A Work in Progress (A Jordan Woodruff Short)
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Nothing more than a laptop’s glow filled the darkened room of Jared Richardson. He sat at his tall wooden desk he laid with his forehead resting against the palms of his hands. Before him was an open word processing application on his laptops screen with nothing more than the word fuck repeated over and over again for three lines. With a loud sigh he looked up from his hands his eyes glowing from the eerie glow of the screen and in a quick movement he closed the screen filling the room with complete darkness. He shuffled from his desk and threw himself down onto the mattress lying on the floor behind his desk chair. He kicked his shoes off and lazily tugged his shirt off tossing it aside.
“No more bad writing Jared. This is not how this was meant to be, I do not understand why you can’t write this fucking story. You have a draft; you even have an ending, what the hell is the problem?” He spoke out softly to himself, his voice filled with a sense of defeat and grimace. He rolled onto his back looking up at the ceiling thrusting his hand into the air he reached out opening his balled fist he swiped at the empty space above his bed. His arms fell back onto his face and he closed his eyes for what seemed like a lifetime to Jared.
Numbers on his clock read with a dim red display 8:13am and the moment of serenity and silence was broken with the loud vibrating of his alarm clock which started flashing and loudly buzzing across the tile floor of his room.
“Shut up you damn thing” Jared whined out rolling back over into his blankets feeling safe in their warm embrace and pressing a pillow to his head as if trying to cover his ears to avoid hearing an eventual explosion.
After minutes of the alarm buzzing across the floor a loud bang shook the wall knocking down something in the background off of his desk. “Wake the fuck up you piece of shit!” A loud angry voice came from the apartment next to Jared’s. His neighbor Marcus had obviously been woken up by the loud noise that was being caused by Jared’s alarm and with being a shift worker did not appreciate being woken up after working a 12 hours shift. “I swear to god Jared if you do not get up I will climb through this wall and take the shattered dry wall and line your face with it if you do not shut that damn thing of!”
“Fine, fine, fuck off I am awake” Jared yelled out
“Yea whatever you old piece of shit, go back to sleep. It is not like I can complain when you bring one of your gutter trash girlfriends home from the corner.” Jared muttered under his breath as he switched his alarm clock off tearing it out of the wall and throwing it at the adjacent wall watching some of the white dry wall cracking from the heavy clock. He rolled back over into his bed wrapping himself into his blankets and once again closing his eyes amerced in his soft pillows. Minutes or hours passed by, without his clock he was not sure. The only thing that was a factor of time was the light seeping from the blackout curtains that covered his window. And a light knock on his bedroom door.
“Jared, are you awake, I thought I heard something crash?” A soft voice licked at Jared’s ears opening his eyes once again.
“Fuck it I am awake, god damn it” He yelled out
“Hey, Jared, why are you cussing!” The soft voice spoke sternly.
“Sorry mom, that dick from next door was screaming at me again.”
“Was your alarm buzzing non-stop again”
“Well you know Marcus works hard. Not to mention he lives alone ever since his wife left him. It has been hard for him”
“Yea that because he was caught mouthing the whore who works the corner of Saint Ives and Birch. I would of left his bigot ass to if I was caught using my vow maker on such a treat.” He muttered lifting himself from the mattress on the floor.
Jared stumbled across the floor of his room feeling across his wall as if a blinded bat looking for his light switch. A bright beam of light filled the room revealing the four white walls of Jared’s cave. He bent over and picked up a picture which has been cracked from falling onto the floor after Marcus had banged against the wall. He rubbed his thumb over the crack on the glass pane and subsequently over the face of a blonde girl who stood hand in hand with Jared underneath a tree in front of a white house. “Damn fascist” He muttered placing the picture frame back onto the desk.
