clean back then, when I first began, when I wrote the city. It was here that wrote its people. All of this, everything you see out there, was my work. The greatest achievement a writer could hope to accomplish was out there through the dingy glass. Nevertheless it was my only work.” The man was smoking again.
He continued his history, pulling occasionally on the tobacco in thought and reverie. Each exhale from his old lungs filled the stale air of the room with a sweet fragrance, and just as harmful. Grey-Blue smoke hung low in that ruinous old room as I watched the gray light of the city filter through the yellow stained leaded glass of the aged window; it created an odd shade on a truly grimy palette. The man told me nothing of who came before him, he only told of the details of his tenure. Of his work as the writer. He spoke of a golden age that had graced the city and how he had brought it to life on his old Underwood. As he regaled me with his mystical history, I could see the glitter and glitz of the swing era and all of those roaring days come to life in the soot of the dirty window. I could hear the big band playing and the singers singing. I watched the golden age of Chicago pass by and fade across the yellowing lead glass.
He recited each name, first and last, of every inhabitant that had ever lived and died in the city. Their occupations, families, histories, loves, losses, triumphs and sadness. He spoke of all these things in such detail and insight; with such passion and love that it felt as though I was there living among them. The screech of a siren rose sharply and abruptly, ending his monologue. It faded off into the north, or so it seemed, and from there I imagined the man only knew. Down in the streets of that urban expanse, life busied itself with its mundane purpose and the first drops of rain fell onto that asphalt and concrete kingdom, past that dirty amber portal where we stood watching.
“Rain is common in the city this time of year”. The man extinguished his cigarette under the same shoe atop the ashen remains of the first.
“More so than sunlight.” I remarked.
The man nodded and paused in thought for a moment, never taking his gaze from the sickly window and the things beyond.
“It was once shining, you know. The city. It was once vibrant and alive, more than the gray concrete monoliths you see these days.”
The man shifted on those brown leather Faragamos and turned toward me. He glanced around the room, unconcerned by its grime and disrepair. He looked to the place on that dirty floor where his Union and Co. desk once was. I noticed a sadness etched upon his plain but aged features. Barely noticeable but present nonetheless.
“I wrote Chicago from this room. All the stories and all the sagas. I wrote its history and its future. I wrote its rise, and I wrote its fall. But like all things, I grew old, and that tale grew old with me. I became complacent and proud of what I had accomplished. With time I became disinterested in the story itself and became solely interested in its people and their infinitely complex stories. Time wore on and I wrote less and less until one day I stopped writing altogether. I spent each day sitting at my desk, looking out that window. My hunger had gone, replaced by the full table of accomplishments, and the pages became empty. At long last I watched the colour fade from my tale and like me my monumental work had grown old and gray. Like me, the rot had set in.” His voice faltered once while he recounted his tale.
I was gazing at the man and failed to notice the rain had stopped along with the sirens. All the white noise, or should I say gray noise, from the city had faded away. The room was still dirty and tainted and rotting from neglect. The door was clean, however, and the man was now standing upon its threshold. His hand was on a worn brass door knob, polished gleaming bronze in the places where a man’s hand wrings it open.
“Like the city, I myself have fallen into disrepair. Into a state of neglect of my own doing. I fell in love with the tale, and its people. I stopped writing the tale and instead only watched it from afar. I didn’t tend to the dust on the windowsill, nor did I clean the glass or polish its panes. Today, I could barely see outside. The way was clouded and opaque and I’ve lost sight of the city and the people in it. Tending this city and its story is my responsibility no longer, for I have written myself out of its pages and its history.
He lit another cigarette and studied a plain white package emblazoned with a blue bullseye for a moment before placing it back into his left jacket pocket. He studied the room once more before opening the door into a long and rundown corridor. It was in a similar horrid state of squalor and neglect as the writers’ room. He turned to leave.
“Where will you go now? What will you do?” I asked, stopping his exit.
The man paused in thought for a moment and responded.
“I’m not sure. I’ll go home, I suppose, though I can’t remember where home is. By the shores of a great river if memory serves me right, but not this one.”
He exhaled gray-blue smoke into that crumbling hallway beyond and lowered his head. “And as for what I’ll do, I suppose that’s up to you now.”
Without another word, the man closed the door and was gone. I walked to that old window there singular, in that dirty old room. Through that one pane, the one he had tried and failed to clean, I could see out into that urban expanse. The landscape he had so meticulously crafted had faded. Through the glass, stained with the dirt and grime of ages past, there was nothing. The city was gone. All that was Chicago, all that was his, had gone, replaced by an endless gray horizon. The rain had gone as well, as did the sirens and the white noise of an American metropolis. Nothing remained of that story he had writ upon the empty pages of history. All the things he forged and crafted as he sat by the window those long years, erased. An empty landscape now replaced his life’s work. All the years he keyed at the old Underwood by the window, erased and left with empty landscape and a new beginning. The room still smelled of tobacco and dingy worn layers of age still clung to the walls; I thought then that this room would be the perfect place from which a new tale would be born.
I looked up and noticed the old calendar fixed to the crumbling plaster wall had changed. I didn’t know how it changed or when, just that it did. The curled and yellowing paper of that calendar no longer read April 1989. It read May, for this place did not belong to the writer. His claim was out there, in those realms beyond the window and past the glass.
#prompt #surreal #scifi
© chriscroW
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