Writer's Rebound
by eni
Regarding the cw: It is something really minor only appearing in a paragraph and in a positive light.
This was a bit hard to tag due to reasons that will become clear after reading.
enjoy.
The sun was starting to kiss the horizon, turning the whole sky yellow as he got into the bus, card in hand. He paid and quickly noticed all the seats were taken again, letting out a sigh readying himself for the ride he went and took his usual spot by the accessibility seat, at least there he could stand against the bus’s window and feel a bit of relief. There was someone doing the same in front of him, lost on their phones, he wondered how people never felt motion sick doing this. Mimicking them, he picked up his own phone, no new messages of notice, the group chat remained dead as always, another sigh, he looked up and around seeing the mess that traffic was and also realising he could barely hear the music on his headphones before trying to find some balance in being able to listen to it despite the bus noises, the traffic outside, all the honking, and trying not to get any sort of hearing loss. He eventually found a good enough volume and settled his head against the window again, rumbling with the bus when it got to move.
***
Unlock the door, step in, lock it, go to his room, drop his stuff, head to the kitchen, open the fridge, stare at its contents, return to self, pick whatever, make and eat a sandwich, remain in the chair for a while for the sake of his legs as he took in the day. It was Friday, Henry should be hyped up, he’d be able to speak with his friends (the ones who would appear…) up until late, maybe they would find something to play or some crazy topic to discuss and get some laughs out of, that’s what Friday meant, but god… He was really tired. He really wanted to push himself, he knew those moments would be great, maybe a shower would help?
He took his dirty glasses off, placing them by the usual spot by his desk, next to an open notebook with some ideas he had last night. Henry entered the bathroom, everything as he left it in the morning, he stripped and jumped into the hot shower. As he rinsed his hair, he thought that maybe if he wasn’t feeling it he could, instead of joining his friends, simply sit down and write, he already had some ideas, just nothing solid to work with, surely something would come up during the shower, that’s where inspiration blooms. But nothing did come up, he just ended up circling around, thinking about having an idea, thinking about how he was feeling; the water stopped, but his head didn’t.
Burying his face in the towel, feeling the cold drops dripping from his long hair down his back, he wanted to scream, to let out the most guttural sounds he could make, this was unbearable. He was warm, refreshed, and clean, but something still bothered him, something that made him feel every inch of his body, inside and outside, as if it all was trembling, boiling, aching for some release. He knew it all too well and he hated it. He wanted to swallow that towel and drown in the velvet, or cotton, or WHATEVER THE FUCK MATERIAL THAT SHIT WAS. The towel slowly lowered, eyes bothered by the harshness of light, breathing staggered, as he started to dry himself.
At least it was clear now, he wasn’t tired, he was existentially exhausted, and all he really needed was to lay that heavy head against a pillow; so he put on a boxer and, with his hair still wet (just not sopping anymore), threw himself at his bed and let his eyes close. It was still early in the night as he drifted away, bathed in moonlight through the window he didn’t bother with closing.
Blue… It was all he saw, blueness… There were some white too… Some shades of it even… Oh, it was the sky… He had been here before, when he was young and apparently took the idea of heaven literally… He was dead, laying in his coffin, underneath the ground, staring at the sky, he knew that even though the only thing that existed was the sky. He was simply cloudgazing and he felt at peace, he couldn’t have asked for a better dream than this one now. All there was was his perspective and the sky, clouds strolling by with their unknowable shapes as the blue shifted hues; there was no sun either but the day still passed.
Soon came the night, and with it everything went away, no more blue, no more white, just complete and utter darkness: all black. There were no stars, no moon, no light in all of this, but there was something else. He existed, laying down as he presumably was before, a feeling of wetness permeating his neck and shoulders, he hadn’t cried, he couldn’t even remember the last time he did that. Yet that was what made him realise his body was there, he sat up, there was nothing to be seen: he knew how it looked, the space it occupied, and knew it was there, but there was nothing to see. It was weird, this was normal? In a sense, but he had never been aware to perceive how it actually was.
There was a presence in front of him, standing up, a woman. His eyes were useless, he gave up on even trying to see and embraced the instinctual feeling of how things were, he knew them, and up until now it had been true. She was big, probably taller than him, plush, skin filled with scars, marks, hair, and imperfections, a canvas that time itself took care in painting. Her hair cascaded down, flowing and swirling, disappearing at a certain point rather than ending; she could’ve been naked, or dressed, he couldn’t tell but he also didn’t register that part. There was something purplish about her.
— W-who are you?
— Oh, we know each other well Henry
— M-maybe? But I’ve never seen you! — Henry didn’t know why he half agreed, but her words seemed to carry some truth.
— I mean, you aren’t exactly seeing me now, right? — She paused, giving him some time to weigh those words — In truth, I’m what you understand me to be, even in appearance.
His mind was spinning around, what was he hearing? This was one perturbed dream.
— Are you… an eldritch god? — He tried his luck, would an eldritch god even know what that meant to him? Well, too late the question was already out.
— Kind of? But I’m neither eldritch nor god, I’m something rather mundane dear Henry. — She approached him, extending a hand for him to get up, which he promptly ignored as he got up, still weirded out.
— Can you stop giving me roundabout answers??
— Sorry, I thought you liked being obtuse on purpose. — Henry got red.
— Not in a situation like this! — He was very uncomfortable, he never had a dream that felt so real, much less one where he was confronted by some unknown.
— Alright, calm down, I’ll be more direct. Do you know who comes to visit you at night, every once in a while?
— The fucking tooth fairy? Some miserable robber?
— I said calm down. — It felt like an ice bucket had been dropped on Henry, he was even more scared, but a little calmer.
She didn’t continue speaking though, clearly expecting for him to give an answer, a calm and measured one at that. He started scrambling around, thinking about what she could possibly be talking about, remembering his last nights before thinking about today, and the dirty glasses laying beside an open notebook.
— Um… Inspiration comes and goes, though it generally happens at night… is that it? — He looked expectantly, afraid to be mistaken.
— Very well!!! — The coldness from before turned into warmth at those words — Inspiration is certainly one name, others would say I’m a muse.
She put a heavy emphasis on that last word, striking a pose, moving slowly, revealing all those curves, how her flesh folded into itself, and for that brief moment he knew with certainty she was naked, before it all went back to that state of unknown duality.
— That certainly was “inspiring”… — Henry said, diverting his eyes even though that wouldn’t change anything — Then, what really is your name? And, what do you want?
— What do you call that force that brings you ideas, that materializes that inspiration?
— Dunno… Creativity…?
— Perhaps, — She clapped her hands, as if catching the answer mid air — I’m Creativity, guiding your hand so you may be able to create.
— Alright, finally, I’d introduce myself but you seem to know me better than I know you. Anyhow, that only answers one of my questions.
— Oh Henry, I only know you as much as you do. But, I’m here because I'm tired of seeing you writing your dreams from nothing onto nothing.
— Huh? What do you mean? It's not nothing, it’s on paper, on my computer, on the cloud sometimes, that is something.
— Paper gets lost, ages, it tears, hardware fails, and don’t even get me started on the cloud.
Somehow he knew exactly what she would say, those were worries he carried too, and thought a lot about.
— Okay, so you’re here because you want me to better preserve all I do? Why do you even care about all that?
— See Henry, all those nights you spent ruminating, unsure of the future, fleeing from the present and living in the past, where you couldn’t stop thinking for even a second just to get to sleep. But then something would strike you, an idea! You'd get up, jot it down, and then lay on your bed again, now resting at ease... That was me. I’m proud of what I do as much as you are.
A chill shot up his spine, she wasn’t bluffing, she knew all of that, and it was true, he knew it too, he had lived it.
— Ah… uhm… Right, sorry… — He was embarrassed, although he felt at the back of his mind that he should be on the offensive here.
— It’s alright sugar, but what I’m really here for is to tell you what you already know: we are all authors and characters. — The words left her mouth, but the sound was of his voice, echoing in the darkness, resonating against his skull. — Your characters may not be you, but you sure as hell are each one of them.
— Stop that! I-I can see where you’re going! — The eeriness of it all was starting to get to him, maybe this was actually a nightmare, he could leave.
— Can you? Then why haven’t you walked down this path before? How do you feel looking at all the characters you didn’t bother with giving a name or development yet were all forced to carry the weight of your dreams, of your expectations; forced to fill a mold?
The wet towel plunged through his mouth. She stood there, “staring” at him, not demanding or expecting an answer, merely waiting. He breathed as well as he could, lost and confused, why was it all coming crashing down now?
— I-... That’s just how it needed to be — Was all that he could muster meekly.
— Nuh uh, I asked you how that makes you feel, not why, I’m not here to judge your writing, girl. All I was trying to get to is that I’m tired, YOU’RE tired, of spilling all those dreams on paper or whatever other medium. Maybe you could write them on the only thing you’ve really got: yourself.
The words echoed around the empty space, echoed in his head, that's where they came from… He couldn’t contest anything, those were his thoughts, his ideas, plowing through him by her mouth. He was just another one of his characters, standing there, dumbfounded by the impossible, on the verge of tears that for long have begged to be freed. The all encompassing darkness seemed to encroach him somehow, heavier than ever.
— H-how so? — He managed to blurt out.
— Look… I may have been a bit harsh, but what you’re doing is already something. — There was a moment of silence as she recognized some confusion. — You know this one dear, to live is to change, and to create is to live; do you expect that the pages you write on are the only thing that changes when you do so?
— Yeah I know that, you’re just stating what I already think. — He was getting impatient, everything still weighed in on him and she wasn’t helping.
— That’s exactly the point, I already told you. If you have to force yourself to sit down and fucking write even if you love doing it, I reckon you should also force yourself to look yourself in the mirror for once and tell yourself the truth. You’re trans, go do something more about it.
He knew that was coming, every single interjection in this conversation, the arguments used, where it was headed; he feared it. Yet continued, curious, invested, he wanted to get to it. But it still hit him hard, diaphragm confused, mind flexing, muscles pounding, ear convulsing. Nothing would ever be the same, nothing ever was the same. And he was supposed to move on forward. Why? How? To where? He was dwindling again, every scenario and fear playing along with this one, he was in complete darkness, even his ability to know his surroundings was gone, maybe she left him, maybe he was alone, alone again, himself and all of this, no one, just him and his pain.
— I’m not gonna leave you. I’m not even sure if I could do that given every… Listen, I just want to show you that there is a way forward, even if you can’t grasp a future for yourself. It is there. Time will go and take you with it, what you can do is go along and embrace it.
— B-but I don’t know how! W-what if… Fuck it! You know all the what ifs I could throw at you! — He was boiling, rage sparking in those watery eyes, accepting any emotion that passed him to defuse those feelings, to go somewhere else.
— Do you have to know how? — Her eyes shot daggers, measured and precise, cornering him, only scraping the skin, a silhouette sticking him to the wall. — Do you? When you engage an idea, do you ever know how to turn it into something material? Or do you just go along; trace out a plan and land on so many what ifs that whatever the final product is it is unrecognizable from any of the planning or original ideas?
— B-but I’m scared! — The veil ruptured, tears cascading down, dragging that darkness with them, all that weight, the guilt, the pain, flowing effortlessly with the might of those droplets. — I don’t know where I’ll end up, w-what if I’m wrong?
— You can be wrong about anything, and it's alright as long as you don’t insist on it. You don’t have to always be right. — Now he could see her, closer, a sense of warmth and tenderness beyond those words. — You haven’t known where you’re going for a while now, your only prospect of a future had been not being in the army, you got what you wanted and you’ve been aimless since then. Why not strive for something? Go be the girl, girlthing, or whatever it is you find yourself wanting to be. Yeah the future is unknowable, but you can set goals, make a path towards it.
They stood there, sobbing, the words incessant, bouncing around, echoing. The place was still a void of pure black, a field of nothingness populated only by the two, but all that they knew before now was able to be seen despite the tears flowing. Henry could see the woman standing in front of them, smiling, waiting. She wanted them to speak, they both knew it, but Henry wasn’t going to, not now at least. They just needed to cry, air out a bit, all that was held up inside was now transposing that barrier, reaching the wider world, or void rather.
— I know it's a lot. — She landed that graceful soft hand on their shoulder, reminding them that they were only in their boxers — To go through not wanting to exist at all and thinking you’d be better off dead to finding joy in life… Some perspective, love. From the emptiness of nothingness to the possibility of a mere idea, a whole world unravels and you do the same along with it.
They took a second, looking at her, now really looking. She was big, beautiful, every little imperfection building into something bigger, she had an air of mystique, seemingly fading instead of ending. Still, even with their gaze they were unable to determine if she was as exposed as them or rather very well dressed, reality seemed to flutter around her.
— I will give it a shot. — Henry said, swallowing and holding the sobs back just enough to be able to speak. — I’ve… Been Henry for quite some time, it's fair to try something else, I’ll still have been him, he’ll still keep being me, we’re one and the same but now we can be… Rose.
She exhaled through her mouth, letting the air carry the name out, it went as the breeze, light and steady, uplifting something inside of her. It felt good to be alive. It felt good. She felt, most of all, all the little and big things, it wasn’t about knowing anymore, she could feel it all now; things traversed through her rather than get stuck trying to cross an impenetrable frontier, getting lost, wiggling, bouncing, wrecking the insides, hoping to one day get out.
— Rose, hmm? — The lady gave her a playful wink. — Makes sense, nobody practices a signature for a name that isn’t theirs if it isn’t for forgery.
— H-HEY! — Rose’s eyes went wide, face completely red, she wasn’t ready for that. — I w-was just practicing… Just in case…
— I’m not judging darling, if anything that practice will come to fruition now. — She had a smile that could devour her and her worries, she was enjoying this. — What about a little reward for enduring all these hardships?
It was weird being called darling, she knew that earlier she’d been doing that too but she simply ignored it. Now it struck her deep, she liked it, even just remembering what had been unremarkable made her shiver a bit. Though what really got her on edge was that promise of something more, could she do something about this? She thought that magic wasn’t real, but then what the fuck had been all of this? She was a bit apprehensive, but hopeful.
— Rose, I’m not going to take out all of the fun for you girl. — That didn’t answer much, but relieved her anyway. — I’ll let you discover and enjoy the process, that's what you’ve always liked. Now if you would kindly stare at me again like you were doing before I’d be very grateful.
At that moment it would’ve been easier for Rose to transition into a tomato. She knew just how to mess with her, she was in shock, embarrassed a bit too (though relieved that she was fine with it (AND WANTED HER TO DO IT AGAIN)), and aroused. Her boxers quickly gave sign of the life that resided within it as once again the mysterious woman seemed to dispel the illusion and show herself as completely naked. She could only marvel at the splendor in display, every fold and crease of her skin, of which there were many, were ravines in which she could get lost exploring with her eyes. Fuzzy hair complimented the space here and there alongside some scars, stretch marks, moles, everything complemented the details of her alluring geography. She wanted to hold that flesh, her thighs, belly, her glorious tits, she wanted to be close, feel the warmth, smell her scent, but all she was asked to do was to gaze at her.
— I feel so spoiled by the way you look at me — She said, now the one getting a bit red — You really cherish the details, huh. Good thing you like it, but I’ll have to divert your focus to here.
Rose’s eyes had risen to meet hers but before they could arrive at their destination the lady’s hands gently landed on her own breasts, hefting them. She focused as asked.
— Good girl! — After that she knew she had to keep staring. — Well, this will be quite the sight for our little farewell, so just keep on watching as they sway and I’ll get you ready to wake up.
She did. There wasn’t a reason to ignore either her or the movement of those majestic beasts. How they went from one side to another, back and forth, back and forth, the flesh shifting, moving with the sway, as did her eyes. She wasn’t lost in the sight, actually she had just found herself for the second time in this dream, gazing at the absolute, gazing at the void, gazing at the…
Purple. It was all she saw, the purpleness… There was nothing else, just sheer purple… Apparently it was her eyelids as when she opened them the color faded, though she had never seen purple when she closed her eyes before. It didn’t matter. The light from the window she forgot open illuminated the room, though weakly, it was early. She was alive, like never before, laying in her bed facing upwards, but the ceiling didn’t matter to her, she did. She looked down awkwardly, chin touching her neck, she looked at her chest, hairy, it had been a while since she shaved. She continued exploring downwards, following her happy trail and eventually landing at her crotch.
She hated morning wood, the embarrassment of it being there, an unstoppable force of shame, of having to pretend it isn’t there until it goes away, and the fear of meeting someone in that state. Not now though, it was just there, peacefully, tenting in her boxers, a part of the scenery, which she admired for a while. She was horny, but she was also feeling lazy and lost on the stupor of having just woken up. She closed her eyes again, heavy as they were, asking for just a little more sleep, and the color purple was there. Something was at the tip of her tongue, a figure dancing through the cloudiness of her groggy mind. Her dream, what had it been?
She remembered some bits, the important ones anyway, she was glad to have taken that step, although now the whole stairway still remained ahead. But there had been someone, an empty space in her mind, she was sure of it she could literally see her sitting atop her, but in her mind nothing registered, she didn’t know her. But she could see her moving now, her weight pinning her down to the bed as she started to grind against Rose, she let out a little moan before once again returning her gaze, trying to maintain her vision of that lady, trying to remember.
The contact of the flesh with the imaginary felt incredible, she could really see it all in fine detail, the ripples, her squirming, that knowing smile, the sway of her chest, it was the same and yet she could only see. She was getting scared and closer, her concentration on that image wouldn’t hold, she would lose that fragment she retained, but at the same time she knew that's what she wanted. Her dick couldn’t stand it anymore, all the friction with the boxer was reaching a breaking point alongside the pleasure of it all and she came. Again that freeing sensation took hold, letting all that had welled up inside her for all those years go, letting herself settle into it all, letting that vision go, the lady winking at her as she disappeared. She was there, laying in her bed, spent but full of energy, she could do a lot, but above it all, she was there.
She was inspired.
This time I tried to do some longer paragraphs to fit better with the site's formatting and decided to do more with dialogues and character development. This is the last idea that was more fleshed out that I had so it will probably be a while before I post again.
Now whilst not exactly inspirations there were two songs that came to my mind as I wrote this so here goes the recommendations:
Author of Modern Thought - The Mellowells
how to feel alive - doefriends
Have a good day!