The Storymaker (Part Two)

© 2012 David Jasmin-Green

Actually the Storymaker wasn't making stories right now. Not new stories, anyway. Many weeks had passed without him composing a single new tale, which was unheard of since he had decided to become a writer some time after he was made redundant from his job in a car assembly plant just over five years back. Not long after he was ungraciously thrown onto the scrapheap Gordon slipped into a deep, dark depression. He needed a hobby, his GP and the Community Psychiatric nurse told him. He needed something thoroughly absorbing, something that he could really lose himself in - he needed a new purpose in life, otherwise he might never escape from the doldrums.

He tried a number of pastimes in an attempt to dig himself out of his debilitating rut. He tried his hand at philately, mainly because it was his father's raison_d’être, but after a short time he realised that stamp collecting was the most boring pastime in the world, which just about anybody could have told him. He tried collecting American superhero comics instead because he had been fond of them as a kid, but after a little while he came to the conclusion that the theatrical, rather childish antics of superheroes were almost as uninspiring as sticking bits of coloured paper into albums. He tried rebuilding old motorbikes, or a single old motorbike to be exact, but he didn't really know what he was doing, no one he knew was able or willing to give him a helping hand and he soon lost interest. Finally, on his wife's insistence, he had a go at taming the large garden at the rear of the family home, a wilderness that he had barely set foot in for several years, but that did his back in and he spent three months in traction.

While he was recovering from his spinal injury he was given a mongrel Jack Russell puppy by a neighbour. As Geek matured, though he weighed barely ten pounds he proved to be a veritable psychopath and Gordon, who had never owned a dog before and knew nothing about canine psychology, couldn't even begin to control him. Geek systematically destroyed the house, which was bad enough, but the last straw occurred when he was a few weeks short of his first birthday. He almost severed Sally Anne's index finger as she tried in vain to prise his jaws from the throat of Oodles, their elderly cat, whom he was in the process of slaughtering after an argument over the possession of a scrap of bacon rind. The cat gave up the ghost a few minutes after the screaming black and white banshee was dragged off him, more from shock than physical damage, it seemed. As soon as Gordon got back from the casualty department with Sally Anne he grudgingly took Geek to the local veterinary surgery, and it proved to be the dog's final consultation. Gordon spent the following three or four hours crying into his beer in the local pub, because though Geek was undeniably a monster he had grown to love him very much indeed. After that experience he vowed never to own (or attempt to own) another animal for as long as he lived.

During Gordon's long autumn of disgrace he had an on-off relationship with a rather alluring, supposedly secret mistress, a mistress who proved on numerous occasions that she was capable of leading him astray, but Sally Anne wasn't having any of that nonsense. His missus must have possessed a sixth sense finely tuned to his dilly-dallying, Gordon mused, because she usually caught him red-handed and sent the old strumpet packing. The would-be drinker gradually accepted his better half's imperative that he wasn't cut out to be an alcoholic, and though he and Lady Booze had a few good times and started a number of memorable riots they never had a chance to become a serious item. In fact it was almost two years now since Gordon had been on a bender.....

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A few weeks after the loss of his beloved pet, while he was wandering aimlessly through the aisles of the local supermarket while Sally Anne took charge of the weekly shopping, Gordon bought a pack of exercise books. That evening he began scribbling down some of Geek's more memorable escapades, which was when he realised that he wanted to be a writer. He bought himself a refurbished computer and his missus didn't complain, in fact she actively encouraged it because Gordon bullshitted her into believing that he needed it for his job searching. He attended a free course at the local community centre to learn the basics of computing, which he found difficult but immensely rewarding, and as soon as he had a vague idea of what he was doing he began to compose stories in his word processing programme.

At first he wrote simple, slightly elaborated accounts of his own experiences, but gradually he caught the fiction bug and slowly he became addicted to writing Science Fiction. Gordon had always liked reading, particularly Sci-fi, but never before had it occurred to him to try to write his own stories. Not much time passed before he realised that he had kicked the last gasping breath out of his depression. Or maybe that was wishful thinking, he sometimes reflected - maybe he had simply found a means of containing it.

During his embryonic period Gordon generally wrote fairly short, simple stories, often completing three or four a week, and his record weekly total was seven, but as time passed his tales started to get longer and more sophisticated. He reached a point when he thought that his efforts were passably good, very good in a few cases, but there was a major problem. He couldn't get anyone to read his stuff for love nor money, particularly his missus, who only found tacky, prime time pap romance novels worth her time and effort. To make matters worse the handful of stories that he believed were good enough to send to magazines in an attempt to get them published received only an embarrassing silence, an occasional rejection slip and an even rarer note something along the lines of 'tough shit, Twatty, better luck next time,' which did nothing to boost the budding writer's self esteem.

For almost two years now he had been a member of an online Writers' group called XYZ Tales, and everything changed after he joined that group..... Gradually he remoulded himself into the Storymaker, which was his user name on the site. At first he received a stream of promising comments and useful suggestions from fellow writers of various abilities, and eventually he reached a point when he was beginning to feel like a proper writer - he felt that he had dramatically improved the style and content of his work and he was actually getting somewhere - but then things started turning shitty.

Some nine months back a new writer joined XYZ Tales, someone using the unlikely sounding pseudonym of Buffalo Mozzarella. Gordon was convinced that the Buffalo, as he referred to the individual, was a man, so we might as well stick with that for now, but he could just as easily have been dealing with a woman, it was impossible to say for sure. Buffalo Mozzarella, whoever he was, soon became a terrible burden to the Storymaker. He posted a never-ending stream of petty criticisms of his favourite stooge's work, criticisms that were sometimes disguised as helpful hints, though usually they came across as unconcealed insults. As the Buffalo's stories - strange fantasies that as far as Gordon was concerned were almost impossible to understand, never mind enjoy - attracted a limitless stream of oohs and ahhs of admiration from just about every arse licker on the site it seemed wise to follow his instructions to the last letter.

Since Buffalo Mozzarella joined XYZ Tales Gordon had spent most of his time polishing and in many cases completely rewriting his old stories, tales that he had lost interest in ages ago. He didn't have the time, the energy or the will to work on anything new because he had lost his confidence and enthusiasm, he had lost the dignity he worked so hard to achieve, he had lost his mojo. As time passed the Buffalo's comments became nastier and more puerile, and the other writers on the site didn't exactly help. Most of them shamelessly jumped on the bandwagon, but even those who didn't openly advertise the fact that they were on the Buffalo's side maintained an icy silence that suggested they weren't even half-heartedly waving a flag for the Storymaker. Gordon's self esteem suffered battering after battering and his mood swiftly deteriorated. He hated the Buffalo with his entire being, he had long since decided. Buffalo Mozzarella was an arse-hole, he was an out and out bastard, he was a prize winning cunt.

A fresh cup of coffee landed with a splash beside the Storymaker's computer next to a cluster of empty mugs, but he was so consumed in his work that he failed to respond with his usual empty 'Thank you.” He missed his wife's tearful “Goodbye, Gordon,” too, neglecting to deliver even a trite “Hmm,” and a minute later he also missed the slamming of the front door as Sally Anne made her furious exit.