Fall and Fire-Boredom

Blank screen. You are supposed to be filled with endless possibilities. Come on brain, function.

My fingers didn’t move. They never move. They just sit idling on the keyboard as my mind is completely blank.

Sure, computer screen. They said this would be easy. You are a creative person. It should be easy to write a novel. All you have to do is sit down and write it.

The room is silent. I can almost make out the raindrops hitting the roof.

I hunger.

I stare at my cold oatmeal in disdain.

It’s gone. All creativity is gone. I can’t even cook anymore. What is going on in this world? What if I’m stuck like this? What if for all eternity I am empty?

Writer's block is the bane of any writer's existence, including mine. I've had it for months. I can't even remember the last time I had even a remotely good idea. I moved here to the middle of nowhere North Carolina to "clear my head" so I could write again. I could laugh at how stupid an idea that was, except for the fact that it might just make me cry. I've never been so bored in all of my life. There is nothing to do here but sit on the back porch and hope a deer wanders through the yard. On occation, I could take a walk in to town, but what was the point. They didn't even have a movie theater.

I stared at the keyboard, and contemplated whacking my head against the keys just to see what might show up on the page.

This is ridiculous. I've got to get out of here.

Rain is something that I typically enjoy seeing in the movies, but not so much in person. I use to like it, but it seems to rain here all of the time. I should have realized that autumn in the mountains could be like this, but I clearly wasn't thinking straight when I moved. At least the woods were pretty.

I haven't been in the woods in weeks, and the trees look... different: taller, darker, and more menacing. The oak and spruce trees I have come to know have slowly lead way to pine, fir, and redwood trees that I don't recognize. Even the animals have changed. Normally I only see birds and squirrels, but I caught just the briefest hint of a red fox tail, and well...

Sheesh! You’re not becoming Alice are you? Only an idiot follows animals, and you know what happened to her!

After about ten minutes or so, the fox dove into a hole where I, Fall, unlike Alice with the White Rabbit, couldn’t, and wouldn't follow.

I smiled, and continued on in the same direction that I had been going. About two hundred yards from the fox’s den, I came to the edge a cliff.

Well, this is... great. Now what am I supposed to do? It’s a good thing that I know how to free climb. Stupid rain. Stupid fox. Stupid writer's block. Stupid EVERYTHING!

By now, I was pretty hopelessly lost. I know better than to go in these woods without a compass and map. The Ranger in town had told me that when I moved it, but I wasn't exactly planning on going far when I left the house. I hadn't even grabbed my phone before I left. All I did was throw on some old camouflaged pants that would hide the mud that splattered above my boots, and thrown my brown hair into a braid. I sighed and pulled up the sleeves of my coat. It was going to be a long climb.

I was exhausted when I reached the valley floor, so I sat against the cliff wall to observe what was around me. A town lay about a quarter of a mile from me, and, from what I could tell, it looked nothing like any village that I’d seen outside of movies. Smoke curled out of chimneys poking above thatched and wood-shingled roofs. The walls of the buildings were made of mud packed between thick wooden beams like in romanticized paintings of old English cottages. The streets were well kept dirt roads, and flowers and vegetables grew along whitewashed picket fences. A cat, braving the rain, dashed between buildings.

This is way weird. Where am I?