The Persistence of Memory: A Writer’s Requiem. Wait, if it’s for a writer, why are we referencing a Dalí painting? And no one’s gone. I’m confused.

In the gloomy offices of the MFUJSF, after a month long renovation done by G-Mod’s ruthlessly corporate interior decorators, Brick sits alone clutching the only copy of his carefully annotated manuscript. The dreams of childhood and adolescence reduced to a 500 page tome of middle aged discontent, the alliteration-loving Brick brooded over the brilliance of his achievement. Or was it just the brine that kept his eyes burning by harsh fluorescent light into the abyss of another insomniac night? His fingers were callused and cut from constant leafing through the coarse pages protected by the brittle red plastic of an old three ring binder for hours, days really.

Having achieved his goal, often sacrificing many things one might consider important in the process (love, happiness, sanity), the author stared at his work, its pages covered with his own sweat, skin and blood. “I have finished my creation but know not what lies next for me.” Having lost faith in everything he had held dear due to years of disappointments and the growing allure of jaded cynicism’s purr, his gaze was filled with fear. Fear of obsolescence. While he had whittled away his youth with crafting fiction, the world around him and those he’d known and loved had long since passed him by, crafting a fiction much stranger than anything his mind could conjure. Maturity, progress, life. These were myths and truths that he could only feign an understanding of.

Narrative is what it came down to. Who decides the direction of where things go and who people become. He had attempted to be a part of that grand human discussion while still rebelling against the inevitability of error and corruption. His revolt led him to be washed away and left to spend his remaining days swimming through the back currents of his poorly led life, looking for a return. Every time he had a glimpse of a life beyond his shameful exile, he was reminded only of how far he had drifted, each glimpse pushing him further and further off.

And so he held the book in his hand. The achievement was solely his, a product of his imagination and effort. It was a document of the last two years of his life, something no song or show could ever fully capture. It was then that he faced his true problem. He had invested everything into the book but would anyone care? Was the investment of time worth the attention of those he had grown distanced from while writing? Of course the novel, its characters and ideas were all woven from the threads of his subconscious, lines invisible to all but himself. Would others grow to love them and hate them as he had on those cold miserable nights he had spent with handwritten notes in front of a sparse computer screen? Would he be able to grab an eraser and take it to his own words like a surgeon to flesh and correct the flaws that others might find with his life’s work? The joy of creation was over and now came the difficult path towards completion.

As an errant moth flapped in and out of the unfriendly light fixture above, singeing itself on the heat of the bulbs,  Brick set his book upon his lap. He had caught the big fish he had wanted. Could he be able to bring it back intact or would the sharks tear it apart? He reached for the nearby waste basket and began tearing the pages out of their three ringed shell and dumping them into the trash, before snapping the old binder across his knee. Like Konstantin in his favorite Chekhov play, Brick realized that his pursuit of achieving new forms were proving fruitless. He lacked the talent and vision to achieve such things and the world lacked the freedom for him to do so. He had lost faith in the last thing he could believe in and so lit a match to purify his flawed words and free him from the final disappointment which would now remain purely hypothetical.

As his fiction turned to ash, Brick rose to his feet and leaned against the window, drained. Beyond his own reflection, the road stretched off into the shadows, eventually being consumed by them. Brick wondered if he too would disappear into the dark vacuum of night if he stared into it long enough. It had been too long since he’d seen the sun, felt her warm, compassionate glow. Only the memory of her would keep him tethered to this world of melted sense, if only just to see her one last time.