Writing Resources from Fifteen Minutes of Fiction

Somewhere Else

Nothing, something and everything - all at the same time. You can choose to feel splendid, you can choose to feel awful. Your decision.

Mo knows how to do it. He takes the problem into his skinny hands, looks at it from all sides and then decides what he can feel about it. Sometimes he even finds out what he can do about it.

He is under the influence of the script. It's the word in the script that gives him peace and strength. It's his key to self-control. The force behind the script is great. Mo is under its power. It's his second and main nature. His first nature is not worth mentioning.

That's why sometimes it's so difficult for him to understand all those people around. Then in the silence of his soul he looks at them, mildly surprised. For example now... this lady in front of him...

He thinks it's so sad that she doesn't know what peace is. She's probably never experienced it. It's enough to see those nervous glances, those involuntary movements of her hands. It's enough to listen to the pitch of her voice, to her disorganized way of expressing thoughts. "Woman, calm down..." - Mo would like to tell her but he knows it would be of no use. Her feelings are like scared fluttering butterflies, her thoughts cling to the first available thing as if she was drowning and needed anything to hold on to.

So... "We're so distant, even if we're so close" - he said. She didn't understand. Then he started his monologue, he tried to tell her how to communicate with him...

"Please, take a look at the palm of your hand. See? The skin is white, your nails are so shiny... look at the veins under the skin, at their blue paths... Imagine nothing else matters, nothing else exists... forget all the rest. Maybe then in the complete silence of this contemplation you'll notice you're breathing. One, two, one, two... count it, control it, focus on it.

"It's gonna take some effort, some of - what you might call - 'awkward silence'... but once you manage to concentrate, to put the world into a set of ordered events, when you manage to make your mind follow one thing after another - only then we can meet here where I am and talk... not just exchange sentences. Talk. Exchange ideas. Can you do it?"

She looked at him surprised and laughed nervously. Then she got up and without a word, without even a glance, she went away. Mo blinked and returned to writing the story about Mo who knew no anxiety. She, this lady, that woman, wasn't his sister. She was just another stranger.

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