Beyond the Bliters Wrock
I took the piece of paper out of my pocket and compared to the barely visible text on the letterbox.
R — 3507, Bliters Wrock
That’s it. Is it?
While my impulsiveness is quite legendary among my peers, this time I even managed to impress my own self. Not to mention, the momentary sense of pride was soon overshadowed by regret, fear, and doubt over my own sanity; not like I was ever sure of it, but this time it was stupid even by my own standards.
For a moment, I considered rethinking the decision and going back but what could have I gone back to. I didn’t know what lay ahead but I was quite sure there was nothing behind.
Still, I expected the place to be at least a little ‘welcoming’. Welcoming like vacation rental if not like home. Home, however, was the last place I wanted to be, and that seemed like a good enough reason to step forward.
Had I entered that cabin ten years ago, I would’ve been ecstatic. That day, it made all my suicidal tendencies kick in and quite a few pet peeves as well.
All there was in the small musty room was an age old writer’s desk with a fairly modern typewriter; a revolving office chair with armrests forcefully taken apart; and a huge window that I failed to notice from the outside. Despite directly visible through the window, the sun wasn’t bright at all; if it were, it could’ve blinded anyone sitting in that chair.
Tired from my long journey, I reluctantly sat down on the chair just to realize how similar we both were. We both had our limbs missing yet the broken chair still somehow managed to be more useful. It served its purpose despite the physical defect while my amputation was anything but corporeal.
Is there a disability worse than losing the ability to pursue your passion? Is there a trauma bigger than realizing that you are not really capable of doing that one thing you always wanted to do?
I always wanted to be a wordsmith, and that is exactly what I ended up as. Word after word. Year after year. And none of it was mine — not a single syllable of it, not a single second of it. Word after word. Year after year — there came a time when words was all that was left but there was nothing to put them together. Every time I tried writing the words would start dancing in front of my eyes, and even that thought was unoriginal. That is how I have heard many dyslexics describing their problem.
I knew I wasn’t dyslexic. I was just lost.
And there I was, more lost than ever, at Bliters Wrock. It was a recluse, my friend had said, I could use to meditate and muse. My pseudo-intellectual peers had played a prank, I realized then. I wasn’t the brightest bulb, they knew; it was quite evident in my work, which was nothing but fables in comparison to the literary masterpieces they carved with their sharp wits and scintillating words. Now they have sent me here with nothing to do but one thing that I can no longer do.
A broken chair. The new typewriter. The odd placement — they were smart enough not to leave any of the writers’ pet peeve out.
This is how my story ends — a climax everyone was waiting for.
That’s when it hit me. There was something I could still write. I knew it was there. I could feel it. The story that I would write for myself and the story I would read to myself. The story of my life as I want it to be. The unexpected. The unbelievable.
I pulled my chair closer to the desk and soon the whole room was immersed in a magical melody of the typewriter and the pleasant light of the sun, which stood bright -Word after word, year after year — till I was finally finished with the story of my life. My life beyond that very point. Beyond the Bliters Wrock.
Category ‘Free Space’, Story 5
