A Short Story

The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over the Lazy Dog

This was all he could write. He had covered the Balkans, Iraq I, and the 2000 election fiasco. Now, for the last four years he was a freelance writer—correction, fiction writer.

His editor had said he lost his spark. That was seven years ago. The paper kept him on for another three years, hoping that he could get it back. Finally they got fed up and let him go. He hadn’t written an article that was published in over three years.

The paper was kind enough to fire him, so he could file for welfare. This was how he’d survived—that and his extremely modest 401K.

Now, two weeks into his project, he had one sentence on paper. And he only had that because he couldn’t think of anything better.

Initially he had wanted to write something big, to be the next Hemingway or Salinger. Now he just wanted to be published.

There was no computer in his apartment—he wrote everything by hand as a matter of course.. Next to him on the left was a stack of blank paper. To his right was a mostly finished bottle of scotch. Beside desk lay a garbage can mostly filled with totally empty bottles of scotch.

Sitting at his desk, he poured the remaining scotch into an old-fashioned glass with two ice cubes. He wasn’t worried, he had another bottle in the cupboard.

He caressed his pen, drawing lazy circles on the paper. Nothing. There’s always tomorrow, he thought to himself, downing the remaining scotch.