The Waiting Room
~ Chapter One
Writer’s
Block In A Roomful of Blockheads
“Damn,
” Mort cursed beneath his breath, slamming the laptop closed,
spinning his chair to face the wall behind him. His mind was a total
blank, just as it had been since his arrival in this god-forsaken
room.
He swiveled forward and looked around the place. It was
circular in shape, shelves upon shelves of books lined the walls from
floor to ceiling. There were chairs of different periods, from
colonial to contemporary, from art deco to Victorian. Small round
tables also filled the room.
There were four doors and one
window. One door led to a single bedroom. The second door was the
entrance to the only bathroom. The third led to a kitchen. The
fourth door was the door they had all used at one time or another to
come into the Waiting Room. But it could not be used to leave the
room . Neither did the window open. Well, that was a lie. The door
and window could open but only if he allowed it. Mort felt as if he
were in purgatory.
Most of the seats were taken by those who
had arrived before him; the rest meandered about almost mindlessly.
A wet bar beckoned him to have a drink, and soon he was
standing side by side with the man he knew as Duke, competing shot
for shot glasses of smooth, warm whiskey.
“You know,”
Mort tried to point out, “If you helped write something, the
quicker we could put an idea in his head, then the quicker we might
get out of here.”
Duke gulped his fourth whiskey before
whacking the empty glass to the bar, then jammed the remaining stub
of his cigarette back into his mouth. The smoke from it was rancid,
burning Mort’s nostrils. God, he thought, he was glad he
didn’t
smoke.
Duke gave Rainey a knowing glance then announced
loudly, “I don’t write fiction, I report the facts!
Now, get your
damn ass back over to that freaking contraption of yours and start
freaking writing!” The journalist slid from his stool, a new
drink
in one hand, waving the cigarette in the other as he stumbled his way
to a far corner table.
“Music! We need some freaking music!”
He clumsily turned in circles in search of his accordion, but not
immediately finding it, plopped down in the nearest empty chair, the
instrument temporarily forgotten.
“You want music?” Axel
asked in his polite quiet way. “I can turn on the
radio.” He got
up from his chair to try to find a station.
“Forgetaboutit!”
Came a grumbling New York City voice from the far side of the room.
“Whenever we put the f--king radio on , Spencer zones out and
we
lose the f--king signal. Ain’t that right,
Commander?”
The
astronaut ignored the question.
Mort returned to his desk and
opened the laptop, hoping for some inspiration.
F--k, he thought
to himself, he didn’t know how long he could stand being
cooped up
in this s--t hole of a room with these guys who all seem to have s--t
for brains. The only smart one in the room , beside himself was
walking over to him on all four legs.
Mort watched as his
faithful canine companion, Chico, found his way to his favorite
corner chair, and with a quick jump, curled himself up for a nap,
oblivious to the screwdriver protruding from the side of his head as
if it were nothing but a large, blood-sucking tick.