SHORT STORY: A THANKSGIVING THANK YOU

Hours passed like minutes. Minutes passed like hours.

And still, nothing happened.

I blinked.

Nothing happened some more.

Heat of the afternoon sun permeated the room, flowing in unimpeded through each of the four large windows before me. Aged upholstery dug into my unclothed neck and wrists but I couldn't seem to gather the motivation necessary to shift my weight. Besides, the chair rocked almost effortlessly with my current position.

Electric buzzing emanated from the fan in the corner as it struggled to stir the stagnant air trapped within the room.

My sanity melted into the very chair I sat upon. Walls warped and turned inward. Hands and faces pulsed through the melting paint and the carpet turned to magma bursting up from the earths core. Screaming filled my mind and yet I sat still, hardly breathing, without expression.

I was going crazy.

I needed to escape.

I stood up. It was easier than I'd expected. Walls, floor, and everything were back to normal. The fan still whirling away with it's hypnotic drone, though no longer holding sway over me. Momentum was on my side, and not wanting to lose the opportunity, I walked to the door, opened it, and strolled out of the room.

Cool air brushed my face with a hint of fresh baked bread as I stepped out into the family room at my parents house. My younger siblings sat with varying degrees of glazed expressions as they stared at the television screen in the corner. Mom worked away in the kitchen, buttering the tops of the loaves she just pulled out from the oven. With a sigh of relief, she smiled at me as I made my escape from the grasp of the mind numbing television program and joined her in the kitchen.

“What's up, little prince?” She asked.

I shrugged down my pride at still being called such, even though I was in college, and smiled.

“I'm bored,” I admitted, a dangerous thing to tell a parent on the weekend, especially when there is always a list several pages long of things needing to be done around the house hidden somewhere in my mother's brain.

I was that bored.

“Well,” she said and I braced myself for whatever task she saw fit to place before me. It might not be enjoyable, but at least I would be doing something rather than nothing. “Why don't you go write a book.”

I stared.

“What?” I asked, certain I had misheard the chore she had set me on.

“Write a book,” she repeated.

I thought for a moment, turned back to the room from whence I'd come, grabbed my laptop and resettled myself into the chair. From there, worlds unfurled, recorded with great care and detail, until my fingers ached and my eyes refused to focus. Day after day I returned to that place, figuratively and literally, pouring my soul onto the digital page. Some days I was filled with inspiration and the stories flowed out in great cascading waves. Other days my soul was shallow and murky and barely the slightest reflections of my dreamed up world could be glimpsed through the mire.

Over the years, the chair, the room, and even the laptop, have taken on different shapes, colors, and sizes. Some times I would visit that place only once in a long while, other times I would rarely leave it, but always there would be the call. Crying from the deepening recesses of my mind, in the place I didn't know existed until my mother kindled it to life, The Story would never let me be, never let me go.

And for that, I must say, “Thank You Mother,” for telling me to go and write a book. For this has been a most enjoyable journey, and has done more to enrich my life than any other worldly influence.

*     *     *

This is the story of how I became a writer. I owe it all to my mother.