Tim is a tall guy in his mid-forties with an average build; a middle class guy whose wild hair projects from his scalp in a jagged aura, as if he’d been struck by lightning. By day, Tim haunts his quaint two-bedroom home nursing a bad knee. For weeks he has trod a single path from his bed to the bathroom to the kitchen to the couch in front of the TV and back. This has lost its appeal since finishing his binge of his latest favorite show. If the writers had followed the direction he’d predicted, the ending would have been better.
This morning, he pushes open the spare bedroom’s worn wooden door; cobwebs drift from the corners. He enters the derelict room with its dim lighting. An old wooden desk nestles against the wall under the window overlooking a tilted bird bath in the overgrown garden. Unable to mow or trim or plant with his bum knee, Tim still ensures the bird bath is clean and kept filled with water. For the moment it sits in deep shade on the west side of the house.
He limps to the desk where a brown leather journal rests. Pulling the rickety wooden chair away from the desk, he dusts off the journal with shaking fingers before he lowers himself to the familiar perch. Finished dusting the journal and table, he unlatches the brass buckle that keeps it closed, revealing blank pages. His reading glasses slide out of place to rest at the end of his nose. He lifts the pen resting inside the pocket of his plaid shirt, rubs his overgrown beard as he gazes outside, and then writes—something he hasn’t done in many years.
With every stroke of his pen, a character comes alive. He details the beginning of the story with great energy. Line after line and page after page, his old hobby surfaces like a drowning man reaching for air.
A line of sunlight cuts through dust motes dancing in the air above the desk when Tim emerges, rubbing the cramp in his thumb from pushing the pen. His back aches and his knee complains but his mind could race for miles. He reaches a stopping point before closing the journal though ideas jostle for him to continue later.
Outside, two firetruck-red cardinals bathe in the concrete basin, their feathers glimmering like a reflective stop sign—a rare sight in his neighborhood.
He rises from the chair, leaving the journal and pen on the desk, pushes the seat in, and then heads to his slightly larger bedroom, where a twin-sized bed rests with sunlight peeking through the blinds, casting shadows onto the wood-paneled walls. “A nap would do me some good to push through,” he thinks as he sits on the edge of the bed, setting his glasses on the night table before lying down and resting his eyes.
The sun dips toward the horizon as Tim awakens from his much-needed nap.
Pain arcs across his crown as he stares at the vaulted ceiling with a large fan over the bed, a crystal chandelier dangling at the base. This is weird, he thinks.